Chad and Amy

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Finally...
We arrived in Chiang Mai after a week of seeing anything and everything Bangkok has to offer. The 5am wake-up call to catch the flight has made some of us giddy with tiredness. However, we got set up in the beautiful and extremely peaceful setting of Crystal Springs Guest House where we will be staying for the better part of the next two weeks. The accommodations seem to be more than sufficient for our needs. We then proceeded to Payup University where we met with the President of the school. He was extremely appreciative of our willingness to help with the service-learning projects. For lunch, a dozen or so English majors from Payap showed us around campus, and helped us find lunch at their cafeteria. We also had an orientation that laid out the plans for our service-learning projects. More on that will come in the next few weeks...

Chad D.


We've been in Thailand for about a week and half now, but it seems like so much longer because we've done so much! We spent the first week in Bangkok exploring the city, touring temples, and learning about the history of Thailand. It's been interesting for me especially since I've been to Thailand multiple times but have never really learned about its history. The time in Bangkok was packed and exciting. We are now in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, and have begun our service-learning projects. We broke up into our various groups, education, business, and gender studies. The education students have been working with the English students at Payap University to organize an English camp for local elementary students. The camp will be from the 17th - 19th of this month. The education students have also been helping the Payap students teach English at the elementary schools. Today we helped with vocabulary words dealing with occupations, environment, and living, and pronounciation. We even taught math, area of squares and circles, to one class in English. It's been fun to see how English is taught in the classroom, and even more fun to be able to take part in teaching. The kids are so cute and eager to learn. I can't wait to see what the rest of the week in service-learning has in store for us.

Amy P.

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