Workin'

We went for an orientation on Monday at the Tsunami Volunteer Center. TVC is up on a hill just south of Khao Lak's main drag nestled in the rainforest. We stood around getting our pictures taken for ID badges and drinking coffee with the seven other new volunteers until there was a quick meetng in which they told us some dos and don'ts (1. Don't touch any Thai person's head. 2. If you're a couple, don't hold hands or show affection in public, etc...) and then we loaded into the back of a pick up truck and we were off.

We toured the villages that had already been completed to get an idea of what we would be building, then we went to the boat yard which is where TVC had built longtail boats for all the fishermen who'd lost their's in the tsunami. They'd replaced all the boats and were building a huge yacht in which to sail around the world. It was pretty fantastic.

We saw two enormous ships that had been pushed a mile inland by the wave. It was incredibly odd to see a 150 foot long police boat in the middle of a field.

Then they took us to lunch where we met the folks we'd be working with. We all made smalltalk until someone put two and two together and realized there were two Massachusettsians on the crew. They called over to Louie, who had been somewhere else (napping, playing with the kittens? I don't know) and it turned out we knew each other. Wild.

That was about it. We went back to our bungalow and had some beers and braced for an early day of hard labor under the hot and punishing Thai sun.