Pre-Departure & Orientation Week

October 19... One Day Before Departure: 

Why am I doing this again? 
By October 1, twenty days before my departure date, I couldn't stop this thought from entering my mind. And each time it did, it was accompanied by an even more panicked, urgent response: I really don't know.

About a month after I graduated in May, this had seemed like a wonderful idea. When other people asked me why I'd signed up to teach English in Thailand for 6 months, I knew exactly how to respond: "I want to travel, and I'm not ready for a 9-5 'desk' job. This seemed like the easiest and most convenient way. Plus, it seems like a great adventure. And why Thailand? I guess because when else will I ever get the chance to live in Asia?"
Which is a fine answer, except just because I might not ever have a chance to live in Afghanistan doesn't mean I want to. But something about Thailand appealed to me even before I knew anything about it. It sounded beautiful, nature-focused, spiritual, and inherently welcoming to foreigners. Plus, when I'd googled "Teach English Abroad," it was the first result. So, I guess there's that.

The last day before I left for Thailand, I wrote myself a letter. In essence, it said:
"Dear Caroline, you have no idea why you are doing this. You do not know why you are leaving your family and friends for a foreign country of which you know nothing about. You do not know why you are choosing loneliness and mosquito nets and bugs and humidity and strange toilets over everything that seems 'better' and more 'comfortable.' Truthfully, you do not need to know the answers. You just need to know that adventure excites you. You need to remember that you are not ready to be finished learning or exploring or discovering. You need to remember the fun you had studying abroad, and recognize that even if you stayed in the U.S. and found a nice little desk job in Boston, you'd probably still have moments where you thought to yourself, Why am I doing this again? Because it is natural to question and to want something different."
I ended my letter by saying, "Be mindful. Suspend judgment. Be patient with yourself when you're learning a new language. And remember this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert: 'When I get lonely these days, I think--so BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life.'"
This is much, much, much, easier said than done.  

October 30... One Week Post-Departure:

First off, to friends and family who might be wondering: I made it!
Orientation week was a blur, and a lot of this blur consisted of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and Thai Language classes, conversing with hundreds of strangers and becoming good friends with some, drinking coffee and eating mostly fruit/cake/rice (the only thing I trusted) every 20 minutes in the hotel cafeteria or in the hallways outside our classrooms, and taking field trips with OEG, our Orientation/Tour Guides. I'm going to try to just mention the highlights:

Saturday (Day 1 in Thailand):

- Drank straight from a coconut on the street for $1. To be honest, I thought it tasted the same as the coconut water you can buy in the grocery store back home, but other people were saying, "Oh, it's so much fresher!" so I pretended I agreed.
- Went to the Sky Bar (from Hangover 2). Had a delicious drink called "Red Velvet Cake"--sweet, cranberry-tasting, and $25 U.S. Dollars, which equivalents to roughly 6 Thai dinners. Despite the cost, the view made it worth it.

Sunday (Day 2... Orientation Begins):
- Went to this Thai village (like Plymouth plantation... a pretend-village with Thai actors pretending to be silk weavers, etc.) and saw dancing as well as a play. The play was amazing--the 'special effects' were absurd, including an actor on stage "diving" into a river on stage, which disappeared in the next scene--but I was struggling not to fall asleep because we've been so sleep-deprived.

Monday (Day 3):
- Went with some girls to Khao San Road--similar to Bourbon Street in New Orleans (touristy but worth seeing once).
- Did NOT eat a scorpion (for obvious reasons... I do not think I will regret it).
- Got a fish pedicure (Slightly do regret it... it was disgusting, like lizards crawling all over your feet).
- Got spaghetti for dinner because I am already sick of eating rice/chicken/fruit for every meal.
- Got coconut ice cream... they carve out a coconut, put some ice cream in it, and mix it together. Delicious!
- Took a Tuk Tuk home (so much fun... Google to see a picture, basically like riding a wagon home).

Tuesday (Day 4):
- Took a River Cruise which was fun (although there was no one to tell us what we were passing/the historical significance of anything, so really we just took the opportunity to drink from the bar and talk to our fellow Americans).
- Got a beer tower full of Chang beer (I don't care if it's special "Thailand beer," all beer pretty much tastes the same to me.)

