the NIS Roots and Shoots Weblog

Oy, I am worn out. It’s Sunday night, and I’m tireeed. It’s been a hectic week, and I’ve finally been able to get back on WordPress, and back writing again. This has happened in no part due to my cyber-expertise, but the sudden change of mood on my internet’s part. Damn its temperament. Anyway, this week has been full of activities — we visited the Care for Dogs shelter! — and I’m here just to lightly touch upon them in this update. The Care for Dogs shelter visit deserves its very own post, and will be described in much detail and more pictures later — by tomorrow, I’m sure.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, our canvas bags are finished! Wheee! Me, Toey and Monika currently have one of our own — not quite sure if we’re supposed to buy them yet — and we are, in a way, ‘testing it out’. People have mentioned that the bags seem very thin, but today, it managed to hold almost my entire stationery collection. I’m a pen freak. I had my large pencil case, my case of fiber-tipped markers, my other case of ink pens, pastels, a camera, a phone, notebooks — well, without subjecting you to the entire contents of my bag, I guess it’ll suffice to say that this baby can hold a lot more than you think!

Currently we just have to decide the price we want to sell these, and write up the tags we wanted to put on the bags. If anyone was wondering why we made these bags, we want to encourage people to use less plastic bags, and when at the grocery store, use these canvas bags instead. They are not harmful to the environment, they can be reused, and hey, they’re a lot more fashionable.

More details about the Canvas Bag project will be found in its individual page — when I get the time to write it.

Other updates: 

The U.N World Watershed Day,  which is March 22nd, has passed us by. Unfortunately, we were not able to organize any events concerning it; I’m afraid we were too busy with Care for Dogs. Recycling has also been going along well, with very little problems!

Until next update my friends! Adios!

Hey Everyone, it’s Anna here!

This is the first time I’ve actually written anything on the blog, so I’m pretty excited. As a member of Roots and Shoots I should have, of course, but we all have so much to do every day that it’s easy to forget to. Anyhow, here I am. In the Roots and Shoots current events this is what’s making the rounds: The Care for Dogs Drive!

We wanted to help the organization Care for Dogs as much as possible, so we decided to ask everyone to bring in something for the dogs, such as dog shampoo, chew toys, food, towels and leashes- anything you could think of, really. So we made posters and put up flyers around the school, as well as having Announcements about it every day, so people wouldn’t forget. So far though, it seems people aren’t as enthusiastic about this drive as they could be, but I’m sure that will change! We still have three days, after all, and if everyone tries to talk to people about it, surely more people will donate.

Another big thing that’s happening with the Care for Dogs crowd is that this Saturday the 24th of March, we’re going to visit their shelter! What this entails is that we will help them with their usual tasks, such as washing and grooming the dogs, walking the dogs, vaccinating the dogs, and even cleaning the dogs’ ears! Is that funny or what? We’re all really excited, and this lunch time we had a meeting about it, deciding who wanted to do what first. Other people in our school are interested as well, so they can come too, though we don’t want TOO many people there, or else we might get in each other’s way, right?

Hopefully that will be a wonderful learning experience for all of us, as well as being fun! I’ll sign off for now, but watch out because I’ll be back!

Once again, it’s Yu. Not a lot of updates lately on the Roots and Shoots front, unfortunately. Everyone has been so busy that Roots and Shoots meetings have had to be postponed. I just came here to comment on the condition of the air of Chiang Mai lately. First, here are some pictures:

There used to be mountains behind those trees.

Taken out a window of Mr. Troy’s classroom. I think this was one of the worst days of dust.

For over a week, radios and the government have reported that the level of pollutants in the air in Chiang Mai had gone over safe levels, and advised senior citizens and the young to stay inside (Chiang Mai Mail, The Nation). This warning has recently only come to full force when in the past few days, the polluted haze of the city has become so apparent that throughout the day, the light of the sun can hardly be seen! Even in the afternoon, when the sun usually beats down relentlessly, the light is still reminiscent of the early morning, yet holding nothing akin to the pleasures of a sunrise.

I remember sitting in the front seat of the car this morning with my mother, and as it came up the rise of the bridge leading to school, my mom told me to look at the sun, which looked like a bright red egg in a mist of tan sky. “Even the sun is being choked by this haze,” she tells me and how can I not agree — the haze is proof to anyone that air conditions have gone past any level of pollution we have experienced before. I’ve seen several ninth graders — also Roots and Shoots members — walking with their shirt sleeves covering their mouths and noses, one even donning an air pollution mask. Though at first glance, this may appear comical, one can soon understand why and how these girls are utterly serious. Looking out the classroom window, how can one not be alarmed to find that the sky is no longer blue, but an almost orange haze?

Air pollution in Chiang Mai and neighboring provinces is an issue already past concern — it is an issue that must be addressed, and tackled as soon as possible. I’ve heard that the government has been planning to create artificial rain to help ‘chase away’ the haze, but in my opinion, this is not a real fix to the problem of air pollution in Chiang Mai. In no way is creating artificial rain going to, in the long run, solve our problem. What we need is raised environmental awareness in the citizens and in our government, and a stronger environmental policy.

