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."