This is the last post for a month. Sue and I leave for Bangkok tomorrow morning to meet up with Gayle and Keith from Australia. We leave for Myanmar the 14th where Gayle and Sue will be training Buddhist monks and World Vision teachers in elementary school teaching methods.

I was just out at 7 this morning to run on the foundation road in the village. I can only run for a half hour now because of Achille’s tendon issues, and have to do some stretching exercises the doctor gave me before I run. The front steps and railings of our second house, Mae Chan’s house, are perfect for those exercises.

Mae Chan

I talked briefly with Mae Chan as she left on her motorbike to help out at the school of some of her girls. Mae, say “ae” as “a” in “apple”, means “mother” in Thai, and that is just what she is. She has been with us the longest as a mother really loves her 7, soon to be 8 girls. They love her and are very secure with her. Of our families, hers has been together the longest and it does show. The girls really behave to each other as sisters.

We train our mothers to be just that, mothers, not only caregivers. Our girls learn that the chief authority in their life is not our staff psychologists and social workers, not our managing director or any other director, but their mother. No one can make an end run around their mother and ask the chairman of the board, who they see often, to get what they want.

Mae Chan’s life has not been an easy one, but it has made her tough as nails. Her girls get a great deal of freedom because all know the limits and have the safety and security of their home as a base for reaching out into life, and a mother that nothing gets past unless it should.

Mae Ui had just finished cleaning the third house. I thought it was already pretty clean, but oh well… Mae Ui and her girls move into it from the first house tomorrow, I think. The first house will become our new foundation office as well as our new crisis center under Mae Noi. We still have 4 girls with Mae Pai at a rental house. Walai says we can start our fourth house for them in our village when Sue and I get back from Myanmar in January.

The first house will be the temporary quarters for our foundation office until our main building. This building is not scheduled but should be coming in a year or two. In the meantime Walai claims she can get all our office, 8 desks of which 5 are the big wrap around type, along with some tables and cabinets into just the front bedroom in house one leaving the rest of the house for our crisis center. Our bedrooms are big, and Walai has proved very capable in all other matters, but I wonder if even she can pull that off. We’ll see when we get back.

Things really are coming together. It is so nice to be out at the village. It is in town but away from it at the same time. Very quiet. Sue and I will miss it until we come be back in a month.

I have not had time to make any posts until now. Sue just took off this morning for three weeks in India. She will be evaluating teachers in the slum school and setting up for the next school year. She returns in three weeks.

I have been getting plans ready and checking on material prices for the two new child homes we are getting ready to build in Opportunity Village. I think the contractor will be selected next week. These first three homes are pretty large, and may eventually see duty as a crisis center for abused or pregnant teenage girls and an infant care center. The next homes we build after these will be smaller, holding up to eight girls.

High voltage electric power has been run along our access road and across the canal. We’ll soon run the low voltage lines into the first housing area that will eventually have sixteen homes. I would have preferred to run the power underground as is done in all new areas in the U.S. With new direct burial cable the cost of underground power in the U.S., even high voltage, is not so much. In Thailand, especially up in this area underground power is still pretty new and its cost is very high.

Large house view. Click to enlarge.

Today Uan and I hope to get out to some window and door manufacturers to check prices and sizes. I have to finalize the foundation piling position four our next houses (numbers 4 and 5). The pilings next to another house must be driven before that house is built, or the shock from driving might cause cracks in the concrete.

Sue and I are now back in the U.S. We find that tax time is always a good time to be back. Most of our bills get paid by auto deductions from bank accounts, but piles of mail, a few pieces of which is actually important, have built up while we were gone. Anyway, we’ve finished figuring our taxes and have a bit of time for other things, like this blog entry.

I have wanted Walai to contribute more to this blog, but she has not had the time lately. Last month Walai became the managing director of the foundation, and so has been pretty busy with literally everything that is going on there. She did have time to send me a pictures of the village’s first two buildings, which appear here. She also told me that 68 trees averaging about 30 feet high have so far been moved from the forest and planted in the village. I think we are shooting for about 200 trees this first time.

This Sala will provide shade and a place to relax for our children, staff and volunteers.

Our children there are doing well. We have seen some improvements in their academics.

