One Week in Thailand

Sorry that I haven't written in a few days. I've been fairly busy with class and spending time with the other people on my program, especially since it has stopped raining in the afternoons. I've also been lazy about taking/uploading pictures, but as promised, I have some for this entry!

Okay, so I just realized that I completely forgot to tell about my experience going to the Big C, which is Thailand's version of Wal Mart. We took a giant van about 30 minutes to the Big C. It was only 40 baht each round trip ($1.50). It was nice to get out of the small town of Nai Harn and see how normal people in the area live and go shopping for their every day necessities as we would. We noticed many motorbikes on the road, many of which carried passengers with no helmets and entire families. This was shocking since our program leaders have told us how dangerous the bikes are because they are often not made well and can break down or explode at any time. Luckily, we were in a 15 person van and ruled the road, so we did not have to worry about any of the dangers a person on a motorbike faces.

We finally arrived at the Big C The Big C is not just one large Wal-Mart type store, but a complex that houses many different kiosks and stands, much like you would find inside a shopping mall. there are also restaurants such as KFC and a pizza place on the top floor. After spending an hour on the top floor buying groceries and cell phones, we made our way downstairs to the food court. we had to go down two levels of stalls filled to the brim of anything you could imagine. The Big C is certainly the definition of a "one stop shop."

A couple of days ago we had our practice teaching sessions. We were put into pairs and made a lesson plan for a class. I was given the topic of weather for young learners, which are 4-9 year olds. My group did a good job. The only thing we were not prepared for was that if we did not fill up the entire 25 allotted minutes, then we had to make up activities to entertain our "kids" until "class" was over. Though it was good practice, I feel as though a real class would have taken longer since the kids would not know the language. It is really tedious and annoying to not only teach people who know what a sun is, but to be the practice students, especially with such rudimentary language. One of my friends described the entire experience perfectly: it feels like we are all drones in a cult because of how many times we have to repeat words such as "red" in unison.

Yesterday was the first day of our two day Thai cultural class. Yesterday started out with a Thai language lesson. Thai is a tonal language, which means that the tone of the way you say a word changes the meaning of it. There are many different words, but a word can look the same to us when you write it down on paper, but depending on the tone, the words changes. We began the lesson by learning the 5 different tones that comprise the language, and then went on to learning words.I kind of gave up trying to learn the language when I found out that the only thing separating the phrases"I have a chicken" and "I am sick" are a different tone on the last word. I think my Thai will never exceed "hello" "thank you" and numbers.

The class also included a lesson on Thai manners. We began by learning three different bows used to address people. The most pronounced bow is for a monk. There are two others, one for addressing a boss, and another for addressing a collegue, which we will use to greet people while working in the school. The profession of a teacher is considered a high status in Thailand. Students will call us "anjan," which is even more respectful than the usual "Phi" used to respectfully address someone older.

Today marks the first week I have been in Thailand! It has been such a whirlwind and so exciting. Highlights include the incredible food (last night I had chicken curry with pineapple, which has been my favorite dish thus far), taking the teaching course, and meeting 27 new people. Since we have class on Saturday this week, we have Tomorrow and Monday off. There are 16 of us that are going to take the ferry to the island of Ko Phi Phi tomorrow morning and attend a full moon party that is being held there. I am excited to see another part of Thailand and to travel with such a great group of people. The only complaint I have thus far is that I am still not entirely sure where I will be teaching. There are 5 of us in a different placement program from everyone else, which will wait until we do our practice teaching in schools the third week of class to see which age group we teach best and which school we would do the best in. We know that we will all be fairly close to each other (1 hr away max) and that we are also about 30 min to 1.5 hours outside of Bangkok. Though this is a much better way of placing teachers in my opinion, I am frustrated knowing that everyone else in our program knows where and who they will be teaching, while me and some of my friends are left in the dark. Luckily, I am friends with everyone in this situation so I know I will be close to them. We will also be in a school with other English speaking teachers, so no matter what, none of us are alone, which gives me some ease of mind. As they taught us today in class, Thais just go with the flow. So I'm practicing being a Thai by being patient, going with the flow, and knowing that in the end everything will work out.

