I am now a dot-com: www.pamcakesforbreakfast.com

Hi Everyone!

I will be finishing up the posts on my last few days in Thailand soon.  But in the meantime, I have bought a domain and switched my blog over to it’s new home!  From now on there will be no more wordpress in my URL.  So please update your bookmarks and rss feeds, etc.  The new address is: www.pamcakesforbreakfast.com

Hope you like the new home and hope you continue to keep reading.  Thailand is just the beginning of many great adventures to come!

Pam

Happy Birthday to the Queen! – Thursday August 12, 2010

Today is the Queen’s Birthday and therefore Mother’s Day in Thailand.  We had to be up earlier today so that we could leave Mirror at 8am to go to the ceremony for the Queen in town.

Mother's Day celebration.

We got to the Administration Building and had to park on the grass because of the massive amount of people that had shown up.  The grass was soaked and incredibly muddy because of all the rain we’ve gotten this week.  Then we trekked through the muddy grass up to the road where there were food, clothes, and all other type of vendors.  We went to the main pavilion and joined everyone else in a line to watch the proceedings.  Two people from each village, I believe, lined up to step onto the stage and present a decorated vase for the Queen.  Each village was announced to the crowd, and you could see people in traditional hill tribe dress throughout the crowd.  After that, they played two songs, in which everyone sang along to.  Naturally we have no idea what the songs were but I’m assuming they have to do with the Queen.  After that, some people went up to the stage to present presents to their mothers.

Stacy and I at the Mother's Day Celebration.

Mother's Day celebration.

Mother's Day celebration.

Mother's Day Celebration.

Mother's Day Celebration.

Mother's Day Celebration.

Soon after, we began to head back and twice we had to push our cars out of the mud.  Well, other people did, I couldn’t because of my foot.  It was an effort well done by those who braved the mud though!

Pushing the truck out of the mud! Great job Brittany, Stuart, Steph, and Zoe!

The day was quite boring.  We didn’t really have much to do, and because of my foot, I couldn’t even join in when they spent some time scrubbing the sidewalks.  We spent time in the office, reading and on our computers before we got dinner and got ready to go into town for the night.  Dinner tonight was delicious!  There was omelet with onions and veggies, and a pork with lots of veggies dish.  The food at Mirror is actually something I look forward to now (for the most part!).

There was a good sized group of us that went into town tonight.  There was Stacy, Chelsea, and myself, along with Alex, Sarah, Stefano, Adrianne, Brittany, Steph, and Max.  Max is one of the Thai interns working at Mirror.  He is currently going to college in Chiang Rai.  Once in town we split up and agreed to meet up at one of the local bars in about an hour so we could just all hang out and spend time together on our last night together.

The clock tower lighting up...sorry it's so blurry!

Stacy, Chelsea, and I went off together and we walked to through the market quickly before we went to our special pineapple smoothie café.  We sat and talked while enjoying our pineapple smoothies before meeting up with the group at the Cat bar, the bar where people were doing Karaoke last weekend.

Sarah and Alex.

There were games at the bar, and when we sat down, some people had already grabbed connect four and were playing.  Max had learned how to play from Stefano very recently, but even though he hadn’t been playing long, he was beating every person he played.  Everyone was taking turns because they wanted to try and beat Max.  Once he knew he was going to win, he would hold up, 2 or 3 or 4, of the discs used to play and say, “Two more and I will win.  Do you see? Do you see?”.  He would taunt the people he would play against.  It was quite amusing to watch!

Chelsea tryint to figure out Max's Connect Four tricks.

Stacy, though, she took on his challenge and beat him!  She beat him twice in a row no less.

Stacy celebrating from beating Max at Connect Four!

There was also a world map on the wall, and a lot of us spent time looking at the map and talking about all of the places we want to go!

When we got back to Mirror, we remembered that earlier, before we left, Stacy had blown the fuse in the girls dorm and we had no power!  It was so dark!  Luckily there were a few of us with flashlight so we weren’t totally out of luck.  We took advantage of the situation though and enjoyed ourselves.  We rotated telling scary stories and each story, even the one she told, Stacy would move around to a different bed because she was scared and needed comfort!  It was a lot of fun, very reminiscent of our childhood.

