I’ve Reached a Turning Point…

My perspective has changed since arriving here 4 1/2 months ago. It wasn’t an overnight switch, but a gradual shift from an American consciousness to a more Thai-ish consciousness. I’ve got an entirely new “normal.”

• Uh oh! I don’t cringe when I see someone driving down the wrong side of the road, a pick-up truck loaded with children in the back, two adults with a toddler and a baby on a motorcycle, or a truck piled so high with bags of rice it looks about to fall over. People do what they need to do here, and convenience trumps safety. All you can do is look after yourself.
   
• Run along now. I’ve accepted that students are passed along grade after grade regardless of their performance. Some of my students have been learning English for 4+ years and still don’t know the alphabet or numbers. It’s impossible to create a lesson for a class with such a wide range of abilities, but I do my best, and the school doesn’t expect any more than that. (In fact, I’m sure I could get away with a lot less.) I’ve shifted my focus instead to getting the kids to open up and just try. That’s an incredible feat but a much more likely goal.
   
• No class today, no problem! It happens quite frequently that I will get to school to be notified that there will be no class this morning for an assembly or the boys will be missing because of a sporting event or we need you to go to Lampang to judge a competition or guess what, you have a 3-day weekend, surprise! When I first got here, I was kind of thrown for a loop. I mean, surely they knew of this earlier. Surely I could have planned a big weekend getaway. Surely they know that they are my only source of information of this kind. That type of thinking is long gone and I’ve learned to be much more flexible and off-the-cuff, qualities I’m happy to have gained.
   
• Shyness won’t get you anywhere, but creativity gets you everywhere. Learning a language through total immersion is entirely different than learning in a class, as I had always done. It’s messy, it’s humbling, and it’s crucial you never give up. Fortunately for me, I’m in a country where the people don’t mind watching me stumble my way through a sentence or butcher the tonality in a question. I’ve gotten exceedingly creative in getting my point across using the words I already know, those I can mime, and those in my phrasebook that I’m using for the first time. So many times I’ve had to rely on the kindness and patience of the Thai people, and they never let me down. Thank you a million times for that, Thailand.
  
  I’ve also become quite the ham. When you’re teaching 12-18-year-olds who don’t want to learn your subject, how else do you get them involved? I’ve opened up a part of my personality, and in return the students open up a little too. I’m sure they don’t know how much confidence they’ve given me, and I can only hope they get some back in return.
   
• Patience, my friend. Maybe the bus we need isn’t leaving for an hour, maybe the line at immigration is so long we don’t know if we’ll be seen today, or maybe the store isn’t opening for an hour after it says it will. My whole new world has need for a whole new level of patience. Jack came here so much better than me in this regard, but I’m improving. Keeping my e-book handy definitely helps.
   
• Don’t take it for granted. Seriously. Just because it’s yogurt doesn’t mean it will have fruit in it; sometimes it has red beans and corn. Just because it’s mouthwash doesn’t mean it will have a mint flavor; sometimes it’s salt. Now we’ve gotten to the point where we just say, “Of course, Thailand. Of course this is the total opposite of what we expected.” We’ve been transported into Jareth’s Labyrinth and Hoggle is teaching us not to make assumptions. (If you don’t get that reference, you’re missing out on an amazing fantasy world. Bookmark this page and go experience it…now!)
   
• Minimizing fear. Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned, and this has less to do with where I am as what I’m doing, is about failure. Even before coming here I knew that fear of something as devastating as failure is paralyzing and would stop me from becoming who I want to be and doing what I want to do. But ignoring that fear and actually experiencing failure are two different things. I fail all the time now, and I’m better for having done it. I’ll write what I think will be a really fun lesson plan and the students will be bored or they won’t understand, but I don’t scrap it altogether. I’ll take what I’ve learned from that class and change things up for the next class. One class to the next can be the difference between night and day. One of the best things about this placement is that I have the freedom to fail and no one is disappointed. They are happy I’m here and want me to be happy too. A million more thanks for that, Thailand.

In four short months, I have changed. The novelty of living in this foreign place on the opposite side of the globe may have worn off…but I still love it here. So what does that tell you?