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More evidence that the children at Stratton House don’t just sit around waiting for good things to happen. We do our best to make this a “Family” home and in any good family everyone chips in to their bit.
Yesterday House Mother Muay got lots of help in the kitchen.
And over the whole holiday the children have done their bit in the garden to, tidying, weeding and improving.
With plenty of time inbetween for relaxing and enjoying the holiday.
Half way through Saturday afternoon Yong and May1′s Mum turned up to take them home for an extended home visit over the Song Kran period.
Hope you have a nice time girls, miss you already, see you after Song Kran.
More apologies for a complete lack of updates for a protracted period of time. This has been mainly due to the recent end of school year holiday. With all the kids at home its was simply pretty much impossible to get away to the internet shop to keep up with things.
Hopefully I will complete the catch-up over the next week , so please check in for features on the holiday period, including our first Volunteers;
a 7 day home visit for the kids from Nan; two new arrivals;
and the return of regular updates on life at Stratton House.
When asked where they wanted to go this weekend , the children asked to go back to the waterfall at Doi Suthep.
Not happy about the risk of more injury from broken glass, we decided to try the Huay Kaow Waterfall a little further downstream.
This waterfall is more developed for visitors with a car park and many shops and cafes.
The entrance is just a few yards from Chiang mai Zoo at the bottom of Doi Suthep.
The hope was that it would benefit from better upkeep and be safer.
Eating at home again we left at 11.30, getting to the waterfall at 12.30.
It is certainly more beautiful and better maintained, although this means its loses some of the natural wild charm of the one further up the mountain.
We picked a shady spot as our base and the kids had lots of fun playing in the waters.
Again, despite having eaten already, I couldn’t resist getting hold of some sticky rice and nam pik see daeng, my favourite picnic snack, and lemonade and kanom for the kids.
Luckily no injuries this week.
I say luckily because, although there was certainly less, there was still a fair bit of broken glass around.
Little Som did a valient, unprompted, job picking up several pieces out of the rock pools and disposing of them in a safe place.
We left the waterfall at around 3pm , with a short visit to the impressive ‘aboretum’ park the other side of the Zoo entrance, at the top of Huay Kaow Rd., before heading home for 5pm.
For more photos please visit our photobucket album here.
Thanks to an anonymous donation to our cycle track fund we decided to purchase the first load of surfacing materials.
A second look at the possible costs of concreting, and the fact that we are still in rented accomadation, led us to believe that we should look at cheaper, less permanent, options, and we settled on gravel and stonedust.
Having used this before with a similar project back in the UK, I know that if done properly it should set hard enough to give a reasonable riding surface.
The first load was delivered early Saturday morning and the children were keen to get to work, despite the heat.
We made it a short hour long session to start, with another hour and a half later in the afternoon, when the heat of the day had subsided.
All the children worked very hard. And on Sunday, on returning from the weekly day out, they all pleaded with me to allow them to carry on and do some more.
Personally I was too tired to do much myself, but was cetainly not going to deter such enthusiasm and was happy to supervise.
Well done kids, very proud of you!
For more photos please visit our photobucket album here.
This Sunday happened to be Valentines Day, so the day out included not only Huay Tung Tao,
but also visits to both Kamtieng Garden Market and the Flower Market close to Chiang Mais China Town at the banks of the River Ping.
We ate at home this week and then enjoyed a couple of hours of the peaceful ambience of Huay Tung Taow and some time in the water, before heading into Kamtieng Garden Market, behind Tesco Lotus on the super highway.
The children had made a special request to be able to go and buy flowers for Valentines day.
At Kamtieng we let the children choose some flowers for the garden. From there we went to the riverside Flower Market where they all bought roses.
The spirit of Valentines truely came to Stratton House a couple of days early. Friday evening saw the culmination of a very stressful week for myself.
As hard as I tried I know that the children had sensed my stress.
On returning home, mid-evening from a meeting I was met by all the children as I walked into the house. They took me by the hands and ushered me, excitedly, round to the art area. There they proceeded to hand me a whole load of Valentines cards and paper hearts that they had made for me.
To say I was touched is an understatement. The stresses of the week, and this spontaneous show of affection, hit me like a tornado and I have to confess to being unable to stop the tears.
I quickly assured the children that it was because they had made me so happy.
This now has become a running quote in the house, “Daddy long hai, bpen kwam suk mak”.
The cards and hearts now adorn my door and bring a glow to my heart each time I see them.
For more photos from the day please visit our photobucket album here.
Monday saw the first Birthday party for one of the children from Nan. It is strange how Thai people don’t appear to take so much note of their birthday or, indeed, birth year. There was a little confusion at first with May claiming to be 12 years old. Checking her birth certificate I confirmed that she actually became 11 on Monday. Sorry May, another year before you get to stay up later.
May got a little extra pocket money for the day at school and we gave her her card on her return from school.
It had ended up that I was on my own to do the present buying at the market in Banthi in the morning. May had requested clothes and I was not at all sure what to buy an 11 year old Thai girl. After a light dinner I presented her with the two shirts I had bought and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw how happy she was with them.
She rushed off to put her favourite on, before we had the small party at around 7pm. Birthday cake, mango and sticky rice and lots more kanom and pop.
Lots of smiles and happiness that make this work worth it.
Thanks to a herculian effort by all the children yesterday , it loo
ks like our original estimate of 5 weekends was way over the top.
Once they got started and the track started to take shape , the children didn’t want to stop.
All the younger children worked hard gathering up loose stones and leveling the track.
Tai was entrusted with the job of shaping points on short bamboo stakes to hold the track marking poles in place.
All the children wanted to have a go at banging the stakes in and managed very well in places where the ground was softest; using wooden sticks as hammers when I refused to allow them to weild the heavy metal lump hammer that myself and Tai used later to bang the stakes in until they were firm.
Even working lat in the afternoon the heat was quite intense and I tried calling a halt to the work after a little over an hour.
But the children would have none of it, not wanting to stop until the whole track had at least been laid out.
Well done kids, to say I am proud of you is an understatement!
For more photos of this project please visit our photobucket album here.