(more…)

The days have flown by. It’s already Friday, the end of the week. I imagine we’re all relaxing at home right now. Well, I’m here again (Yu) just with an update post on our fair today and R&S updates.

Care for Dogs
The day began with my voice blaring from the P.A system. It is an uncanny feeling, really, to hear yourself talking in a relatively quiet room, and hear your voice again, much louder, from an outside source. The announcement was to thank everyone who bought something for Care for Dogs yesterday, and that they are really helping these dogs. I did remind them, however, that the best way to help was to adopt one of these dogs and give them a warm loving home.

Lunchtime I met with Ally once again to get more things to sell, and she came with a huge bag of stuffed animals — the ones we ran out of yesterday — that I kept stock of in the office. They were adorable as always, and I think I must’ve been hallucinating from my rather small lunch (a box of guava) but I saw sadness in their eyes. Yes, I must’ve been hallucinating! Dogs and their eyes.. hmm.

Unfortunately today, even though we set up our ‘booth’ right in the middle of the hall, I think most people had already had their share of buying the little doll pups, and we didn’t get as many people. Some asked if there would still be a sale on Tuesday — as Monday is a holiday — and I could only give an unsteady reply. However, since the merchandise won’t be going anywhere, I’m sure we’ll be able to get a little more out of them.

Talked to Mr. Troy, and after discovering that next week would only have three days, we rescheduled the shelter visit for the week after. Thank you as always to Fun, Betty, Jackie and Eve for helping out with the booth (if I didn’t mention someone I’m sorry), and all the kind people who donated something for our cause.

Recycling
Mr. M, our regular recycling guy, came today to pick up the plastic bottles and paper, and we got 92 baht this week. I feel rather bad that I couldn’t help him put the plastic bins back, for really, it isn’t his job, but hopefully next week we’ll do better.

Canvas Bags
Wanted to head to Concept (the design shop that is doing our bags) today after sending Betty home but my mom was too busy to go. Hopefully I’ll head there this Saturday to pick up the sample (I really hope it’s there waiting for me!) and get our design on file to put up here.

That’s all for R&S updates today. Website still under construction, so I’m writing posts to nobody at the moment, really. Next week I hope we can discuss World Watershed Day, Movie Night, and the planned social.

Hey everyone, it’s Yu here, just updating with some pictures and what’s been going on lately.

Today Roots and Shoots held what has been unofficially dubbed the “Care for Dogs Fair”. Yesterday Ally Taylor from the Care for Dogs organization came to the school at lunch and dropped off two boxes of things to sell; these included ceramics, doggie dolls, keychains, mobiles (not phones!), postcards, and several posters and signposts for us to put up, and of course, two rather large donation boxes. Most of the R&S members were having a pizza party just then, but surprisingly enough, that day we managed to earn 1,212 baht in donations and sales!

This morning I arrived at school with a metal grille of some sort I had taken from my defunct oven, and Ms. Oil, the school’s secretary, helped me put up the little keychains on the grille with the ingenious use of paperclips (thanks Yuu for suggesting that!) and we displayed it in the office window. From right that moment, the keychains started selling like hotcakes — something me nor Ms. Oil was prepared for. People kept buying the adorable little dolls throughout the morning, until lunch, when Ms. Oil told me that she couldn’t sell anymore things. I feel quite bad — her whole morning was disrupted.

Lunchtime we had a meeting to take a stock list of all the things we had. By this time we’d pretty much run out of keychains or dog dolls! At 12:30 R&S members met in the front of the office, then moved up to Ms. Elissa’s room. Pretty much everyone except for Mr. Troy was there, and they all helped to make our stock list. Monika left her pencil there, but I hope she got it back.

After school was when the real fair started, but by then there wasn’t much to sell. I had Eve and Jackie help me carry the boxes of things to the canteen, where I thought would be a good place to set-up. Well, I was wrong! Despite much interest in the first ten or twenty minutes, it started to get quiet really fast, so we packed up and headed to the front of the school building, where Eve, Jackie, Nok, Gale and Dolly helped to sell things to the little kids and the many teachers there. Mr. Rory helped point out an interesting detail about the metal dog paper holders we were selling, but I don’t think I should mention it here!

Kaimook also dropped by to tell me she had collected the paper from the elementary building, so recycling should go well tomorrow. She looked really tired, and she probably must be, dragging a load of paper up and down three floors!

By about 3:40 we decided to clear up, as a lot of people had already gone home, and we had sold the majority of our things during the day, before the sale. Eve and Gale helped me count the money, and here, what we’ve all been waiting for, is the total of what we’ve made!

5,448 baht! Wow!

I can’t believe we’ve made so much! I called Ally to bring more merchandise for tomorrow when we’ll have the second day of our dog fair. Tomorrow I hope we can discuss what we want to do with this money we’ve raised! You can see the pictures of our fair in the gallery.