Content from joanne
Wednesday – 14 November
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| Christina Gets her Float Badge |
Today we finished the floors by pouring concrete over the
dirt and rock fill. When we arrived in the morning, there was re-bar already
placed in a criss-cross pattern on the floor area and we made many tubs of cement
to cover the re-bar with concrete to an acceptable height. The last step was to
run a float (levelling bar) over the top to make the surface nice and smooth,
and Christina got her ‘Float Badge’ – Congratulations Christina!
Site two also had a small ceremony to place a toonie in the
cement where the entry door is going to be – for good luck. (This used to be a
loonie –but we upgraded to a toonie for inflation.) Apparently it was a good
choice because the gold and silver mix holds particular significance for Thai
people. Site one had their ceremony yesterday.
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| Toonie Placement for Good Luck |
Site one also wrote their names in the cement to keep their connection to the house documented forever.
It was also interesting to see the neighbours coming around
the site and interacting with both team members and the family. During the
first couple of days people were pretty shy, but today we had a slow but fairly
constant stream of people just on the outskirts of the build site watching and
saying ‘sawadee ka’ (from females) or sawadee krap (from males) in greeting.
The wife of one of our builders also came by to check on him, and the group of
three people harvesting rice just across the street were watching for a while,
but the most interesting interaction was when a lady brought her pet hedgehog
over to meet these ‘crazy canucks’ – it was really cute!
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| For Ever |
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| Diana Has a New Friend |
With the floor all poured and smoothed, we returned to the
city for a swim to cool down, followed by (in true North American fashion) a
supper of pizza, salad, and refreshments by the pool. In the evening Stephanie
spoke to us about her work with Ten Thousand Villages complete with some Fair
Trade chocolate. One of the artisan groups they work with have a shop just up
the street, and we saw one of the dragon-fly fridge magnets made of recycled
phone books – gotta get one of those!
Keep those wishes for cool weather coming – it’s still
steamy here!
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