July 23, 2008

"College all over again" except without any of you guys and only all the school work. That's kind of what I felt like after today :0. No, it wasn't bad. I was tutoring the kids as usual but one of them had like a thousand questions about circuits and waves that I wasn't quite sure about. So I looked in his book, which didn't really help because it was in Thai, and then I googled some concepts. Now I'm back in business baby and ready to offer more clarifications. Who would have thought that learning physics could be rewarding?

Anywho, tutoring hours is something I wanted to talk a little more about. I spend most of my day doing the office work and then I spend the evening tutoring. However I only get to tutor the kids for about 2 hours. Usually I get through 6 students; 8 if the the concepts take less time to explain. There are 36 students. I can't tutor longer because I can't actually stay on the site past hours. There are girls here and male volunteers are not allowed to be on site beyond 10PM. The regulation makes sense but I think it's an unfortunate situation. I have offered to tutor on weekends as well and as on my day off. Hopefully I can help more kids this way.

I wanted to end this post with my thought of the day which is actually not related to the topics above. I mentioned earlier that I'm taking the truck to work by myself now, which means I actually have more time to think. So I was thinking today (more like calculating). I take two trucks to work. One of them only costs 15 Baht a person and it goes from the marketplace to the next town which is about 17 miles away. There are usually 6-8 people per run which comes out to be 90-120 Baht that the driver collects. This is less than $4.oo. Gas here is 33 Baht a liter and 3.78 liters equals 1 gallon. 1 gallon would therefore cost $3.75. The pickup trucks here will run about 20 mph. Every run, they pocket a difference of only about $0.25. One truck makes 20 runs a day to and from the market place which means that they make about $5.00 per day driving. $5! How does one live off of $5 a day, especially with a family? That is my thought of the day.


Sadly I could take a picture of myself tutoring so I'm posting a picture of an other volunteer helping one of the girls in Thai. She's cool.

July 21st and July 22nd 2008

July 22, 2002

I'm going to skip day 21 because it was not too eventful for myself. I was asked to make a presentation about the Hmong in American for a conference amongst the Hmong leaders. Having just one day to prepare, I spent the entire day putting together the presentation.

The meeting was today, the 22nd and I thought it went well. First off, I met one of my uncles here. I've never met the guy before but he's a doctor and says he knows my pops. I took a picture of him and send it home. My dad knows him too. Cool eh?

Anyhow... the conference. It went well. Some of the things they discussed were quite progressive, like addressing the inequalities between men and women in the community. It wasn't that I had low expectations for the people here but let me be honest and say that this is a society that has yet to accept man and woman as equal beings. I was excited for this topic and felt I offered constructive feedback on the situation in America.

I'll spare you the details of the rest of the conference. Just know that the folks here, like everywhere else, is looking for change and they know it is up to them to inflict this change in society. This is admirable anywhere you go.

This is a picture of some of the leaders having lunch (I didn't feel it was appropriate to take pictures during the actual conference). You can see there are women amongst this group as well.

July 20, 2008

July 20, 2008

I administered my survey today. I wrote it in English and had it translated into Thai by my director. By coincidence, I think today was pretty good timing. I think I've bonded with the kids well enough for them to be honest and open to me. But before I proceed further with this blog, let me tell you briefly about my project.

In addition to helping the BRJ Project with their work, I also have a project of my own. I'm investigating the common health problems amongst the children here at the site and around the villages. With this knowledge, I will be working with the BRJ Project staff and other health NGOs to develop an academic curriculum that we can teach to the kids here. The curriculum will cover an introduction to the type of diseases that are prevalent amongst the youth. It will offer preventative measures and tips as well as advice of what to do when they are sick. The latter is important to include in the class as well because containment is essential when there are so many children around. By working with the staff on this rather than by myself, I am hoping that they will continue to run the course once I return home. If the program goes well, I'll look into expanding it to the villages and other places where such knowledge is not taught. My hope is that I can help these folks live healthier lives.

Okay... so about the survey. It is intended to be a beginning marker of measurement for their hygiene habits and knowledge of health problems. It will also offer me another view of the situation. I already read the records of their doctor visits and spoke to the staff about the common diseases. This will allow me to observe the health situation from the aspect of the children.

Anyhow, the kids were cooperative and they were done within 20 minutes. I sat down with my director and we briefly went over some of the responses. Even she was surprised at some of the responses. We both agreed this program would be good for the kids.

Note: I wanted to post the game of dodgeball that we played after the survey online, but I've been trying for the last few hours and it's not working :(. I'm posting a picture instead which has less action. But you should know that I got my bu*t kicked :)

July 19, 2008

July 19, 2008

I took the red truck to work all by myself today. YEH!!! My director finally trusted me to not get lost :) However she did call me in the middle of my trip to see if I was on the right truck. She is exactly like my mother at home and I think that's perfect.

