The last 2 days have been more of the same routine. We have almost finished with all the block and mortaring. They say we will probably finish the house by Tuesday at this rate. I'm becoming more and more Thai- I have gotten really good and fast at balancing on the "squatter", I'm eating rice at every meal and I've learned about 10 good Thai phrases! The culture here is so different from America. 90% of the population ride mopeds without helmets, children and ...

We are starting to settle into a routine now. Early morning walks, breakfast, ride in Yoyo's truck to house, work, eat, work, eat... Starting to get more of a feel for the people here with us with habitat as well as the Thai people. Two of the ladies who came here alone are continuing to travel in Thailand and neighboring countries by themselves. One young lady is going to travel to Laos and Cambodia before going home by herself. It just amazes me how she can do ...

Today was a long day! We started at5:30 am with another 2 mile walk to the market through back streets of town. Mark bought some rice rolled up in banana leaves to give to the monks who have to beg for their breakfast. Since it was his birthday they gave him a special blessing. We left for the house site and today was an especially hard day! We mixed concrete by hand in buckets and basically poured a 900 sq ft slab today! It was back breaking work mixing the sand...

Today was the first official day of our Habitat build. We started at 6:30 am with a brisk walk to the local "wet" market which means all food not clothing, etc. It was amazing all the different fruits ,vegetables meats,different kinds of rice , coffee, teas, spices, bugs, etc! We bought some different types of rice rolled up in banana leaves and several different fruits to try. After walking back to hotel and eating breakfast we climbed into our "taxi" to go to ...

We woke up in our last day of luxury and pampering - enjoyed cappuccinos and a hot breakfast. Got in our van with most of the Habitat Build team and headed to Lampang. This is a town about 60 miles south of Chiangmai and is a lot smaller and virtually has no tourists at all - a sharp contrast to what we've been used to. The people here can barely speak English unlike Bangkok and Chiangmai. After checking into our "hotel" we went to their mall and had lunch,came b...