Rain, Rain, Go Away! – Wednesday August 11, 2010

Today did some resource development in the office for a few hours in the morning.  All the classes were cancelled; so all the indoor were around.  When we woke up, the rain was coming down pretty hard, but as we were working in the office, it just poured!  We eventually looked up from our work and we saw that all of the walkways around us were totally flooded and there was virtually no separation between the ponds anymore!

The bridge flooding.

The pond flooding.

The ponds flooding.

Resource Development.

So needless to say, I wasn’t going anywhere!  Chelsea brought be back some lunch though when they all left to get food.  And I’m glad she did because it was curry with noodles today, and it was fantastic!

Lunch!

The rest of the day was quite boring and relaxing.  I stayed off off my foot as much as I could, which ended up being quite a lot, since I just sat in the office on my computer and reading.

I did finish the Alchemist late last night.  It was a really great book.  I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.  I read it on my dad’s nook, but I know for sure I want to get a hard copy when I get home so that I can read it again and again.  I suggest to anyone who hasn’t read it, to read it.  It’s a really quick read but you can get so much out of it.  It’s a book about following your dreams and it’s ironic that it came to me when it did.  The story really applied to my life right now as I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life after I graduate next may.  Stacy and I had been having conversations about that for several nights before I started the book and after having read the authors note before the book, I knew there was a reason that I had been introduced to the book when I did.

After dinner, because everyone was incredibly bored, a bunch of us ordered a Songtau to go into town for a few hours.  I was originally not going to go, because we had already planned to go Thursday night, but I had nothing else to do, and I’m only in Chiang Rai for a few more days, so I hopped in!

Bakery Stacy and I checked out.

I walked around with Stacy while we were there and after she got a haircut, we walked to the market to get some food and do some shopping!  I got my now favorite Thai dish, Chicken and Cashew with rice.  It was one of the dishes I made in the cooking class and I just loved it.  So I got it from one of the street stalls and again, it was fantastic!  It isn’t a spicy dish, it has a sort of brown sauce with it, although it’s not soupy at all.  There are onions, mini corns, peppers, chicken, and cashews.  Its just such a savory dish!

Stacy eating her Pad Thai.

Food Stalls.

While we were eating, Robert walked past us and stopped to talk to us.  He had went into town the day before and checked into a guesthouse and hadn’t come back yet.  No one really knew what was going on with him at Mirror.  When Adrianne went to the hospital Wednesday morning to get the results of her knee exam, he hadn’t shown.  So I was a bit upset with him still and Stacy did a majority of the talking to him.  Then he left and went to eat.  He had said that he had a stomach bug and had been just sleeping for the past 2 days and hadn’t been eating anything so he ventured out to get something in his stomach.  He also said he went to the hospital and the scrapes on his leg from the accident had become infected.

When we had finished eating and were walking out, I saw him sitting alone eating, just looking sad and I felt so bad for him.  So I grabbed Stacy and we went to talk to him.  Even though he hasn’t exactly had the best attitude here, he still doesn’t deserve to feel alone in a foreign country, sick and with an infected wound.  If we showed him some support, hopefully he would be able to take some good out of this experience.  So we stood and talked to him for a little while, checking if he was okay and seeing if we could do anything.  We encouraged him to come back to Mirror where people would take care of him and make sure he was okay.  He said he was going to try and come back Thursday afternoon, so hopefully we’ll see him get back safely.

We went to Swenson’s after to get ice cream sundaes and inside, Brittany, Steph, and Adrianne were already sitting and eating.  Great minds think alike.  After out brownie sundaes we made our way back to the Songtau to head back to Mirror.

At Mirror, as planned, we watched Shutter Island in the orientation building.  There were a few parts in which I got really jumpy and screamed, but for the most part I was okay during it.  It was a really excellent movie.  The story was really interesting and kept you thinking.  I heard that the book is much better, as usual, and Chelsea read it in one day here, so I plan to read that pretty soon!  I guess it’s a real page-turner, and you just want to figure out the mystery, so you get through it pretty quickly.

Indoor work! – Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Today was my first day doing indoor work!  I spent the morning with Chelsea making a lesson plan for the women at the Mirror Art Guesthouse in Chiang Rai.  Today we were teaching directions, driving directions and traffic signs, and map directions.  We spent about an hour coming up with a good lesson plan.  We drew a map on a white board that just showed roads intersecting in various ways so that we could incorporate directions such as, left turn, right turn, u-turn, straight, road, highway, merge, and curve (in the road).  We then drew routes on the road using arrows so that they could speak what the actions were in the route using the new direction words.

