2008
January
This month has been rather slow ... no visitors or volunteers as we slowly saw the winter in Thailand fade away. Christmas holidays are now just a memory although Santa still sits astride his sleigh with his reindeers above our door. I just got a call last night from Wendy, our first volunteer of last year, who has
returned to Thailand
and is in Bangkok visiting her daughter, another volunteer who visited
us last year. The kids and I have been taking it easy. The
highlight of our weekends has been our trips to the river for swimming
and play with the radio-controlled boat I bought for them from a
friend. Although the batteries never last long enough for us to
play with it more than 20 minutes we manage to have a good time anyway.
We
like to swim downriver from Mywaddi where the river is clear and free
of trash as you can see here. The boat you see dredges sand from
the river -- like many other such places along the river -- and is used
all over in local construction. If you notice the tanks on the
bank across the river, these are for fuel storage -- mostly diesel.
The local news for the month was a series of two successive
explosions and fires at a similar fuel depot just a little further
downstream from this picture. It sent clouds of billowing, black
smoke into the air that we could see from all around the village.
We cycled over and watched it burn until the Mywaddi fire
department arrived. It must have been at least 45 minutes since
it is a good 10 kilometers away. An empty house in the village
also mysteriously burned down this month. So much for the local
news that you'll never read about anywhere else except here. The
kids are all healthy, dewormed again (Chili had them this time), and
spend most of their time studying or playing happily in the yard.
We were not able to secure the lease on the Buddhist temple land,
ultimately, but were luckier to get a similar piece of land for a
vegetable garden nearer the house for a cheaper annual rent. We
hope Wendy arrives with seeds as planned and while she's here, we'll
finally start our kitchen garden. More news from February's
visitors as we go along. Please stay tuned for further updates.