7 Strangers Picked to Live in a House. . .

If you scroll down to the beginning of our blog you will see a photo of the outside of our dorm/house. We will try to post some photos of the inside of the house as well. We do live with 7 strangers. . . all volunteers with Travel to Teach. We are at the Meechai dorm which as we have learned is a little bigger, a little nicer and a little quieter than the other dorm. Ryan and I both like our dorm and the fact that we have our own room is HUGE!!! We also have the internet/computer room here so we like that too! Our roomies include: 2 women (23 and 24 years old) from Belgium, one is a speach therapist and the other works with at-risk youth, 1 Canadian guy (19 years old) who is here in between studies and trying to 'find out what he wants to do', 1 Swedish guy (20 years old) who has been here for several months and 1 Austrialian guy (20 years old) who is studing Buddism and is now traveling during the week to another city to teach. . . then there is the 'married American couple'. . . us! We have a very good mix of cultures and backgrounds and try to learn from each other. We tend to spend a lot of time getting to know the 2 Belgian women as they came together as well. The other dorm has a mix of Germans, Austrailians, Dutch, Brits, and Canadians. . . a very diverse group.

We have come to learn to expect the unexpected in Thailand and always bring your camera. On Sunday, we went to pick up our laundry at the house 2 doors down (laundrymat of sorts) where they wash them, hang them and iron the clothes for us for under $1 for 3 loads (many of you know how often we tend to do laundry so this is a huge treat to drop it off and have someone else do it so inexpensively!). We are walking out with our bundles of clothes when the owner stops us and asks us to stay. . . we are soon whisked into action behind a table that is crowded with the neighborhood children. We soon figure out that this is their local 'Children's Day' celebration and they wanted the 'farangs' (foreigners) to hand out the cookies to the children. We smile (not sure what we have gotten ourselves into) and hand each child a bag of cookies and chips after they polietly wai (the hello in Thai, made by bringing your two hands in a prayer position up to your mouth with a bow of the head). . . it was so cute and touching. After this BIG community celebration (there were probably 30 kids) we picked up our bags of folded laundry and walked home with smiles on our faces. We were sad that we didn't bring our camera to pick up our laundry as it would have made for some great pictures... now we know. . . always bring the camera!

Note: Scroll down to see new photos on old posts!