Day 6

After I woke up, I stayed in bed to write up notes on the last few days. I didn’t watch the time and I got to breakfast with ten minutes left. I missed pancakes and porridge. I just had a boiled egg, banana and some toast.

I worked in the Elephant Kitchen during morning chores. We spent the whole morning there and stayed on for our morning project too. There were bags upon bags of corn to shuck. We always went back to that in between unloading and washing produce.
The first thing we did was dump watermelons into the wash basin to soak.
We shucked corn for a bit, then washed the watermelons.
Then a load of pumpkins came. We had to unload it off the truck and then put it on the racks.
Of course, we went back to shucking corn.
Check out the green bananas we had on the side.
A truck backed up with a load of watermelons. We weighed them as they came off the trucks. Then we formed a chain to transfer them under the bananas for storage.

The baskets were ready!
I looked for Kham Paan’s basket. She’s going to have watermelons today =)

I went to the observation deck to feed the elephants. Angelo had not gotten Kham Paan’s basket yet. They were sitting out in the sun.
Two mahouts were sitting on the stairs, keeping an eye on their elephants. One introduced himself as Dam. His elephant’s name is Kham Geaw. He was very nice and his English was really good. He introduced me to Mae Tee and her mahout (I forgot his name..) too.

Kham Geaw was hungry.
Dam brought over her basket and began to feed her.
Mae Tee’s mahout invited me to feed the elephants. I took a few pictures of him first.
As I was feeding the two elephants. A group of visitors came by. One of the ladies stood next to me. When Kham Geaw was finished chewing, the visitor took the piece of pumpkin from my hand and offered it to the elephant.

I was a little surprised but I was a volunteer and I always felt that it’s a part of our jobs to make a visitors stay as great as possible. I just kept handing the lady food from Kham Geaw’s basket.

I made small talk with the lady. I was surprised. I found out that she was a part of the Power of One group. She told me that she came here every year. This year, Kham Geaw was HER assigned elephant.

When I realized that she deliberately took the pumpkin from my hand because she felt that Kham Geaw was HER elephant.. my feelings were hurt because she was so rude.

At that moment, I saw Angelo walk by with the food basket on his shoulder. I said good bye to the lady and walked down the stairs. She could have Kham Geaw all she wanted. I was only up there to wait for Kham Paan.

I had fun feeding Kham Paan today. Angelo let me feed her the WHOLE basket! He told me that she likes corn, but not cucumbers. I tried to feed her cucumbers, but she wouldn’t eat them until the end.

Since I could pass by the Kitchen on the way to the platform, I offered to take the basket back for Angelo. I washed it super clean. I didn’t want him to get the basket during afternoon feeding time and think that I did a crummy job washing the basket.

I watched tourists feed Sri Nuan. She’s the first elephant on the platform, so there’s always someone feeding her. I like watching her eat. She’s a huge elephant. I think she’s supposed to be the biggest girl in the park.

We sat down to eat lunch together. As always, I put so much on my plate from the first row of buffet pans that I didn’t really have room for the second row. I tried to squeeze in some greens because the first row is mostly carbs.

We helped Michelle in the kitchen after lunch. There were more pumpkins to unload. We threw them onto the top shelf until it was too dangerous. Then we stood on chairs and stacked them.

At one o’clock, all the volunteers met in the conference room. We watched the DVD that was made from all the footage the camera crew got this week. We couldn’t stop laughing at everything! There were many scenes in the beginning with close up shots of our faces during the safety talk. We looked so serious, everyone laughed at each other’s awkward embarrassment.

It was wonderful to watch the DVD. I couldn’t believe that our week together was almost over. A copy of the DVD is only 300 baht. Some people ordered more than one copy to send home. I put my name down for one copy. I hope I can figure out a way to upload the video for everyone to watch.

Brad took us to the village temple as our afternoon project. We had to cross the scary bridge. I was first and I walked quickly to get off the bridge. It was a good idea because Lisa started running and everyone was screaming from how much the bridge swayed back and forth!
We were all looking at this tree. I can’t remember why it was important, but I THINK it was the same type of tree that Buddha sat under when he was first enlightened.
Some of the signs of Buddha all over the world?
A crazy set of stairs led to the temple. Janet tried to run the whole way up.

When we got to the top, we sat on the top step to catch out breaths. Many of the volunteers were not familiar with Buddhism. Brad used to be a monk so he was able to explain the concept and answer all the questions. He told us the story of Buddha and the different levels of hell.
It was 3:50 by the time he finished the story. I didn’t want to miss feeding time so I excused myself while the others went to look more closely at the temple.

I walked back quickly. I didn’t think I’d make it in time to feed Kham Paan but she eats earlier than the rest of the elephants on the platform so I could feed them at least. A long the way, I saw some baby chicks and I had to take a picture.
I checked the beach and to my surprise, Kham Paan was still eating! She still had at least half a basket left. I’m not sure if Angelo was just delayed or maybe he was waiting for me(!)? Either way, I’m really glad that I didn’t miss her feeding. He let me feed her the rest of the basket.

After she ate, we herded her over to the river.
I guess it was cold today because she was really hesitant to go in.
I put my camera away and joined the two of them. I stood in one spot while Angelo made her turn left and right so I can get her whole body. After the bath, a bunch of girls came to scrub her. You can see Angelo handing Kham Paan a stick so she can scratch herself.
After Kham Paan walked back to her shelter, I wandered around the platform. The others with Brad hadn’t gotten back yet. I saw some staff members folding towels for people to try their hands after using the main washroom by the Kitchen. I asked if I may join them. They smiled and nodded.

I watched them fold the towels and copied their folds. It wasn’t very difficult because many of the towels were creased from being folded in the exact same way so many times. Half way through the pile, I realized that the ladies might not even have understood what I was asking! They probably would have smiled and nodded at anything I said. I felt really awkward and self conscious as I finished helping them with the rest!

Brad showed us a cat that looked like Hitler. Somehow, we were here all week and it was the first time we saw him. His name is uncle in Thai. I didn’t have my camera, but both Chris and Melita took pictures. Here they are!
All of a sudden, the lights turned off and a cake with candles was brought up. It’s Emma’s birthday today. The park always prepares a cake for volunteers on their birthday.
Look at the jam on the side. Yes.. we had toast for dinner again.
We spent the rest of the night talking upstairs. At one point, the topic of different types of currency came up. We started to show each other money from our countries. We had euros, ringets and yen on the table.

Tonight, we had FIVE dogs in our room! Melita slept with Number One on her bed. I had Duke and Baumi.
Toto and Tin Tin (picture below) slept on the floor.