Anyhow, today was again, another great day I would say. I did the regular office work and then worked with the kids. At dinner however, our chattering led to me saying that I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand (try saying that in Thai. How do I know Thai? I don't.). The kids thought I was kidding and I had to show them a picture of me when I was a young boy in Thailand. They were stoked, or at least I think they were because then they wanted to know about my life story... Actually I already told them my life story on the first day that we all met but I spoke in Hmong (that's my native tongue) and perhaps they didn't understand what I was saying.

My director said that my story instilled some sense of hope for these kids but I'm doubtful. You see, these kids come from very unfortunate backgrounds. I mentioned this in the e-mail the sent out but it's worth repeating again because these number bring forth a reality that we often don't think about. All the kids on the BRJ Project site have been affected by drugs and of course poverty. 10 of the the kids are orphans because their parents passed away from drugs. 17 of them have parents that are in jail because of drugs. 15 of them have at least one family member currently addicted to drugs and they themselves are in high risk of selling or using drugs. With so much taken away from them, I think, more than anything, that it was just good to hear the story of someone who came from a similar background. In any case, I'm glad I was able to share my story with them.

Dinner in their dinning hall. The other kids are on the other table

July 18, 2008

I apologize that I haven't been blogging regularly. I only recently got internet access in my room. But lets not look too much in the past. We still have many great weeks ahead. I promise you guys I'll try to keep my daily blogs short. If not, I promise that they are worth reading :P

So I want to talk a little about the big thing that happened today but first, a quick summary of the day. I woke up at 8 AM (like every other day) and took the red truck to work. Actually, Seewigaa (my director) doesn't quite believe that I know the way to work yet, so she continues to send one of the students to come fetch me. I think it's funny but I love her for caring so much.

Then I spent the morning editing the report I wrote for one of the projects here and I FINISHED. Seewigaa, my director here, is very excited. This would have taken her a couple of weeks to complete, mainly because she is super awesome and has like a MILLION other things to take care of while writing the report :). Anyhow, I had the rest of the day free and ask what I could do. Seewigaa said the kids were selling pho at the corner to the villagers and I should go check it out.

So this is the story of the day. I went to the corner (which was actually moved indoors because it started to sprinkle) and sure enough, three of the girls from the BRJ site were selling pho. I wasn't really hungry but I wanted to help out so I bought a bowl for myself. As I was waiting for it to be prepared, one of the other child went up and wanted to buy a bowl as well. I told him that I would pay for him and then without thinking further, I told the girls behind the counter I would buy every child a bowl today.

Feeling good about what I just did, I rushed back into the project site and made the announcement that I had just purchased a bowl of pho for everyone who wanted one. All 36 kids dropped what they were doing and ran to the pho stand. Seeing this, I thought to myself "what a good thing you just did, treating these kids to pho." So I quickly calculated how much this would cost, 12 baht a bowl for 36 kids came out to be 432 baht or $13. "$13!!!" I blurred out loud. "Just $13?" Here I was thinking I had just done something great and it cost less than what I pay for dinner in Palo Alto. Actually feeling a little guilty about this, I tipped the girls another $13 which they didn't accept. So we compromised that I would treat everyone again the next time they were selling pho.

All sarcasm and joke aside, I think this experience goes to show how much we can actually do even with just a little amount of money. $13 fed the entire hostel a meal. Personally, it was a great reminder that there are many who are not as fortunate and that it is important for me to not only acknowledge this, but to do something about it as well. I really hope that I can.


This was the Pho stand.


This video was their thank you to me. Sorry for the low volume my camera is not that good. Essentially they said thank you and the because they are able to eat and live, they will be good people to each other and themselves. Very cute indeed.

Bahn Ruam Jai Project

My great buddy Seamon introduced me to this blog as a way to document my experience with the Bahn Ruam Jai Project. Let me just highlight a couple of things that have happened here in the past weeks.

I arrived in Bangkok and then took a plane out to Chiang Mai. This was the cheaper route by about $300. I stayed with one of my newfound friends in Bangkok (newfound in the sense that I had volunteered to host him at Stanford during his exchange program and then it just so happens that he lived in Bangkok and offered me a place to stay when I arrived).

Anyhow, I'm in Chiang Mai right now (which is north of Bangkok by the Myanmar/Burma border). For various reasons I'm not staying at the Bahn Ruam Jai Project site. But they did arrange for me to stay at the Mountain View Guest House which belongs to a friend of theirs. The place doesn't look anything like the Mountain View we all know but I really do like it here. I have a whole room to myself with a shower, toilet, sink, A/C (thank god) and an extra bed (so if you guys are ever in Chiang Mai this summer, give me a ring 084-456-6291. You've got yourself a place to stay :) )!

OKAY briefly in regards to business. I continue to love what I am doing here. During the week days when the kids are at school, I don't get to interact with them much but around 4 in the afternoon when they come back to the site, I get to play with them and quite frankly that beats writing proposals or editing project reports any day :). These kids are all so lovable. They are polite in both their manners and speech and they are so loyal to one another. Kind of rare to see this back home isn't it :o. I'll post again in a few minutes pertaining to specific days. Thanks for keeping in touch with me guys. Below is a picture of the site and some of the kids. There's more to come.