Thailand Mission and Cultural Trip 2014 - Journal 9

It is the end of the work week! I don’t remember working as hard doing manual labor as I did this week. As you see from the attached photo of my pedometer log, I did the equivalent of over 200,000 steps this week (and I still have one more day of the week to go). The reason, of course, for this is the huge amount of digging/weeding with the hoe on the farm. Normally there are a lot of us and we only work in the mornings. But this year with only 2 of us working in the morning and then everybody again working on the farm in the afternoon, I doubled my output! And I am feeling it in my muscles and bones! But we got through an entire pepper field and an entire chili field (minus 2 very very rocky rows). Rob and myself were determined to conquer the rocky terrain of chilles; so we didn’t

hang around the English Camp too long. You will have to read Susan Bebee’s Facebook posts to see what happened there. (She gives a good run-down of their day and activities). I asked the teaching team to evaluate their week at the school. They thought it was great and gave it a grade of B+ to A-. That is a strong grade, for teaching in a different cultural setting, without any preparation. I’m proud of them!

Right after lunch I took them to the Nam Tok Chet Sao Noi waterfalls, which is about 2 km from the school. It was calming and peaceful. They enjoyed it; but they really wanted to get to the Premium Outlet Mall – a very upscale Mall. For some in the team, the big attraction was that there was a Starbucks there, even though the cost is a little higher than in the States! I got some time to just sit down and nap, sitting straight up!

We ended the day with Dutch Treat at the Farm Chokchai  Steakhouse. This entire farm is run like a Disney establishment, and in some instances, even better! We were impressed! Oh, we did get back on time for Vespers for some of us to attend (even though yet again the power of sleep overtook me!).