Thursday, 8/6/09 - Last Day At Work

Today is a very hard day to sum up in words on behalf of the whole group...it's certainly the type of day that each of us will have to describe in our own way to our friends and family when we return! We won't try to speak for everyone here, but please understand it was an amazing day and very personal for every one of us.

Today was our last day of work on the house and we met our goal in terms of the work schedule. All that is left is to finish the plastering the house and running electricity (which is done by the skilled workers) and according to Anne, Sak and his family will be moving in late next week! The work we accomplished in 2 weeks would normally have taken Habitat about 2 months or more to complete, so we were very honored to be able to help Sak move in sooner.

Lunch was with the workers on the jobsite as usual, but it was unusual in that we prepared and cooked it onsite ourselves (with Anne's guidance!). After lunch was our formal house dedication where we presented the "key" to Sak. He is a very humble man but expressed himself well and was certainly appreciative.

We left the jobsite early today and were back at our hotel by around 3pm - it gave everyone the chance to relax, shop, get massages, or just cool off in the pool before we headed to yet another beautiful seaside dinner. It was such a great end to a great two weeks of time together and a beautiful evening at that!

Wednesday, 8/5/09 - Stucco & Scorpions...AND walls!

Today's work day started out with an exciting find - a scorpion hiding in our pile of concrete blocks! As Amanda was moving blocks she came across the discovery and our Taxi driver moved it out of the pile and out to freedom, but not before we got some pictures of it. It was huge to us, but Tom - a Habitat representative and our comic relief on this trip - told us it was small compared to the size it would become.

Our day today was a bit more low key than usual - again, do to the fact we are up to high areas on the house and not enough scaffolding, we worked in teams to try and keep busy. One group worked up high finishing up the exterior walls (finally done - yeah!!), another group cleaned up around the job site - inside and out. On the inside it was a matter of sweeping up concrete dust and "concrete droppings" and outside was a conglomeration of interesting findings...a lot of trash, old clothing, lighters, food wrappers. Who knows how long they had all been out there, but we now have a very clean site!

The afternoon became a little more exciting...as the "high team" continued wall work, the rest of us were able to mix a new recipe of sand and cement for the wall stucco, which put us all back to work again. Sheri and Sarah were working on plastering an interior wall and VERY instantly learned how little airflow there is inside. They were literally dripping sweat within minutes (see photo) and they both agreed it felt good to be back to our hard physical labor :)

Let us take a moment to acknowlege our team leaders from the Thai side of things - Anne (see photo of her preparing pineapple for us) and Tom. They have been absolutely fabulous and have ensured our safety, hard work and good times throughout these 2 weeks. In addition they serve as our translators with the workers and hotel staff when we cannot find other creative ways to communicate with them :) Their dedication to their work and to volunteer groups like ours is amazing - their work is not like it would be back home where a Habitat office covers a particular region - usually very small. Here, they serve the entire Southern part of the country and spend their time travelling from province to province as their work requires. They are outstanding!

Hard to believe tomorrow will be our last day of work. We will have accomplished our work schedule and the remaining tasks of the house will be left for the family to finish. I'm sure much reflection is to come in the next couple of days as we wrap up here and all head back to the airport for our journeys back home.

Tuesday, 8/4/09 - More walls & Orphanage

Okay, we promise the update on the walls will be over soon! It takes a long time to do this stuff :) So, as the headline mentions, today we continued the work on the walls. Good news is that the interior walls are now complete and we just have to finish the exterior!

At lunch we took a field trip and ate lunch at a local orphanage which also runs a bakery to support their work. There are about 20 kids who live there, ranging in age from 5-15 but they were all gone to school when we arrived. We were served a wonderful Thai lunch and were given a tour by Kelly - and American now living in Thailand and engaged to be married to a Thai man. She met him when she came here for a Habitat build and and he was the Thai Habitat leader on the build site. She has since moved here and is supporting many local initiatives, including this orphanage. The kids who live at this orphange were either orphaned by the tsunami or their parents cannot afford to care for them. Kelly reports the home is full of love and the children are very happy and well cared for.

