Thailand & Mexico 2007

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Friday, April 13, 2007

A day in the life of...

If there were any normal days they would always start pretty early, on weekdays because of school, and on weekends and days off because it wasn't possible (at least not for me) to sleep once it started to get hot.

School would last from 8AM to around 1PM. There would be two classes, each two hours long with a 5-10 min break in between, and after that we had lunch. Back in Nong Khai there would be some time to relax in the afternoon, do some emailing, read, just hang out with the others or go downtown for a visit to the market or to stop by the Green Dorm. Once a week the afternoons were spent at the orphanage, trying to avoid getting crapped on, and later on an addition to the afternoon volunteer activities was made when we started helping with the renovations of the Meechai School, just next door to the dorm.

Evenings were twice a week spent teaching either the monks or the university students, each for about an hour and a half, and it would start around seven or eight. After that we went out for dinner and if it was your free night, it often meant waiting for the others to finish teaching so that as many as possible could eat together. Usually since eating took place pretty late, we weren't finished until around ten o'clock, after which there was always the option to either go out for a few beers or head back to the dorm and get some rest.

The weekends were the time to travel, check out what the surrounding areas had to offer, or just hang out by the pool and prepare for a big party night. Most of my weekends were spent elsewhere and I can only remember a couple of weekends were we/I didn't have anything planned outside or away from Nong Khai. Most of the others did the same thing, leaving the city almost empty of volunteers sometimes, except for maybe a few who volunteered in Phon Phisai or Namsom, little villages where there really wasn't anything to do and therefore would visit Nong Khai during the weekends.

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