There's Nothing Familiar Within 500 Miles! By Matt Hill in Thailand (2/2)

(1/2), (2/2).

Suddenly I had a moment of What the fxxx - I'm in a foreign place surrounded by foreign people and it's all crazy, there's nothing familiar within 500 miles, so decided to take my first break. Got a Friday night bus to Bangkok, stayed in the original chilled hostel that we'd stayed in two months ago, and was surrounded by London Camden Town style backpacker culture for a couple of days.

Seemingly the hand of fate was involved as the first person I met was a teacher from England taking his 4 weeks holiday travelling, and we got onto the subject of teaching, how it's rewarding but challenging. On Koh San Road (backpacker central) I remembered why I'd decided to check out volunteering (backpacking can seem like just another hit in the consumer lifestyle of westerners on vacation) and came back bright eyed and bushy tailed.

So, everything this week has seemed sweet. I'm liking getting up and working for a lesson at 10am, and then working for my more challenging one at 4pm. I wake up with people, the work isn't for an employer, and the work/results process is twice a day. I love walking down my road, mountains in the background, with people saying hello and sitting in the tea shop and watching people whose real community contrasts so much with their material wealth.

This week the teacher who lives near me came over with her guitar, and my housemates invited her into their Burmese whiskey drinking jamming session with me on bongos.

They loved it and they told their life stories, which always brings back home the awful truth of the whole situation (some of my students are landmine victims, all desperately miss their home country and are victims of the military regime's ongoing atrocious cruelty which keeps people like prisoners in a foreign country where they have nothing), and makes everything so powerful.

This morning had breakfast with some missionaries (is it JUST me that thinks teaching the Bible to vulnerable ethnic minorities is wrong?) and later four of my students took me to play football with about 30 guys on some wasteland next to the charity run clinic. Due to the rainy season I've never seen a worse pitch... You can imagine how well I represented the UK! So, I guess that was me, in detail, in chilled Sunday mode. Monday's are the same whether you're in Thailand or England tho, you still gotta get up and go back to work! This week my organisation's leader is coming unannounced to observe a lesson, so I'd better go do some work.

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