Arriving yesterday we picked her up from Sarapee on the way home from collecting our four Mattayom level students who have been away on a 3 day Scout camp with their school.

That was lunch time and it didn’t take long for Emily to pitch in, helping the girls with the post-lunch clear up.

And she appeared to be an instant hit with the kids after that joining them in their Saturday afternoon free time and instigating some fun and games herself.

She also helped the May 2 and Jor with their new “spring” mattresses purchased yesterday.

We bought 3 with one going to Tai. We will be replacing more in the near future but are still looking for a kind hearted sponsor to cover the costs.

Emilie will be with us until next Saturday so I’m sure there will be much more fun in-store.

Its heart warming to see a bunch of kids not yet so over run by modern technology that they can’t see the worth of the simple things made by their own hand.

Or indeed made for them with love of a sibling. Watch Zak as he plays with the “train” made by his older brother Tai, from old milk cartons and bottle tops.

Today we had a very welcome visit from Pui, her family and Jurgen and his friend Ohs. Jurgen has expressed an interest in helping our Foundation, liking our core philosophies and our work so far.

Our visitors came with yet another great lunch for the kids, with green curry, chicken, noodles and much more. Jurgen and Ohs also presented us with a huge supply of toothpaste and toothbrushes for the children, donated by a dentist friend of theirs in Switzerland. Sorry I failed to get your name, but we all say a big thanks for that.

After a fantastic lunch Jurgen offered a return visit to Childrens World at the Night Safari. And so there followed a wonderful afternoon for the kids and a relaxing time for the adults with chance to discuss several ideas in connection with onward funding and development.

This includes a kind offer to help design and produce drawings for our ” permanent facility”.

We would like to thank Jurgen, Ohs, Pui and all her family for their generous support and I look forward to ongoing discussions in the near future.

Thanks to recently made contacts we now have someone prepared to help us with this.

So this week has seen a couple of trips by myself, up to the land with the strimmer and then again Saturday and Sunday mornings with the children pitching in with the job.

I am hoping to get the complete clearance done in the next couple of days so that those all important measurements can be made.

It was some time ago when we launched our Gamma Team idea.

Sadly, although we have had a couple of ex-volunteers doing what they can we still only have 2 official Gamma Teams; our first Faa gamma, headed by good friend Heather Mackay in Queensland , Australia; and Yai Gamma which is basically my Mum and my sister. Both these teams are doing their best to hold varying fund raisers most months and I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those involved for all their hard work and support.

Our present basic monthly running costs are around 1000 pounds sterling. Thanks to great efforts by both Gamma teams over the Xmas period and regular contributions from an American couple, we received a little over that for Januarys budget. This is the first time we have actually covered our budget totally with donations.

On average we are receiving just half of what we need with the remainder being made up by myself.

To sustain our work and to hopefully move forward this is not a tenable situation.

If you are looking in and have time , energy and ideas and would like to help a very worthwhile cause please consider joining our Fund Raising Family. Your “team” can be just one person or a group of friends. If you keep a record of your Fund raising activities and take some photos to we will give you space on our website where your efforts will be credited.

From jumble sales to home made fashion show, movie clubs to coffee mornings…..as the old adage  goes,” every little helps” and with enough small fund raising teams around the world our target is not a huge mountain to climb.

If you are local to or visiting Chiang Mai and want to confirm what you see on our website via a personal visit please do get in touch.

We are dedicated to quality “family style” care with extensive efforts towards true development of each and every child’s potential, employing art, music, dance, character building work projects and are now moving forward with even more practical skills development, including basic electronics.

Please help us sustain our work, which is starting to show marked results. And not just to sustain but to develop and offer  ”A Better Chance” to many more children in the future.

And another full day it was.

Certainly the morning was busy with the usual work time slot, with more work being done to our “workshop”.

As there wasn’t really enough jobs to go round on this project, Anna took some of the girls to begin a new Mural on the rear wall of the outdoor shower block.

After work hour Tom got into more Patong and Anna helped Bpaa Zang and the girls in the kitchen.

Top star lunch. Nam pik phlaa with  sweet and sour chicken and cabbage and eggplant on the side. Genuine Thai cuisine as tasty as any you’d get in the city restaurants.

In the after noon things were a little more chilled with the kids keeping themselves occupied with Patong and their bicycles and the adults taking some time to let our food go done and grab an afternoon nap.

Active Anna succumbed, finally, to the heat and took some well earned nap time in the garden.

We all said a big thanks to our visitors over dinner and wish them all the best for their new life in Australia. Hopefully “see you again” rather than goodbye?

During our converstaion there Ray and Tak told us that they would like to invite us all to lunch at their home sometime soon.

Well that “sometime soon” was yesterday, and an amazing lunch it was too.

