Visiting the local school then onto Chang Mai

  Chang Mai, Thailand
Friday, November 18, 2005

Up early again, we ate then we were invited to go over the road to the local school to say hello to the kids. What an experience!   They were very cute. 

 We waved to the kindy kids first, all so little - the teacher got them to line up, put their hands together and say hello. 

We then watched the school assembly before venturing in to say hello to the Grade 2 kids.  They were all very shy - Hugette started singing some and getting them involved - thank God she was there!   We taught them some English and they taught us some Thai.

  It was then time to see the Grade 5/6 kids - they were definitely more confident - especially when we were taking photos (when i looked through mine later I noticed that one of them was even pulling the bird!!). We all went outside and played some games, soccer and volleyball. Our hosts bought over some lollies for me to distribute and I was almost bowled over by the swarm of kids that rushed to get some!  Was so much fun though...  We said our goodbyes then hopped on our bicycles for a ride around the village.

 We visited a local temple, a mushroom farm where we picked some to use for our lunch a bit later.  We also visited a paper making farm & tried our hands at it - was tough work & it takes talent and lots of practice to swirl the thing through the water and get it all evenly spread... i just bought some instead.!  We had our mushie soup for lunch then made our way in the songthaw to the city of Chang Mai... It was nice to get back to the big smoke..

A quick shower and we all wanted to see the temple Doi Suthep which overlooks the city...Its quite a climb up the stairs but its worth it for the views and the temples.  Lots of gold, bright murals and buddhas of course! 

By now we were pretty stuffed so we made our way down in the songthaw, had a visit to the market and had dinner in one of the open air stalls.  I caught up for a drink with Kelly, Sarah & Shobi who had just done the hill tribe trek then i was in bed by about 10pm.  Going to learn to cook something other than spag bol tomorrow at cooking school!