After lunch we returned to the job site to continue exterior wall work and to clean up the job site. Due to the fact that there are so many of us and so few scaffolding sets, we had to rotate the upper level work.

The weather continues to be great this week! The heat is still very present, but it has been more cloudy all week, which makes a HUGE difference :)

Monday, 8/3/09 - More walls

Today was a continuation of the work we started on Friday - more walls. The jobsite is really starting to look like a house now and it is very exciting. We all have a whole new appreciate for bricklayers or masonry workers - it's hard, tedious work making sure it's all done precisely! We are over half-way done with the walls now - the interior walls need to be 13 layers high, while the exterior will go all the way to the roof. We are also to a point where we are need scaffolding and we only have limited access to that, so soon we will have to transition to a point where some will lay brick and others will do a new task - we'll report on that tomorrow :)

Something that we have been reflecting on a lot recently is just how happy it makes us all when we randomly see Jiresak "Sak" standing by looking at the jobsite and smiling to himself. To imagine how hard he's been saving, and for how long he's been saving, to see this dream become a reality is a clear reminder to us all of why we're here.

Also, an update for all wondering - Sheri and her mystery sting are doing just fine and healing well! Our new injuries for today included Ashley slicing her arm open on a rusty metal support rod (thank goodness for her tetunus shot!) and Jennifer being splattered in the with wet cement. One of our inhouse EMT, Ben, ran to the rescue and helped flush it out. It did, however, cause Jennifer to immediately demand everyone of us put our sunglasses on to serve as eye protection for our dangerous task :)

Sunday, 8/2/09 - Spiritual/Religious Experiences

This morning started off to slow start, just in terms of everyone enjoying the opportunity to sleep in a bit! A few people from our team decided to attend a Christian church service this morning and thought it was a great experience. Although we're uncertain as to the denomination, the service was led by a woman pastor who did quite a bit of English translating once she saw that "Americans" in the pews. Another very special part of the service was when they sang Amazing Grace, but in Thai. Hearing a familiar hymn, regardless of language, was a moving experience.

Around noon we all left left our hotel for lunch at a beachside restaurant. This area was one affected by the tsumani from 2004 - it was overwhelming to see the ladders now attached to the trees with "tsunami climb up" signs posted near them. The pictures in the restaurant of the before and after images were hard to see. Even as we were sitting and eating we were discussing how we were there, at this moment, enjoying the views just as innocently as those on 12/24/04 who had no clue of what was to happen. It was a scary thought.

Following lunch we piled back in our taxis for a trip to a local Buddhist temple. In the normal Buddhist tradition, photos of the interior of temples or of monks is not allowed, but our Habitat representative was able to get us permission from the monk so we are sharing a couple with you here. After we spent some time looking around inside adn taking photos, one of the monks came and spoke to us and did a Thai blessing chant and blessed us with holy water. He also gave each of us a bracelet for protection - the men he put on their wrists directly, but for the women he dropped it in each of our hands, as he cannot have contact with women.

Our last stop of the day was to the local tsunami memorial and toured the area bit. There were many photos and a memorial wall constructed by the German government memorializing the German's lost in the disaster. Afterward, we did a little local shopping at the local merchant stands before heading back to our hotel.

This evening is spent as a free night and we can wander town, rest, and eat as we wish before resting up for our final week of building!

Saturday, 8/1/09 - And on day 7, they rested...

What a day! After a week of hard work we all enjoyed our R & R day today.

We woke up early and loaded our taxis from Khao Lak (where our hotel is) to the Phang Nga bay. It was very interested being able to drive through the different towns in the province during the 1+ ride there. Once we arrived we loaded into two long tail boats. These boats have benches and a motor and are made of wood. We set off for another part of the bay where we could go canoeing in some of the limestone caves. We paired off and hopped into the inflatable canoes with a "driver" in each boat with us. Since it was still low tide, we were able to glide into some of the nearly hidden openings in the limestone cliffs. It was amazing! Some of them were even so small we had to lay flat down to get through them.