We arrived at their family home shortly before Midday to a very warm welcome. Mik is fortunate enough to have quite a store of toys, plus bicycles and scooters and it wasn’t long before all the kids were having fun.

Ray and Tak had laid on lots of kanom and pop as well as a fantastic spreed for lunch. As well as Thai food, Kapoaw, there was Spaghetti and meatballs in rich tomato sauce and eggplant bruschetta( I think), with mozzarella, and garlic toast.

Na Na the Huskie puppy was popular with the kids and very friendly.

As well as playing with the many toys and bicycles the children spent quite sometime playing Patong.

Anna and Tom seemed to have a great time too.

Shortly before leaving mid-afternoon we all went for a short walk and spent a little time watching a local fisherman at work in local pond.

We would like to say a very big thanks for a fantastic lunch to our kind host Ray, Tak and Mik.

This has meant an extra workload for myself whilst waiting for new staff.

Thankfully, after a couple of non-starters I am pleased to introduce our new House Mother, Zangboon. Now known as Bpaa Zang. She has pitched into the job straight away since starting on Tuesday and all the signs are that we have yet another great member of staff. Floors are sparkling, children are getting lots of hugs and our stomachs are being treated to excellent quality Thai cuisine. Zang apparently had her own business in the past cooking Thai food to sell at local factories at lunch time.

With the kids back to school on Tuesday it was a chance for our two volunteers to take it easy in the day time but they wouldn’t hear of it. In the morning they accompanied me up to our land.

Now that we have had sustained dry weather it is an opportunity to get some work done, not only planning for the new build but also to utilise the land whilst we raise funds.

The first thing that needs doing is to strim the overgrowth, which is quite substantial.

As Tom and Anna can testify, even though the rains have gone we are now up against the sun and so it is a case of slowly slowly, doing an hour or so before the heat of the day makes it difficult.

We are keen to get proper plans drawn up for the proposed permanent facility so it is important that we get new measurements in metres to facilitate this. To do that we need to find the borders and land markers, now hidden by the last 3 months growth of weeds.

With Anna and Toms help we cleared the path down to the land and found the first marker on Tuesday.

In the afternoon our to busy volunteers then helped cut posts for our new Re-Cycle storage, and when the heat got too much, set to peeling and chopping sweet potatoes for storage in the freezer.

They were then on hand to greet the kids from school and spend time playing before dinner.

On Wednesday they did take a well earned day off, as Anna had a phone interview for a new job in Australia. All that good Karma they’ve been building up obviously did the trick, with the news that she was successful in her interview.

Slightly sad for us as it means they will be leaving earlier than planned. But we are happy that Anna has secured herself employment for the couples new start in Australia. And they are still with us until Monday so we will all have to make the most of that time.

Today it turned out that the Primary School children had a day off. This changed our plans a little but it was another productive day.

In the morning Anna took care of the girls, whilst Zak accompanied Tom and myself to the land where we did more strimming, with Zak busy with the rake.

We were successful in our target for the morning, clearing down to, and finding, the furthermost land marker.

After a delicious lunch, made by our new House Mother; Zangboon; Tom and Anna came with me on a Re- cycle run, picking up re-cyclables from The American Pacific School Kindergarten, Kwan Wiang Moobahn and our local Garden shop in Sarapee. It was a massive haul from the garden shop, whose friendly lady proprietor  has been saving stuff for a monthly collection for the last couple of months now. She stocks a wide range of garden plants, from the simple to the exotic, as well as high quality garden soil and other accessories. She also speaks a reasonable amount of English.

Back home everyone joined in sorting all the re-cyc;ables ; paper, glass, metal and plastic; and bagging it for storage in the new tidy pens I put up on Wednesday(photos coming soon).

Then it was back to chill out and playtime for everyone before dinner.

It turned out that the school is getting various visits this week with a view to inspecting its standards. Yesterday they were visited by the Governor of Lamphun Province, within which Huay Sai is situated.

Our day began as usual with the school run, taking the four Mattayom Students to their school in Sarapee, picking up Anna and Tom on the way. From there we went to the vegetable market in Sarapee and got the weeks supplies.

Having dropped the veg back home we then headed off to Huay Sai , arriving a little after 9am.

Shortly after our arrival we were treated to some cultural performances laid on for the Governor, including Traditional Thai Dancing, Hula Hoop Dancing and a display of Muay Thai/stick fighting by the boys.

Then it was into Khruu Khems English classroom, which had been laid out to imitate a small market, ready for the children to go “shopping” using English language.

Anna, Tom and myself  spent time helping the children practice their vocabulary, both with the shopping exercise and with a performance of ” Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”.

We all had lots of fun and when it came to the children doing the exercise in front of the visiting inspectors they all did a great job.