Bo's day out

Sunday me and some of the volunteers here took one of the Rachawadee Girls to church, and then out for some ice cream afterwards. I think she really liked it and it was nice to take her to church because she's one of the girls that would understand what is going on and not sit there being bored. She also speaks more english than any of the girls at the wards, many of whom can't even speak at all, so she's really been a blessing to work with by all the volunteers that go through there. She has a great memory of the past volunteers too and can tell you who they are by the pictures she keeps with her in an album. Plus she told me that I'm handsome, so that instantly put her on top of my favorite's list!

It's great taking the kids out when we can because there is so many kids here that want/need to get out that they don't get out often at all. It's hard to choose which one's to take, but they really appreciate wherever they get to go. Bo hadn't gone to church in about a year, which is much like a lot of the guys I'm working with who want to go but don't have people to take them. This weekend we have to do some kind of yard sale in the rich American neighborhood nearby (I'm not too fond of the whole neighborhood in general) and then afterwards we'll be taking some of the smaller kids to the aquarium in Bangkok. I'm looking forward to this trip a lot, but the day will be pretty packed. Sunday I'll be waking up early to take Pittaya to church and then out to the store afterwards. He told me he's earned about 15 dollars from selling his paintings to visitors and he's been really excited to get out to the store and church. The tuesday following that will be my last day at Rachawadee Boys and CCD. I'm sad to leave, but it will be good to be back home and start to make a little money rather than spending it. I'll have about a week off before my plane trip which will be spent writing reports, buying souveniers, and taking another trip to the northeast part of Thailand to visit my friends up there.

The weekend before last we ended up at an island down the coast a bit with 11 of us volunteers. Here's a couple pictures of the trip, in case you're looking for a reason to come visit Thailand. I'll be adding more to the picture website soon enough! The picture with the huts on it is where we stayed, a mere stone's throw away from the ocean for only 9 dollars a night, which I split between me and another guy that came with us.

Rubbish

I've been a bit rubbish this past week at trying to get another blog up. Sorry for that...again. Last week went by pretty quick, culminating with a dinner at sizzler and Indiana Jones. Yeah, I was pretty excited to see the film, so were some people in the house. I figured it was time to treat myself to some western food (a rarity to say the least) and finish the meal with some Indiana Jones. With a free salad bar I ate so much I wanted to throw up. Then my burger came out and I had to finish that too. It was the first burger I had since I left at the beginning of January. All in all it was a good night. There were nine of us that went, the seven other volunteers and the volunteer coordinator that works for CCD. We treated her to dinner and the movie to say thank you for the work she does with us.

Most of the girls living in the house here have been sick from some kind of stomach flu or another, so the week was pretty depressing at the house here. I left thursday night into the city to see the family I know from Buriram as they were at a conference hosted by a church in Bangkok. The speaker was a pastor from Georgia, USA. It was good to see the family for the evening and they insisted on driving me back home. I tried to tell them it wasn't necessary, since I could take the sky train over all the traffic and then catch a bus and be back in a mere 45 minutes or so. It's hard to refuse the hospitality though, and probably by some cultural rules they felt some kind of obligation to make sure I made it home. They are a lovely family though, so I don't complain one bit...even though it took 2 hours to negotiate our way through the traffic before we made it back. They have been really good to me everytime I come out here, since I lived with them in the slums one summer. They call me their foreigner son, and I call them my Thai parents. I try to show their picture to people when I'm trying to negotiate for a Thai price on something and say that I'm not a foreigner at all. Doesn't work too well, think I might need a darker tan.

On that note, I'm trying to learn the Isaan dialect, which is the dialect spoken in the Northeast part of Thailand, where they are living now. It's hard to learn because there are different tone rules on the words, and around 15 to 20 percent of the words are completely different than Thai. It's hard not to confuse them, but I figure that if I can at least know the words to understand what is being spoken it will be a big help, since they can all speak central Thai up there.

I'll try to get another post up tomorrow with some pictures from today when we took one of the cerebal paulsy girls to church and then out for ice cream. She was super excited about the whole day and it was a lot easier than Tuesday when we took 6 of the girls out for dinner and ice cream all at once!

More Adventure room adventures

We took the kids to the childrens museum last friday which was a ton of fun. I don't know if the kids had more fun than I did, but I sure hope so. I didn't have a kid I was personally responsible for because I wasn't sure if my visa situation was going to go as easily as I was hoping. The visa worked out great, thanks for the prayers and support. I spent most of the time at the childrens museum helping with Anna. She's the girl I was responsible for when we went to the zoo, so I was really excited to do that. After lunch we took the kids into the library for some reason or another. It wasn't really a quiet place after we brought the kids in there, and one of the autistic we took spent his time running around and hitting the books that the other adults were quietly reading to their children. The other adults there were really understanding to us though, which was nice. We didn't lose any of the kids for very long, but some of them are quite good at running off during moments of chaos.

