Asian Nomads HTF

We enjoyed a well-deserved ten day holiday over Christmas and the New Year's season. Sujin and Choi, a couple of organic farmers from Korea, visited over the holidays and helped us make original kimchi -- a pickled Chinese cabbage recipe famous worldwide for its spicy chili and garlic taste. A double-decker bus full of Korean missionary families and their children also visited the day after Christmas. Their pastor talked with the children who now are the choir at Grace Church, sponsored by the Korean missionaries. The children enjoyed Christmas dinner at our house with over 150 people invited -- including the congregation of Grace Church, visiting friends and relatives. We also participated in the Christmas party at Mae Tao clinic and another dinner with gospel worship at a nearby factory where many Burmese work. The Top Form Brassiere factory, located in our village, also hosted a New Year's party on the school grounds so we were treated to fireworks directly overhead. Even though it was the end of 2007 and the middle of winter, we still managed to go swimming again. Please download the December newsletter and Xmas videos for further information about our activities over the holidays. We also signed the lease on our first farm plot for the year 2008 -- a good start to the new year.

We have made a recent move back to the original village. We are now in a house only fifty meters or so from the gate of the school where our children study. Additional volunteers have recently visited us -- Chrissie and Puck from the U.S.A. Both have come from recent stays at Twin Oaks community in rural Virginia. I was able to talk to them about our shared history -- I grew up in Virginia. They were able to relate to the peace and quiet of our Thai countryside. We took Puck on a long bike ride to celebrate Father's Day and the King of Thailand's 80th birthday. I only hope I am still alive to see my own. We hope to soon relocate the farm to a small plot of land actually in our village and next to the house we originally rented. It is a return of sorts to our own roots. We will soon start our classes for young farmers and introduce them to the skills of natural farming. We just need a good agricultural trainer or two. Any of you out there? You're welcome to join us soon. Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all who still support us. Hope to see you again in the new year.

This past couple of weeks saw two visiting volunteers. Ingo, a German, is a counselor at a Camphill community in Scotland. He joined us for two weeks and also traveled to hill villages while here. Jodie, an Australian, is a school teacher who just completed teaching at a language school in Japan for one year. She is spending a lot of time with our younger children and teaching them nursery songs. They are all up dancing and jumping around when not playing with their newest toys, a plastic block building set. We have continued our bike trips in the surrounding countryside and our visits to the local swimming holes. The monsoon rains have cooled the weather down considerably and evenings are cool for sleep. We are looking forward to the visit of an Australian couple who will stay with us from October to January. They are interested in starting their own orphanage and want to learn from us. Hopefully, we will be well established on the newer farm by January.

Update (May 30, 2007)

My name is Eliza and I am the most current volunteer to date. I’ve been here for about 1 week and will soon depart. I have enjoyed spending this past week with the kids. Their energy and love swarmed the house right when I entered it. All the kids were holding my hands and saying, “Welcome”. Many of the kids at the shelter are working on their English and are able to understand most of what you are saying (though sometimes you need to use your acting skills!). This past week we’ve spent many days in the local swimming holes after the older kids get done with school because it’s been so hot. Also, on Tuesday night, we attended the night market that happens once a week where any essential supplies are purchased for the next week. I will miss the kids and their daily hugs when I leave here! But, I know that I am always welcome here in the future!

Update (May 15th)

This month has brought the cooling monsoon rains and a new volunteer from Japan, Kiyo, who plans to be with us for the next few months. It will be a busy monsoon season with a lot of volunteers slated to visit us from now until the end of August. Kiyo's generous donation has gone towards helping half of our children to enroll in a nearby village school. The younger children will continue home-schooling until they are ready to join the others. With new uniforms, haircuts, books and book bags, shoes and socks, the children are eager to gain acceptance in the local community. Our plans have also firmed up for moving our shelter and community to a nearby farm sometime this year or next, dependant upon the generosity of volunteers' donations and future sponsors. Our present landlord has agreed to lease his farm land to us -- enough land that we could eventually achieve self-sufficiency. This will be a long and arduous road for us all to trod but we are ready to give it a try. The farm has low land for rice paddies, its own swimming hole, fish pond, spring, higher land for fruit orchards, herb gardens, and our future planned shelter. The farm already has a couple of buildings on it and we are moving a couple of the families of children we support at the shelter onto the land as soon as we can afford to start paying rent. This will enable these families to have a real home -- not just a plastic shelter along the river. Kiyo, our new volunteer, plans to help out at a couple of local village schools for Karen refugees and to complete a survey of the services provided by other local NGO's. We hope to propose our farm as an intentional community to the Fellowship of Intentional Communities and invite more long-term volunteers to join us in building a local village of Burmese migrant workers and homeless children. Please contact us by email if you are interested in contributing to the growth of this enterprise.