We also created a new resource for traffic signs.  We drew 10 traffic signs on a sheet of paper with a line next to each.  Then backed the paper with cardboard and covered it in clear tape to protect it and give it longevity.  We then wrote out the names of the signs on smaller papers that would fit on the line and covered those in clear tape.  Then with a piece of tape placed on the back of the labels, its possible to place on to and remove the labels to the signs.  So it can be used to teach and then for the students to kind of play a matching game with them.  It turned out really nicely and I’m so proud I could help with it!

Serchai came into the office and looked at my foot and then asked me if I was willing to try a natural healing method to reduce the swelling in my foot.  I was totally open to it so he started to prepare things for it and I was to come join him in a little while.  So he had gotten mud from the back of Mirror and then wrapped it into big leaves, which he placed in the bottom of a fire, he had started.  After it had heated up, he took the hot mud out of leaves and placed it in 2 t-shirts, which he then put directly onto my foot.  It was hot!  It was supposed to draw out the water from my foot and put heat into the foot from the bottom so it could be expelled out the top and reduce the swelling.  It’s supposed to be done several times a day, but since Serchai needs to be at his village with the homestay volunteers that are staying with him this week, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to try it again.  I didn’t really notice any difference from it today.

My swollen foot.

Serchai getting the natural healing materials ready.

The mud in the leaves.

Putting the mud into the t-shirts.

Putting the hot mud on my foot.

Putting the hot mud on my foot.

The lesson though, went really well.  Only one of the two women were there today and she was quite good at her English, so she did really well with the directions.  She had trouble pronouncing two of the words, curve and merge, but I think it’s only because the specific sounds used in those words are ones that aren’t used in the Thai language.  We finished quickly with our plans, but we had extra things that we had ready to do if that happened.  So we played a game where someone would be blindfolded and someone else, in English, had to direct them around some objects using words we had learned.  (turn left, turn right, little, a lot, straight)  She really enjoyed that game.  We then play some scrabble, making simple English words, and we spent some time talking and playing pictionary.

When we got back to Mirror we were pretty much free for the day except for an Indoor meeting after dinner.  We met and talked about what we were going to be doing for the next few days, because classes for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday had been cancelled for the celebration of the Queen’s birthday on Thursday.

So we were going to be doing a lot of resource development, which means that we will work on making new or updating and improving the resources we use when teaching English.  Also, time seriously needs to be spent organizing the resources so that everyone can be more productive and the office can be clear of clutter.

I just spent the rest of the time in the office with people floating in and out; talking to people and savoring in my last days at Mirror.

Last weekend in Thailand, Chiang Rai – Monday, August 9, 2010

HAPPY 16th BIRTHDAY JASON!!!!  Have fun driving!

So today was the true relaxing day of the weekend.  I took my time getting up and getting ready.  Pack my things and then had a lovely breakfast of poached eggs, toast, and fruit from the Tourist Inn.  Then I went with Chelsea, Stacy, and Sarah to get a Thai pineapple pancake from a restaurant down the road.  Thai pancakes are much different from western pancakes.  They are more egg-y, sweet, buttery, and crispy.  They are heavy and rich and so good with some butter and honey or butter and jam.  I’m going to try and come up with my own recipe for it when I get home.

Then I just sat in the Tourist Inn, half falling asleep while reading, and waiting and rested while Stacy, Chelsea, and Sarah went to the hospital.  Once they got back we ate a whole wheat croissant from the Tourist Inn and then got a Songtau back to Mirror.

At Mirror, I organized all of my things on the top of my bed so that they are all neat and nice and then spent the rest of then we had debrief at 7pm.  Debrief was the same as usual really except that Stacy was named the new indoor leader and Adrianne and I pass on our leadership to Amelia for outdoor.  Yay…Kudos to the new leaders!  At the end of debrief, we had a special surprise, and Alex and Stefano performed a rap they made up for Mirror.  It was quite possibly the best “made-up” rap ever made.  There were so many jokes that were pulled from the first 2 weeks we were here with the old people, and so many jokes made that just described Mirror so well.  They took a video of it, so I hope to get a copy once they’ve gotten home and upload all they’re pictures!

