Today I helped finish Hands On Learning’s 4th playground in the Mae Sot area. I must say that the first time that I looked at it I thought that it was pretty ugly looking, but the more time that I spent with it and the more finishing touches we put on it the better it started to look.
The whole point behind them is creating playgrounds for free for migrant children, usually from Burma, out of recycled materials. So we use lots of old tires and logs. We also use concrete pipe barrels for the round play houses. And lots of bamboo. It is pretty inventive if I do say so myself.
I came in at the very end of this one so I mainly did a lot of the painting, which is fine by me because doing work out here is killer! It is so hot and humid that even sitting around outside you break into a sweat let alone digging a hole or cutting tires (which is really hard, because evidently they have steel right in the middle of the rubber going all the way around- who knew?). I am so tan right now, even though I wear a hat and lots of sunscreen. It is pretty neat because I get to do a lot, and I mean A LOT, of hands on work. I get to use concrete cutting drills, diamond edge hand saws, all sorts of drill bits, and of course the regular hammer, nails and screws. After this whole thing I over I think that I will be super handy, and probably really quite buff!
Hopefully in the next play ground I will have a larger role in the creation aspects; we start that one on Monday! I am pretty excited to start a play ground from start to finish even although right now I am pretty exhausted about this whole working out in the deadly sun from 9 to 6 pm!
Below I am posting lots of photos with the kids enjoying our finished product. It is really rewarding to see them so happy about something that is really so simple!
On a totally other note, the bathroom tiling is almost done! yay!!! I am giving the guy the final amount or money tomorrow and it should be all done by 9 am! I am so excited to not have to deal with this tile guy any more. He is a really good tiler, but it is just little things that a tile guy might automatically do in the States, he needs to ask me first about so that means setting up a meeting time with him after work, taking Thawa (my roommate and translator) with me and chatting with him through Thawa every time! I gets really tedious after a while! We are still trying to find a mosquito netting guy, hopefully that will get pulled together by the end of this week! But the house is starting to look good and we are going to buy furniture this weekend and do lots of room painting!
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