Update (April 19th)

This update is by Katie, Wendy's daughter, and the newest visiting volunteer: Hello, as you can see from the very flattering picture, Dhane and the kids have already taken me to all the swimming holes in Mae Sot. I arrived 3 days ago and already feel like part of the house. The kids are so welcoming and Etta and Goin have been teaching me Burmese everyday. I'm starting to understand some words, and I'm sure that by the end of my stay they will have taught me a few Burmese pop songs. The kids are so excited to learn how to read and write. They are full of energy even in the heat of the afternoon and can't get enough of English lessons. I just hope that they can all go to school some day. I am amazed by their resilience. They handle accidents and arguments without many tears or fights. I fell off a bike with 2 kids on the back and they laughed while I was more worried about them being hurt. I know I'll learn many more lessons from them over the next weeks. Looking forward to all the adventures to come.

Update (April 8, 2007)

Summer has finally arrived in Mae Sot. Our house has warmed up and all the fans going keep overloading our humble electrical wiring and fuses. It has been another months of ups and downs -- highs and lows. The 'high' for the month was the return of A-aah from the hospital. The doctors have finally finished 'chewing' on his foot and he is left with most of it, except for the toes. He'll be up and back on a bicycle before too much longer. As always, the number of kids staying with us has fluctuated with the individual circumstances of each one. Some have left to return to family and work -- others have returned to the shelter after a long exodus. We are helping another couple of children whose father's leg was injured in a dynamite blast and can no longer work. It's a strange mix of personalities and accidents that has brought us all together. We've added a satellite dish to the house and are at work on adding a well in the back yard. It's a couple of days from completion -- then, no more water bills for a while. I We got A-aah back but lost our noble guard -- white dog. He really belonged to a neighbor's kid but began following us on our bike trips. He must have thought he had found a new 'pack' to adopt. Wherever we went, he was there. His master even took him home but he just broke his leash and returned to our house. At times, we were exasperated as what to do with him. Wendy left us a puppy, Rascal, and we are also loaded with a kitten. The two animals are constantly chasing each other around the house, jumping on the bed in the middle of the night and waking us all up.

Update: (February 26, 2007)

Our influx of volunteers from the U.S.A. and Canada has visited and made a tremendous impact upon the shelter. We have been able to improve the shelter -- fixing the electricity, plumbing, garden, and kitchen so it is more comfortable for residents and visiting volunteers alike. We still all sleep on mattresses on the floor and it is like dormitory life in a school. The house is large, airy and full of light. Neighbors have been welcoming, visiting the shelter and offering to take us swimming. It's getting warmer and warmer although nights and mornings are still cool. Wendy left us a puppy -- in addition to the kitten we already have. A neighbor's dog has adopted us as well and we may soon resemble an animal shelter. The chicken coop in the back garden has been built and the garden will be finished by next weekend. We hope to grow a lot of beans, corn, herbs and vegetables to supplement our diet. Life has moved on into spring and the shelter has lost some children. They come and go -- visiting their siblings left behind in Myanmar now that the weather has warmed up and sleeping outside is not so uncomfortable. We are resigned to this -- the kids value their freedom and I think this should be supported. A-aah, our bicycle accident boy, may be back home in another week or so. Hopefully, more volunteers will visit later this year.

Unlucky Valentine's Day 2007

This entry is for A-aah -- one of our newest children at the shelter. He arrived only a few days ago and had already made his mark as a welcome and stabilizing influence with the other children. He's 14, a Muslim, as are three others at the shelter, and has a mother and older sister working at a nearby factory. They count beans. I don't know the significance of this but Valentine's Day doesn't always bring luck or love. We are grateful that Wendy was here, an experienced nurse, for this year's Valentine's Day brought us all a painful lesson. A-aah, as all young teenagers are prone to do, was off and enjoying himself on his friend's bicycle, riding a mere 50 meters or so from our house. Showing off to his friends, he wanted to demonstrate he could ride a bicycle without hands on the handlebar -- and, unfortunately, ended up under the wheels of a passing truck. We visit A-aah daily and hope his stay of 2-3 weeks will be over soon. We've lost a bicycle and he some toes -- but life goes on at the shelter. Alex and Jason from the U.S.A. have arrived and are helping out at the shelter as well as helping keep A-aah's spirits up with visits to the hospital. We hope to start a garden around our house this week and continue our bike trips, but with more attention to our riders' safety in the future. Donations towards A-aah's hospital bill are welcome.

