I've lost track of the days but I'm sure that I had a great time the last few days! I LOVE Thailand, have I mentioned that yet! We continue to work on building the homes, Thursday I got to paint the kids and even a few adults nails which was a lot of fun - especially since I couldn't paint nails if my life depended on it! There was nail polish all over, mostly on me though so that was ok. We moved into our new place in the village of Phuteo - pronounced POO-T-O. Thursday Phuteo was the talk of this side of Thailand because Ricki Martin was there! Right in my very own village (I have some pcitures being sent from a friend who was there)! He has donated a lot of money to build homes and a school here so he came for some opening ceremonies and such. Oprah Winfrey's people were here (she wasn't) and it was all video taped and will be aired on October 10 - mark that on your calendars!
Our new place is great - scorpion and all! Our pet scorpion and toad are doing ok, I think the must be hungry but I don't really want to open the door to feed them because i might get stung! Baiba moved in with us and then last night we picked up a new friend, Amber's friend from Canada, Megan, and the 5 of us are squiched in one little room that only has room for 2 mattress, 1 sort of mattress and one 1, but we are cozy and I love it!
Last night was our first night there and the water wasn't running so Jodie and I threw on our bathing suits and had a big water fight that was our shower. We used the rain water that had been collected and dumped buckets of water all over us until we decided that we must be clean - we couldn't be sure because it was dark!
Today was an amazing day. We had been waiting for today for 3 weeks now. Today was the day that we went to Khao Lo, an island for ignore people. On one side of the island are the Moogen ( i have no clue if that is right, but I do know that they are different from the Mogan that we have been working with) people that are so poor that they have only recently received clothes for the first time and who our friend James brings food and other necessities to every 2 weeks. On the other side are also poor Muslim people, but they are more well off. They control the Moogen people. A team from Korea brought food and clothing to the Moogen people and we went to visit with the Muslim people and play with the kids. We went into the water in Ranong, the same place I went for my Visa run so I knew I was in for a good day, even with all the rain that we had. We piled into a long tail boat and were on our way. It was a rainy day so the waves were more choppy which made for a fun ride. When we got there we went straight into the school and let the games begin! These kids were so happy to play our games and for the next hour and a half we played every game we could think of. My favourite was a balloon game where you put a balloon between 2 people and they hugged until the balloon popped! The funniest was when 2 chubby boys (the only 2 chubby boys on the whole island) tried this. They reminded my of when my dad and my uncle tried to hug but couldn't quite reach because their bellies were too big to get their arms around each other! We played as long as we could ( I told James to just leave me there because the kids were so much fun!) taking breaks when it rained too hard, and then when the rains really started coming down we got in the boat to head home. There were 3 little Burmese boys that came in the boat with us, the work for the boat owner, and I put 2 in my rain poncho - one in each arm hole! The rain poncho didn't really help with the blinding rains, but it sure was fun! The drive home was also fun. The Burmese people where a sort of make up on their faces - it looked a bit like dried yellowish baby powder and James had some of this. On the drive home we took turns putting this on each other while James drove over the bumpy road and we all listened to Christmas tunes! Many of you know how much I love Christmas music and it appeared that James did as well, and since we were the only 2 in the front seat the rest of them had to suffer! So back to the paint. It is hard to put on makeup while driving, but that didn't matter because they put the makeup all over their faces - which was exactly where ours ended up!
I have to run because I have a ride home now so i hope this all makes sense because i didn't reread it! Please email lots. i don't have much email access now so don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me for a few days. love you all and miss you,
Cat
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