Well I leave Thailand exactly a week from today. I will be headed back to Bangkok tomorrow night. I am leaving sooner than I originally planned but plans are made to be broken right? I have had a great time here in Thailand and still love this country,culture and people very much! It has not been all roses though. I have had some difficulties with the working visa and the major language barrier. So, making this move to Colombia (with a month long stop over at home) I feel is the right decision. I am excited for new opportunities and know that I can learn Spanish much easier than I have been able to pick up Thai.
Teaching in Thailand has been a great practical on the job experience for me though. I walked into this teaching thing with zero classroom experience and the only training I had was a 150 hour online course I took. Well my school here did not offer me any training at all. They just said "Teach" so everyday at first was a new experience for me! I am glad it worked out this way though. I had a good school with (mostly) good kids haha. Good co-workers and I had the freedom to teach as I pleased,whatever I felt like they needed to learn. You would NEVER find this style of teaching back in North America but it really works here. I learned what works for me and what does not. I am able to function on my own as a teacher now with little to no supervision. I am by no means saying I am the most experienced,qualified,best teacher in the world. I still have very much to learn but, I have a leg up on the process now I think and I look forward to my next teaching assignment in Bogota Colombia!
I really need to single out my house mate Noong. She has been so good to me over the past months that I have lived here. She has cooked for me and picked me up at the train station at all hours of the day and night. She has gotten me gifts just out of the kindness of her heart. She has put up with all my crap :P and been a friend to me. She has helped me get settled into life here and I will always be grateful. She likes to joke that she is the only mother I have got in Thailand and I guess in a way its true. She is not that much older than me really but she has very much played the motherly role and I guess I am like the son she never had lol. I won't forget her!She is an amazing cook (who had her own restaurant) and I have ALWAYS been well fed.
Just tonight in fact we had some very interesting meat that I have never had before. It looked exactly like raw backstrap from a deer and it tasted quite salty (Noong's friend brought it over) so I can only assume it was raw meat that was flash cooked or just salt cured. It was really good though and reminded me a lot of venison. I have been so lucky to live with a super nice lady who has a nice house right on the beach and has kept me well fed all these months with all this great food! Lucky for me she can cook both Thai food and Western food. I will miss her cooking almost as much as I miss my own mom's cooking.
You know when I last left Colombia 10 months ago (and ended my streak of 19 months of nonstop working/traveling) by going back to Texas, I had no desire to go home at all. None. I was not ready and was terrified of going home. Of how things would be like, how I would feel, how things and people will have changed. Too an extent my fears were justified. Some things had changed a whole lot and I just was not ready. Other things hadn't changed at all. The only reason I even came home is because I was dead broke and out of a job lol. Well after four months at home and a failed relationship with a girl who I thought would be something serious I knew it was time for a new change again. So off I went here to Thailand to teach!
Well the difference now is, I am going home on my own terms for a little break. I am not dead broke and I am excited to go home for a month. I know what to expect and not expect. I won't be hating life there because I will be happy to be with my family and friends again. A change in perspective makes a huge difference! Come April 26th I will be starting my new adventure in Colombia but I still have plenty of time to do everything I want with family and friends at home. I am looking forward to it!
Well I have a big to do list of things to get done in Bangkok before I leave so I may not write again until I am home but until next time let the journey roll on,Tyler
Safe Journey!
ReplyDeleteSorry I missed you in Thailand.
I'm headed to Montevideo for the week. Maybe I will catch up with you in SA
Dan