My last 9 days before leaving for home were some of the best.
On Saturday evening I enjoyed soccer with some of the students. It was dark enough that I couldn't see the ball when it was in shadows, and we were playing in the cafeteria, so it was lots of fun.
On Sunday I did my best to disrupt a staff meeting by teaching the gardener to use a skil saw as I was working on a handrail for the stairs we had built. I soon found myself elsewhere, and got lots of reading done. When I went back to work in the afternoon, I got distracted by soccer for a while, but eventually some work got done.
On Monday I focused on a high priority: escaping to the woods. I took the Nafie sisters to both of the rock structures I had explored, and we climbed the one with the view down to the school. Three students met us up there. The forest is really nice right now: trees that have been bald for a while are putting out elegant red leaves. The hillsides will look really nice when these leaves are big and green. We saw a few new types of flowers along the hike too. We could have taken twice as much time as we had to explore, but made the mistake of checking the time.
On Tuesday I went to Byota with Gayle (the nurse), her son Micah, a student and a teacher, and Elani, another volunteer from Tennessee. Byota is about 4 hours away from the school, in a beautiful valley. It's higher country: the mountains we went over on the way there have pine forests on them. It was neat to see wild bananas and pine trees growing beside each other while I enjoyed the refreshing forest air.
Wednesday was a good work day: we got one bamboo wall replaced with boards. If I stayed I'm that house too long, I think I would develop a sideways lean: the walls in the house are way out of plumb. The house has character that most North Americans miss out on.
We had used most of the wood on Wednesday, so on Thursday, so I had the problem of trying to stay occupied in a beautiful mountainous place. I went for a hike on a shortcut road before breakfast, then did the repeat and enlarge version of that hike with Elani after breakfast. We went quite a ways before she turned back, then I kept on going and followed the road to until it joined the main road at a big pagoda. There were many excellent views. I got back to Byota on time to go to an excellent swimming hole in the stream. It is surrounded by nice rocks to jump off, and made an ideal place to play tag, which we did at Micah's suggestion. In the late afternoon I finished replacing the front door of the house. Gayle gave me her VitaMix blender, since she can't use it with Thailand's 220 power. Excellent pay for little over a day of work: especially since just the experience was more than worth it.
On Friday some of us returned to the school: my main accomplishment was taking in views.
For some crazy reason I agreed to play violin with Dah Bu (a teacher) and Anna for AY on Sabbath afternoon. Then I found out there was no written music for the song they were going to sing. My play by ear skills are almost non- existent, so I had lots of practicing to do. But then I skipped half the practicing to chase Emily and some students to the pagoda with Micah. So everyone had to put up with a fistful or two of wrong notes. It went better than I thought it would though, way better than the week before.
On Sunday, Mr. Adams and I got the handrails for the chapel stairs up: something I really wanted to get done. Now he just has to install a couple supports (which are just to make sure they're too strong) and that project will be done.
Overall I had an excellent time here in Thailand. Great exploring and good work experience helped make it worthwhile. But it was the staff, students and volunteers at Sunshine Orchards (the school) that really made the trip worthwhile: they're all awesome people, and the love of Christ shines very brightly through many of them.
Jan. 5 update:
I had most of the day in Seoul. I took the subway to the old part of the city and explored a historic palace and a park. Pictures of the palace, fortress wall, and broad-topped pine trees say a lot more than I will: I'll post some on Facebook when I can. I think the lunch I had was a traditional Korean meal. The salad part of it was excellent, and the soup cleared my sinuses quite well.
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