Mirror - First week experiences

I arrived at Mirror on a Wednesday, which means that my first week here is a very short one! This week I've been lucky enough to be one of the first volunteers to arrive so I got thrown straight into duties (not that you can really call them that). A few of us jumped in the back of P'Aye's ute and rode the 30 minute drive up to Phu Koc childcare. The kids here are gorgeous and we spend an hour or so entertaining them. The basic childcare lesson consists of the 'Meditation Song' (a song we would learn to love), outlining of the letter-of-the-day, the alphabet song, a craft activity, a book (if we have one that they haven't read), dances like the chicken dance and hokey pokey, and about 15 minutes to play outside with the kids.

There are around 20 of us volunteering at the moment, a few have or are leaving at the end of this week, others are starting next week. We had orientation this week which pretty much informed us of what we would need to know whilst we were at Mirror, what was expected of us, and we were also given information on the homestay that we will be doing at a later date.

We have started our volunteer week at an interesting time. This weekend many of the Mirror staff are going away for the week to an annual Mirror Conference and so the volunteers and thai interns (L, Kate, Tip and 008) will be heading to Mae Chan on Saturday and will spend a week there doing community development work. When I signed up for Mirror we could either chose to help out with the Community Development program or the Teaching English program. I signed up for Community development, however the two projects have been combined depending on how many volunteers there are and what opportunities are available. Needless to say I am extremely excited about getting to do some physical work whilst I am in this beautiful country.

My first (half) week at Mirror finished with the regular Friday night trip into Chiang Rai. All the volunteers and interns are taken out to a local restaurant for dinner. I had a delicious pork and rice dish paid for by Mirror (even though it was only 30bt it was a bonus). They took us to a local supermarket called Big C's - it's pretty much a mixture of a Westfield and a Big W (if your Australian like me), or a WallMart. Toilet paper was of course high on my priority list and we also needed to buy childcare supplies to take to Mae Chan with us. Finally we were spared about an hour to wander around the Chiang Mai night markets and buy beautiful hill tribe handicrafts and silk products.