20 degrees hotter in Mae Sot than in Edinburgh!

Today Murray met with our friend Nan Lung, who is doing research into how the programmes for Teacher Training, developed by our other friend Dr Thein Lwin, are being used by teachers on the border.

She is spending two months in Thailand on this work which is part of her doctoral thesis.

She and Murray are helping Pirniehall Primary School make a twinning link with Satur Nay School in Mae Sot, in much the same way as Forthview has twinned with Hle Bee School.

Head teachers Mrs Ryan-Gillespie and Pho Cho have already been emailing each other and sending photographs and when Murray visited them today they were very excited at this new link – and sang... and sang... AND SANG!

Their school is much smaller than Hle Bee and Murray was able to listen in – and understand – their lesson this morning which was Thai language training from a local Thai teacher.

In the afternoon Murray visited Hle Bee and took all the letters and cards that children had written and tried to answer all the questions that the children asked.

What a difference from when Mrs Laing and Murray visited last year – no mud; no grass and flowers; just lots of hard baked mud and a beautifully clean, concrete brick floor!

So many children, all excited to receive the cards written by P6 and P7 to their friends – and the younger pupils were very excited to get cards as well.

Mrs Laing wouldn’t like going to the toilet in the dry season any better than the rainy season – look at the difference between the two photos of the toilet block and guess which was taken today and which was taken in the rainy season!

The corrugated iron roof makes is very hot and a bit more smelly – temperatures can rise almost another 20 degrees in April/May, so imagine how bad it must be then.

Pupils opened their beautifully decorated envelopes so carefully and pinned their cards and letters to the wall of their classrooms along with other pictures and letters from their Forthview friends.

P6 and P7 are to be congratulated for their neat handwriting, which meant that Burmese pupils could easily read out loud – and understand – their friends’ messages.