Updates from Thailand

Hello everybody!

I finally have some time to write a post about my life in Thailand. I’m spending the weekend in Mae Hong Son, a town close to the village where I work, and I’m enjoying some luxuries in the hotel where I’m spending the night: hot water, A/C a wardrobe, a table, two chairs… and glass at the windows. *-* And there’s even a restaurant where I can have sandwiches with cheese and bacon, I’m in paradise.

The internship is being interesting, challenging and exhausting. We are not staying at the village, but in a guesthouse in a near small town, and we commute every day with the teachers or the local governor. The school wasn’t ready for our arrival… at all. This way it’s ok, we even have a shower!

We teach English 10 hours / week at the village primary school, and it’s harder than I thought. It was agreed it should only be three hours, but apparently they had different plans for us. I don’t like teaching, I never worked with kids, we don’t have a translator, and the students didn’t know a single word of English. Also, my classroom is awful, full of never-used computers and tablets, and dangerous half-broken stuff. Most of the time is frustrating, but eventually I started liking my kids (some? :D) and got used to the routine. I have no clue whether what I’m doing has a meaning at all, but I’m still trying my best. I would have rather taught the teachers; this way, once we’re gone, the situation will be the same as before… But well, it is how it is.

For the rest of the time we work for the organization. We have a blog (http://maeseepeetai.blogspot.com/), and they’re using our posts for the website, which makes me quite happy. Sotiria’s correcting my bad English all the time, and I’m really grateful for that… It makes me feel smarter than I am. We’re meeting (sort of) weekly the women taking part in the project, and our main task is profiling them. When we don’t have a translator / mediator, I can really understand why “brokers” are so important. Sometimes we have to rely completely on a Burmese refugee, who’s the only English speaker at the village, and still communication is so hard.

The village is poorer than I thought at the beginning. With the fancy stuff they have at school, I thought I would see something different. Some houses don’t even have running water, some of the kids are undernourished, and most people completely rely on agriculture, not having any other sources of income. At least 3 NGOs are intervening there, and I got to see the different approaches they have.

In this area, there are 2 refugee camps, and it was recently decided that they should be sent back to Burma after decades spent in Thailand, but the process is quite difficult. Many organizations are working with them, and here in Mae Hong Son I keep meeting development workers, especially from UNHCR… I’m quite curios to see what’s going to happen next.