Sweet Sweet Saraburi

It's my second day here in Saraburi, I'm actually leaving in the afternoon. My Subdistrict office has a meeting at 10 o'clock and after that, my city's Mayor and the assistant Mayor are taking me back to my province. So far, I have not found anything to complain about concerning Sao Hai (the name of my city). Yesterday I spent the entire day visiting different groups around the village. First, the SAO (Subdistrict office) is building a day care center right outside of the office building; therefore, they took me to the nearby school to visit the children who will be moved to the new nursery/day-care. I'm not sure how much " community development" I will be doing with the 2-3 year olds but I think it will be a good tool for me to integrate into the community. Once the building is complete in about 2 months, I can spend my days there, learn some thai, teach some English and most important, get to know the parents/teachers through spending couple days at the day-care.

After that, we visited the Health Center/Clinic, the leader of the Clinic seemed really excited to see me and excited for me to be helping out. I told them that I'm going to tag along when they do home- visits in the village. I basically told everyone I'll be doing a lot of " tagging along" my first couple months there. I would love to do some projects relating to " healthy life style" with the clinic. So if anyone has any ideas on how I can approach that, feel free to share :)

Then along the way, we visited the police station just to let them know a foreigner will be riding around her bicycle in about a month for two years hahaha. Anyhow, one of the villages grow their own organic vegetables, we walked around to see their vegetable field. Did I mention that my city's main income source is through agriculture. I see rice and vegetables fields more than I see houses/shops. It sucks a bit that I do not know much about agriculture, so that's going to be my challenge, Although it will be great to work with Youth, the Health Clinic and other income generating groups I also think that I need to be involved in the asset of the village which is " agriculture". Once again, if anyone you know is involved in agriculture, I would love to do an exchange of information :)

Also, the last place we visited was a dessert making women's group. I helped them make some Thai desserts and told them I'll be back to work with them in about a month. There are many these type of "income-generating groups" in the village. Once I settle permanently, I'm going to take my time getting to know their strengths, weaknesses and challenges in order for me to help them with their businesses, expand their markets or whatever else they need.

I was also very excited to find out that the SAO office has a Youth group called " To Be Number One" I can see myself getting very involved with this group. I found out that they are from the ages of 18- 25 so I can start thinking about what kind of projects I can be involved with them. I am very excited about what is to come. We are always told by P.C to not come in with a 6-months plan of our own since it takes a while to really gain the trust of the local people and to actually get them involved with our work as a volunteer; all of which are completely true :) But I can still be excited right?

One day at a time :)
- Zari