day 6 - sept 6

This morning our alarm went off at 5:30, we went back to sleep 😴 cause we got to bed so late last night. We did our yoga at 6:30 and we were joined by Tina(from Australia) and Christina(from Singapore). I led them in about a half hour of yoga and stretching. It has been such a great thing to do each morning. Breakfast was at 8, we had.... drum roll.... rice! We had dragon fruit which has a similar texture to a kiwi. Some soup and some spicy green vegi stuff. We had our group meeting, then met up to meet at 9 at the silver truck to start our work! 

We rode for about 30 minutes to a school. This school was made out of a cement type material. The kids wore uniforms. Around the school yard they had a cement panel wall and our job was to paint pictures on it to help them learn English. Previous paintings were some of water, fish and other things. It took a bit to get started, but once everyone got a bit comfortable and after talking and brainstorming ideas, we divided and concurred. Some of the cement panels  that we painted today are: one with a monkey, koala, and a sloth/ one with family and body parts/one with the sun and the moon/ one with the solar system/one with nature, tree, flowers, clouds, butterflies/one with emojis/one with helping hands around the world 🌎/one with fruit/mom did an alphabet/ Australia one from Tina and Ray(from Australia) they drew the continent and local animals there, and their flag... it was neat to see everyone being creative and helping each other. We ate a packed lunch with rice and chicken sausage, pad Thai looking stuff and spicy sauce. Right after we got done eating lunch, a school teacher came and invited us for lunch. We were so full that we didn't eat much, but they had some watermelon and different fruit. We used their 'toilet', which was a squatty potty. Super different! 

We got some rain so we left a bit early. The drive back was beautiful. We did lunch dishes when we arrived and then we gathered some wash to do. It was a popular place so we went on a walk up to the pineapple 🍍 place! We then had dinner (rice, yellow curry, and deep fried corn). We had a really good talk with Ray about life, he has an interesting story and is really good about serving others. Then Nikki (volunteer coordinator) came and talked with us for over an hour. She told us of her experience, being a volunteer at the Mirror Foundation, then applying for this job. She has done this for 4 years. She traveled to many different countries before starting her current role and swam part of the English Channel, and has done all this with chronic fatigue. She shared a photo of a lizard that comes by her place (which is here at the Mirror Foundation) and this lizard is about a foot long and is baby blue with brown polka dots! The photos were beautiful. We then went and did our laundry and witnessed some of the volunteers trying to build a fire. It was pretty awesome how dedicated they were. It would not be easy being so wet, so they got creative and grabbed some hairspray. They sprayed their lighter and created a blow torch, which then the fire would go out after about 5 seconds. 

We played farkle with our roommate Sarah (from Canada) and I was winning all night! It was a really good day. It is humid and pretty hot when the sun comes out, but it is usually cloudy and rains about once every other day if not every day so far. The humidity goes down in the rain also. Thai people are very in the moment people and pretty calm. They are very respectable and give respect without it needing to be earned.