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15 Sept 2002 |
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| September has been a busy month for visitors and, as chance would have it, they all arrived around the same time. Claudia (Ming's friend from the Tibetan school in India) arrived with Mark just a few days after Rhys, who was on a short break from Hong Kong. And then Jackie, the INitiate chairman rolled into town with a small group from Singapore. It was great to see old friends and to have a chance to share our experiences with them. Everyone got dragged along to the schools to be welcomed by the teachers and mobbed by the students. And having visitors gave us an excuse to take a few hours off work to explore some of the villages on the way to Udong. Rural life is tough during the wet season, with long hours spent standing bent over planting rice under the hot sun - no wonder our students say they don't want to be farmers. But sometimes people were just relaxing in hammocks while their kids played in the flood waters. The sight of three or four westerners in their midst was always a source of awe and amusement. In one Muslim village we were invited into the school run by the Mosque, but luckily we weren't asked to teach as lessons were in Arabic! | ||||