our "calves"

On the left you can see a picture of my siblings' and my "calves"- that was when they were a lot younger. A couple of weeks ago though they were sent off to the butchers. Now we have made a lot of money with them. I bet there is some happy person in New Zealand now who has a yummy beef meal(s) to look forward to!

business ideas

There are a couple of things that I've noticed that could make Kalasin and Kamalasai better. (We live in Kamalasai which is a tiny town in Kalasin Province. Kalasin town is the closest bigger town to Kamalasai.) There is a need for a good supermarket in Kalasin. Also in Kamalasai it would be nice for an air conditioned cafe. It would also be good to have some safe family accommodation around here somewhere.

In Kalasin there already two "plazas." The reason why there are quotations around plaza is because you can hardly call them plazas. The older one has cracked tile floor, is grotty, and doesn't sell much other than milk powder and nappies. The other plaza has a tiny little supermarket grocery part. The floor space would be about 150 square metres and a good third of that would be devoted to skin care and toiletry products.

As you can probably see, there is a great need for a proper supermarket! The reason why no one's built a good one yet is because of one man. He owns a hospital , some other buildings, and the two plazas. If someone was to build a decent supermarket, he would lose his customers. Right now he is forcing them to go to his plazas, or make the long trip to another province. He is very rich and is able not to let anyone build a supermarket without his permission.- this is what I was told from a local person.

One major difficulty would be to get permission from this one man to build a supermarket. Another difficulty would be to employ good staff- there are lots of people who would like a job, but to get people who know what they're doing is another thing! Another difficulty could be getting enough money to buy land and then to actually build the building. To have enough customers will not be a difficulty at all!

Having an AC cafe in Kamalasai would be really nice because it is hot over here! It got up to 42.2 degrees C a couple of days ago. Also we need to keep drinking because of this weather, which is why we often go to cafes and get fruit drinks. There are lots of little two-room-and-a-toilet places (where one of the rooms is a shop front)for rent around here that we could use for a cafe. Getting a place to use isn't a difficulty!

Some difficulties might be getting enough customers to make a profit. Another might be buying ingredients cheaply, but still good quality. Also it may be difficult to get reliable staff to make the drinks.

There are lots of small accommodation places around here but they are all a bit sleezy and not suitable for families. When families come here to see the dinosaur footprints or whatever, they want to stay at a safe place.

One difficulty could be finding a good location. Another could be finding staff trained in hospitality. Or a possible difficulty could be having enough customers, but I doubt that this would be an issue.

goats!

During the holidays my brother had his birthday. His birthday present from my parents was a goat. However when we got to the farm to buy the goat and take it home, the man said that the get very lonely when by themselves. So we had to get TWO! I got a goat as well because I was the only sibling that didn't already have a pet of my own. (my sister shares it partially) My goat, Paivee(girl), is cream coloured and is 3 weeks old. Micah's goat, Peetu(boy), is brown and white and is 3 months old.

They are slowly getting friendly-er.
(PS I hope they don't explode from eating too many banana leaves 'cause they looovvveee them!)

Blackboard-it's ups and downs

Blackboard can offer interaction with people who are from, and live in different places other than where I live and am from. An example of this is that I live in Isaan, Thailand and am from Finland and New Zealand. Other people who do Blackboard live in New Zealand, Spain, or the United Arab Emirates and come from Thailand or New Zealand etc. Blackboard also gives feedback pretty quick compared to lets say, posting mail. I have sent lots of work(my booklets) ages ago, and I mean AGES AGO and have only received a few back. Another good thing about blackboard is that I can interract with English speaking people. The place where I live only has a couple foreign men. There are no foreign kids in this province, let alone foreign kids my age!
These are all good things about black board, but there are also some down sides. When you attach a piece of work, you can't actually open the the attachment to see if it's the right one(or if there is a way, I haven't found it yet!). Sometimes I send off the wrong attachments because of this. It would be nice if we could change or edit what we've done. For an example, if we accidentally put the wrong attachment, then the person who put up the work could go back and attach the right one. This is one thing that I especially like about this blogger site. Right now I can't think of any other thing that I would like to do with my online learning that black board doesn't do. If I think of anything, then I will put up my idea.

....naarak and poppy in my hammock...

Naarak and Poppy are sitting in my hammock. They are always so scared whenever they sit in the hammock because their little paws fall through the netting of the hammock.

my best work on bb

I think that my best work(s) were when I made the slide show about shell and frame structures and sketched the chedi. It was lots of fun doing these because I enjoy sketching and I sketched the different structures for the slide show, and sketched the chedi for the other activity. At the same time, though, it was challenging drawing the chedi because it had so many different layers/steps. It had quite a bit of detail, and because it was an ancient building it was crooked here and there and wasn't symmetrical. The slide show also was difficult in some areas for me because I am not very good at things to do with computers and techy stuff. After doing that activity I learnt that the more I do things, like working with computers, the better I get. Now I don't need help from other people as much as I used to when on the computer. Another thing that I learnt about myself is that I don't mind going off for a while and just being by myself and sketching.

The weather

One day it was 37 degrees celsius, the next day our family went to a friend's house and the gazebo blew over because of the wind, and the day after that it was so cool that I needed my bedspread on all night with no fan on- very unusual for this time of the year! Within a couple of days we had really hot, windy, and cool weather!