Following this part of the excursion, we headed to "The Floating Village" further out in the bay where we ate lunch and wandered around the souvenier stands. After lunch we loaded back into our boats and headed off for "James Bond Island" (Ko Tapu Island) - both this island and the Floating Village were featured in "The Man with the Golden Gun" movie.

When we got there, the island was very crowded with several tour groups and the wind was very strong which blew the shell beach pieces all up into our faces, and feeling like little stabs on our legs. After some photo opps at James Bond Island, we loaded back up to head to another deserted island to swim.

As we pulled up to our own deserted island, we all got out and went for a swim. The water was beautiful and the tempurature was great (even though the Bay floor was grossly slimy)! Following our female bonding experience offshore (the guys were on the beach) we started to swim back to shore. SUDDENLY, Sheri yells "ow!" and Jennifer says "what's the matter?" Sheri replied "something just stung me" - as then Jennifer hightails it in to shore! When we got back on the beach and saw Sheri's painful expression and examined her arm we realized he had in fact been attacked! As we analyzed possible treatment options (a million miles away from medical treatment) we decided urine was a cure-all. As Sheri had already recently relieved herself, Diana stepped right up to the plate. The pain continued and our boat driver offered up some mystery natural remedy - he applied some pink powder to her wound and off we went, headed back home. We are assuming, based on knowledge and the trusty google search that she was stung by a box jellyfish - one of the most deadly animals in the world if it attaches and releases its venom! Sheri seems to be doing pretty well as of this evening, although still in a little bit of pain.

We got back to our hotel around 6:30pm and everyone has evening off to wander town, eat, sleep, shower, etc. It's was an amazing day and absolutely perfect weather for our "day of rest."

Friday, 7/31/09 - WALLS!

Today we got straight to work on the walls of the house - both exterior and interior. It was a learning day for all of us, as it seemed none of us had mortering experience ! The day was much cooler since the sun stayed hidden by clouds most of the day and there was a nice breeze - it was a very welcome change! Actually, we were all amazing at how quickly today passed.

The brick work today was very rewarding - seeing the walls actually go up was very exciting because the house was really becoming a reality. It was fun to see Jirasek "Sak" - the homeowner - look around a smile periodically (that's him in the top picture) and it just made us wonder what he was thinking. He has been saving money for a long time to try and build his own house and when his opportunity to work with Habitat came around, it must have been a dream come true.

We were able to get four layers of brick done before our workday ended and we are officially ahead of schedule now which is great. A Habitat representative told us today that what we have done in 4 days it would usually take their hired workers about 3 weeks to complete. Having 14 of us add to the workforce of their 5 workers makes a huge difference!

After work we stopped at a waterfall on our way back to our hotel before getting cleaned up and heading out to dinner. Week one is now officially over and we'll have 3 1/2 days left to finish the house next week before our time here is complete. It's so hard to believe how much we have accomplished in just 5 days!

Thursday, 7/30/09 - We have a floor!

Exciting topic of the day is that we have a floor - today was spent mixing and pouring concrete for teh floor of the house, so nothing a whole lot to explain on this one :) It felt very good to see so many layers of our hard work come to fruition in the form of a smooth, solid foundation to this house we are helping to build.


Today was actually only a half day of work. We left at noon to head to the beach for lunch before heading to a local elementary school for a bit of the afternoon. It was such a great break from our regular schedule to get to interact with the local children. They were very excited to see us as well! We spent some time singing songs with them in English and them teaching us some songs in Thai. Before we left, we had treats of chips, candy and ice cream to give them - so great of us to fill them with sugar just before their school day ended :)

Wednesday, 7/29/09 - Words of the day: MORE Concrete!!