First Volunteer Arives

Our first volunteer finally arrived earlier this week and she has been a ‘godsend’ to the shelter with her generous and loving heart. Wendy is a nurse from Canada, married to a Taiwanese doctor -- both live and work in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Little did I realize she would reinspire me to further devotion to the kids. I had posted a link to the website: www.firethegrid.com , which tells the heart-warming story of a Canadian mother who survived a death experience with her son in the cold waters of a wintery swamp in Nova Scotia. Wendy knows doctors in the ICU unit at the hospital in Halifax – the people who would have taken care of this woman’s son and who helped bring him back into the land of the living. It’s a strange case of synchronicity – a reminder that we should all be open to listening to our intuition – that inner teacher of our soul. I had doubts about myself and the story of Shelly Yates and her son, Evan, but no more. Wendy will only stay with us for a couple of weeks but she has made an impression upon our kids – filling them up with a mother’s love. I’m only an old, fat fart – can’t quite manage to provide that genuine mother’s love myself. Thank you, Wendy, for our new washing machine to keep the kids’ new clothes clean and, especially, for filling our new, larger house with LOVE. Wendy has helped out some at Pataravitaya School as well, visiting a few of our classes and teaching the children in the ordinary program songs and nursery rhymes. Hopefully, she and I will greet two more volunteers arriving from the U.S.A. Thursday. Although their stays will be brief, we hope to at least have one bike ride and picnic in the countryside. Wendy has graciously bought another bicycle to be donated to the shelter and is available for future volunteers to rent for a nominal fee daily -- all funds collected to be applied to our weekly trips to the bike shop for repairs. We have 'junker' bikes that need fixing or repair almost daily. The weather has finally turned to spring and we'll be back swimming in the river soon. We may not coax Wendy into the river but she may go for a dip in the pool soon. Hope that Alex and Jason arrive soon.

Update: (January 31st, 2007)

A lot of changes have kept happening this month. The shelter now supports 16 children – 9 boys and 7 girls. Space is limited and we are moving to a larger house, graciously provided by our present landlord. As soon as the water line has been connected, maybe by February 3rd, we'll relocate. The local government is building a cell phone base tower across the street from the old shelter and we don’t want to be situated near it for very long. Eventually, we want to move further out in the countryside and find a place with some land to keep goats and chickens on, as well as gardening. Our plans for eventually building a shelter have become centered around using a plentiful local supply of bamboo to make a light and airy home. The hut pictured at left is near the entrance to a hidden valley we have discovered behind a range of hills on one of our bike trips. Hopefully, we'll relocate up there some day. This is entirely dependent upon the good graces of future donations – so far, limited to those of volunteers expected for next month and March. We hope our volunteers maintain their commitment and show up. The boys and girls now receive tuition in Thai from a local teacher daily as well as their continued studies of Burmese and Math from our local staff. They are a Christian couple and our children also receive bible classes. We are hoping our foreign volunteers will start their studies in English when they arrive this spring. Of course, it never happens as one plans ... after spending four months waiting for volunteers, it is only natural that everyone would show up in the spring. You're all welcome, anyway. Hope to see you soon.

Update: (Mid January 2007)

We made it through Christmas vacation and now have started studying hard. A Thai teacher is helping us teach the kids that language 2 hours a day and we are busier than ever. Another child has returned to the shelter so the total is now 7 boys and 5 girls. With the neighbors' children often in the house we seem to have enough children for a class and also for a creche. Volunteers who have experience with very young children could help us very much. We are looking forward to the next long holiday in March after exams and hope to take some long camping trips into the mountains. We have continued looking for that special place to build a new shelter and are narrowing in on a few choices. At last, some volunteers have promised to show up -- hopefully over the spring, we will be able to report good news from their visits. More of our plans in the next update.



