Submitted By Dr. John Easterling Nov.10

Two Days of Travel to see our student serving in Santisuk English Centers in different locations

This fall’s internship has been extra special having my two brothers along in China.  They both came on to Thailand, but Jim returned home after 5 nights and Paul will leave on the 12^th day.  One Tuesday and Wednesday Paul and I traveled to visit the other 4 Santisuk campuses—Rachada, Silom and Ratchayotin on Tuesday and the Ladkrabang campus on Wednesday.  I wanted to see the students in their own settings and also to give out  funds for the next 8 days food.

We took busses, subways, sky trains, and vans on the first day and spent over half the day traveling.  Rachada is a small campus about 1 ½ hours away by bus with a great traffic jam along the way.  We traveled with Cathy Wentzel who teaches there.  She is from Minnesota and loves Thailand.  We didn’t have any students on the campus, but they are growing and doing an excellent job.  

Cathy gave us direction to walk to the subway and then get off at Silom where we walked to the Pilot Pen building.  We met up with Awe, the Thai Director and our two students Liz and Holly.  Our students have smaller classes on Silom campus, but they are still challenged by the opportunity to teach English and become a part of the students’ lives. They are enjoying the cell group and church on Sundays.

After lunch, we walked to the Sky Train.  We took it a few stops and switched to another one which we took to the end.  Then we made a mistake.  We took a wrong bus and instantly it turned West/Northwest, but we wanted to go North.  We got off at the first bus stop and walked back 3 miles and started over on the right bus.  We had to ask for help from two individuals on the bus, but we got off at the right stop.  After a phone call, we met up with the team on the Ratchayotin campus.  Tong, the pastor of this group has an international English-speaking church on Sundays.  Allie and Bri are teaching there with 39 students enrolled in the program.  They are thriving.  Tong has if we wanted to eat before we returned, but since we left in the morning, we thought that it was best to return.  We took a van that brought us back to Santisuk in Bangkapi.  Day one was a success.