We are experiencing a theme for our workdays – everything revolves around concrete and concrete without a big truck with a chute on it equals a lot of hard work! Our entire project for today was to prepare the floor of the house for concrete. This entailed many steps starting with returning to our project from yesterday of moving and breaking up old broken concrete blocks. this project cleared up our jobsite because we cleared two huge piles of broken blocks, but was also a huge amount of work! After all the concrete blocks were in the "house" they were spread evening over teh entire floor. The next step was to bucket hundreds of buckets of sand on top of the concrete blocks. This was done to allow the sand to sift down between the broken blocks and fill the gaps. After the "floor" was completely filled with sand, it was then watered down to help the sand sift down further, then more sand was added until it was a solid layer of sand.

Next step was to bucket and spread gravel over the enture floor, followed by a checkerboard pattern of split bamboo - to act as the rebar. After the "rebar" was in place, every intersection had to be nailed together. It was a tedious task, for sure!

Then FINALLY it was time to mix more concrete and start pouring the slab for the floor of the house. Again more gravel and sand was hauled and concrete was mixed. It was nearing the end of our workday so we only got through pouring the kitchen, which is a slightly lower than the rest of the house. It was so exciting to finally see the floor looking like a floor!

Tomorrow we will work a half day only and will finish the rest of the concrete slab so we will be ready to start laying block for the walls on Friday morning. Exciting stuff - means more concrete to come :)

Tuesday, 7/28/09 - Word of the Day: Concrete!

Today’s heading covers it all. Today involved A LOT of concrete – mixing, hauling and dumping, then more hauling and more dumping…

Today’s projects included three main tasks. One team of people – led by Benjamin – dug a hole 9 feet deep and 4 feet in diameter that is to hold the septic system. When we say dug we mean by hand…with a shovel no machines…in the 500 degree heat…in a hole.

The second job was to carry old broken concrete blocks into the area that will be the floor of the house and then use hammer and sledge hammers to break them up as small as possible. Keep in mind this house is 36 square meters, which means a lot of concrete blocks and a lot of breaking them up. Once that was moving along well we moved towards the final project – more concrete.
Our biggest goal of the day was to complete the foundation work. We hauled bucketfuls of sand and gravel to the concrete mixer, adding the concrete mix and water. We are talking hundreds of trips carrying these buckets – we needed a lot of concrete! As we made each batch of concrete we then halted the concrete mixing process and switched gears to then bucket the concrete out of the mixer and into the foundation. Our chain system worked well with passing buckets from person to person until the end of the line when it could be dumped and passed back towards the fron tof the line to be refilled. It became a very efficient system when we finally got it down right. We stayed late today to ensure the job was done, but it was worth it.

It’s funny to see us on the way home – it’s a very quiet ride in comparison to the morning trip into work. We are all so exhausted by the time we’re heading back to our hotel that everyone seems to be in a daze. The hard work, in combination with the heat and humidity are enough to do a person in!

Dinner tonight was great – we went to a great place across the street from our hotel that is a combo Thai/German food place. It was delicious! One of the other terrific things about this restaurant is that they offer free wi-fi J It is our new favorite stop after a long day of work. With three computer between our entire group the “internet rotation” is working out just fine.

Monday, July 27th – Let the work begin…

This morning started very early for a portion of our group – Jennifer, Ashley, Sheri, Amanda, Diana and Sarah surprised even themselves by getting up at 5:30 for a walk to the beach to watch the sunrise (well, not sunrise exactly – we were facing West – let’s call it a dayrise). It was well worth it! The morning was beautiful – watching the waves roll in, heat lightening flashing through the clouds, the dogs roaming the beach and the daylight come up was amazing. After many pictures, creation of some sand art by Sheri and wading in the water we headed back for breakfast.

After breakfast we all met up – bags in tow – for our trip to the Andaburi Resort in Phang Nga – it was about a 2 hours drive. After those two hours, a few more moments of bated breath while driving and some beautiful scenery we made it to our hotel and had time to explore the area and get unpacked before meeting up with our gracious HFH Thailand hosts for our welcome and orientation. HFH Thailand has been doing amazing work in Thailand in the next 4 years plans to build 1500 more houses with families living in poverty housing. This area we are working was also hit hard by the devastating tsunami a few years ago and Habitat has been a key player in the rebuilding efforts here.

