We’re baaaaaack! This is Dr. Ferron as your guest blogger. Wow, so seems like it’s been a while since we posted. Did you miss us? I know you did. But don't worry, we are ok. We have just been super busy doing the work of PUC. Okay, I’ll give a brief overview of what we did these past 3 days, starting from Sunday and ending on today, June 12. Sunday, June 10, 2018 Sunday was our day of rest. Remember in the June 3rd post I stated that some of us may participate in the church service. Guess what?? I actually did it! Yep, I am now a bonafide member of the New Life Donklang Church Choir. I even practiced with them on Saturday. We sang 3 songs in Thai and English (okay, I just sang the English version of the songs) and it was a great experience. It’s always been a lifelong goal of mine to sing in a choir as an adult. Who would have thought that my first time doing that would be in Thailand. It was a beautiful service and since that will be our last Sunday there (we will depart on the 15th to go to Salaya for the Mahidol closing ceremony) the church had a small recognition ceremony for us. Each member of the PUC team said some remarks about their experience and gave thanks to the church members for all of their help. The photo below shows us at the ceremony. Do you notice anything different about one of our PUC students? Hint, hint… look very closely at the girls. Answer will be given at the end of the entire blog post. HAHAHAHAHA, now you need to actually read the entire post or scroll through it to see the answer. After service we had lunch with the church community and then relaxed. The students played various card games, basketball, etc. I worked on a presentation that I was going to give the next day at Mahidol University. We finished the evening off with dinner at Khem’s palace…oops I mean house. The students have been craving for pizza so being the considerate person that he is, Khem arranged for us to have pizza for dinner and some yummy desserts. My favorite part of the evening was looking through Khem’s wedding album and when Khem’s 82 years old father-in-law sang some traditional Thai songs for us...in Thai of course. Even so, somehow we understood what he conveying without understanding what he was saying. My take away from this day is that our similarities bonds us more than our differences separates us; even though we do not speak the same language as our hosts we were still able to communicate since we are united in a spirit of love, giving and compassion. Monday June 11, 2018 Remember when I said I had a presentation at Mahidol University? Well the day has arrived. Khem and I departed the church at 7:30am to travel by van to Mahidol. We arrived around 10:30 am. By the time we finished checking in with the appropriate people it was 11:20. Khem and I decided that we will grab lunch since the seminar was not until 1pm. However as we were walking down the street we passed a massage parlor. Khem looked at me and asked me if I wanted to get a massage or do a long lunch. Now anyone that knows me, knows what I said. MASSAGE PLEASE!!! So I got an hour massage. We finished around 12:40pm. After the massage, we grabbed some street food (chicken on a stick and sticky rice) and quickly walked back to the University. We made it back at 12:50. #winning The seminar went really well. It was a great mixture of students and faculty. Thank you to Dr. Wudhichart Sawangphol from Mahidol Faculty of Information and Communications Technology for organizing the seminar. After the seminar, we traveled back to Suphan Buri and reached there at 6:00pm, right in time for dinner. Oh, about that massage…..it was the best one I’ve had thus far in Thailand (that was my 3rd one by the way). It was more expensive than the massages I’ve had in Suphan Buri, but boy was it worth it. I had a hot oil massage and my only complaint was that it was only an hour. I wish I had time for the 2 hour massage. Anyways, if you are ever around the Salaya area of Thailand, I highly recommend the Talanda Spa. https://talanda-spa-salaya.business.site/ While I was engaging in community involvement by giving the seminar, the students were at the site working. It was going to be a light day of work since some critical path items that needed to be done could not be done until the next day. So what did they do? They started working on assembling the water pipes, filled in some trenches, made care packages to distribute to students at the school, and played with the students. The care package consists of a toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste, this fits in well with the mission of the project. One of the reasons we are building this hygiene station is so that the students can brush their teeth after meals. Inside the care package was a special note from the team. Wanna know what the note said? We will reveal the contents of the note if we get at least 5 comments in the comment section of the blogpost that says “Go PUC Team!” Photos: Top Row, Left Image: Aleesha and Pooja assembling pipes. Top Row, Right Image: Aleesha playing jump rope with students at the school. Bottom Row, Left Image: Assembling the faucets. There's 25 of them. That's alot of sinks! Bottom Row, Right Image: Putting together the care package for the school. Tuesday June 12, 2018 Today we split into two groups. Trey, Pooja, Aleem, Sofia and