Monday at work we had a birthday party for one of our staff at Rachawadee Boys which the kids liked. We cooked some food that they ate on top of the food that the government gives them. After work Monday I went into the city to help take 30 kids from the homes to go see some concert that was to benefit disabled children. It was an odd experience. One of the government ladies invited me to come with, but I think she was surprised that I said yes. So I went, the only one from CCD, and the only white person in the whole place. We basically took all the kids in a big covered truck (the cover did nothing for the rain on the way home, I was soaked) into the city which took 2 hours to get there. We ended up with 31 kids when we arrived...I still don't think anyone knows who the extra kid was. They said we'd get back around 8:30...but this is Thailand. 8:30 that night translated into 11 pm. Pretty standard.

Tuesday I had a blast with the kids in the adventure room again. I love going to that place and the kids get a kick out of being there. I really enjoy the fact that it's a big padded room where I can throw the kids around. I realise that there is a lot of things I get to do here working with the kids that most people my age aren't really allowed to do anymore. Such as playing on playgrounds, or in ball pits. I'm really lucky to be out here and have such a great job. The kids here are really amazing people to work with and get to know. I tell them how I'm only able to be out here because of you guys back home, giving me time off from work and helping financially to come here and buy things for the kids or take them traveling around. Thanks for all the support, I'm really looking forward to the last four weeks here!

I'm back

I made it back into the country ok. There weren't any problems going to Cambodia today and coming back which was nice. It was just a draining day spent driving to the border and back. I will have to leave the country one more time before I go back to America next month, but I'll have some time to think about what would work out best. I didn't get any pictures though, mainly because there wasn't much to see other than the inside of the van, the crappy fence at the border crossing area, and the casino on the Cambodian side where we ate lunch. No photos were allowed inside the casino, though there wasn't much in there. It had the feel of being in a bingo hall to me.

Although I've beeng wanting to take some time and see Myanmar since the protests that were going on there last summer, I feel like this isn't going to be a good time to go up to the border and try to get in. Especially since they aren't even letting US aid workers in. It does seem pretty grim up there and I hope to be able to take a trip up there before coming home next month. As for our life here though it still seems like Myanmar is a world away. A lot of staging points for aid supplies and news reports are here in Bangkok, but now where we live. There isn't lots of trucks parked out front loaded with supplies, so it's hard to remember how close this really is to Bangkok. The storms never hit us here, though the original reports were that we would get some thunderstorms coming all last week because of it. We did have some storms of our own about a week before that which did some damage here. The winds tore apart the roof of the movie place nearby and even bent over a metal fence on the way to work. The metal here in Thailand doesn't seem to be as strong as the metal I'm used to back home and many of the small buildings and thrown together houses aren't meant to stand up to sever weather. When the storms hit here a couple weeks ago I thought they weren't much of a big deal since we get much worse back home. The reality was however that roofs of people's make shift house were flying off, and the food stands were sailing all over the roads. I can only imagine what is going on in Myanmar now, especially in the Irawaddy Delta where it seems there isn't a whole lot of stable building to begin with.

A day in the life of an illegal immigrant

Last night sometime around midnight a thought dawned on me that I was supposed to check my passport to see when my visa expires. I told one of the other volunteers to remind me to do so, but I think I asked the wrong volunteer. Instead of putting it off till morning, I climbed out of bed (aka. up of the floor) and saw the stamp in my passport indicating I was four days past my allowed stay in the country. The person in charge of sending in the paperwork to renew my visa hadn't done it a month ago when it was due. Now there's no way I can really keep my non immigrant visa (that I know of) and my best option is to go on a "visa run" to Cambodia tomorrow. It'll cost me $50 for the whole trip (lunch IS included so I'm happy about that) with some kind of agency that helps out with these things. I figured since this is my first time going to Cambodia to do this I better pay the agency than let everyone at the border try to rip me off wherever they can. Especially since I'm switching from a non immigrant visa to a 30 tourist stamp, and I'll have to pay a fine for the days I overstayed. The only problem with a 30 stamp is that my flight back to America is in about 35 days (seems like it's coming too quick). This means I'll have to leave the country again, or stay gone this time for about 5 or 6 days. I'm opting to plan a trip outside Thailand towards the end of my stay. Another volunteer has to leave also so at least I should have some company then.