Buddhist temple near my hotel

Nai Harn Beach! Taken in front of the restaurant we eat at every day

The kittens that live outside my hotel room

The lake I run around

I Live in Thailand

Yesterday afternoon as I was sitting on the beach with a bunch of people from my program, it finally it me: I'm in Thailand. Between the months of me mentally preparing myself, the 30 hour trip to get here, and the whirlwind of staying in multiple hotels and meeting 30 people in the span of 3 days allowed me to glaze over the fact of where I am. The lush, tropical surroundings reminded me of Costa Rica and Mexico, and being surrounded by tourists and not needing to speak Thai has given these whole few days the feel of a vacation. But as classes progress and I become more familiar with my peers, it is clear that I am going to be teaching Thai children English in about a month. Reality has still not completely set in, as I still don't know where my assignment will be, and I will be confined to the most tourist-ridden areas of Thailand for the next 3 weeks, but is beginning to hit me.
After class yesterday, most of the people from my program congregated on the beach and hung out. A few of us went swimming, and all of us talked with people that we had yet to meet. Afterwards, about half of us went to a better-than-expected Thai Mexican dinner and then met the rest of the group at a bar next door called The Reggae Bar. It's a half outdoor bar that is surrounded by the tropical flora that inhabit the island we are staying on. The bartender had met some of the people from my program earlier and loved to have 30 people (there were only about 34 people in the entire bar) populating his establishment. We all had a great time and it was good to get to know just about everyone on the program. Group participation was encouraged by Bobby, the bartender, and I found myself playing the maracas and tambourine alongside the other people in my group while listening to Bob Marley and Nirvana.

Classes are kind of boring but will be extremely helpful in a real-class setting. It's a lot of repetition and our teachers teach us how to teach by demonstrating lessons for ESL students. This involves us repeating vocabulary words such as "monster" and "spider." It gets old fast, but helps us visualize what a class will be like. Tomorrow we do a peer teach, which means that we made up our own lesson plans for a certain age group and will lead a class to our peers. I am teaching vocabulary words involving the weather for young learners, which is 5-8 year olds. We follow a formula that was taught to us in class, but we have to make up our own games and worksheets that will help the students learn the vocabulary and use the words in different sentences.
Though being in class is not all too exciting, it is not too much of a bummer to be inside since it is still the rainy season here. The past few days it has rained off and on, and yesterday it did not rain at all even though it was overcast all day. Today there was a torrential downpour almost all day . At one point it was raining so hard you could barely see 100 ft in front of you and the wind was blowing extremely hard. It was a true monsoon.
The area we are staying in is extremely beautiful, but is expensive for Thailand. We have quickly acclimated to the low prices here and complain when we go to a restaurant that charges 200 baht ($6) for a main course. Tonight, my delicious dinner of chicken curry with potatoes and a beer cost about $4. I am not complaining about the prices, and am optimistic as to how inexpensive the rest of my stay in Thailand will be if this is the most expensive area (even Bangkok is supposed to be less expensive).

These past few days have been exciting for me, but not too exciting to write about. This weekend we are planning on going to Kho Phi Phi, which is an island fairly nearby to us. Unfortunately, we don't get our weekend until Sunday and then have Monday off as well. After our day of practice teaching tomorrow we have two days of Thai culture class. So far, all I have learned to say in Thai is hello (sawadee) and thank you (cop cu). If you are a woman you say "kaa" at the end of a sentence to make it polite and "krap" (though you only pronounce it kap) for men.

Okay, that's my Thai lesson and my life the past few days! Sorry for the lack of pictures, I'll start to take more.

New home!

Hello everyone! I have finally arrived in the town that I will be taking my TESOL course and began training today! The course has been offering us some really helpful lesson planning and activity ideas. There is a lot of repetition that gets a bit annoying, but overall the instruction is interactive and interesting. I am still getting to know all the people on my program, all of whom I like a lot. Today was not very exciting, but yesterday was a lot more interesting and filled with new people and places:

I checked out of my hotel in Nai Yaing and got a taxi to the accommodation ATI set up for me and the other teachers. The drive was over an hour long and took me around the Phuket region on what i assumed to be a major road (it was only 2 or 3 lanes and had sporadic traffic lights). At first, I was intrigued and confused as to how a small town could suddenly appear from what was just moments before blank highway and how stores and car dealerships existed in what seemed to me to be the middle of nowhere. I suddenly realized that this is what route 1 must look like to a foreigner: random shops, restaurants, and civilization broken up between random stretches of highways and exits. The colors of the buildings were beautiful, usually blues or yellows. Occasionally w would see large pictures of the King framed in ornate gold. We passed a few ornate golden temples with menacing dragons protruding out and colorful, gated schools.At one point we passed a sign that said "Big Buddha." I looked down the road it pointed to. After seeing nothing and drawing my eyes away, I saw a giant white stone Buddha on top of a hill. It must have been at least 3 stories high. I tried to look up something about it in my guide book, but only found a Big Buddha on Kho Samui, which is an island farther north. There must be many of these large Buddhas, though I was very excited to spot the first Buddha I have seen since being in Thailand.

