Placement no.3

Above photo: Taken from the hammock. Not the best quality as I forgot my camera so had to use my laptop camera. Hopefully you can make it rice paddies with a mountain backdrop.

 

I'm staying at the Tom  Karen centre- a functioning building with electricity and mosquito-proof windows. We are spoiled (this isn't sarcasm. The place is lovely). The bathroom has a light, an flushing toilet, dry floor and TOILET ROLL. All of this made for a lot of gasping from us volunteers.

 

We teach at a hilltribe school from 9-3 and for an hour after school at the centre.

 

Mod, our host Mum is wonderful. Last night Aisling told her she'd never seen a firefly, Mod ran to get a bamboo mat for us all to sit on and turned off all the lights Ash and I insisted everyone turn off their phones so we sat in complete darkness (it's not like there's any street lighting here..).
Soon fireflies came some only a metre away from us. It's like zooming fairy lights in the sky.

 

Mod also came to our school during lunch hour today and explained she had cooked tofu sweet and sour for Axel and I as the school was making pork curry and she knew Axel was Jewish and I vegetarian. She made food and bought it in for us. I love Mod!
(She also said she would teach us all how to cook Thai food tonight :D )

 

This is Axel, by the way. He's French and when he says 'Hokey Pokey' it sounds like 'Le Honky Pokeny'. I laugh about this approximately ten times a day.

 

 

My Senior Prom Night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytBR7ET_6uU

Tonight, back in England it's my senior Prom.
The story Facebook shows is of girls in pretty dresses and boys in tuxes sitting in a decorated room.
I'm on a bamboo platform hut, totally exposed to the elements in rural east Asia. It's Tom, Andy, Sam, Jake and I. The conversation alternates from sociology and cultural politics to the stuff you would expect teenagers to speak about.

But tonight's incredible. So much more so than Prom could ever have been. Ever. Last week, these guys were strangers, tonight the only thing louder than the laughter is the rain- it's a monsoon. Torrential, deafening, but not cold, heaving streaming, pouring, like you've never seen it rain. So we sit for a few hours, until gone midnight on this platform. Listening to crickets. Watching fireflies.

I've never seen a firefly before.