August 22
Today I worked in Sunshine Village all day. I wasn’t working with kids but I was painting flowers on buildings all day. It was fun. I discovered that I really like painting and especially painting flowers.
After we come back from CI, we had some educational classes about cultural diversity and it was pretty much fun. We were split in 4 groups and every each group got assignment how to act when talking to people from other groups and so we started. I was in a group of people who waited 5 seconds before answering someone question and I first talked to Wouter. He tried to give me a sock as it was his gift for me and for me it was hard to talk to him as he talked too much and I had to wait 5 seconds after he finish talking. It was fun as none of us know what was happening.
After that Mitch and Brenna presented us new imaginary culture and how does that look to us. Conclusion was that we all had wrong image of that culture as we didn’t know anything about it and we tried to make conclusions from what we have seen. My conclusion is that we should never judge people. We should talk to them and try to learn more about them and why do they act the certain way.
After educational classes we had cast meeting and it was hard. People opened their hearts and shared things. I’m always impressed how cast meeting affects me. It’s always heartbreaking but I’m happy that we have that cast meetings so that we can solve certan problems in cast, talk about feelings and problems and how does change affect us and talk about happy things also.
Let me share some more things with you about my Thai experience. Well… it’s been more than 5 days that I’m here and I finally feel that I passed crises zone. I don’t have any problems with using toilets anymore, that’s how life is here and I got used to it. Toilets are special topic here. They don’t have toilet paper and you use water in bucket to clean yourself and to flush the toilet.
I got used to cold shower and I can say that it’s even refreshing to come home all sweaty and take cold shower. They don’t have warm water anyway.
I still didn’t get used to Thai food as it still taste strange to me and I’m really not able to eat it. I got stomach problems only that first day and after that I’m feeling great. I avoid spicy food and I’m feeling fabulous.
I talked to my advanced team trainer today and I received some notice about our (Faith, Sophie, Danielle and me) trip to Europe next week. We will leave Phuket in Monday and we will stay in Bangkok for one night. Than we will take plane for Finland and than Faith and me are going to take plane to Sweden. Than we will stay one night in Stockholm and another day travel by train to Sodetelie (sorry for miss-spelling). Long trip again.
August 21
So, today was new day. We went to school with Pookie and Tookta as today they had school.
After morning meeting we went directly to Sunshine Village and in the morning Dave, Fola, Emily from Sweden and I played with the kids and the rest of the people were painting the flowers on the houses. It was fun. We were taking care of small kids as most of the older kids were in school so we teach small kids English. After lunch we went to paint with the rest of the group and it was fun painting.
I discovered today my new skill which is painting. I’m not so good at it but at least I discovered that I liked it and who knows, maybe one day I will have my own expeditions of who knows what kind of paintings. After wrap-up meeting, we were singing Brother John song for Guinness book of records. The thing is to sing in different languages same song.
When we come home, I went to Patang beach with my host-sisters. I wanted to swim, but the flag on the beach was red which means that is not allowed to swim as wind is too strong and waves are too big. We were just walking at the beach and I loved it. Sunset was really beautiful and whole beach is really beautiful. My host-sisters also catch some kind of animals so I tried to catch one, but they were too fast so I couldn’t do anything about it.
August 20
What did I do today?? It was our first CI day. After the morning meeting we had arranged transportation to CI for which we were assigned for. I was assigned for Sunshine Village which is the place where children who are abounded or tsunami victims live there.
We came to village at 9h and heartbreaking thing I saw was Tina entering the building and one of the kids running towards her and hugging her immediately. I loved it. Soon after that we started playing with the kids. They were a little bit shy at the beginning but soon they become opened and aware that we are there for them and they started to play with us. After few games we had in mind, it was lunch time and after lunch we played with kids again. Some of them just started to hang ( direktan prijevod) all over me. They wanted me to carry them around. They just loved it.
It was day full of emotions for children but day wasn’t over after 3.00 when we finished our job in Sunshine Village.
Amy and I come home around 17 and our host-family decided to take us to shopping. They took us to shopping center, really big one in Patang beach. It was pretty much the same as all European or American malls are by the time we didn’t go to “garden”. There was big fountain with music and lights and as the music played, and lights changed, you could see moving pictures in fountain. Wow, amazing.
I bought Thai pants there and after that we went to Patong market place to buy other stuff. Of course, you have to barging with them, as it is part of culture and they would find it offensive if you don’t want to barge with them. There at market place I found summer pants, skirt and bag. After that my host-family took us to bar to drink and after that we went to visit night life street at Patong where all bars and all disco bars are situated. We were just walking and we saw a lot of lady boys and I even saw a little bit of lady boy show. Wow, some of this lady boys are really pretty and you could never say that they are in reality man dressed as woman and acting as woman. I liked that street very much but I was tired of shopping and playing with kids all night. Who could tell that kids can be so tiring.
Day with cast - August 19
Today’s day was really hard. I woke up in before 6 and I didn’t felt well in my stomach. I felt really bad and first thought that come to my mind was diarrhea I had yesterday. Well, I pushed myself to get ready, even though I wasn’t feeling really well.
We packed our bags and we were ready to go, but no one from the family get up to take us to school. So, Amy and I knocked on mama’s door for a while and when she finally wakes up, she arranged transportation. It was surprise, as we were waiting for them to come and some man just showed up. For both of us it was the first time to see that man and we sit in the car and he took us to school.
When the drive for school started, at very first curve, I started to feel even worse than before and luckily I found plastic bag and I throw up. After that I felt much better and I decided at that point not to eat Thai food anymore.
When we come to school, we had morning meeting and after that we went to visit Sea gipsy village. It’s poor village where gypsies live and it was devastated during tsunami. Interesting fact is that no one died from village during tsunami as they are all fisherman and they follow the wind and they felt strong wind coming so they went to the mountain. It was hard to see how people live there. We also played with the kids from the village and we sing them Thai song named Chong.
After visiting village, we went to see monkey place where you can see a lot of monkeys. We didn’t spend much time there as it started to rain so we directly went to boat for island. We went to visit Coral island. Sea is soo green-blue color that it’s so beautiful to watch it. When we finally came to island, we had white sand beach with palms and it was amazing. Everyone went swimming or snorkeling immediately and it was amazing. I was snorkeling for few minutes and in that time I saw a lot of amazing fishes with different colors. Wow… I love it. Sea is really warm and I love it. So, I can say that I was swimming in Indian Ocean.
We had lunch provided at island and one nice lady from Phuket paid everything for us. For lunch I only took rice without anything as I was afraid to get sick again.
Around 4 we were ready to leave island and come back to Phuket Island. It was pretty rocky at sea but we survived. When we come back, we didn’t have much time and we had to get ready in our nice outfit in only few minutes. Why? Because we went to dinner in hotel which Rotary club paid for us. Dinner was really good. Rotary club also paid for FantaSea show where we went immediately after dinner. It’s the show with different performances and with elephants and other animals. It’s really modern show and I love it.
Post je objavljen 22.08.2007. u 18:01 sati.