15
Location: Ruam Namchai Children's Center, Bangkok
We awoke today to a nice hotel breakfast consisting of a buffet providing many Thai and Western choices. We left to the children center at 8:30 AM and arrived to the sounds of screaming children overjoyed at our coming. We got straight down to business, split into two groups: one that sandpapered the wall and then painted it while the other more skilled painters went to work on finishing the job that we started yesterday. We worked with the kids at our side and local Thai teenagers who were there for community service as well. Lunch was cashew chicken, hot dogs, fried eggs, rice, and bamboo sprout soup. After lunch, we finished up all the painting to the delight of everyone at the center. Then we split into three groups to do some cool Thai activities. One was decorated with flowers where you can do your design and bring the small flower pot back with you. Another activity was creating your sticky rice and mango wrap. We would take banana leaves and add sticky rice and mango, banana, and black beans. Then wrap it up in the banana leaf and tie it with a string from the banana plant. Then we steamed them and ate them ourselves later: delicious. The last activity was creating our Thai dessert where we would take flour and add some colored water to it. Then we would roll the flour into many little balls and then stew them in coconut milk. That dessert was more interesting than delicious, but most of us still liked it. After these activities, we did our final ceremony with the children at the center which included many dances and songs, and we had to perform as well. Once again we did the Cha Cha Slide, Juliette showed off her cool karate, and Emily sang a song from the Little Mermaid beautifully. We gathered our goodbye presents and sadly said goodbye to the kids we got close to over only two days. Our group then split into two again because some wanted to get massages before dinner and others didn’t. The people who didn’t decide to get sushi, which was a refreshing change to the everyday routine of spicy Thai food. Now it’s off to bed and then up tomorrow at 8:30 am again to help another community center.