SANDY...

If you're looking for my reviews of this week, just scroll down because I wrote about the English camp and the river after I wrote about this term's review.

English camp

we went to a school that has two rooms in it. There is one room for the 1-3 grade, and the other room is for the 4-6 grade. They live far out in a village(45 min from our house)so having foreigners teach them was a big thing! There are only 25 students at this school and so they only have a couple kids in each grade. For an example they only have 2 1st graders(they're brothers and are sOO cute! We taught them basic English like the numbers. We also did crafts with them. One day we made beaded hearts and the other day we made photo frames. We also played games with them like catching water balloons, using parachutes, making big bubbles, stacking cups, and making this Chinese jump rope out of rubber bands. i think the kids really enjoyed it, and so did us foreigners!

the river

We have a big dam here and the other day(when we had 17 people staying at our house), we went to a river that comes out of the dam. It was so fun because there are lots of rocks there, there's a little island in the middle that you can swim to, and there's a log that pokes out of the water that you can jump off. But the funnest part is that there are these rapids that you can go down. most of the river is rocky, but the rapid part isn't. There's this one big rock with heaps of slim and moss on it, on slide down this and when you come to this really foamy white part, you quickly try to move your body to the right so the rapids take you down the safer way. If you go down the wrong way(quite a few people did) then you come into the rocky part and you get bashed about the rocks a lot. Also when you go down this way, it is hard to stop yourself until you reach the sandy and more calm part of the river. You7 can go down these rapids by yourself or in a train. I went down it tons of times by myself, and tons of times with my older sister and her friend.(Her friend was part of the group that was staying at our house and came up to help teach English or this camp thing for two days) It's also fun to lie on the rocks and let the water sweep on over you, it's kind of like having a massage!

Feedback to those who write the resources....

If I were to give feedback to those who write the resources, I would say a couple of things. First of all I would say that I really liked doing those online games when you were actually running a business.(muffin bakery, fish shop) May be we could have a few more of these type of activities.

Sorry that this isn't very helpful but I can't really think of anything that we could have less of or what could be included.

Emma

How have the ENTERPRISE activities helped me?

I guess that doing those activities that Sandy mentioned in the Announcements have helped me with my business. But how? Well I guess they helped because they made me think about how big companies (Tip Top eg.) became so famous. Also that all big companies started off small but because they had a catchy slogan, or made a tasty product, or had good marketing skills, became bigger and bigger.

Before doing those activities I didn't really ever put much thought into how a business started. I guess I just thought that they just started and then that was that. But NO! There are lots of small things that you need to do or have in order to be successful. You have to have your products at the right price, you need a catchy slogan, to make enough money to make a profit, to have the right kind of advertisements, a business name that can be remembered easily.....these are only some things that you need!

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.