Monday night was spent as usual, in the office, on my computer and hanging out with whoever was in the office throughout the night.  But Zoe was in the office and he offered to help with my foot and massage it to help with the swelling and loosen it up a bit.  It helped SO much!  I hadn’t realized how tight my leg and ankle was until I stood up and I could move so much easier!

I’ve also been asking around for books to add onto my book list.  I’ve gotten a lot of suggestions of a lot of very different kinds of books, so I’ve been really excited for the books I have to read in the future.  I find that it’s really nice to get suggestions from other people because there are so many different books in the world and it’s impossible to find out about all of the good ones by yourself.  So by asking other people you can find books that you may never have considered yourself!  So I asked Zoe for any suggestions and he sat and talked to me for hours giving me suggestions that I added to my list.  I ended up adding about 70 books onto my list from Zoe alone.

I’ll add some book lists at a later day for those who are interested!

Last weekend in Thailand, Chiang Rai – Sunday, August 8, 2010

This weekend was a weekend of rest!  Although I suppose I could have rested more on Sunday, but I just didn’t want to miss out on my last weekend!

So on Sunday, I took my time getting up and then had a late breakfast at the Tourist Inn.  There were people going in and out of breakfast while I was down there. I also had to take my massive amount of pills, which I got some laughs for.  But it’s actually becoming more popular, as more people are getting pills they have to take regularly.

My daily pills...

After breakfast I walked with Stacy, Chelsea, Alex, Sarah, and Stefano to a Used Book Store!  It was run by a German man who had set up shop in Chiang Rai and was now married to a Thai woman and has kids.  The bookshop was above their home and there were book everywhere.  You could buy the book and on the sticker it tells you how much you can get back if you return the book to the store.  Also, if you bring in two books, you can exchange it for one book free of charge.  It’s a really neat store.   It’s called Orn’s Used Books and isn’t too difficult to find because there are usually signs pointing in the correct direction.

After the bookshop, everyone wanted to get Thai massages, and although I love them, I wasn’t really up for one with my foot being how it was.  Not to mention, I feel the ugliest and dirtiest I’ve ever felt.  I have bug bite all over my legs that are like scabbing over and bruises all over my legs.  I swear in the past week the bugs have become mutant crazy bugs and have attacked me!

So anyways, I went to a café with Paul, actually the same café I went to the first weekend with Adrianne, Stacy, and Chelsea.  I got a wonderfully delicious Pineapple Smoothie and then a piece of heavenly delicious, light almond cake!  It was my food therapy session!  I spent some time updating my blog and chatting with Paul before Stacy and Chelsea joined us after their massage.

My therapy...

Soon after we had to say our goodbye’s to Paul because he was going home and needed to get to the airport.  Paul did indoor and he was a really nice guy, always had a smile, and had them most ridiculous laugh I’ve ever heard.  And yes, it was even crazier than my laugh, for those who know me!

Afterward, Chelsea and I shared a green curry with rice that was incredibly spicy but so delicious.  I am really becoming a huge fan of curry!

We then just chilled out at the Tourist Inn for a while and Chelsea and I came up with a travel plan for this winter! And Stacy, who was kind of, sort of sleeping near us would randomly chime in about the trip.  We planned out a road trip along the west coast for Chelsea, Stacy, and I, and anyone else we want to invite or that’s available to join.  More to come later about our plans, but I’m excited!

Eventually we dragged ourselves up and walked to the night bazaar to do some last time shopping in Thailand (for me at least) and to get some dinner.  We did a lot of shopping and a lot of bartering.  It was a very productive shopping night!

For dinner we went to the lines of food stalls at the bazaar.  We all ordered a Pad Thai omelet.  It sounds odd, I know, but omelets are good and so is Pad Thai so what better than to combine them?  Well it was so good!  Extra egg can never be a bad thing and it is definitely something that everyone who likes Pad Thai should try!

Pad Thai Omlette

Pad Thai Omlette

We stopped at Swanson’s after to get ice cream sundaes.  They super wonderful, I got a toffee brownie sundae, but they were tainted by news we got while we were waiting for our sundaes to be made.

Adrianne had walked by with some other girls and a couple guys and when they saw us they stopped in to talk to us.  Adrianne was on crutches and had scrapes all over her legs and a brace/wrap around her right knee.  She had gone on a motorbike with Robert during the day and he had taken a turn too quickly, caught some gravel and crashed.

