Sawadee Krap,
Everyone I am here to tell you about last week and it was a busy one. We began the week with the planning of the rest of our garden project with the science teacher, sorry I forgot her name. There are about 775 people working and living here I can’t remember every name, not yet anyway. She wants to plant flowers so the kids can make well for lack of a better word and a better explanation “Lays” . They are used in some of the Buddhist ceremonies and now they won’t have to buy the flowers, just cut and make…The plants will produce flowers all year long and we have 40 plants. We now have planted everything that we planned on, chilies, limes, cucumbers, peppers, 3 types of basil and lemongrass, can’t wait for them to grow to taste them. More to come after we see how these items grow, I will keep you posted.
Also last week some of your donations went to buying the track team new running shoes. They are going to be competing in a competition in Phuket the first week of December, which I am going to go with them, yeah! I have been going to practice with them to learn to ropes so I can help the coaches when we get there. It has been great getting to bond with these 16 older kids since I have not had much time with them, they practice twice a day so I was never able to see them.
We also have been making different ice creams and sorbets to see what we like best to get ready for selling. So far Pomelo and Pineapple sorbets are in the lead as well as Coconut ice cream with corn, it is so good. Making Chocolate-Milk ice cream soon, it should be great and Chatree is excited to try it too. Those of you who do not know Chatree, he is one of the older kids that has been here for years and now helps out with everything at the Wat, I love him. He loves to cook but baking is his expertise. Yesterday he baked bread and I should him an American staple with his delicious bread, yup you guessed it Peanut butter and jelly…They love their sweets but have never had it before. I took the sandwiches for the track team for after practice, they were gone in about 3 minutes. Chatree and I also made subs or the Thai version of a sub, I like more meat on mine but we made them a little thinner. The kids loved them and even one of the Monks help with the preparations.
The Monk that helped us name is Low Pe Gail, I have been teaching him English for a few weeks, 1 hour 5 times a week. He is reading and writing, I am amazed…He taught himself for a few years with the use of a single dictionary he bought in Bangkok. So I guess I am just helping to work on his grammar and some of the finer points. We really need to work on the words with p’s and f’s, he mixes the up a lot. Oh yeah and the whole TH thing is tough as their mouths don’t work that way just like some of the Thai words that I am having trouble with. At night I have been working with some of the kids with their English homework, who knew I would now at 36 years old love doing homework?
So some of the other donations have gone to new tools and beads to make jewelry to sell here the Wat and man these kids are making stuff fast. We should be selling things in the next week or so and I will post pictures and if I can work it out to sell them here on my site, I will. It’s just the shipping cost to the US is so much, anyway i’ll figure it out.
I wanted to also tell you about the Cricket team here at the Wat Don Chan, there are about 20 kids that play. Chris, a retired angel from the UK comes with 2 of his friends 3 times a week to work with these kids and their AWESOME! This Sunday they are having a big game, myself and a few friends are going to cheer them on. There is also a big compititon coming up in Bangkok and Chris is taking 4 of the top players that have been invited to compete, GO TEAM WAT DON CHAN! Also a huge thank you to Chris and crew, the kids are truly grateful…
Also we had a great celebration here called Loy Krathong, this is the holiday where you send off flowers and candles into lakes and rivers to send away the things in your life that are not so good and that you would like to change. This celebration will go on for 2 to 4 days depending on where you live, here at the Wat we did one day. After you let the flowers go there are fire works and more of the home-made balloons sent off. We could actually hear fire works bursting for days and it is kind of nutty people set them off anywhere. I was on my scooter and was surprised several times but how close they were to the road. I spend one whole day preparing they homemade works with the Monks, we took a mixture of 4 items which I don’t know exactly what they were but I know there was gun powder and stuffed it into bamboo. Mine took 1 1/2 hours to make and we made 30 total. After Phra Ah Jon spoke and did a few blessings, the kids chanted for about 45 minutes and then the fireworks show began. It lasted for 1 hour and then it took 45 minutes to fill a huge kom-roy (homemade balloon), all the while kids were sending off smaller kom-roy. The Monks attached a large amount of fireworks to the big kom-roy and off it went, exploding for a while. This night was a blast but so much different from the sates. The kids are given fireworks and matches and let off to do what they want, kind of nutty but surprisingly enough no one get hurt and the next day everything was cleaned up as if nothing had happened. We all had so much fun, check out the pictures…
This week sadly we have a few sick kids here, well 30 to be exact. They have what we call Pink-eye and the Thai’s call it Red-eye. LOL. A doctor came yesterday, lined everyone one up, gave them the drops and on they went. Sadly 4 of those kids are on the track team so no practice for them and I better watch it.
