New Travel to Teach Program: BOLIVIA.
Bolivia is hot! A journalist who has been covering Latin America for the past thirty years recently wrote "If you have a chance to; go to Bolivia now!
This month sees the start of another Travel to Teach venture, this time in Bolivia. Bolivia or the Tibet of the Americas as it is known is the highest and most isolated of the Latin American republics. Bolivia has certainly had a turbulent and explosive history, but nowadays its image as a haunt of revolutionaries and drug barons is greatly overstated. Although it still faces some difficult problems and has some of highest poverty levels in South America it remains one of the areas peaceful, secure and inviting countries. Based in Santa Cruz volunteers choosing to spend their time in Bolivia will get to choose between a range of projects in areas such as Teaching, Conservation, Eco Tourism, Community Development, Museums, Sports and Art.
Travel to Teach Bolivia Homepage.
Volunteer vacations in the Mekong delta
A very special program - an intense trip combining volunteering and seeing big parts of the Mekong Delta.
This summer T2T is planning a 4 week cultural excursion to southern Vietnam. Starting on the 1st July you will spend 3 days being guided around Ho Chi Minh city before spending a three day home stay in the Mekong Delta visiting floating markets and enjoying the spectacular Vietnamese landscape. For three weeks you will work on various volunteer projects, building houses and digging wells for the Kingdom of Khmer people situated on the Cambodian border, taking care of Agent Orange victims and teaching English to local village children. The price for this adventure is 500 Euros including food, hotel and host family accommodation. Spaces are limited so for more information or to book your place on the program contact Jessica jessica@travel-to-teach.org.
New dorm in Nongkhai
Travel to Teach has new dorms in Nongkhai, in a big house close to the Michai school (by now well known to readers of this newsletter).
When you move into a new house in Thailand, you should have a "house-warming ceremony". This is to tell all the Phis (spirits) than live on the land, that you are well intentioned and want to live in peace with them.
The ceremony has to be performed by nine monks in the early early morning and takes about two hours.
Everyone that takes part in this ceremony gives each monk something to eat or drink, from soy milk to lollipops they like everything!
Volunteer of the month
As a new feature in our newsletters we will present one new volunteer every month.
Marius arrived Nongkhai at the start of January. As a teacher at Tesseban 1 school Marius was well received and never phased by a classroom packed with teenagers.
A love of Muay Thai led him to get involved with a local trainer and for the following 10 weeks he stuck to a grueling training regime. In his final week his trainer deemed him ready for his first fight.
All of the volunteers turned up to show their support and cheer Marius (or Maroot as Thai people call him) on as he knocked out his opponent in the 3rd round.
His stay in Nongkhai was also marked by a fantastic piece of news from Germany when his first book (Die Berg von Kallon) was accepted by a publishing house. It is due for release in July and we wish Marius the very best of luck with his promising literary career.