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.