Man is it hot here! “Rorn” as they say in Thai

It’s been three weeks since I’ve arrived, and the heat follows you everywhere. It’s been with me at the Non-Formal English Camp I taught during 17-20 September in Songkhla, at the beautiful Songkhla zoo, at Peace Village in Hat Yai, and everywhere in-between.

But thankfully everyone I’m with experiences the same weather I do, and so it bonds us. I’ve met many volunteers through Peace Village. People from France, Switzerland, Japan, and, of course, Thailand. We’ve worked together, teaching English to 100s of students in the past few weeks, all different ages, and all of whom are eager to learn but also just want to play football or volleyball with all the strange Farangs that show up at their school for a couple days.

Teaching isn’t the only thing we’ve done, however. For the past four days I, along with three other volunteers (two from France, one from Switzerland), volunteered at a farm in Songkhla, helping plant new vegetables and preparing planting structures for future projects. We were able to visit a real rubber tree farm (latex smells bad, beware!), a shrimp farm (where we were given shrimp to make delicious tum yum kung),  and even ate honey straight from a beehive: the farmer had a hive in his house, and he simply burned a coconut shell to smoke out the bees so he could safely bring down the hive for us to enjoy. YUM!

All in all, the past three weeks have been a lot of fun, even though you wipe your sweaty forehead every five minutes. The memories will last quite some time, maybe indefinitely, and I know the friends will last even longer.

Peter Wagner

United States of America – Ann Arbor, Michigan.