Building Day 2: "We're Sort Of Rockstars"

Duncan Russell: "Or Brickstars..."

Indeed we are Rock/brick-stars. This house is going up faster than the Starship Enterprise (thanks to Rebecca for that Star Trek reference - we didn't think it was THAT dorky). We are having a fantastic time building in Udon Thani. As one of our hosts, Art, says: "In Thailand - have three seasons: Hot, Super Hot, and Crazy Hot. Right now is Crazy Hot." So yes we are building rockstars despite the heat. Today got up to 104F (40+ for you celsius folks) (for you doctors/med school folks that's a scary bad fever). We just keep building.

Here are a few random observations/comments/thoughts:

--The Habitat staff here is SO nice. Everyone is friendly and helpful. They provide us with a tent/shade area with chairs. We have ample ice, water, soda, snacks (including ridiculously fresh delicious fruit like mango and pineapple). The lunches on site have been AMAZING. For example, today was chicken/tomato/red pepper curry in broth, fried eggplant with greens, and egg omelets. Today we had a sing-a-long with slightly risque lyrics and dancing after lunch. See pictures below.

--The entire team is absolutely destroying the construction site. Our daily tasks include clearing dirt, mixing cement, and laying the cinderblock that form the house. Everyone on the team is getting to lay block and all are doing an excellent job. Even the Habitat staff here are impressed with our progress. You'll see below that when we started it was basically foundation, roof and dirt... then after only two days of building you can see how high the walls are!

--The Karin Hotel has some nice perks. Like air conditioning in each room. However, the air-conditioning doesn't come on until you stick your room key in this little slot. They're very energy conscious here. We have ABF each day - Thai short hand for "American Style Breakfast." This is 2 fried eggs, a piece of ham, a 1.5 inch vienna sausage (American?) and toast... everyday. We might go out for breakfast one of these days. You can get a 2 hour thai massage at the hotel for 300 baht. That's $10 USD. Think about that the next time you go down to your local spa. The hotel does get a few English speaking channels. They are the Australian Broadcasting Network, Bloomberg News, and Fox News -- quite random I know -- I don't know if the Fox News is a Rupert Murdoch/Australia is fairly close-thing.

--Last night we went to a Thai barbeque place. However it was actually more like fondue because you had these little pots of boiling water at your table and you grabbed any number of various items (chicken, beef, squid, mystery fish) and cooked them yourselves. It was an unsatisfying experience for some (J.B.) who were too scared about undercooking their meat and ended up with small pieces of rubber. Afterwards we went to an outdoor market. Think about an amazingly lit up mall, except instead of stores it was a bunch of tents (think tents at the fair) and people sitting on big blankets selling their wares.

--Sadly we're still waiting for 2 of our team members to arrive, Pat and Steph, who have been trapped in Beijing since Saturday night. Don't worry they're safe, but they missed their connection initially because their flight from the states was late, then they lost one of their passports sometime after arrival and have had trouble getting it replaced. We hope to see them very soon, hopefully tomorrow morning. We will keep you, our entrepid readers, posted on this situation...

So enjoy the smorgasborg of pics below all from Udon Thani. I think they nicely paint the picture of our adventure thus far...