After arriving to the town my hotel is in, I attempted to explore, though there is not much to explore. It consists mostly of restaurants that turn into beer (prostitute) bars at night and a couple of overpriced convenience stores and beach ware shops.the town is situated around a cove that has a beautiful, CLEAN, white sand beach. We are able to see a couple of islands just offshore. After exploring the town I had my first Thai Phad Thai and then checked into my hotel.

On my way to my room, a man approached me and asked if I was part of the ATI course as well. I told him I was and he told me to meet him and a few of the other teachers-to-be on the beach. After arriving on the beach and talking to the other teachers for a bit, some men playing baci ball approached us and asked if we were doing ATI. They told us that they had done it a couple of years ago and were still teaching English in Phuket because they loved it so much.

Later, almost all 30 of the ATI teachers went to dinner together and then drinks afterward. Everyone seems extremely down-to-earth and people that I would enjoy spending a lot of time with. Most people came alone, but a few came in pairs. One couple is married.  A few people on the program had jobs and then decided to leave them because they just weren't happy. It makes me feel so much better that I am doing this now and seeing the world before settling down in a job.

Here's a picture of the ocean and islands from near my hotel in Nai Harn/new home!

I'm in Thailand!

I finally made it to Thailand. After 24 hours of flying and over 30 hours in airports, I made it safely to the Land of Smiles. With only a bit of confusion among my three flights and Thai customs, I was officially allowed onto Thai soil. Unfortunately, on my plane to Phuket I realized that I had planned a hotel for the next night, but not the night I arrived (my flight landed at 2 AM, embarrassing admission that I did not think this entirely through). I asked the people at currency exchange where a pay phone was to make a local call, and instead the woman behind the counter called my hotel, told me they would not give me the same rate as expedia, and arranged for a hotel in my price range. The hotel she found for me was a "bungalow" just down the road from the airport and was a small cottage that consisted of two rooms: the bedroom and tbehind a steel door the toilet, sink and a showerhead.
As soon as I stepped out of my bungalow at 12:30, the man thatso kindly let me in at 3 AM the night before greeted my and told me that a taxi to my next hotel would be 100 baht (about $3). He then escorted me to his car, put in my bags, and drove me the 5 minutes to my next hotel, which is much more conventional to American standards. The hotel is a bunch of rooms (obviously) that are laid out ranch-style. My room is the farthest one, and I got to see quite some sites as I walked to my room including tortises having sex.
It is the end of the "rainy season" here in Thailand, otherwise known as monsoon season. It had already rained twice today, and not too hard, so I thought it harmless to begin my walk to the hotel lobby to find some lunch when it was slightly raining. As soon as I left my room it began to rain heavier and heavier, and about halfway to the lobby(about a minute) it was a terrential downpour. I found some shelter under a tree and watched the downpour for two minutes when it then began to stop. I made it to the hotel's restaurant and had my first delicious Thai meal of seafood while listening to the rain taper off, just in time for the end of my meal and my walk on the beach.
The town is small and mostly consists of restaurants, but the people are extremely friendly. The beach is full of trash, hopefully because of its proximity to the airport. Tomorrow I go to the hotel in which I will be staying at for 3 weeks during my TESOL training and get to meet the other participants in my program!

Up, Up, and Away

For months people have been asking me what my plans are post-college and the answer has always been, "I'll be teaching English in Thailand for 6 months beginning in September." This answer has become so monotonous that it is unbelievable that the countdown has quickly gone from months to a mere 30 hours, after which I will be arriving in Thailand to begin my training to teach English to foreign speakers.
As of now, it feels as if I am going into the unknown: I have never been to Southeast Asia, let alone the continent of Asia; I have had minimal contact with the Thai culture; I know no one; I don't even know where I will be living after my 3-week training in Phuket.
I am unbelievably nervous and anxious, but at the same time optimistic and ecstatic for the adventure that lies ahead. However, before conquering the unknown, I must brave 24 hours of flying between Boston, San Francisco, Beijing, and Phuket.
I'll write again once I've arrived in the Land of Smiles at my beachside resort (and found an internet connection).
See you all on the other side!