	2007
	2007 \| Jan \| Feb \| Mar \| Apr \| May \| Jun \| Jul \| Aug \| Sep \| Oct \| Nov \| Dec \| 2009

	Update (Christmas 2007 and New Years 2008) We enjoyed a well-deserved ten day holiday over Christmas and the New Year's season. Sujin and Choi, a couple of organic farmers from Korea, visited over the holidays and helped us make original kimchi -- a pickled Chinese cabbage recipe famous worldwide for its spicy chili and garlic taste. A double-decker bus full of Korean missionary families and their children also visited the day after Christmas. Their pastor talked with the children who now are the choir at Grace Church, sponsored by the Korean missionaries. The children enjoyed Christmas dinner at our house with over 150 people invited -- including the congregation of Grace Church, visiting friends and relatives. We also participated in the Christmas party at Mae Tao clinic and another dinner with gospel worship at a nearby factory where many Burmese work. The Top Form Brassiere factory, located in our village, also hosted a New Year's party on the school grounds so we were treated to fireworks directly overhead. Even though it was the end of 2007 and the middle of winter, we still managed to go swimming again. Please download the December newsletter and Xmas videos for further information about our activities over the holidays. We also signed the lease on our first farm plot for the year 2008 -- a good start to the new year. Update (December 7, 2007) We have made a recent move back to the original village. We are now in a house only fifty meters or so from the gate of the school where our children study. Additional volunteers have recently visited us -- Chrissie and Puck from the U.S.A. Both have come from recent stays at Twin Oaks community in rural Virginia. I was able to talk to them about our shared history -- I grew up in Virginia. They were able to relate to the peace and quiet of our Thai countryside. We took Puck on a long bike ride to celebrate Father's Day and the King of Thailand's 80th birthday. I only hope I am still alive to see my own. We hope to soon relocate the farm to a small plot of land actually in our village and next to the house we originally rented. It is a return of sorts to our own roots. We will soon start our classes for young farmers and introduce them to the skills of natural farming. We just need a good agricultural trainer or two. Any of you out there? You're welcome to join us soon. Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all who still support us. Hope to see you again in the new year. Update (Ingo and Jodie) This past couple of weeks saw two visiting volunteers. Ingo, a German, is a counselor at a Camphill community in Scotland. He joined us for two weeks and also traveled to hill villages while here. Jodie, an Australian, is a school teacher who just completed teaching at a language school in Japan for one year. She is spending a lot of time with our younger children and teaching them nursery songs. They are all up dancing and jumping around when not playing with their newest toys, a plastic block building set. We have continued our bike trips in the surrounding countryside and our visits to the local swimming holes. The monsoon rains have cooled the weather down considerably and evenings are cool for sleep. We are looking forward to the visit of an Australian couple who will stay with us from October to January. They are interested in starting their own orphanage and want to learn from us. Hopefully, we will be well established on the newer farm by January. Update (May 30, 2007) My name is Eliza and I am the most current volunteer to date. I’ve been here for about 1 week and will soon depart. I have enjoyed spending this past week with the kids. Their energy and love swarmed the house right when I entered it. All the kids were holding my hands and saying, “Welcome”. Many of the kids at the shelter are working on their English and are able to understand most of what you are saying (though sometimes you need to use your acting skills!). This past week we’ve spent many days in the local swimming holes after the older kids get done with school because it’s been so hot. Also, on Tuesday night, we attended the night market that happens once a week where any essential supplies are purchased for the next week. I will miss the kids and their daily hugs when I leave here! But, I know that I am always welcome here in the future! Update (May 15th) This month has brought the cooling monsoon rains and a new volunteer from Japan, Kiyo, who plans to be with us for the next few months. It will be a busy monsoon season with a lot of volunteers slated to visit us from now until the end of August. Kiyo's generous donation has gone towards helping half of our children to enroll in a nearby village school. The younger children will continue home-schooling until they are ready to join the others. With new uniforms, haircuts, books and book bags, shoes and socks, the children are eager to gain acceptance in the local community. Our plans have also firmed up for moving our shelter and community to a nearby farm sometime this year or next, dependant upon the generosity of volunteers' donations and future sponsors. Our present landlord has agreed to lease his farm land to us -- enough land that we could eventually achieve self-sufficiency. This will be a long and arduous road for us all to trod but we are ready to give it a try. The farm has low land for rice paddies, its own swimming hole, fish pond, spring, higher