Orientation was followed by a traditional Thai lunch – again it was amazing – then we got dressed and ready to head to the job site. We were excited to see that rather than riding in the vans we’d been transported in up to this point, we are going to utilize the local open air taxi trucks to go to and from the job site everyday. As Anne, our HFH Thailand host told us, they want to support the local services as much as possible. No complaints from us!
The job site is about 35 minutes from our hotel and we arrived there at 1pm for a welcome, introduction to Jiresek and work! Anne served as our translator while Jiresek introduced himself and expressed his gratitude and appreciate to all of us. He spoke humbly and briefly, but it was obvious he was excited and appreciative of this opportunity to move his 8 person family out of his 2 room (1 bedroom) rental house and into this soon to be new, safe, and sturdy house.
Now it was time to get to work! We started with mixing cement for the footers which entailed shoveling sand, cement mix, water and gravel into containers and them carrying them to the cement mixer. Everything is done by hand and hard work and we all realized within minutes that the intensity of the sun and the high humidity made it critical to stop frequently – every 15 minutes or so – for a water break. We were sweating faster than we could wipe it off and definitely jumped right into working hard and getting dirty! After mixing several batches of cement and bucketing it to the already dug footers, we moved on to the task of moving old, used concrete blocks into the foundation of the house, then using hammers to break them up into smaller pieces so that tomorrow we can spread it evenly over the area where the concrete slab will go on top of it. It was explained that we will spread the broken concrete pieces, and then carry sand to pour in and level it off before we will mix and pour the concrete over it all to create the slab foundation. Sounds like a lot of work we will be doing tomorrow!

At 3:45pm it was time for cleanup before heading back to the hotel. Hard to believe we had worked for only 2 ½ hours and we were all so exhausted! Tomorrow will be our first whole day of work and it will certainly be challenging, just as this afternoon was.

The rest of the evening was spent cleaning up, going to the beach/pool, and having dinner - Pizza this time :) Then we all headed to bed to get prepared for along day tomorrow!

Sunday, July 26th – Phuket, Thailand

Well, after much internet frustration, we think we have finally figured out to get online to update our loyal followers on our many adventures! Sunday consisted of our team finally coming together at our hotel in Phuket – Jennifer was able to relax knowing we had all arrived after our respective hours of travel! As we were waiting for everyone to arrive, we were able to explore the hotel, eat, lounge by the pool, swim in the ocean or take a much needed nap. It has been an exhausting few days for us all and we are just happy to have met and begin settling in for our next 10 days together.

As we arrived in Phuket and stepped outside of the airport the response was the same – IT’S HUMID! The thickness of the air and the intensity of the sun is unlike anything most of us have experienced before and it will definitely end up on the list of “biggest adjustments in Thailand.” Something else that was noticed almost immediately is the driving habits! Motor bikes, cars, bikers and motorized carts all share the same roads and the lines painted on the roads dividing lanes seem to be there just for decoration! Many times we hold our breath as we are passing someone on a curve or trying to squeeze between a truck on once side and a motor biker on our other as we proceed to drive down the middle of the road, not exactly in any one lane. It’s been an adventure J

On this night we enjoyed a delicious Thai dinner waterside and this was our first get together as a complete team. Our group consists of a variety of people – ages, backgrounds, experiences, professions – but it’s been amazing to realize how quickly we are getting to know each other.
Tomorrow we will leave our hotel in Phuket and travel to the province of Phang Nga (about two hours north) where we will get settled at our new home for the remainder of our trip. It’s been an exciting and exhausting few days of travel and adjusting and meeting new people, but we are all here, safe and sound and ready to get to work on the house we will build with Jiresek Kumloy and his family! Big day tomorrow!