Back to Wat Rang Sane Nakorn Chan School today again, for another round of troubleshooting, working on the solar powered systems and creating the instruction manual, though this time we plan to leave the school late at about 7 pm. The reason for this is to find out if the solar powered lights are able to work as intended in the night. If it fails, we will have to troubleshoot and correct the issue, which will be a chore and definitely not something we look forward to. As such, we went in with anticipation and hope that it all goes smoothly for the day.
After these few days, we all had a hang of how things go and begin splitting into our respective ‘specialisations’, some of us worked on the Arduino component of the system, others worked on the instruction manual, in case the system require troubleshooting in the future after we leave the country. As for me myself, I went to help in labeling the weatherproof boxes and recording the maximum voltage set for each solar panel controller in the morning, followed by participating in fun activities with Primary 4 to 6 children in the afternoon.
The children we interacted with today were a little older and some of them were able to understand a bit of English, which made things easier for us today. We started off with the same activities as yesterday – guessing of cards, and also Broken Telephone, which is becoming my favorite game to play with the kids as I get to learn more about the Thai language. I participated in two games of Broken Telephone, one of the messages being in English and the other in Thai. Somehow, trying to memorise a Thai phrase from a Primary school child is more stressful than I thought. All in all, I had a great time during the session and I look forward to celebrating Children’s Day with the kids on Friday.
Also, there was a cat in the school which we petted and played with for the entire day (animals here are all so friendly to humans):
However, the highlight of the day for me was when we went out with KMUTT students to explore the vicinity around the primary school. There is a monastery up the hills right next to the primary school, with a breathtaking view that stretches all the way even to Myammar.
We also went to a nearby farmland just across the road, where we watched the evening sun. Also, there was a small river where we stopped by for a really long time just skipping stones. Some of the KMUTT students in particular were practically experts at it.
When we went back to the primary school, we waited out for the dark to fall, hoping that all goes well. Guess what – all of the corridor lights we installed did work! Some of us were excited enough to immediately whip out our phones to snap some pictures of the working lights. We were all proud of what we achieved for the past few days, especially in the last two days or so spending our time under the hot sun installing the solar powered light system.
Also, notice how the night light was in a lovely hue of purple and black, and I could not help but take another picture of the night sky at the primary school myself (don’t mind the poor quality from my phone camera)
In the end, we went back to the university campus for a late dinner at about 7.30havpm, where we had great Pad Thai with shrimp. I wolfed down my serving, though I cannot tell whether it was because I was hungry due to having dinner later than usual, or that the food was just that good!