It is never, ever a good idea to go on a motorbike in Thailand, for future reference to anyone who might consider it.  There is a statistic, which I’m not sure what the exact numbers are, but basically it says that most people who rent a motorbike in Thailand, get in an accident.  Not to mention, in Thailand, if a farong (foreigner) gets in an accident, they always have to pay for all of it, because they are viewed to be the richer person, regardless of if they actually are or not.

Thank god she’s alive, but even still, she has something wrong with a tendon in her knee and is now on crutches.  So picture her on crutches with her knee, and then me and my swollen, club foot.  Now picture us carrying all of the stuff we brought with us, plus all of the things we bought while being here, through the airport.  Funny sight, right?  Well that will be in about another 3 days.  Oh well, things happen, and we’ll be fine.  Everyone here has been incredibly helpful and my foot actually is healing quite well!

Stacy, Chelsea, and I, and later Sarah as well, spent the rest of the night sitting in the Tourist Inn chatting.  Well, I spent a lot of the time fuming at Robert’s carelessness and how I just wanted to shake him for hurting my sister, but they did their best at distracting me!

More foot problems… – Saturday August 7, 2010

Today was a rough day.  I woke up with my foot feeling okay, not good but not horrible.   We had a really good breakfast this morning of coconut sticky rice in leaves with fried dough and coffee or hot chocolate.  Generally I’ve noticed that they have nicer breakfasts on Saturday, kind of as an end of the workweek special.

Well my foot was doing okay so I went with the Outdoor group and Serchai to the Banjoi hill tribe village to sell the second hand clothing we had been sorting all week.  We take the clothes to different hill tribe villages and sell the clothes for really cheap prices: 5 baht for children’s, 10 for adult, and 20 for jeans.  That money is then used to support the elderly people in the hill tribes that cannot support themselves any longer.

When we got to the village we laid out a tarp and started to open the bags and then dump them into a pile on the tarp.  It was like a mall on Christmas Eve!  All of the women and children and some men just dived into the center and started grabbing clothes and burrowing them away!  It was like this every time we opened a new bag.  They all just dove in, ruthlessly grabbing for clothes.

The village looking through the clothes.

The village looking through the clothes.

The village looking through the clothes.

A cute little boy looking at clothes.

Kid's in the village.

People from the village looking at clothes.

After a while, I noticed my foot was swelled up pretty badly so when we were finished with lunch, Serchai took me to the hospital.  I got put into a wheel chair and was given a wristband and hospital card.  They wheeled me into the emergency room to clean my wound and then they took me to the waiting room for the doctor.  The doctor didn’t remove the bandage, but he looked at the swelling and told me that I needed to be put on an IV of antibiotics for 2-3 days because pill antibiotics wouldn’t be enough.  That was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, so I asked if there was another option and they told me I could take the pills but if it wasn’t better in 2 days, I had to go back to the hospital.

My foot at the hospital. It's actually not too bad in this picture.

After seeing the doctor, I had to wait to get my medicine.  They gave me prescription iodine, antibiotics the size of my fist, an anti-inflammatory, and another pill, I’m not sure what it is.  It was total bill of 813 Baht!!  In American that really not that much, but in Thai that’s a lot of money!

We went to Mirror after and I had to pack for the weekend in Chiang Rai.  It was my last weekend in Thailand and I didn’t want to miss out and just be away from everyone not experiencing everything, so I still planned to go into town.

The smallest truck bed ever, I really don't understand the point of it.

We went to Big C first and got too much snack food!  Then we went to the walking market where we were dropped off for the weekend, so we had to walk to our guesthouse.  That was a slow process for me, but everyone was being so helpful and supportive!  We dropped off our laundry, checked into our room, showered and were out again to go to P’Noi’s barbeque!  I was so happy to have the kebob’s with the awesome mushroom balls and the corn on the cob with the best sweet chili sauce ever made, before I left.

I followed people around to a couple bars for a little while so I could hang out with everyone and then turned in early so I could rest my foot!

Some people were doing Karaoke.

The clock tower all lit up at night!

