A Day in the Life of......

Images c/o Ashleigh Hokafonu
Written by Stephanie Dodd - Thailand 2008 GapBreak Volunteer

Hi there all,
I figured I'd take some time to tell you all about what it's like here. Kind of like - a day in the life of...

Breakfast is at 8am which consists of rice and some sort of thai dish or a mildly spicy omelette. It's kind of like having Thai takeaway leftovers for breakfast every morning. Although some people [including myself as of this week] go to the office in the morning to have cereal rather than endure the copious amounts of rice they give us. I'm not saying I don't like rice, I quite like it, I believe I may have been asian in a past life, but I also appreciate a bit of variety ;o)

Then the morning meeting is at 8.30am [in Thai] followed by the volunteer meeting. Then we go about our day organising what needs to be done! The tasks vary from day to day.
Mon - teaching hilltribe and ICT staff as well as a class of kids who come after school [Top Kids]
Tues - same thing as well as some people go to teach at one of the schools - Thung Lung
Wed - teach staff in morning, construction [building new eco tour office] and then teach the local tour guides english for 2 hours and then top kids again
Thurs - Nam Rad school in the afternoon [prepare in the morning] but they are now preparing for exams and then have holidays so we don't go back there for a while.
Fri - Nam Rad school again as well as Damrong school to have conversations with the kids for half an hour.
Weekends are generally free...

Although last weekend we went to Ban Apa village which is an Akha tribe for our homestay. Pairs stayed in the traditional style hut houses and ate Akha food. It was good apart from the roosters at 4.30am. All novelty of a 'cockle-doodle-doo' has now worn off completely as the houses are on stilts and the roosters decided to hang out right underneath the floor where we were sleeping!

Apart from that the stay was great because they had a huge festival on which only happens once a year. the people were really friendly and generous for taking us into their homes.

I'm really enjoying my time here so far and I suppose that's a good thing because I'll be here a while!”