Good news, I'm employed! Just this past weekend, I was told I’ll be teaching high school in a town in the Ban Thaen District in Chaiyaphum, Thailand. Never heard of it? Same.
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Week one is done, and I’ve never been so exhausted in my life. Although I’ve been in Hua Hin for just under two weeks, this week was the first week of our TESOL course. We had our first class on Sunday because we needed to get through the material we needed to, to make sure we were ready for Thursday and Friday when we taught “English Camp” to Thai kids. I will get to that later, though. Sunday to Wednesday was spent learning how to create lesson plans, and then we would come in the next day and present them to our class as if we were teaching it to Thai students. Getting up in front of my class to “teach” them on that first day was one of the toughest things I’ve done. I was just a huge mess of nerves and felt so uncomfortable up there, but thankfully after presenting twice more by Wednesday the nerves slightly disappeared and I was more and more comfortable up there. During these few days, I also learned that Thai schools have a no fail policy, so these kiddos have no incentive to learn or even show up to class. A lot of the time students will be on the school grounds and then just hang out with their friends instead because they know they’ll pass anyway. It’s crazy. As I mentioned earlier, on Thursday and Friday, we were thrown to the wolves and taught Thai students. It was the most exhausting, rewarding, hilarious, frustrating and fun experience thus far. It was also exactly what we all needed to help us understand what things work in the classroom and what things just don’t at all. It really helped me to loosen up as well, and not to be so damn nervous in front of a class and just laugh and have fun. These kids literally had no idea what I was saying to them 95% of the time, so why work myself up with nerves? I would try to explain something to them is the simplest of terms and try my best to use visual cues and I would just get blank stares. It was also a good experience because it opened our eyes to how misbehaved these kids can get, and how important it is going to be for our own sanity to be able to have classroom management because its tough to discipline and gain control when they cant understand a single word you’re saying. At the end of the day each day my friends and I would exchange stories about what happened in our classes and just die laughing at how poorly some of our students were behaving. By far, the most hilarious thing that happened was when a student was in the back of my friend’s class while she was trying to teach and he was cutting his hair. Then in another one of my friends classes they had a student take the white board marker from my friend and then he just stuck it down his pants. Just overall horrifying, yet hilarious behavior. Thankfully none of my classes had that bad of behavior, but they also we were not all angles. Although I felt a bit defeated at times, I left school on Friday and I still felt like I am where I am meant to be. I didn’t leave the school freaking out about what I have gotten myself into. I left school and I was more excited about teaching at my placement then ever. I don’t really understand why I was feeling so excited, because I was so drained from just two days, but I really was. I had a weird new burst of energy about being a teacher and I just was going with it. On Saturday a whole group of us went to Khao Sam Roi National Park to hike down to the Phraya Nakhon Cave. We had gone out to celebrate finishing the longest week of our lives the night before, so getting up at 830 for a 1.5 hour ride was not ideal, but my God was it worth it. To get to the cave you could either take a boat ride and then hike, or do two separate hikes. Either way you had to hike at least once, so my friends and I decided to just do both hikes. We did end up taking the boat back however, but that’s because one of my friends rolled her ankle a few days ago and the hiking made it swell up. The hikes were no joke too. My total lack of exercise these past three weeks really showed. When we eventually made it to the cave, the view was just breathtaking. These pictures I took do it no justice. The best was to describe it is just magical. I found myself just taking the same photo over and over again because every time I looked at the temple I was just so taken back. After a while or resting and relaxing, we hiked back and then walked along the beach. It was another “pinch me” moment to add to the list. For as long and exhausting as this last week seemed, I can never complain. I am learning so much from being in this TESOL course, gaining so much confidence in my ability and having the experience of a lifetime with hilariously amazing people. Lucky is an understatement. So here we finally are! The blog, that even I have been waiting to write. It’s been just over a week since being in Thailand, and I still do not believe it is happening. It has definitely helped that my life has been just been nonstop ever since I landed, so being anxious or nervous really has not been much of an option. Thankfully, it was smooth sailing when I landed in Bangkok and my ride was there waiting for me to take me right to my hotel for the next two nights. Who knows how I was able to collect myself enough after 12+ hours on a plane but I was, and I spent my first night in Bangkok on Khaosan Road. Granted the majority of the people there were Westerners, and the only Thai in sight were the ones working at the bars or as street vendors, but it was still quite the experience. None of the bars had a fourth wall, all of them were opened to the street and you could bounce from bar to bar as you pleased. I tried fried scorpion, for the first and last time, and was meeting so many people from my program. As exhausted as I was, it really was a great introduction to Thailand. The next morning, I was able to actually see the city of Bangkok while the sun was out and that’s when the culture shock first hit me. Just mass chaos and disorganization. People are not joking when they say traffic laws do not exist here. It is horrifying. The two nights in Bangkok I shared a room with a girl named Janie from South Carolina, who also happens to be in my group for my TESOL, but I’ll get to that later. The two of us had got to Bangkok the day before so we were quite tired, but we also wanted to take advantage of the day we had, so we did a bit of sightseeing and walked through Wat Pho before the heat got the best of us and we headed back to our hotel. |