land for fruit orchards, herb gardens, and our future planned shelter. The farm already has a couple of buildings on it and we are moving a couple of the families of children we support at the shelter onto the land as soon as we can afford to start paying rent. This will enable these families to have a real home -- not just a plastic shelter along the river. Kiyo, our new volunteer, plans to help out at a couple of local village schools for Karen refugees and to complete a survey of the services provided by other local NGO's. We hope to propose our farm as an intentional community to the Fellowship of Intentional Communities and invite more long-term volunteers to join us in building a local village of Burmese migrant workers and homeless children. Please contact us by email if you are interested in contributing to the growth of this enterprise. Update (April 19th) This update is by Katie, Wendy's daughter, and the newest visiting volunteer: Hello, as you can see from the very flattering picture, Dhane and the kids have already taken me to all the swimming holes in Mae Sot. I arrived 3 days ago and already feel like part of the house. The kids are so welcoming and Etta and Goin have been teaching me Burmese everyday. I'm starting to understand some words, and I'm sure that by the end of my stay they will have taught me a few Burmese pop songs. The kids are so excited to learn how to read and write. They are full of energy even in the heat of the afternoon and can't get enough of English lessons. I just hope that they can all go to school some day. I am amazed by their resilience. They handle accidents and arguments without many tears or fights. I fell off a bike with 2 kids on the back and they laughed while I was more worried about them being hurt. I know I'll learn many more lessons from them over the next weeks. Looking forward to all the adventures to come. Update (April 8, 2007) Summer has finally arrived in Mae Sot. Our house has warmed up and all the fans going keep overloading our humble electrical wiring and fuses. It has been another months of ups and downs -- highs and lows. The 'high' for the month was the return of A-aah from the hospital. The doctors have finally finished 'chewing' on his foot and he is left with most of it, except for the toes. He'll be up and back on a bicycle before too much longer. As always, the number of kids staying with us has fluctuated with the individual circumstances of each one. Some have left to return to family and work -- others have returned to the shelter after a long exodus. We are helping another couple of children whose father's leg was injured in a dynamite blast and can no longer work. It's a strange mix of personalities and accidents that has brought us all together. We've added a satellite dish to the house and are at work on adding a well in the back yard. It's a couple of days from completion -- then, no more water bills for a while. I We got A-aah back but lost our noble guard -- white dog. He really belonged to a neighbor's kid but began following us on our bike trips. He must have thought he had found a new 'pack' to adopt. Wherever we went, he was there. His master even took him home but he just broke his leash and returned to our house. At times, we were exasperated as what to do with him. Wendy left us a puppy, Rascal, and we are also loaded with a kitten. The two animals are constantly chasing each other around the house, jumping on the bed in the middle of the night and waking us all up. Update: (February 26, 2007) Our influx of volunteers from the U.S.A. and Canada has visited and made a tremendous impact upon the shelter. We have been able to improve the shelter -- fixing the electricity, plumbing, garden, and kitchen so it is more comfortable for residents and visiting volunteers alike. We still all sleep on mattresses on the floor and it is like dormitory life in a school. The house is large, airy and full of light. Neighbors have been welcoming, visiting the shelter and offering to take us swimming. It's getting warmer and warmer although nights and mornings are still cool. Wendy left us a puppy -- in addition to the kitten we already have. A neighbor's dog has adopted us as well and we may soon resemble an animal shelter. The chicken coop in the back garden has been built and the garden will be finished by next weekend. We hope to grow a lot of beans, corn, herbs and vegetables to supplement our diet. Life has moved on into spring and the shelter has lost some children. They come and go -- visiting their siblings left behind in Myanmar now that the weather has warmed up and sleeping outside is not so uncomfortable. We are resigned to this -- the kids value their freedom and I think this should be supported. A-aah, our bicycle accident boy, may be back home in another week or so. Hopefully, more volunteers will visit later this year. Unlucky Valentine's Day 2007 This entry is for A-aah -- one of our newest children at the shelter. He arrived only a few days ago and had already made his mark as a welcome and stabilizing influence with the other children. He's 14, a Muslim, as are three others at the shelter, and has a mother and older sister working at a nearby factory. They count beans. I don't know the significance of this but Valentine's Day doesn't always bring luck or love. We are grateful that Wendy was here, an experienced nurse, for this year's Valentine's Day brought us all a painful lesson. A-aah, as all young teenagers are prone to do, was off and enjoying