On Monday, October 18, I started teaching at my organization. It happens to be the same ethnic minority that Amber teaches, and the students at our two organizations know each other well. I have about six to eight students per day, between the ages of 18 and 25. Unfortunately, Amber teaches from 9am to noon, and I teach from 1pm to 4pm.

Here’s what a typical weekday looks like. Amber wakes up around 7am and gets ready for “work” (just because we volunteer and don’t get paid doesn’t mean it’s not work!). At 8:30, we ride our bikes across town together to her organization. I ride back to our guesthouse and find a place to have a bit of coffee and breakfast. I do some errands around town, such as visiting the local Tesco grocery store, printing digital photos, dropping off our laundry, buying fresh flowers at the Burmese market, etc. Around noon, I ride to my organization and eat lunch (rice, vegetables, maybe even some fish paste) with my students. Meanwhile, Amber leaves her organization for the day and rides her bike home. While I teach, she searches the Internet for potential jobs for us or does errands around town. I get home around 4pm. By 6pm, we meet up with one or two friends at one of our favorite farang-friendly restaurants.

Now that we have settled into a regular routine, we promise to take some more photos of our surroundings here in Mae Sot. For the safety and security of our students, we are not allowed to post their pictures or any information about them on our blog. However, we can certainly take pictures of the town, its residents, and other random things of interest here.

On Friday, October 22, I visited our local Buddhist temple, known as Wat Aranya Khait, which is less than two blocks away from our guesthouse. The night before, I was walking the streets at night by myself. A young monk standing at the gate inside the temple called me over and asked where I was from. When I told him I was from Florida, he said he heard about Florida because of the “big snakes” (referring to Burmese pythons released by exotic pet owners into the Everglades and Miami area). Believe it or not, most monks speak English, because they stay at their temples all day reading and studying a variety of subjects, including English. Anyway, this particular monk chatted with me for half an hour at his temple’s gate, and he invited me to stop by the next morning for a tour of the temple. He showed me behind-the-scenes places like where the monks eat, sleep, wash their orange robes, etc. Here are some good photos from the visit.

Tags: Mae Sot, teaching, temple