Claire (back row, left) with some of her 'class'

sorting and drying the fish

overcrowded bus

First photos from Myanmar!

As Claire is unable to access her blogspot directly in Myanmar, I am attempting to keep it uptodate with information and photos she manages to e-mail home. These are the first photos received this weekend (February 25th) :
a picture taken inside the very crowded bus on her 17 hour journey from Yangon to the village where she is now teaching, some of the children she is teaching pictured on the beach adjacent to her house, some Burmese women sorting the fish catch and drying the fish, and Claire delivering a loudly squealing pig to a poor family in the village. The teaching is hard but challenging and rewarding work. She is eating lots of fish, (getting to like it, almost!) rice and nice fruit such as papaya, guava, watermelon and coconut. She also plays football with the children and teaches them to swim, as well as helping the older ones to learn the recorder.
You will notice the lack of dreadlocks in the photo of Claire - she 'chickened out' of going further when the first six or seven had been created as she ran out of time before departing for Bangkok.
Antoinette (Claire's Mum)

Arriving in Myanmar

Claire is having problems accessing and editing this blog site so I (her mum) am doing it for her...here is what she wishes to say:

The connection in Myanmar is too slow to be able to post comments on myblog, so whenever i write emails home to my mum, she can post some of thethings i say on my blog to keep you all up to date with what wonderfulthings are happening here. It is the most fantastic place. I feel like Iam living in a hotel, but just outside the garden walls, there is thevillage with 700 houses made from wood and on stilts. Almost everyone inthe village are either fishermen or fish sellers. They lie out the fish todry every day, you can imagine the smell.I am teaching children (ages 2 to 16 in one big class- sometimes as many as60) from 7 to 9 every morning and from 4 to 5 every afternoon. Then threetimes a week, i teach adults ( who are mostly older than myself) for 1 hour.The teaching is much harder than I thought it might be, it takes a lot oftime to prepare each lesson, but very rewarding in the end.