Rin were members of the “Project Group”. The project group did just what its name suggests. They continued to work on the project. They worked on drainage piping, specifically assembling them and checking for leaks. Great news, module 1 does not have any leaks!! Myself, Aleesha, Julie, Sai and Pim were the “Scoping Group”. The Scoping Group accompanied Khem on two site visits to scope out potential projects for next year’s PUC Thailand’s team. Yes, we want to keep this going! We are even talking about doing a 5 year reunion in 2021 with everyone involved in a PUC Thailand team from 2017 - 2021. Last week Aleesha and Aleem scoped two schools that were located about an hour away from our current site. Today, the Scoping Group went to two schools located about 10 minutes away from our current site (Ban Thap Luang School). At each site, the principal came out to great us and gave us a tour of the school (see photo of the Scoping Group checking out a site) and told us their priority list for potential projects. Each of these schools are doing the best they can with the resources they have. From cafeteria kitchens to student bathrooms to playgrounds, we listened (through our translators) as the principal shared with us their deepest desires for improving their schools. It was bittersweet because we could see the hope in the principal’s eyes and their passion to improve their school, however we also know that next year’s team will probably only help one of the schools. An important issue I should note is access to clean, drinking water is a major issue at each of the schools that we toured. A couple of days ago, Sai mentioned that perhaps one project would be to help the city improve their water treatment process. I do think it’s something that is worth considering since that will be addressing the source of the problem. This is also a great time to mention that access to clean water is a problem in many parts of the US too (https://impact.vice.com/en_us/article/wj4qvx/these-us-cities-are-dealing-with-the-worst-drinking-water-problems-nationwide). So to all those reading this and to the author herself, if you have potable water when open the faucet valve in your home, work or school, give thanks and take a second to reflect on the fact that even though access to safe drinking water is a fundamental human right so many communities around the world do not have it. Be vigilant in conserving water in your communities and feel free to hug your favorite civil or environmental engineer for being part of a profession that aims to bring access to safe drinking water people across the world. Can you tell that I’m a civil engineer ;-). After the site visits, the Scoping Group met up with the Project Group and we all had lunch at the church. After lunch, we all went back to the site and became one “Project Group” again. The contractor plastered the sink modules and the students continued working on piping. Khem told us that if we finish by Wednesday (umm, that’s tomorrow) then he will take us to someplace called the Monkey City. To be honest, I'm not sure what the official name of the place is, but that is what Khem called it, so hence that is what I will call it. To my understanding, Monkey City is a park where lots of monkeys roam around in nature and they come up close to people. Ummn, yeah....I’m not too excited about this (I’m a scaredy cat!). I'm not sure if I will go...maybe I'll hit the spa again.but the students are really really excited about Monkey City. Will we finish in time for them to go? Check in tomorrow to find out! See here for the answer to the hint!
Did you figure it out? The answer is that Pooja cut her hair!! Well, actually Pastor Dar cut Pooja's hair. Her hair is now shoulder length. This is the first time her hair has been this short! Another first for a PUC team member! Kudos to Pooja for her bravery. Her new hairstyle looks great and she fully embraced and loved it from day 1. See below for the before and after photos.
7 Comments
Rhonda
6/12/2018 04:58:45 am
Go PUC team!!! You guys rock! I love you updates and love what you are doing! ❤️❤️
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Eby Lukose
6/12/2018 06:16:55 am
So excited for y'all! Go PUC team!
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Lori Mosman
6/12/2018 06:37:22 am
Enjoyed these blogs....Great kids helping others......What an awesome experience!
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Shannon Black
6/12/2018 07:05:16 am
GO PUC team 2018. You guys are awesome and we are so proud of the work you are doing.
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Deepti Kharod
6/13/2018 04:42:01 am
Go PUC Team 2018!!! I’ve missed the daily blog posts, so thank you Dr. Ferron, for catching us up with details of the service work, fun, life messages, & photos!
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Mischia Farrer
6/13/2018 04:03:20 pm
Ohhhh man! That got oil massage sounds legit!!😁 Glad you're enjoying some "Me" time while still accomplishing great works abroad.
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Natasha Gordon
6/15/2018 09:52:07 am
I’m finally catching up on your adventures!! This is wonderful! The community is blessed to have the team build a sustainable necessity that we take for granted in the States!
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