Shanna Kelly from Canada shares about her last week volunteering with Partners Relief & Development in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.

This week the students are learning about FOOD! It is pretty fun. I taught them the names of some of the popular ingredients in local dishes, as well as how to identify the tastes of certain foods (salty, sweet, sour…).

After announcing that he didn’t like sweet things, I offered Tun, one of my students, a piece of chewing gum. He was so excited. It was funny to see his reaction after announcing that he didn’t like sweet things. He was quick to announce that it was his food that he didn’t like to be sweet.

That same day, a friend of one of the students came and sat on the porch outside the living room that serves as our classroom. I welcomed her and told her that she could come and join our class but she politely refused. Soon after, I saw her holding a camera, which she used to take a video of me – for quite a long time! When I thought she was finished, I looked over to my left and saw that she had simply gone to another room to get a different angle. Oh, I like these students! I am going to miss them.

Well, it is my last full week of volunteering with Partners. Next week I will teach on Monday and Wednesday but I will start packing up my life in Chiang Mai. Although I have only been volunteering with Partners for a few weeks, I have been in Thailand for a year – long enough to know that I want to come back…and hopefully help refugees in some way.

 Over the past few weeks of being here, I can really see that the people working here at Partners are dedicated to the work that they do. It’s not all work though – they have fun doing it. It’s a very close-knit community here, almost like a family – maybe a little reflection of what Partners is about. Life in the office is very community oriented – everyone sits on the floor and eats lunch together as a big group. I really like the way things are done here.  .

I am really grateful for this opportunity that I have been given. Thank you to everyone at Partners for allowing me to come and experience a small part of what it is like to help the people of Burma.