The crew got the flooring done on this home.

The flooring and some of the walls were installed in this home.

On the third home, the floor got installed. Slowly, but surely things are progressing.

The future site for the girl’s dorm. The 3 homes that I just showed are close to this site. Most likely we will be building the girls’ dorm this coming dry season.

Recently the lumber has arrived for the boys’ dorms, so the crew stopped building on the staff homes and started up again on the boys’ dorms. Here you can see that they are putting up the wooden frame for both of the dorms and the bath house. On the right is one of the boys’ dorms and in the middle is the bath house and on the left is the other boys’ dorm.

A closer look at the boy’s dorm on the right. They are getting closer to getting ready to put the roof on!

A closer look at the bath house. It will only be one story.

And a closer look at the boys’ dorm on the left. Both boys’ dorms are two stories.

Flooding! Over 2 weeks ago we experienced our first flood this rainy season. The Moei river is close to a quarter of a mile from our road that parallels it. Here you can see that  the river overflowed its bank and that it finally reached our road. You can see a bridge that goes over a creek close to where it pours into the river. The water backed all the way up the creek and eventually overflowed on the bridge.

Here you can see the bridge. The water was a good foot deep. We were told that the last time this happened was in 1993!

Here is what was left of our garden behind the boys’ temporary dorm. The river is usually over 20 feet lower than this.

These trees were usually 15 feet or more above the normal river level.

This part of the river near the town of Mae Salit, was 3 times wider than normal.

Because of the flooding of the river, these rice paddies were under several feet of water. This area is usually about an 8th of a mile from the river and over 15 feet higher. Anyway, about a week later the rains subsided and in 24 hours the river dropped about 15 feet. Now, one week later, the rains have picked up again and it is getting very close to flooding these same areas plus many other areas again along the river. I believe some of this rain is coming from some typhoons that recently hit the Philippines and are moving west to where we live in Thailand.