Mango Fest, Sweaty T-shirts and 2 Houses

A little note copied from my own blog!

Hi everyone! It's been a few days but we are officially in Udon Thani and have been working hard for 2 days now! The house is progressing so quickly, but 16 sets of hands will do that I suppose. It is SO hot, literally around 40 degrees and lots of humidity. Luckily their construction they put the roof on first and the walls are built up of concrete block after so we are in the shade a portion of the time. Unfortunately I'm not able to post pictures but here is the link to the Group Blog where others will be posting as well http://gv10344.blogspot.com/ the title of the blog is so funny because today we found out that we are actually working fast enough and raised enough funds to build two houses! VERY exciting! So on the way back (in the back of a pickup truck) our group leader says " yea so they didn't want to tell us until they realized we are sort of rockstars"! Which we surely are - but you knew that.

The group dynamic is very intersting! We have age 21-74 and we all work very well together, I'm super anal about the craftsmanship so I go around regularly and clean up the extra cement which doesn't look neat and tidy and I think other people have just realized I am a strange girl. I'm going to be so strong when I come home, just look out! Between the heat and work though, and the fact that I sweat more than probably anyone else on the team (bottle water in, bottle water out) my tanktop is drenched after only about 1 hr of work- what can ya do. The family that we are building the house for is a 30ish yr old man and his elderly mother. Currently they are living with his sister and family. Her husband however is an alcoholic and they have a small 1.5 yr old daughter (absolutely ADORABLE) and so they are all crammed in and need more space. Very sad. The diversity is very strange, there are very very rich houses amidst the most poor and shack like, they do not segregate in their own little communities like at home.

Tonight or tomorrow I'm looking forward to an authentic thai massage which generally run about 300 B for 2 hours (10 dollars). Jealous? ;) I also seem to be developing a very interesting rash on my hand and JB one of our leaders (just completing med school) has pretty well told me I need to put some heavy duty cream on so I think I'll head to the nice airconditioned mall and pick up a few things. May also stop at 7/11 on the way back and pick up a lovely alcoholic beverage.

I feel as though this post has become quite long, so I will look forward to writing more very very soon now that I have found an internet cafe! Love to all

B