Oct 17
Almost 270 people have been reported dead from the major floods in Thailand, while 3.4 million acres of agricultural area is now covered by water. It is one the worst disaster in Thailand in the last 50 years. More than 30 out of 77 provinces are now under water. More than 700,000 families have lost their home and their family members. Some area has been under water over a month, and some areas have flooded twice this year. These floods in Thailand have badly affected the Thai economy.
The has been a lot of rain in Trat, where our volunteer dorm is based, but because Trat is located near the sea water can be drained to the sea and we have not been had experiencing any floods in the central Trat area. There are a few areas outside Trat that were flooded for a few hours.
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Oct 17
Since I had never been to a retirement party before, I didn’t know what to expect from the Wat Aw Yai School retirement party which I was invited to. On Thursday 29th September, I was picked up by P’ Wiseht at 4pm. When I arrived at the party, some teachers and students were already there. The students were going to do the dance show and thus they were getting dressed up and started to put their make up on. I was helping them and talked to the director of the school. “I am very sad to see p’ Nid leaving”, the director said to me. P’ Nid has been the only English teacher and was working at the Wat Aw Yai school for 30 years and 13 days.
There were more than a hundred people from other schools at the party, including the Aw Yai community. A lot of typical food and drinks from Trat were served at the party, and of course there was karaoke. It was amazing to see how relaxed and joyful the teachers and directors were during the celebrations. They were singing karaoke and telling jokes. It was such a different experience to see them like this, as opposed to when I encountered them during school times. The crowd insisted that I should sing a song as a uVolunteer representative, and so I did.
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Oct 06
Last Tuesday was a great day. I got up early to prepare breakfast for the volunteers in the dorm. Our Dorm Mother (Dona Isabel) was on vacation so I had the honor to cook breakfast, it was great to see everybody wake up and leave for their projects.
Today, Stuart was changing his construction as the project he was working on the house was completed. We walk to the bus stop by the university, waited for the bus to San Pedro and got off at the grocery store called Los Rombos.
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Oct 06
There is a festival that’s coming up for anyone visiting Koforidua this month!! Hopefully you’ll get to see it.
The Odwira Festival is celebrated by the people of Akropong-Akuapim, Aburi, Larteh and Mamfi during the period of September/October in the Eastern Region. The area is 30 miles from the capital, Accra and about 35 minutes’ drive from Koforidua where our volunteer house and the majority of our projects are based.
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Sep 21
In Costa Rica, English has become one of the main requirements for most job applications because the tourist industry increases every year. uVolunteer started a project in 2007 in which our volunteers teach English to people in San Ramón according to this economic and social context. The population to which the project is addressed are to those who don´t have the time or money to pay for private education.
The English community class is a great opportunity to interact with the locals and explore Costa Rican culture. The project began with 20 students and two classes. The project opened as a conjunction between the uVolunteer volunteers and local volunteers like Danilo and Daython, and has been growing since then. The first volunteer to teach at the Evening class was Joachim Mowinckel whose experience can be read about at http://www.uvolunteer.org/costa-rica/volunteer-stories/joachim-mowinckel.php. More than 50 volunteers have contributed with the program during the last 4 years. uVolunteer would like to say thank you so much for all your help.
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Jul 06
Today was Kathleen Stanford`s first day at Simón Bolívar kindergarten. We arrived at the project at 7 am and we were welcomed by a small crowd of six years olds. In Costa Rica public education is quite good and children start receiving it when they are 5 years old when they enter the educational system in “Pre-kinder”. Kathleen’s volunteer work was taking place with the kids at kindergarten, or as the Costa Ricans call it “kinder”.
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Jun 20
As I was getting ready for one of my weekly duties ‘The Project Visit‘ , I could sense that today was going to be a beautiful day, though it was a bit foggy early in the morning you could actually sense the warmth rising. Meaw and I were taking Tiffany one of our volunteers to her project on the first day, Environmental Conservation Project in Madre Verde in Palmares. Read the rest of this entry »
May 11
Andrew Manos, our most recent volunteer in Ghana chats about his experience.
It was a great month working with a local football team and local college sporting teams such as track and field, basketball, badminton, table tennis and volleyball. Since the West African Poly games are coming up, I was very busy volunteering with various teams.
Click here to read Andrew’s Full Story
May 06
Last weekend I went on a trip to Monteverde. It was about a 3-hour bus trip from San Ramon. We stayed at a hostel called Monteverde Backpackers. The gentleman who works at that hostel could not have been more accommodating. When we first arrived, we told him that we were going to a restaurant in town. He asked which restaurant and when we told him, he told us how expensive that specific place was. He then told us about a great little buffet-style restaurant close to the hostel. We thanked him for telling us about it, and went to check it out. The food ended up being incredible and we ate like kings (and queens) for about four dollars each.
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Apr 19
We woke up really early on Monday to get ready to do some construction work. We headed to the construction site at Cataratas, a beautiful small rural town in the San Ramón valley by bus. Rebecca, Emma, Diane, Meaw and I got off the bus and started the walk to get to the construction site. The construction taking place is for a family of three, a couple and a 4 year old boy who enjoys visiting his grandpa who is helping to build his daughter’s house.
The construction project is part of an agreement between uVolunteer and The Foundation for Rural Housing Costa Rica – Canada. Its main objective is to support development, through financing and management of construction, in rural areas of Costa Rica in order to reduce migration to urban areas.
There are three workers at the construction site who work with the volunteers and teach them about construction labors. One of them, the youngest named Roy knows a little English and helps the volunteers to practice Spanish and the volunteers help him to learn more English. They have become friends during the process.
The day we visited the construction site with the volunteers we introduced Diane to the construction project and she was really happy to be helping a family to get their own home. The work began with three of us digging a hole for the septic tank that needed to be 9 feet deep. It was really muddy so we had a blast using the shovels and taking out the dirt with the wheelbarrow. The other volunteers were sifting the sand that we were going to use to plaster the walls.
While we worked a man showed up with a guitar and started singing some Spanish songs to us! We asked for some English songs which he attempted for a couple of minutes but soon left because it started to rain.
We took a break around noon and afterwards we helped the construction workers to plaster the walls. Obviously, they have much more experience than us doing this and they don´t spill a single drop of the mix. We, on the other hand, spilled the mix everywhere even into our own bags! Apparently it takes a lot of practice to do it properly, but after a while Rebecca was showing the necessary skills to become a master plasterer!
After the plaster experience we moved some construction bricks near to the septic hole. These bricks are going to be used in the construction of the septic tank. We finished our day a little bit tired, dirty and happy, it was really rewarding to know that all the hard work was about to change a family´s life for good.
