At the end of September, we had a team from New Zealand visiting us. During that week quite a few girls were already home from school either because their school had already closed for holidays or because they were in their final testing weeks and didn’t have to go to school every day. So, what do you do with a team of 16 people consisting of mostly 18/19-year-old youngsters? Neither the girls nor the staff know what to do with foreigners and especially not with foreigners who don’t speak a word of Thai. So, when these people begin to speak it is all English and then the girls and staff have to reply, which is quite scary. All the girls learn a bit of English at school and some of them are quite good, but it takes courage to actually start using it. It was great to see that some of the girls put in the effort to communicate with foreigners in a language not their own, although it was accompanied by a lot of giggling.

This team was here for a week working every day to help paint the living room, homework room, and the bedrooms at one of the houses. They worked really hard and they managed to finish the entire project. To wrap up the team’s time with us there was an evening of music, drama, and games which everyone really enjoyed.