Mae Sot and Hanging around Tak

12/23/15 3:00 PM

As I begin to write this I think about how half of my time teaching is already up. It is a good time to reflect on the past few months and to look ahead. Since arriving in Thailand I have travelled all over, met great people, began to learn to live in a new culture and learned what it takes to teach students here. Thailand is like no other place in the world. The people here are unbelievably friendly, understanding and happy. What this country can sometimes lack in terms of being productive it more than makes up for in happiness. Students here can’t fail a grade. While there are some obvious flaws to this system it does make for much more carefree children than at home. Kids do not live with nearly the same stress level that they do at home. It is very different than the schooling I was brought up in. It asks the question is it more important for children to be happy and stress free or for them to be learning as much as they can. Like most things in life it is about balancing those two sides, but it has been interesting to see a culture so far on one end of the spectrum.

Tomorrow Molly and I will leave for the Christmas trip that we have been planning. We will head south to Bangkok for a few days before heading further south to the beaches of Koh Samet and Rayong. I am so excited to finally make it to the beach, and to spend my first Christmas with Molly. While we will miss our families at home, we have big plans for our first Christmas together. Getting a western meal in Bangkok, seeing the Grand Palace, and watching the new Star Wars movie are all on the Christmas day itinerary. We will be attending a small church service here in Tak tonight with some other teachers from our school. 

The last few weekends I have spent in Tak and the neighboring city Mae Sot. Three weekends ago I headed to Mae Sot to visit with my friend Sean and meet up with two other teachers, Luke and Kristin, and to see some of the sights around the City. Mae Sot is directly on the border of Myanmar, and is a much more culturally diverse place than Tak. Many NGO workers live there to work with Burmese refugees; I was able to meet some awesome people from Germany, South Africa, and the U.K. The proximity to Myanmar leads to a large Burmese influence over the city. I was able to walk near the border, visit a Burmese market, and eat Burmese food while I was there. I even learned to cook some Burmese food as the four of us took a cooking class and learned to make a few dishes including an amazing tomato salad and pumpkin curry. The class even came with a cook book so I’ll be able to make Burmese food for some of you once I make it back home. Mae Sot is close enough to visit any weekend and I look forward to heading back there sometime soon. 

The delicious meal we made!

The last two weekends I have spent relaxing in Tak. It has been great to explore my local surroundings a bit more. A few weeks ago the teachers at the other school, Meghan, Sarah, and Paige found a nearby coffee shop called the Coffee Farm. It has awesome grilled cheese sandwiches, breakfast food, and an awesome atmosphere. Molly and I got brunch there last weekend; the food was amazing and they even had some Christmas decorations set up. Two weekends ago we took the motorbike to the neighboring province to see Bhumibol Dam. It is the largest dam in all of Asia and the scenery on the ride there was beautiful. We found a small temple near the entrance to the park that the dam is in. We made the treacherous climb up and enjoyed the view. Getting down the hill was harder for some of us than others… Other than that the last two weekends have been spent enjoying great company, eating delicious food, and relaxing at home.

Bhumibol Dam trip:

Life Around Tak:

Hanging with "our" dogs

Finally found a good beer in Tak!

Dim Sum for 6 people

Coffee Farm Christmas

There is a lot I am really looking forward to on this trip. My family will be coming in mid-January to visit and see where I have been living. It will be tons of fun to show them around. We have also began to plan our travels after we are done teaching. We will be heading south in Thailand, exploring other southeastern Asian countries, visiting family in India, seeing friends in Europe and more. The farther I get into my trip the more thankful I am that I took a year off from school to do this. As cliché as it sounds living in a new culture really does make you look at your life at home through a new perspective. You appreciate aspects of life at home that you didn’t even notice before; you come to see drawbacks that you would have never thought about. I also know that I will come home much more grown up than when I left. I have never spent so much time far away from home. Being away and in such a new setting is helping me to learn more about myself and to teach me about life in a much different way than the academic setting that I am accustomed to would. It has been so great to share this experience with Molly. Having someone who understands me so well to do this with has been a blessing. I have really enjoyed getting to spend so much time with her. I can’t wait to experience all of our upcoming adventures together.

Lastly I wanted to say thank you to everyone who reads these posts back home. It is nice to feel connected to you all even in a small way. It’s funny how small things will remind me of someone or a fun time back home. I seldom feel homesick, but I do think of you all often, and will have lots of fun stories to share when I get back home! Merry Christmas and Happy New year!

Loy Krathong and Thanksgiving

Tuesday, December 1st 5:30 PM

Three weekends ago I went on a hike with the other foreign teachers in Tak and a few visitors through Lang San, a nearby national park, to a small waterfall in the deepest part of the park. As I hiked I was struck by how a year before I would never have imagined that I would be spending Saturday afternoons journeying through Thai jungles in search of the perfect waterfall to swim under. I would never have guessed that I would be in charge of a thousand students in a foreign country who do not speak the same language as me. Even just a few months ago I had only a faint idea of what to expect out of this program and this experience. I am so glad I made the decision to put everything at home on hold for a time and go on this adventure. Already I have seen so much and met so many amazing people. We had a blast at Pa Tay waterfall that day. The long, hot hike ended with a dip in the water below the waterfall. It was refreshing and a perfect way to get in touch with nature after being in Tak for the past couple weekends.

