It’s been over two months since I last posted about Bailey and I’s adventures in Thailand. For those of you wondering, yes, we are still here and we are still doing well. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what I would next write and when. While our days aren’t filled with tropical excursions and meetings with elephants anymore, we are still busy learning to navigate a life where we are the visitors. At the end of October, we moved to a small town called Fang in the north of Thailand, near the Myanmar border, where we began teaching English, first online, and then, finally, onsite.
It’s been a journey. Only two months into working in an ESL (English as a second language) classroom, we have already learned so much about ourselves, our students, and daily life in small-town Thailand.
In many ways, it’s been an incredibly difficult experience. There are language barriers and cultural differences that have been a challenge to work through and accept. While we taught online, we felt terribly isolated, unable to make real connections with our students and the other teachers we had yet to meet. Our living accommodations had abruptly down-sized in the move from Chiang Mai, and we still live without a kitchen (although for Christmas we were gifted a single-burner kettle-pot thing that we’re deeply excited to use for pasta –not noodles, pasta).
Since beginning to teach onsite, however, our outlook on our situation has begun to change for the better. We’ve been better able to make connections with both our students and our fellow teachers, which has, in turn, helped to make us feel like a greater part of our community. (Students calling your name in the grocery store and giving you hugs after school, really helps for some reason).
My mom always says you have to give anywhere new you live a year. It takes a year to really feel like a new house (or town or state) is your home, and I think when you move abroad it’s just as true. It takes time wherever you go to adjust. While we haven’t been in Thailand a year, we have had four months, (between Phuket, Chiang Mai, and Fang), and I think there are already many things that have become easier.
The Christmas season, for example, was a bit of a struggle at first. Neither of us had ever spent a Christmas away from our families, and when you’re used to white, snowy Christmases (or at least brown, rainy ones), it can be hard to get into the spirit in the Buddhist tropics where few people celebrate or decorate for the holiday. We bought a single strand of Christmas lights and hung them over our window, we listened to and sang Christmas carols as often as we could, but it still didn’t feel like Christmas without our families and friends and all the seasonal preparation that starts prior to Thanksgiving. (Our Thanksgiving was sponsored by KFC this year, which probably didn’t help our spirits.)
Christmas Eve was spent teaching at school, and in the evening we ordered pizza and watched The Holiday. (It’s one of my favorite holiday movies, and Bailey hadn’t seen it.) Christmas day, though, we’d been invited by our fellow foreign teachers to both a birthday party and their church’s Christmas party. Unsure of what to expect, but desperately needing to get out of our one-room apartment, we happily agreed to attend both.
Many of the foreign teachers we work with are from the Philippines. They are all extremely nice and welcoming, and my goodness, do they love to sing. For the birthday brunch, we took over an entire restaurant with homemade food, birthday songs, and an impromptu rehearsal for that night’s Christmas party, because, as their guests, they requested we sing with them instead of just attending as spectators. So we did.
After a dinner of spicy som tum, sour coconut-chicken soup over rice, sushi, and chicken skewers, we attended their Christmas service, which was followed by a Christmas-themed pageant put on by all of the Church members, from toddler to elder, at the end of which, our teacher group sang (and Bailey and I received our Christmas pasta-pot). Everything was in Thai, and we didn’t know what was happening for most of it, but it was fun to be welcomed into their community and feel a part of something on a day that means so much. We are still so grateful.
While there are some ideas and practices here that Bailey and I may never accept as our own, and that may keep us from staying longer, the time we spend here is a time of learning and of growth, teaching us what we value too deeply to compromise. I know our outlook will continue to change over the three months of this journey that remain, but I know that with it will come a deeper understanding of one another and of the incredible people we have met.
To our families and friends, wherever you may be, Happy New Year! We hope 2022 is filled with light and love for each of you.
–The Gordons
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