February 23, 2008

Hello Everyone,
Sorry but my other webpage has not been working. I am going to try and keep up with this.
Jodie

It is now 7:20 am our time, 8:20 pm at home. We are just waking up. We had a very exciting day yesterday. We woke up around 7 and were ready to go by 8. We played with some of the children downstairs. They loved to pose for pictures and videos, and then come around to see what they did.

We decided that we really just needed a lighter breakfast, so we walked to 7 Eleven for some milk, which costs around 23 baht for about 500ml of milk. It tasted a lot like home, and went great with our corn flakes. I know, I know...this is not a great way to experience the culture but as Misty put it "We could just tell George that it was either corn flakes or throw up in our mouths." So corn flakes it was.
After we had breakfast the boys were picked up in a truck from Mercy. I think the truck came about 3 or 4 times to pick up the boys and they all ran to cram in the front and back of it. Instead of closing the top of the box, one or two of the boys would hold it open.
Misty and I went to our usual spot to wait for our ride...which never came. We waited for a good hour, and then decided to just take a cab. We gave the driver a card with our address on it and off we went. However, it turned out that we knew the location better than he did as he passed it, so we had to use our poor language skills to try to explain how to turn back around. The ride was around 43 baht when we finally arrived, a lot more expensive then the usual 5 baht. We decided yesterday that we are going to walk in the mornings from here on in, to get to know the neighborhood better. I will tell you how this goes.
When we arrived at Mercy we were greeted by P. Nitaya and Angela and her boyfriend Bobby. You will notice that there is a 'P' in front of Nitaya's name. This is a polite way of referring to someone who is older than you. Also, when names are pronounced the second syllable is stressed. This does not really change the sound of my name as much as it does Misty's.
Angela was one of the students from Acadia who worked at Mercy last year. She was traveling on vacation with her boyfriend. They are both working in Korea now.
Church started at 10 am. All of the children sit on the floor in the chapel. The mass is mostly in Thai. Apparently the mass is a mixture of Catholic and Buddhist. Communion is only served to the house parents and staff. Mass is a lot different than here in Canada as the children do not stand up at all, and only during the blessing of the communion do they bow forward. Misty and I were introduced to everyone during Mass as we had to stand up and tell everyone our name, where we were from, what our parents did and whether or not we had any siblings. Father Joe asked the questions and then him and P. Nitaya translated for the children.
After Mass Angela and Bobby showed us how to walk to Tesco. The walk was about 30 minutes long, but was well worth it. Tesco was in the Lotus mall. I think this place will be our little piece of home. Here there was a KFC, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, Tesco (a HUGE Zellers like store) and many little shops and stands. P. Nitaya and Si Jie met us for lunch here. Afterwards Misty and I did some shopping to buy some very important necessities. (Bowls, our own fork and spoon, a towel and toilet paper....quite the list).
These two pictures were taken on our walk back to Mercy.
We were going to attempt to take the bus back to our place of residence but Misty and I were having trouble remembering all the buses that came here, and I could only remember one number. So we walked along the main road, until someone pointed out a bus stop for us. The bus system is much different than that in Canada. Here you basically stand anywhere on the side of the road, well in front of a 7 Eleven is a common stop, but there are other places as well. When a bus comes that you want to get on, you have to signal to the bus to pull over. The ride costs 8 Baht. After waiting for roughly an hour we decided it would be just as easy to walk back to the main building of Mercy, so off we went. When we arrived back at Mercy we checked and the temperature was 36 degrees plus the humidity. I think we are going to be skin and bones when we come back as we are sweating ourselves away. We have come to realize that most of our time is spent waiting for transportation that never comes; we do a lot of walking.
Arriving back at Mercy we spent some time with the adults and children in the AIDS hospice. This has been one of the most frustrating times with the language barrier. We really wanted to communicate with them but we didn't know what to say. Emotionally it was difficult to be there, as some of the patients were very sick and in their beds. One man was speaking to me in broken English words, telling me how cold he was. Another one of the beds said "Admitted to the hospital."
The children were full of energy and very very cute. They were standing on the table during their supper and dancing and singing for us. I could say that most of them were under 3 years of age. They greeted us with several really warm hugs. They loved to be picked up and spun around as well.
We decided we distracted the children from their supper enough and that it was time to go home. One of the staff members helped us tell the motorbike taxi drivers that we wanted to go home. So home we went, on the back of a motorbike, with 24 rolls of toilet paper between me and the driver. When we got back we decided to have a small nap, but we ended up crashing for the night and just waking up now. Oops...I guess we needed that. It's time to get the day started! I will post more later.