Wednesday (Day 5):
- A couple friends and I tried to go see the Wat Po temple, which is in the same area as the Grand Palace, and accidentally stumbled through this security gate (like in an airport) and into the mourning area of the King. This one girl we were with kept hissing, "We need to get out of here, we're not wearing the right clothes, we're too loud, we're in too big of a group," until finally I said, "It's not like they're going to shoot us." She replied, "You never know who has a machine gun."(??) The mourning area had a lot of great free food though, including bread with thick layers of orange butter and sugar (these people were celebrating the King's selflessness by 'paying it forward' and offering up free food) so I wanted to stay, despite the apparent possibility of getting shot.
- After leaving the mourning area and entering the street right outside the Grand Palace, we were suddenly told by police (actually, everyone was speaking Thai, so really we were just peer pressured) to sit down and tuck our legs underneath us. One girl beside us spoke a little English, and she explained that the Prince was leaving the Palace, and every time the Prince/Royal family left or entered the palace, everyone near the Grand Palace was required to sit until he left/arrived, which takes upwards of a half hour, in complete silence. Coming from the U.S., this level of devotion and, honestly, wasted time is new to me, but regardless, I followed suit and sat for twenty minutes in silence until a black Volvo drove by us, at which point everyone resumed walking and driving and talking in the street.
- Visited Chinatown (probably like every Chinatown in any city) and then gave up trying to figure out where to go in Chinatown (way too overwhelming) and went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner (thank GOD no rice).


Thursday (Day 6):
- Went to Kanchanaburi for an overnight trip. Visited the River Kwai bridge (WWII significance... Google) and then took a river cruise (again) for dinner. The scenery was breathtaking--I have never seen mountains of that shape, or a sky of that color against the backdrop of dark green bushes, palm trees, and dilapidated shacks nestled on the side of this murky brown river we were gliding along.
- Stayed up late drinking and chatting with the people who I have spent the last 6 days with. We talked about how strange it would be to be moved to our villages, far away from Americans after spending 6 days in the middle of hundreds of them; although I was terrified to be uprooted away from these newfound friends, I was also excited to start teaching. I plan on visiting everyone I met during orientation who I became close with and we've started a group message.

Friday (Day 7):
- Met my coordinator (A big Thai man named Owen--41 years old, wears green clogs (?), and is the sweetest grown man I've ever met, giggles like a child and asks questions with wide eyes and is very, very good at English) and a woman named Ying who is my co-worker). I was incredibly nervous to meet them (I've never met an employer for the first time AFTER getting the job!) but they put me at ease right away and said immediately, "Okay, so, business later... first, want to go get food?"
- Owen and Ying took us to get Japanese food, cooked on a little grill right in front of us. We had boxes of beef, chicken, shrimp, squid, crab (essentially all meat/seafood), and placed them on the grill until they were done, and then each grabbed one with our chopsticks and ate it with some of our rice and soy sauce. SO good. Then we walked around the market area.


<-- My coordinator, Owen, a fellow American OEG teacher at my school, and another English teacher from Sakon Nakhon, Teacher Ying. 


Saturday (Day 8):
- Got up very early and went to see a temple in Bangkok that Ying knew about, and then a palace designed by King Rama V in 1907 (picture below), which is now a museum.
- Flew to Sakon Nakhon, my province for the next 6 months!!

I'll stop giving information on my whereabouts every second of every day now, and post again soon about my experiences beginning this new chapter in Sakon Nakhon.

Thanks for reading :)

^Thai dance at the village

 ^My hotel roommate and a friend who is living in my province with me on the river cruise! 

 ^Children praying at the Grand Palace

 ^Bridge to the River Kwai (pronounced Kwai like kway, not kwai like kwhy). 

 ^Buddha during starvation period before he became enlightened by realizing balance in life is necessary. 

 ^Monk apartments 

 ^Palace commissioned to be built by King Rama V. 

 ^My meals are often served in banana leaf "dishes"

 ^Where our coordinator took us when we arrived in Sakon Nakhon... Been open 20+ years; the smallest umbrella-ed shop with a tub behind it used to wash the dishes--but great Vietnamese food for less than $1.