As I’m sitting down to compose my blog this week, I’m in an incredibly good mood - and have been all day. I’ve had a lot of fun this week at Hands of Hope.
I have to be honest: I am not good at crafts. My cutting skills are not skills at all. I have learned a little quilling and can muster up some decent quilling moments. I can help assemble some boxes that are decent. But crafts are not my forte. So although I do plenty of other things at Hands of Hope (like much of the computer work including invoices, printing logos, updating logos, finding new markets/customers, etc.), I do not always feel like I assist in the creative side.
This week was different. I’m helping to gather ideas for new products before Hands of Hope does their design workshop at the beginning of December. I feel very useful, as all of my coworkers are looking at designs and getting inspired. It’s great to be around all of that creative energy and feel like I’m adding to it.
Another reason for my good mood is I feel like I’m continuing to settle in and enjoy my community here (it helps to have our health back, like we have had the past 10 days finally!). Thai people like to have fun (sanook). Throughout the day, you hear laughter, as people banter back and forth. Now that I am less of an outsider, my coworkers poke fun at me when I count incorrectly during the exercises I lead, as I slip up on my Thai. I give my coworkers a hard time, when they call me the name of previous volunteers. It’s a lot of kidding around.
A follow-up to the rice harvest. Above is harvested rice that has been milled and is sitting out to dry a little longer.
I also really enjoy the full-time staff. Most of my daily interaction with staff is with two of the social workers, and I love my time with them.
On a side note (but an important one at that), there is big news here that I keep on forgetting to share. The Care Center had applied for a grant for the funding of a new building, which will be an extension of the Care Center. It was a much longer process than it was supposed to be, but they finally found out last month that they were approved for the funding.
Things have swiftly been set in motion. They had final meetings with the architect, are figuring out new operating budgets, hired a new cook in preparation, and perhaps the biggest news: began the surveying and digging for the new building. We’re all very excited here.
This new building is essential. The staff have been playing musical beds with patients - to try to accommodate the most patients possible, and we still have to turn away new patients. There seems to always be a waiting list, between people that the Outreach Team visits to the government asking for help for a certain case who has no or little family support to people who hear of what the Sisters do and pass along patients who have nowhere else to go.
So I’m a little sad because my two new social worker friends will move to this new building, once it’s built, and I won’t get to see them several times a day like I do now. Thankfully, I still have plenty of time before this occurs. The building won’t be finished until March at the earliest and probably not fully operable until April.
I also enjoy how affectionate another staff member, Sunthi (pronounced Sun-tee), is toward us. He is one of the drivers, and he drove us to all of our doctor’s appointments when we were trying to figure out what is wrong with us during our dengue fever. He is very playful with everyone. There is a cute little boy that sometimes comes with his grandmother to work. This boy has lots of energy, and I love watching Sunthi let the boy climb all over him like a jungle gym.
Some other little joys this week:
- Sr. Pranee spoiled us and gave us kahnomes (sweets/snacks) almost every day this week. One of them was this delectable, layered deliciousness in a cup. There was some kind of whipped cream with cocoa dusted on top, then bananas (and the bananas are small and taste more delicious here than back home), with some bit of caramel-like pudding/sauce and a graham cracker bottom. It was so decadent and delightful (lots of words beginning with the letter D apparently!).
- After the second day in a row that Sr. Pranee gave us a kahnome, I joked with my social worker friends that it’s because she wants us to stay for two years instead of one. The next day over lunch, as I was thanking Sr. Pranee, she joked that we could stay for three! Not to scare our parents at all, but it is nice to hear that people would want us around for awhile. They must like us a little bit, to half-joke about that.
- I was able to go to the Friday afternoon market (we have overnight duty every other Friday now), so on my Fridays off, we’re able to go to the close-by market. I treated myself to a fruit smoothie and enjoyed walking around with two of my Thai friends.
Let me conclude this blog with some photos of the beauty of this endless sky, with #nofilter photos.