On Monday I had arranged to head out to the Mulberry Farm to volunteer there for a few days. I set off early and decided that on the map it looked quite easy to walk to the project via the river and through the rice fields which seemed a much nicer walk than along a dusty red road. I set off and the walk was stunning it was really peaceful and the fields looked like a postcard. However after an hour and a half it became apparent that the walk wasn't as straight f...

Sunday was my last day at Sae Laos. In the morning I weeded the vegetable garden which still frustrated me that we weren't eating more produce from it. In the afternoon I showed some new volunteers around the project and then headed into town to stay the night. The weather had changed and it had become really hot. When I arrived in the town I couldn't believe how busy it was. In China everyone gets one week off work a year and it is the same week for everyone whi...

On Saturday I volunteered to start work at 6am and clean out the pigs. I have grown up with friends that live on farms and have mucked out a few horses and cows so I was happy to volunteer. What I hadn't thought about was that cows and horses only really eat grass so their faeces isn't really that bad. Pigs on the other hand eat all sorts of things and their poo is a lot smellier and it wasn't my favourite way to start the day. There was then bamboo to be moved f...

I volunteered to do the daily cleaning of the communal areas; the toilets, showers, dorms, school and outside sitting area. In the afternoon I did some more weeding of the grounds and went to relax in the sun by the blue lagoon. That evening was my last class. I taught family members, the letter 'g' and I helped them with some reading they had to do for school. I really enjoyed teaching the classes, it was my favourite part of time at Sae Lao, the students were l...

Thursday was Buddha day which meant a day off. Buddha day is decided at the beginning of the week each week and no one knows before then which day it will be. There is some connection to the moon but I couldn't figure out what the connection was. I couldn't get my had around how anything could be planned in advance if no one knew in advance what day of the week they would have off and how did each village/town all know that they had the same Buddha day, I was sur...