himself on his friend's bicycle, riding a mere 50 meters or so from our house. Showing off to his friends, he wanted to demonstrate he could ride a bicycle without hands on the handlebar -- and, unfortunately, ended up under the wheels of a passing truck. We visit A-aah daily and hope his stay of 2-3 weeks will be over soon. We've lost a bicycle and he some toes -- but life goes on at the shelter. Alex and Jason from the U.S.A. have arrived and are helping out at the shelter as well as helping keep A-aah's spirits up with visits to the hospital. We hope to start a garden around our house this week and continue our bike trips, but with more attention to our riders' safety in the future. Donations towards A-aah's hospital bill are welcome. First Volunteer Arives Our first volunteer finally arrived earlier this week and she has been a ‘godsend’ to the shelter with her generous and loving heart. Wendy is a nurse from Canada, married to a Taiwanese doctor -- both live and work in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Little did I realize she would reinspire me to further devotion to the kids. I had posted a link to the website: www.firethegrid.com , which tells the heart-warming story of a Canadian mother who survived a death experience with her son in the cold waters of a wintery swamp in Nova Scotia. Wendy knows doctors in the ICU unit at the hospital in Halifax – the people who would have taken care of this woman’s son and who helped bring him back into the land of the living. It’s a strange case of synchronicity – a reminder that we should all be open to listening to our intuition – that inner teacher of our soul. I had doubts about myself and the story of Shelly Yates and her son, Evan, but no more. Wendy will only stay with us for a couple of weeks but she has made an impression upon our kids – filling them up with a mother’s love. I’m only an old, fat fart – can’t quite manage to provide that genuine mother’s love myself. Thank you, Wendy, for our new washing machine to keep the kids’ new clothes clean and, especially, for filling our new, larger house with LOVE. Wendy has helped out some at Pataravitaya School as well, visiting a few of our classes and teaching the children in the ordinary program songs and nursery rhymes. Hopefully, she and I will greet two more volunteers arriving from the U.S.A. Thursday. Although their stays will be brief, we hope to at least have one bike ride and picnic in the countryside. Wendy has graciously bought another bicycle to be donated to the shelter and is available for future volunteers to rent for a nominal fee daily -- all funds collected to be applied to our weekly trips to the bike shop for repairs. We have 'junker' bikes that need fixing or repair almost daily. The weather has finally turned to spring and we'll be back swimming in the river soon. We may not coax Wendy into the river but she may go for a dip in the pool soon. Hope that Alex and Jason arrive soon. Update: (January 31st, 2007) A lot of changes have kept happening this month. The shelter now supports 16 children – 9 boys and 7 girls. Space is limited and we are moving to a larger house, graciously provided by our present landlord. As soon as the water line has been connected, maybe by February 3rd, we'll relocate. The local government is building a cell phone base tower across the street from the old shelter and we don’t want to be situated near it for very long. Eventually, we want to move further out in the countryside and find a place with some land to keep goats and chickens on, as well as gardening. Our plans for eventually building a shelter have become centered around using a plentiful local supply of bamboo to make a light and airy home. The hut pictured at left is near the entrance to a hidden valley we have discovered behind a range of hills on one of our bike trips. Hopefully, we'll relocate up there some day. This is entirely dependent upon the good graces of future donations – so far, limited to those of volunteers expected for next month and March. We hope our volunteers maintain their commitment and show up. The boys and girls now receive tuition in Thai from a local teacher daily as well as their continued studies of Burmese and Math from our local staff. They are a Christian couple and our children also receive bible classes. We are hoping our foreign volunteers will start their studies in English when they arrive this spring. Of course, it never happens as one plans ... after spending four months waiting for volunteers, it is only natural that everyone would show up in the spring. You're all welcome, anyway. Hope to see you soon. Update: (Mid January 2007) We made it through Christmas vacation and now have started studying hard. A Thai teacher is helping us teach the kids that language 2 hours a day and we are busier than ever. Another child has returned to the shelter so the total is now 7 boys and 5 girls. With the neighbors' children often in the house we seem to have enough children for a class and also for a creche. Volunteers who have experience with very young children could help us very much. We are looking forward to the next long holiday in March after exams and hope to take some long camping trips into the mountains. We have continued looking for that special place to build a new shelter and are narrowing in on a few choices. At last, some volunteers have promised to show up -- hopefully over the spring, we will be able to report good news from their visits. More of our plans in the next update.