A few weeks ago Ash, Mel, and I went up to Mae Sot, Thailand to volunteer teaching English to teachers that live in refugee villages on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. In these villages they have very small schools with one classroom. The age of the students range from 2-16 years old.

We flew into Mae Sot on Friday. We had to leave school a bit early, still barely making it to the airport on time. Our first night we stayed in Mae Sot. Had some food at a Canadian place. We visited the town carnival. Ash had told Mel and I how exciting it was. Lies. We may have gone too early, there wasn’t much set up. We did a quick walk through, then headed back to out hotel for bed.

Saturday was an early morning. We were suppose to be picked up at 7:30 to drive 2 hours north to Maesalete, Thailand.

When the truck wasn’t there at 7:45 we began to worry. Ash called Emily, whose husband was suppose to be picking us up. Apparently they thought we were coming the next weekend.

Everything always works out in Thailand.

About 30 minutes later a truck had arrived to pick us up. Someone’s cousin was going to drive us. We were really sure who was doing what, but we got in the car with a complete stranger. He then drove us through his neighborhood and stopped to let some other guy get in and drive us the rest of the way. Sounds sketch, but it all worked out.

We arrived at Emily’s guesthouse. There were a few teacher there ready for us to begin!

We ate a quick lunch….soup. We had the same soup for all 5 meals.

We taught an afternoon session from 12-5. We taught them phonics and grammar. They were all so eager to learn!

There is one restaurant in the town. We walked there for dinner. The shop closed at 7, the same time the rest of the town shut down. We stayed until about 8 and decided to walk back.

Thank goodness I brought my headlamp. We were walking along the side of a highway in the pitch black.

We did some nighttime meditation and turned in early.

Sunday morning we had soup for breakfast and a morning English session for about 4 hours. We were able to split them into groups based on ability level, some of them could speak English well. After the class was over we had a quick photo shoot then headed to eat some soup for lunch.

Such sweet souls.

After lunch we rode with Emily’s husband to take some of the teachers back to their villages.

When we dropped off Kaew Kaew in her village she invited us to see her school. All of the children were so eager to see us, they sang songs for us and all introduced themselves in English!

We then went to drop Gloria off. She is a teacher in an orphanage called Safe Haven. You would never know the orphanage is there, we pulled over on the side of the road and had to hike down a mountain to get to the village. They recently had 2 new classrooms built for them! The kids here also sang songs for us. One youngster had learned how to play a guitar and played while all the other children sang. It was absolutely beautiful.

After we finished up there we headed back to the airport in Mae Sot. We had enough time to stop by a pizza place for a quick lunch. The airport consisted of 2 rooms…. So we didn’t need to be there too early. Though, we all managed to get the security pat down/bag checks while checking in. Grabbed some snacks for the plane ride and it was time to board!

Never accidentally have a fork in your bag….

Back to Bangkok!