New Head Office in Mexico

After seven years working in Nongkhai developing our South East Asia programs ranging from one small program in the north-eastern Isan region of Thailand to six successful programs in Thailand, one in Laos, two in Cambodia and one in Vietnam, we at the T2T head office felt that we had developed our South East Asian placements as much as we possibly could and it was time to move on to pastures anew.

We felt that our Mexican programs needed a helping hand, and thought that we could expand our Central and South American programs and also get away from all the Thai food for a bit!

Whilst traveling around Mexico we stumbled upon a beautiful old Spanish colonial city named Oaxaca. Oaxaca is in desperate need of English speaking teachers and we felt that we could help with the ongoing problem of the local street children by offering something to help keep them out of harms way! So we have now decided to set up camp and try our hand at learning Spanish whilst we're at it!

Luang Prabang

Travel to Teach has received its first two volunteers at its brand new Luang Prabang volunteer project in Laos!

After a long slog of nearly two years trying to work with the farming project in Vang Vieng Laos, we have finally cut our ties with their difficult coordinators and instead we have started a fantastic new volunteer program in the beautiful old UNESCO World Heritage Cultural city of Luang Prabang.

A dear friend of the T2T family in Nongkhai, Hamish Gregg, has been working as the project coordinator in Luang Prabang along side the local community providing volunteers through T2T to help teach English, English through computer studies, and to help reorganise the disarrayed local Library.

The library has a checkered history and has been closed and reopened three times but due to volunteers helping out it has now stayed open for over two years. Within the library there are four computers which have been recently donated, word games such as boggle and scrabble and between 300-400 books in different states of repair.

Until recently books have not been seen to be important to the Laos education system, but together with the library and the local Luang Prabang government system we at Travel to Teach are trying to change this mind set.

Read more at Volunteer Luang Prabang.

Fun Fund Raising Ideas!

Over the years many of our volunteers have used their initiative to raise funds for their volunteer fee.

The chatterboxes have participated in sponsored silences, the physically lazy have received sponsorship for sponsored runs, the vain have received sponsorships to cut their long and glamorous locks, and they have even donated their hair to cancer victims, whilst the scaredy cats have raised money for sponsored bungee jumps and sky dives!

Below are some pictures of Sarah Long, a Travel to Teach volunteer who was originally afraid of heights and who received money from sponsors to jump out a plane and at 13000 feet and skydive so that she could pay for her flight to Thailand and the T2T fee which enabled her to enrich the lives of Burmese Refugee orphans in Mae Hong Son. Well done Sarah, I hope you have now conquered your fear of heights!

English Camp and T2T 6th Birthday

This summer Travel to Teach in Mexico celebrated it's 6th anniversary with a fantastic international group of volunteers.

We had volunteers from Belgium, Denmark, USA, Canada, Australia, England and Scotland.

We partied in true Mexican fashion by smashing a Piñata full of sweets and eating traditional Mexican food that was prepared by our T2T Mexican staff, whilst supping on a few tequilas!

We also held our second ever Mexican English Summer Camp, which was a great success. Our volunteers worked really hard with the local children, teaching English, playing games, and even preparing a small show of "Old MacDonald had a farm" and "The lions sleep tonight" complete with paper mâché animal masks and a small dance routine for their parents and the locals to watch.

After the show the volunteers prepared traditional food from their home countries to share with the children and their families and then played more games such as "Simon Say's" and again more Piñata fun.

We at Travel to Teach would like to a say a big thank you to all the volunteers that took part in this year's summer camp in Mexico and we hope you had as much fun taking part as the local children did!

Please mail your comments on this newsletter to Travel to Teach.