Thursday, 3 December 2009/17:59
intro first: We spent the whole day in the village. We painted the local school and planted trees around. It was hard work, but the SCs worked together and helped each other. At the end of the day, the school looked quite new.
At night, we had a ‘party’ with the locals. We danced, sang and laughed. The local children had pristine minds, and were cute too. It was a session of joy and laughter. Although we may speak different languages and believe in different religions, we were brought together by dances and songs, which were our mode of communication and interaction for that night.
here comes the record:
13/11/09 6.35am after brushing teeth
the rooster woke some of us up at abt 4 or 5am.
Ben seems the earliest (at least among boys) to wake up. i'm aft him.
It was indeed very cold at night.
*(then, we went for a walk around the village, and i took the following photos.)
*(look! the children are really helping
their parents doing farm work! start of the day! right in the morning when we are soundly asleep!)
*(a big, fat one)
*(nice view)
*(look! Ben n i were reali impressed by the behaviour of these kids. They were enjoying themselves by throwing and passing the slipper to each other. "easily contented kids" as commented by ben. I found no trace of greed in them, only simplicity.)
*(then, we went for breakfast.)
*(this is the bridge we had to cross everyday in order to reach the place where we have breakfast. Okay it's not even a bridge...)
*(our breakfast for that morning!)
a breakfast including:egg, bread, coffee, 'local rice stick'
*(this is the 'local rice stick' i'm talking abt. below is a food review written by me:
首先，外表上看，个个米粒晶莹剔透，配上红豆，白里透红，非常好看，让人很想去吃。
一口咬下去，黏黏的(sticky)米并不硬，米的清香过后，一股奶香味在嘴里扩散开来，浓郁却又不腻。果然是本地美味。)
*(then we went for a walk around the village again and saw this, not-so-cute but big elephant! (okay it's not gigantic)..the village has 2 or 3 elephants i think..n notice that there's the seat for the rider on the back of the creature..it must be quite cool to be giving instructions to the elephant, ordering it to move..imagine having an elephant as a pet! i wonder where are the fellows of SPCA chiangmai branch (or do they have a branch there?))
"friday the 13th" *(we juz realised that that day was friday the 13th)
*(then, we went to the local school and started our CIP. I didnt bring the notebook with me, so i didnt record anyth until i was back to my hut at night and wrote down what had happened on that day. So the following record was my recollection of the day.)
11.15pm. writing on bed.
camera running out of battery.
handphone running out of battery.
was too busy to write in the day.
1.CIP at local sch
*(description of sch) just a small piece of land, not even bigger than DHS canteen, with ONE classroom only.
Inside classroom: most common thing: king's photos
very 简陋. we painted walls white 1st, while some others doing planting.
*(description of CIP work) not-so-hard but dirty work. paint all over my pants, some even on my head. Fabian said sth lyk, now he really understands why we shldn't vandalise the walls-------really very hard to paint them!
*(SCs at work!)
then lunch, 炒粿条， i dunno how they cook de..
*(l8r i happen to know that it's actually fried noodle thai style..but it reali looked like 炒粿条)
*(during lunch break, some of us were playing with the local kids. See, communication is that easy---we may not speak the same language but we can still play together!!)
After lunch, i switched to doing planting. my task: place sticks beside young trees planted and at the top place a milk pocket to remind ppl not to step.
Appears to be easy, but act. NOT.
esp when the trees are planted in bushy places and there's still remaining milk in the packets, resulting in sticky hands.
Then as i walked around the sch after completing the task, Peter suddenly wanted to look at the sch crest on my PE shirt as he was abt to pain our sch logo juz beside the door of the only classroom.
i offered to draw the 明德 and i did a pretty gd job i think.
*(hey guys, esp those who doubt my loyalty to DHS, look! this is 100% a DHS crest! i drew the 明德 okay! my loyalty to DHS is not to be questioned!
But at the same time, it's quite ridiculous as we drew our sch crest just beside the door of their only classroom! We joked that this sch is our 'colony', DHS Chiangmai Branch..what a show of sovereignty..lol)
*(photo taken from Ying Xuan's blog.url:
then i helped to colour the drawings on the wall, which's much more colourful by then.
bees, flowers, a boy and a girl
Meanwhile, some seniors were playing with some kids in the classroom...Despite speaking diff langs, they were really playing happily. They played 'our' and 'their' games.
I was really tired, rushed to take my bath as the others who weren't painting have alr finished.
~end of record before dinner~
well, this is just before the dinner. That night we had a fantastic camp fire when everyone's dancing enthusiastically! That will be included in PART 2 of DAY 3!
