Pangaea Visit

The Pangaea students arrived in Surin on the 16th and spent two days celebrating Buddhist lent with Tabthai villagers and learning about village life. Students are staying with SFS members that have children in the "Kids Love Nature" club, so they can see what village life is like for someone close to their age. By staying with villagers and exchanging with them about their way of life, as well as how they have created their own organic farming organization, the Pangaea program hopes to teach students about the methods and experiences of community leadership and organization. In turn, when students return home, they can share what they have learned with the Portland, Oregon community and work to become grassroots, youth leaders at home.

On the 17th, students joined up with the subdistrict parade, dancing ram, the Isaan-style of dance, and following the elephants!

Deon dances in front of an elephant with a Buddhist monk from the local temple riding on top

Laurel shares some laughs with one of the parade's most festive dancers

Living in a rural village was certainly a new experience for the students, but the group challenged themselves to be involved with farm work and help around farmers' households. On Sunday, the 20th, they joined the village "Kids Love Nature" club in making organic compost with food waste from the "Trash Smile" project. The American students and village children worked together to mix rice husks, cow and water buffalo manure, and fermented food waste to make more than 350 kilos of organic compost!

Trevor got really into the mix!

After the compost was thoroughly mixed, P' Nok taught everyone how to make Tamarind facial soap. The soap is inexpensive, simple and easy to make. Once the soap was dry in the afternoon, everyone got their own little bar:


To see the rest of the images from the Pangaea visit, check out the Picasa Album

From the 21st to 22nd, the Pangaea students worked on a community project to support SFS' local food initiative. The group will work to track the ingredients of a typical meal and see how locally and sustainably the farmers are eating. They visited members gardens to see where different vegetables come from and taught English classes at the local school that focused on English food words. From the 23rd to 25th, Pangaea will be in Kong Chiam, on the border with Laos, to see where the Chi River and Mekong River meet. They will return on the 25th to finish their community project and present it to the community.