Departure

Hi everyone, and welcome to my blog, A Thailand Adventure! For those of you that didn’t already know I will be spending the next six months teaching in Thailand. I plan on using this blog to document my activities in Thailand, and my travels after the teaching experience is over. I plan on posting at least once a week and hope to include lots of good pictures, stories, and tips for other people considering a trip or teach abroad in Thailand. I also hope to keep a list in the “places visited” page of different activities and excursions I go on throughout my trip. Finally, I would love to hear from some of you on here. If you have questions or any thoughts, please use the comments section on my posts. 

In this first post I want to cover my motivations for going on this trip, the information about my placement that I already have and how I plan on getting to Thailand. Travel has always been something that I have had a passion for. My first transcontinental trip came when I was only 18 months old: I traveled with my mom and dad to Mumbai, India to visit many family members on my dad’s side. Despite my only memory of that trip being one of me playing with my grandpa’s red telephone, the multicultural nature of my family impressed the notion of travel as a fun and rewarding experience upon me at an early age. Since then I have visited almost a dozen countries and have found every trip to be more than worthwhile. However, I have never had a chance to be truly immersed in another culture for an extended period of time. When I entered college I set a goal of earning my biomedical engineering degree and getting all of my medical school prerequisites completed in four years. This left no time for any sort of study abroad experience. After getting into medical school at OSU, I hoped to find a situation that would allow me to travel and still have some income to pay for all of my activities for one year. Also, whatever I chose to do would have to be worthwhile in the eyes of the OSU college of medicine as I would need to ask for a one year deferral. My original plan stemmed from using connections I had made during my summer internships at a company called Athersys to find a position abroad. Athersys had a sister company in Brussels, Belgium that I wanted to work for. I figured doing research in Europe would be a perfect way satisfy all my aforementioned criteria. In the end the sister company did not have much need for another researcher and I wasn’t able to secure a position there. When I told my girlfriend, Molly Koenig, that my plan to live in Belgium was not going to work out, she told me that she had found another program through an organization called CIEE. This program would allow us to apply to be placed in the same region and travel together to teach in another country. She had always wanted to go to Thailand, and I thought it was a perfect place to go. The culture is very friendly and the cost of living is low enough to make the salary given to foreign teachers more than enough to live on. We both applied and were accepted into the program. After my acceptance, Ohio State granted my request for deferred matriculation, and we began our long wait to hear about where we would be teaching. 

In late August, after completing our applications in May, we were notified that we would be teaching at Takpittayakhom School in the city of Tak, Thailand. Tak is the capital city of the region Tak on the western border with Myanmar (pictured above). It is about a 3 hour drive to Chiang Mai and a 5 hour drive to Bangkok. Tak is somewhat rural and has lots of waterfalls, mountains, and forests to explore. Although it is a bit quieter than I would have liked, I am excited to explore the local surroundings. I also plan on making many weekend trips all over Thailand. One surprise came with the news of our placement: I would be teaching Math rather than English, the subject most people in our program teach. More specifically, I will be teaching concepts ranging from coordinate geometry to quadratic functions to 7^th, 9^th, and 10^th graders. The school has a little over 2,700 students and the average class size is around 50. I am excited to get started! I have spent the months since graduation seeing friends, making some more money to support my trip, and planning for Thailand. I managed to keep busy most of the time, I ran my first marathon and took the GMAT, as I plan to pursue an MD/MBA dual degree at OSU. However, the last few weeks have been pretty slow. Tomorrow is finally the beginning of my departure. 

 Our apartment building, about a 5 minute bike ride from the school

My journey to Thailand will begin with my parents driving me to Cincinnati to meet up with Molly and her family. From there Molly and I will take a Megabus to Chicago and stay with Molly’s sister Megan until Monday morning. Flying out of Chicago was much cheaper than other airports in the Midwest, and Monday happened to be the cheapest of the days we could depart. We ended up getting a one-way ticket for just under $600. We will fly from Chicago to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Taipei, and then from Taipei to Bangkok. The journey will begin the morning of Monday, October 12^th and we will get to Bangkok in the early hours of Wednesday the 14^th. We will then spend the day and night in Bangkok. On Thursday the 15^th we will fly to Chiang Mai where our orientation will take place. After that we will head to Tak. 

 My backpack and duffel bag, all the luggage I am taking with me for the next 6-8 months

As I think about the beginning of this experience I am filled with excitement but also some apprehension. I have never been so far from home for so long. I’m sure it will be incredibly rewarding but there is no doubt I will miss my friends and family. There is also a fair amount of uncertainty in what I will actually need for the trip. I hope I am bringing the right stuff. More than anything I am ready to start acting on all of this planning, I can’t wait to see what everything will be like!