Over the past few months we hosted a lot of young Americans and Europeans in our volunteer and intern projects. In this post I would like to tell you about Sarah. Sarah was not only unique because she is a Neurology student from Harvard University, took part in both our Medical Intern and Teaching Monks projects for 8 weeks, but she’s also Thai.
Born and raised in the United States to Thai immigrants, Sarah arrived in Chiang Mai with Group #78 and volunteered and interned with us throughout June and July. It was great to have Sarah as a part of our team here in Chiang Mai.
##Sarah Mumanachit’s Volunteer Testimonial##
August, 2011
“My experience in Chiang Mai with the Friends for Asia program was beyond amazing. I was especially fortunate enough to do both the medical intern and teaching monks project for a month each. First of all, Chiang Mai is a great city that is not as busy as Bangkok, and there’s always so much to do. I definitely recommend exploring and getting to know the city. In terms of my projects, I was lucky enough to be able to spend time at both McCormick and Maharaj Hospitals. McCormick was a great experience being able to see different departments each morning and then stand in on interesting surgeries in the afternoon. Maharaj definitely had a different feel than McCormick in that it was a bigger hospital, but like McCormick, the doctors and nurses were more than happy to talk to you and help explain what they could in English. For the teaching monks project, I had an amazing time teaching English to novice monks at a beautiful temple right there.
I enjoyed getting to know my students and it made me so happy to see them finally understand something they were struggling with earlier and it was amazing to see them so eager to learn English. Take advantage of your time in Thailand because there is so much to do and the people are so kind. I was so sad to say good-bye to the doctors when I was leaving the hospital and to my students on my last day of school. My volunteering was a once in a lifetime experience and I hope to be able to return to Chiang Mai some time in the near future.”
Click Here to read more stories from the Teaching Monks Volunteer Project or Medical Intern Project.