I'm not surprised that I didn't even think about my visa expiring till it already had. I tend not to think about things like that, especially when someone else is supposed to be doing it. It's kind of just out of mind for me. I'm also not surprised that the person in charge of doing it didn't think about it either. I am a little irritated about the whole situation though. It's costing me extra time and money that I shouldn't need to give up. I should still be back to go to the childrens museum friday, but I told the government I can't take the kid I was going to. If something happens and I have to stay in Cambodia or something like that I don't want the kid to be sitting there waiting. All the other volunteers already have kids they are taking so I will just go along with them and help out with whatever. That's not a big deal.

Today we were taking a group of kids from work to go swimming at this international school in Bangkok. The kids were pretty excited because the pool at the government wards has been under construction and they haven't swam in a long time. After loading all the kids up in a bus and trekking them into Bangkok, and waiting outside for half hour for the guy who set it up to come down and meet us, we were told that the pool was being used by someone else and we weren't going to be able to swim. But we could take the kids over to sit outside at the playground. Thailand.

Learning some Thai

Well, I decided against fishing yesturday. I needed a day to relax a bit with nothing to do. Then I was bored not having anything to do so I travelled down to a computer mall that is nearby and bought a couple movies for the kids to watch at work. On the way back I got off the bus a mile and a half away from home to buy some pepsi because it's cheaper there than the store at the end of the road. Realizing after I bought my pepsi that I was going to lose all the profits I made on that stop on another bus ticket to get back home, and not wanting to walk home in the hundred degree day, I popped in next door to the coffee shop to do study some Thai. It was a really peaceful day, but I didn't get back home till about 7 at night. I was wanting to get home earlier, but I couldn't just get a cup of coffee to go. If I did that I would have been better not to even walk over to the coffee shop in the first place. The air conditioning of the little cafe was nice to relax in for a while. It's the place I usually like to go when I need to get out of the house and get some work done doing something such as studying or writing.

One of the motivating factors of learning Thai for me has been that I didn't really want to walk around confused all the time. Even when a Thai person speaks English there still seems to be a lot of unnecessary confusion about the details of the conversation. Over time however, I have learned that about 90 percent of the confusion has nothing to do with translating issues. I think it's just the mentaillity of Thai people. I was told last week by some of the staff from another day care that we were taking our guys swimming today. Now I know that it seems I would've had to ask the people I work with to find out if it's true or not, but I thought I was ahead of the game. The people I work with usually tell me wrong dates or leave out details, so I thought that this information was better than the information I usually get. Plus the entire conversation was in Thai, so it couldn't be wrong.

I'm glad I didn't wear my swimsuit to work today. The new rumor is that we're going tomorrow.

It's about time we get some holidays here...

I found out on Friday that we have this Monday off of work for labor day. I asked last week when the Monday that we have off work is and they told me that it wasn’t this weekend, but the one after that…somewhere around the ninth of May. I showed up the next day and noticed a calendar that shows we have this Monday off, not the following Monday, but the Monday after that we also have off for holidays. We also (because you can never get too many holidays) have next Friday off. It’s good to spice things up and get a Friday off every now and then instead of all these Mondays.

The days off though are good for having the time to take out other kids that we don’t always get to work with. Yesterday I went with one of the staff to take two of the kids that live in CCD’s foster home to the small island of Koh Kret (walking distance from where we live). We took a boat ride that tours you around the island and stops at a few shops along the way. Afterwards we ate some lunch and came back for a nap. We took two of the kids, Sebone and Tiger. I don’t get to work with them often, but everyone tells me that was an odd pair to take out. I had a lot of fun going and helping out though.

I took one of the guys I work with, Nin, to church today and then out to KFC and do some shopping. I got him some things he had been needing, like razors for his shaver, batteries, pocket knife…you know, the essentials. A couple of the other guys had been asking about getting small backpacks to carry their things around in, so I took a look to see if I could find something suitable. I figure I’ll buy a few of them and give them to CCD staff to distribute to whoever needs them the most.

After taking the kids around all weekend I think I might spend the day off tomorrow going fishing with one of the staff. I used to go fishing with him when I was here last time, but he’s studying at a university on the weekends now so we don’t get a chance to go often. Next Friday for our day off we’re taking some of the smaller kids to a children’s museum in Bangkok which I’m looking forward too. Sethi and Lien from Belgium returned home Thursday night, leaving me now in a house full of English girls. Not as exciting as it sounds…nothing against the English, but living in a house where you’re the only guy isn’t as good as it might sound. Last night they took me salsa dancing somewhere in Bangkok (I spent most of my time down the street at the Seven Eleven). Afterwards we came back home and put on a movie…Dirty Dancing 2, Havanna something or other. My one vote doesn’t seem to go as far as their 6, no matter how many cockroaches I kill for them. I ended up in my room watching the movie Hitman on my computer. It’s a pretty man-tastic movie if you ask me.