We are enjoying being with our children and grandchildren here, but are already missing Thailand.

The first picture was taken at night just as I left my landlord’s house. This elephant goes around Nang Rong in the evening with a reflector tied to his tail, stopping at the restaurants. Since the restaurants are open to the outside, the elephant just comes up close, but not close enough to grab anything off your table or tap you on the shoulder with his trunk. If it is dark outside you don’t notice him until he’s there. His handler sells a bag of sugar cane you can buy and feed back to him. My wife always goes for it.

The seat on the elephant suggests you could get a ride if you wanted. We’ve never checked into that. I’ve driven an elephant in the jungle, but driving one in the city is probably beyond my capabilities.

We have a volunteer family visiting for three weeks. The night after their first day it rained. Then there was a light drizzle all day for their second and third days. It is finally leaving and should be back to normal sunny “dry season” days soon.

Now I’m thinking you may not believe me after all I have said about continuous great weather here during “dry” or “cool” season. This is the first time in my three years here that I remember it being like this. If it does rain, which is rare, during this season, it usually rains hard for about ten minutes and that’s it, just like in rainy season.

We are just getting started on our first child home in Opportunity Village. In April the first of our two families, now in rental homes, will move into the new house. We are looking to add one or if possible two more families in rental homes this year. The second picture is not going to be the new home. It’s the temporary shelter, and perhaps home, for the workers building the house. It’s over by the main canal on the west side of the property.

The final thing to report is that I ran into another parade two days ago, on the street that crosses my street five houses down. The flatbed trucks you see coming held monks and nuns sitting in rows. Something to do with buddhism, of course, but other than that I don’t know. Now just about every street around me has had a parade in the last year except mine. Some weddings, a few ordinations (kids becoming a monk for awhile) and buddhist house warming celebrations, but no real parades.

I was going to run the ring road at the foundation, which is almost exactly one km around before running back. After getting a third of the way I had to stop. Our contractor for the property fill and road building had to quit a few months ago for the rainy season, but he must have restarted while I was gone. There was new loose fill on at least a third of the ring in the back. I guess he’ll roll it out later. He fills and compacts the road in 20 cm layers, but the compaction is sufficient that when loose it’s about half a meter of big dirt clods.

The road engineer/surveyor came out to the property at noon and asked me to come out again. This time I had my camera with me. It seems a property line marker had been mistakenly set in the wrong place and had caused the road to be placed wrong in turn. Also in another place the road was too close to the small canal. Not really a problem at this stage. The main thing I watch for is that no mistakes are made that might squeeze our child home locations between the road outer edge and our property line. It won’t do for our children to walk out the back door into one of the canals.

The left picture is taken by the small canal, which is to the right behind a grassy rise. Rot is on the left and Khun Winai our engineer/surveyor on the right. Ho, the father of our first family, is in the middle. He has a jacket and mask on for motorcycle riding. I do find a jacket helps if I’m riding a long way in cool season. I’m not in the picture but had no need of a jacket. I think Thais can have a little different perception of the weather than someone from the U.S. might.

It was early afternoon and the weather was still great. It was just right for walking the entire area that I had avoided this morning. Anyway, we checked everything and we will get it all into the correct position.

It’s an ideal time to be here. There are days in Nang Rong when the clouds come and are really welcome. This is the “dry” season when the sun is really welcome, and fortunately out nearly all the time. “Dry” may convey the wrong image. With rivers and canals everywhere this is certainly no desert. There is plenty of water for everyone and everything. “Cool Season” is another term that is maybe less used by Thais but better describes it for my way of thinking. It’s still short sleeve weather except maybe in the early morning, if you’re not running.

It is good to be back. With November starting it is definitely cooling off. It was great out today. It threatened to rain in the late afternoon, but did not. If there is no rain tonight I can go out with Ho, one of our family fathers, and check on some positions the surveyors put in for our first child home two weeks ago.

Here are some pictures I took of our Opportunity Village area a little over a week ago.

The property level is raised and some grass is growing. You see the road to the right as you come across the bridge. The new child home will go at the horizon of the grass at the picture center.

These three ladies are still growing rice on an unfilled area at the east corner.

To the left of the bridge water buffalo cool off in the canal.

Later, some men come and fish in the same area to the left of the bridge.