My foot is going to fall off!!! – Friday August 6, 2010

So I had these couple of mosquito bites from over the weekend, that were really quite intense.  They itched terribly and they got all scraped up and the next thing I know its this big kind of scabbed up, kind of open wound.  It didn’t really hurt for the first few days and it would start to scab up but then at the end of each day it seemed like it would open up again.  Then the past couple of days half of it was healing but half was open and oozing and the whole top of my foot hurt really badly, especially when I was walking, which is like all of the time.

Then last night, it just poured all night long and then today has followed suit.  There are puddles of dirty water everywhere and its just constantly wet because it keeps raining on and off.  Some of the Thai staff here saw my foot and made me go to their office where they have a first aid cabinet.  They cleaned it a little and added some iodine, alcohol solution to clean it and they P’Nu, the director of Mirror, told me that she wanted me to go to the local clinic in the afternoon to get it cleaned better and then they would clean it at Mirror for the rest of the time, till it heals.  But in the meantime I needed to stay out of the rain and keep it as clean as possible.  So needless to say, I couldn’t really work outdoors today, so instead I sat in the office and stayed off of my foot.

After lunch, we were going into town to talk to two different villages about coming to their village tomorrow to sell the second-hand clothes we’ve been sorting all week.  So before we got to the villages, we stopped at the clinic for my foot.  It was the biggest waste of time.  The woman immediately treated me like I was unimportant and then took a cotton swab with water and quickly rubbed it over the area, not really cleaning it at all and then released me.  She said that it was fine and just clean it and don’t cover it cause it’s too wet.  Then she gave me a bottle of iodine, some gauze, and cotton swabs and charged me 50 baht!  We had all those supplies already at Mirror, I didn’t need them but I like didn’t have a choice she just thrust them upon me and I had to pay!  Luckily it was only really a dollar and a half, but it was still just a waste!  And it still hurt really bad!

Afterward we went onto the first village, Bonjoi, a Lahu tribe.  We discovered that Saturday was a working day for them and that they wouldn’t have a lot of people in the village so we should only send a couple of people there tomorrow.  The next village was very enthusiastic though.  They said there would be a lot of people around and joked around with Serchai saying that we should skip the other village and just come to theirs!

We then went to a Temple nearby, that was still under construction, before heading back to Mirror.  The Temple was beautiful.  It was more of a Chinese design than a Thai though.  There were steps that led all the way up to the top of the temple, eventually leading to a narrow winding staircase to the top most level.  The views from the top were beautiful.  They stretched out so far that you could see the clouds meeting the mountains in the distance.

The Temple we visited.

Chandeliers in the temple.

Buddha in the Temple.

Me at the temple.

The beautiful views.

The beautiful views.

The beautiful views.

The beautiful views.

The dragon at the entrance to the temple.

When we returned to Mirror, Serchai thoroughly cleaned my wound.  I mean thoroughly, which is really good, but it was also really painful.  That pain then continued on for hours.  I literally could not walk or stand or even sit without pain surging through my foot.

After showering and watching some of the indoor volunteers record songs for a song movie to aid in teaching, I went up to the kitchen with the group of them for dinner.  When we got there, there was no food.  I was so mad.  I paid to live at Mirror and with that I am supposed to get a place to sleep and 3 meals a day.  We went to dinner at 6pm, but apparently the food had been gone since around 5!  That’s just not okay.  Especially when we live so far out from the actual city of Chiang Rai.  There were about 12 of us that didn’t get food tonight.  I know I needed to be accepting because things like this happen, but it just all built together for me.

I was already having a rough day, and I was pretty emotional today as it was, so that just made me really angry and I couldn’t help myself when I just started to cry.  It’s not that I felt bad for myself or anything, I was just really frustrated.  And all I really needed was to be alone and to cry so I could get it out of my system and then I knew I would be okay.

Everyone was going into town to get dinner, so I decided to stay and just have some quiet time here.  I was sitting in the office when Zoe walked in and immediately picking up on my mood, came over and started to cheer me up.  He gave me a hug and then started to talk to me and make me laugh as he usually does.  His happiness is contagious and he really cares about others and does everything he can do to make other people happy around him.  He has a really big heart and a beautiful soul.  He then took my foot and redressed it really nicely with this ointment that he went to go get for me.  Then he went to the kitchen and made me dinner with his own food.

It was the nicest thing.  He brought me an egg and tomato and cucumber sandwich but it was unlike anything I had ever had and it was so good!  He also brought me warm milk, which was something I had never tried before, but was so comforting.

