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Published: March 14th 2008
So I just spent about 20 minutes writing part of this blog only to accidentally leave the webpage thinking that it had saved itself, only to find out that it did not save and I had lost everything I wrote. So now for the second time, here comes my promised final blog.
I've been putting off writing this all week because I really had no idea what I wanted to write and I still don't really know, but I'm going to try and hopefully give some perspective into my trip and hopefully some coherent thoughts will come out of it. I guess the first thing to start off with is: Am I glad I went to Thailand? I'm happy to say that the answer is definitely yes. I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to actually live in Thailand for 2 months. I laugh when I think that at this time a year ago I was seriously doubting whether I wanted to go to Thailand or not. I knew then that I would regret it if I passed up the opportunity, and now I can say that had I not gone, I would definitely regret it. But luckily for me I can say that I did go and that I have no regrets about it. Sure, there were things about Thailand I didn't like and my trip certainly had its ups and downs, but I got to live in a foreign country for two months and I think that in that time I was able to get a decent view into Thai culture. Obviously, I was living the life of a "wealthy" foreigner so there are many things I did not see but the things I did see allowed me at least a small window into what life is like for Thais living in Bangkok.
One thing that does kind of bother me is that I can't see myself going back to Thailand anytime soon. I don't want to say that's because I didn't like the country but maybe it's just because it was so different from anything I've ever experienced and that it ended up being so different from my original expectations that is was just too different for me to handle. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing because had I not gone to Thailand in the first place, I don't think I ever would have gone. So in that sense I got to see a part of the world that I never expected to see. But it just didn't strike me as a place that I would want to go back to on a vacation anytime in the near future. Maybe someday I could see myself going back just to see how it's grown and changed from how it is now and perhaps then I might even want to go back because I'll be able to go with people I actually want to go with but I have no idea of knowing what my perspectives on Thailand will be years from now. I just think it's a little weird because almost everywhere else I've traveled to I have always said that I would love to go back if I had the opportunity and for Thailand, I can't say that right now.
Just because my main purpose for going to Thailand was to teach and not to be a tourist, I feel obligated to give some feedback on the school so I'll do that now. I've been in my new school back in the US for one week now and it is entirely different from the school I was at in Thailand. Since I no longer need to worry about my safety in Thailand, I will finally use the school's name. Ruamrudee International School (RIS), where I taught in Thailand, was unlike any school I had ever been in before. Firstly, it was a Catholic school. Secondly, they used block scheduling (four 80 minute classes everyday instead of the eight 45 minute classes at my new school). This made lesson planning difficult at first because you can accomplish a lot of stuff in 80 minutes. Third, the school had a rotating schedule so if I saw a class on Monday, I would not see them again until Wednesday. While I adjusted to this, it was just weird because everyday I had a different schedule and I could never get it down by memory. The first week or two there were a couple times when I even showed up in class when I didn't have one because I thought I was on a different day's schedule. Needless to say, I was looking at my schedule about a million times a day to make sure that I was always where I was supposed to be. Then there's the students. As with any school, I liked some, and I disliked some, but even though I was there for 8 weeks I had trouble adjusting to the cultural differences. In the US most students don't like to be quiet and listen. At RIS, the majority of students did not like to talk or participate in class. Ever. Personally, I enjoy having class discussions and feel as though students can learn a great deal this way, so for me it was difficult at first to adjust. I felt like I was constantly struggling to get students to talk and to participate in class. Even when I would call on students to answer a question (which I had to do almost all the time), many times they would just giggle and wouldn't really have much of an answer. It's not because the kids are dumb or didn't understand what I was talking about because most of my students were very intelligent, capable people. It was just something about the students, and I'm assuming it's cultural, that made them not want to speak often in class. And there's nothing wrong with that because it's just the way it is. I'm only commenting on it because it's so different from my experiences with education in the US. Next, I think the subject matter bears commentary. I taught modern world history and Asian studies. My world history classes were interesting because I got to teach stuff I had never taught before. But it was even more interesting because the textbook is a British text so it's written from a completely different perspective than American history textbooks. So there were things that I normally would have put into a lesson that I would teach here in the US that were just glazed over in their textbook, and vice versa. They had things in their textbook that I would glaze over if I were teaching it in the US. My Asian studies classes were... interesting, mainly because I had absolutely no experience with the subject matter that I was teaching. While that made it interesting for me because I got to learn about something completely new, it made planning and conducting my lessons a little more difficult because I was only learning the material a couple days before I taught it. All in all, I think my teaching experience at RIS was worthwhile. I think that I personally made progress as a teacher candidate and I hope that my experiences at RIS will help me while at my new student teaching placement and beyond into my career.
Finally, I think I'm nearing the end of any coherent thoughts I may have had concerning Thailand when I first sat down to write this. But I think I still have a little more in me. Now that I'm home and everyone I know is asking me about Thailand, I'm having an extremely difficult time relating my experience to others, but I think this is perfectly normal. How can I convey two months worth of experiences to someone else in just a sentence or two? It's almost frustrating for me that when people ask me how Thailand was, the only thing I can say is that it was different, but good. There's no possible way for me to give anyone any clue as to what my time in Thailand was like and this almost upsets me because it's something that I want to be able to share with others and I want to be able to give others some sort of a glimpse into what my life was like for the past 2 months. Unfortunately, there's just no way for me to give anyone a clear picture into what my time there was like. For those of you who have kept up with my blogs and who have read all of them, I hope that you've been able to get some sort of an idea of what my experiences there were like and that you've hopefully enjoyed reading what I've had to say. I was speaking to someone yesterday and they said something to me that I hadn't thought of, but I think is really poignant. Even though it's difficult for me to convey my experiences to someone else, I now have stories to tell for the rest of my life. It's strange to think of, but I have really had a once in a lifetime experience that I can now share with others through stories until the day I die. Sure, I'll always have stories to tell, but how many people can start a story with, "You know, that reminds me of this one time when I was living in Thailand..." It sounds almost silly, but I really do have experiences and memories that will last me a lifetime and that alone makes my time spent in Thailand completely worth all the money, tears, effort, and everything else that I poured into the trip. So to those of you who have tried to live vicariously through me over the last 2 months, I thank you for reading these posts and I hope you enjoyed them. But more importantly, I hope that I'll have the opportunity to someday share some stories with you that I didn't write about. Sawadeekap!
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KP1958
non-member comment
You found Thailand so different from your original expectations. What were your original expectations, then?