The Continuing

Friday, May 18, 2007
8:22:32 AM

10:11:22 PM
Friday wasn’t a bad day as I recall, Greg and I were up early again for another day of CI. Our driver took us to the facility where we all congregated before the day began. It was decided that we’d continue our work in the same rooms as the day before. At the beginning of the day, all of the students gathered in an open air (everything is open air) room where we raised the Thai flag, sang the national anthem, then proceeded to do some dancing. Some of the students were highly engaged and danced a lot, some of the students were quiet and reserved, in their own worlds. We also then did an activity where some students were simply given a piece of paper, then the staff would take turns in the middle coming up with new ways for the students to manipulate their sheets of paper. At the conclusion of the activity, we were given the task of making our paper the longest. For us this basically involved tearing up the paper into little strips and laying it out on the floor. After we had demonstrated it, some of the students got their try at it. There were smiles all around. I went to the computer lab to set out on a secret project with Louis. The school has only a small website in Thai only, for them I have designed and translated their site to English. In this way, I hope to make better know this facility and what they do there to the wider world; letting people know of the volunteer opportunities that exist here. For lunch we ate in their cafeteria, a dish of rice and chicken (as seems almost standard here in Thailand from what I’ve seen). In the afternoon, we all had to meet the director of the foundation that runs the facility. In the discussions we had, it was quite apparent that we were making a positive impact and that Up With People is more than welcome to come back with later casts. School was out around 3 in the afternoon, but we had some internal Ubuntu time until 5:30 -6 or so. We discussed what it was that the Up With People Experience has meant to us, what are some regrets, some hilights, and what were some things that you did that you really felt you made a difference with. Afterwards, Greg and I went for the first time to go shopping to the MBK, a huge mall type complex downtown. There was an entire floor, probably near a kilometer long devoted almost entirely to selling cell phones. I was able to shop around and find a Thai SIM card for my phone for 50 Baht (about 1.20$ canadian). Everything is quite a lot cheaper here. I also bought a watch for about 5$ (which was a copy of an expensive designer watch) and a tshirt. The Cab ride was quite long going home through the traffic, but I managed it. On the Plus side, I found that I can call canada for about 35¢ a minute using my cell now.

During our wrap up session at the end of the day, we were informed that one of the prospective students to our program that had been interviewed in Nashville had died suddenly; the details were not given. Later on, Jorn, the cast manager came up to me and told me that this person had been the girl I had interviewed with Lauran that week. Remembering back, I recall the enthusiasm this person had shown to travel with our program, and now will never had that opportunity. Her parents are planning on setting up a scholarship fund in her memory so that other people may travel in the program.

Morning Activities with the group