*** An Anniversary Celebration in Thailand ***

SawadeeKa, Bermuda!

Well, today is our 7th anniversary and we get to celebrate it in Thailand with a great group of people! I first must apologise for not blogging more frequently, however, with a group our size, hogging the computers at the Internet Cafe on Koh Phi Phi for long periods of time was by no means a good way of making friends! From what I can read, the students have done an excellent job in keeping you all up to date on the "goings on" of our group's progress.

What I would really like to share with you all, friends, family & sponsors, is some of the great things that we we were able to accomplish during our time on Koh Phi Phi. Before we even arrived on the island, we were able to go to two of the shopping malls in Phuket to purchase items from Bann Koh Phi Phi's Wish List. One Team purchased three digital cameras, three colour printers, three memory cards, a stereo system/CD player with micro-phone and cleared two IT stores out of their printer cartridges, printer paper & photo paper! Another Team purchased sports equipment for the students; volleyballs, footballs, badminton sets, frisbees, etc. The third Team purchased shopping cart loads of school supplies, such as notebooks, pencils, pens, rulers, readers, writing paper, colouring/language learning books, highlighters, pencil crayons, erasers, etc. Overall, a very successful initial donation to the students & school.

Additional to this, we made direct financial contributions to Bann Koh Phi Phi School for a Fundraiser/Sports Day and the purchase of two water pumps/filters to provide clean drinking water to the staff & students. These donations totalled about 80 000 Bahts! We still have so much to spend! A few of us joined the HiPhiPhi Team (www.hiphiphi.org) & The Asia Foundation (www.asiafoundation.org) to visit the other school on Koh Phi Phi. Although I will give you all more information on this experience, we were able to donate 100 000 Bahts to go towards a lunch programme for 10 students for seven months, as well as two computers and several book shelves for their little library. This school was a school for children of Sea Gypsies, and our experience was certainly one to remember.

I have to leave now to meet with everyone to decide on the day's events, so I'll sign off for now. I have tried to add pictures, but I fear that they did not upload...next time, O.K.?!?

Have a nice day!