New House

Jan 9

Saturday we had a new volunteer move to Thailand. Her name is Meg and she’s a 33 year old teacher from England who worked teaching the disabled there. About 7 more volunteers will be moving out here in January sometime so I moved into the other volunteer home on Saturday to help with the new volunteers that come in. It’s been a bit of a change, but still a nice change of pace. I’m excited for all the new volunteers to get here. Allison (my friend from America) is coming out in a little over a week to be here for 5 weeks. That’s going to be encouraging too. This house is closer to the work site, but further away from everything else it seems. Still, there is plenty to do around here and it doesn’t take much of a bike ride to make it to the other house.

Yesterday I went back to the other house to help with some “yard work”. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but when I got there Taktan called and asked me to cut down the papaya tree. I hung up the phone rather excited as I grabbed my machete(s) and went out to cut the tree. It was then that I realized I had no idea what a papaya tree looked like. I waited for her to come home and she told me it was the mango trees. If you ever have a chance to cut down a mango tree with a machete, I highly recommend it. I cut down three mango trees with a total of three swings of my machete. They are so soft. Then she asked me to cut down four other trees that were in the way I guess. It was a rather fun time and when it was done I think I was more thankful than she was.