We just sat there and talked while I ate my dinner, which was a long time, since anyone who knows me, knows that I eat very slowly!  After I did finish though, he took my foot and placed it up on his leg where he performed this healing technique that he was learning about.  He just cupped his hands around my foot and held them there for what was probably a good 15 minutes and was warming my foot.  I wasn’t exactly sure what it was he was doing, but he just said he was sending love into it.  Well, whatever it was, it worked.  The whole rest of the night, my foot did not hurt like it had, and I could walk on it reasonably well.

So I spent the next couple of hours reading ‘The Alchemist’ as I lay on my bed.  I got a little more than half way through when everyone had started to get back from town.  Sarah had come into the dorm and came to my bed with a take out box of Pad-Thai.  Even though I had said I didn’t want anything from town, she still brought me back something.  It was so heartwarming.  Sarah is another one of those people with a huge heart and is really an incredible friend!

Later on in the night I ventured back to the office where Stacy and I sat and talked for hours.  I feel so blessed to have found so many great friends here at Mirror.

Donations and the Dark Knight – Thursday August 5, 2010

Stephano came back today!!  He had been gone all week between Chiang Mai and Bangkok trying to get a new passport and visa because during the first week he was here, he has lost is passport!  So he has been going through a nightmare trying to get a new one and has been going back and forth between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai and he finally got back today with a passport and visa!  We had missed him, especially since all of our other old people were gone; it was nice to know that he would be coming back!  There’s only 6 of us left that had all started together.

But besides that excitement, it was more of the same today.  We spent the morning finishing the sorting.  Then in the afternoon we got another truck full of boxes and spent the next couple hours sorting those.  We finished that quickly and then were done for the day.

At night a lot of people were hanging out in the office and everyone wanted to watch a movie.  So we were all talking about what movie we wanted to watch.

Now, there is this guy that started with my group named Alex.  He’s from Long Island and he’s my age.  He’s a great guy and I really like him, but he has his own little intricacies that take some time to get used to before you really warm up to him, at least that’s how it was for me.  It’s hard to describe him to fully convey his quirks but I guess I can say that he is very thorough in what he does and the stories he tells.  He has this way of getting everyone’s attention and then using his hands to really get interest in the story.  I true Italian way of talking I suppose, using your hands that is, granted I’m not Italian and I use my hands when I talk a lot too.  But anyways, its something that really makes him who he is.  So the point of this story is that you’ll appreciate how we chose what movie we were going to watch.

So in true Alex fashion, he decides we need to take a silent vote to pick the movie.  Him and Stephano write 10 movie choices on a board and then walked around to each person in the office, probably about 17 in total, and asked them for their vote.  But when giving your vote you had say the number choice not the actual movie title.  Then Alex recorded the votes to find the winner.  The funniest part about it was that everyone was taking it so seriously!

The winner ended up being Toy Story 3 but because of the format it was in, and the specific hook ups we had, we couldn’t watch it.  Instead we watched runner up, The Dark Knight.  We all piled into the building and I’m pretty sure that by the end, just about everyone had fallen asleep!

Wednesday August 4, 2010

Today was basically a repeat from yesterday.  We spent the entire day working on sorting out all of the donations.  We just about finished but tomorrow we should be getting in another load, so we’ll have plenty more sorting to do tomorrow!

We did walk up the street to a local store and bought some homemade banana bread and that was so yummy that it helped make up for the boring day we had!

At night I usually spend my time sitting in the office working on my blog and updating pictures from Thailand onto facebook and in my iphoto and then chatting and hanging out with whoever is sitting in the office.

Lately though I’ve fallen into a late night routine with Stacy. Usually later in the night when everyone else has either gone to bed or to the orientation building where the big TV screen is to watch a movie, Stacy and I sit in the office and chat for hours!  It has become one of my favorite parts of the day and I look forward to it.

Stacy and I are very similar in a lot of our thoughts but we think in different ways so its really interesting when we get into more serious conversations about life and the future because we agree on most things, but we view them in different lights.  She also gives really great objective advice.  So we’ll find ourselves talking from like 10:30/11pm until like 12:30/1am!  But I love our late night talks; it makes me sad we only have one more week left of them.

Oh! And she brings her big tub of really yummy cookies with her! : )