Molly, Sarah and Meghan enjoying the waterfall

Cooling off

Two weekends ago we headed to Chiang Mai to meet up with some friends from orientation and see some of the Loy Krathong festivities. Unfortunately, the lantern festival we planned on attending was cancelled due to concerns from the airport about lanterns impeding air traffic. We decided to do some exploring around the city instead, and because of the planned festival we had a ton of friends in town to hang out with! When we first arrived the teachers from Tak met up with a few others at the Beer Terminal, a bar with an impressive beer selection, especially for Thailand which features only a few standard domestics in most places. I was able to enjoy a Rogue Mocha Porter and a Trappist beer that everyone raved about.

 Really tasty beer!

Molly, Melanie and I met up with Carolyn, a friend from orientation who is teaching just outside of the city, the following day. We wanted to see some of the fun places in Chiang Mai that we didn’t have time to visit during orientation. The first place we visited was the 3D art museum. The museum features many paintings/scenes that when viewed from the correct place appear 3 dimensional. 

Later that day we headed to the Chiang Mai Zoo. It was sprawling and featured a lot of opportunities to feed different animals. The regulations in America would never allow people to get so close. I was about six inches away from a gaping hippo’s mouth and got to feed a jaguar some raw meat. If you know me well you know that I was inordinately excited about this.

All week we had planned on getting Mexican food for a meal at some point as cheese is not featured in Thai cooking (and we miss it...a lot). We decided on Salsa Kitchen earlier in the day and planned on meeting a few friends there. I had no idea how many people would eventually end up getting Mexican food with us. It started out with the four of us meeting up with the other Tak teachers and a few friends from outside of Lampang and Mae Sot. We thought we would have no more than ten people. Fast forward an hour and almost 60 Americans, mostly from our orientation, ended up at the restaurant. It was a complete takeover and so fun to see so many familiar faces. I find it so interesting that just by word of mouth we all ended up there.

The next day we ventured outside of the city to go zip lining in the jungle. We spent around three hours whizzing from treetop to treetop, traversing treacherous bridges and even jumping through a few free falls. It was a beautiful and exciting way to enjoy the Thai landscape and a perfect end to the weekend. 

We had an amazing time in Chiang Mai but we were a little bummed about missing out on Loy Krathong activities. Luckily for us Loy Krathong in Tak is a huge event, and we got an opportunity to set lanterns off by the river that is just down the street. Tak is a small place in Thailand that usually does not get many visitors. Loy Krathong is the city’s biggest draw and it was so fun seeing it lit up and busy. The festival is traditionally meant to pay your respects to the river and all that it allows you to do by floating a lantern down it or releasing one into the air. When you release the lantern you are supposed to make a wish for the following year. We all got to release lanterns by air and by river.

Nadia, Clay (two other teachers at our school) and I
having fun with our Krathongs

Molly and I also got to spend our first Thanksgiving together this year. We purchased a small motorbike the day of and then had a traditional western Thanksgiving dinner with the current foreign teachers and teachers at Takpitt from years past. It was complete with Turkey, stuffing, rolls (bread isn’t that common here), gravy, cranberry sauce, and last but not least, mashed potatoes. 

Yum!

The meal was delicious, I thought I would miss out on a Thanksgiving meal here and I didn’t. I got to enjoy one with lots of new friends who are all wonderful people. The one drawback was that I burned my hand that night. My hand feels a lot better now but the first night was pretty excruciating. A more pleasant surprise for the holiday was that I found a cheap motorbike to purchase through another teacher at school. It is so fun getting around town on it and it gives us a lot leeway to explore the surrounding areas. All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving. I missed my family but I am happy that I got to spend the day with Molly and our new friends. Hopefully it is the first of many happy Thanksgivings together for us.

Our new bike!

This weekend we wanted to go somewhere where we could easily meet up with a lot of friends so we settled on Lampang. We spent the first night there eating pizza and talking together. Later we found a bar that was willing to stay open a bit later for us. Sean, Willie, Joel and I befriended one of the Thai men who helped run the bar. His name was Wassan and he shared some of his whisky with us while we all tried to communicate with his broken English and our far more broken Thai. The friendliness of Thai people never ceases to amaze me. The two guys running the bar were about to close up when a group of foreigners walked by, and they kept the whole place open for just us. The next day we visited a cave outside of the city and travelled to a dam where we all enjoyed a pontoon style boat ride around the reservoir. That night we went out to a burger place and hung out at a nearby bar before I went back to the hotel to try and watch the OSU Michigan game before going to sleep. Unfortunately, the wifi was not working so I did not get a chance to watch. No surprise that the Buckeyes once again trounced that inferior team from up north. I’m hoping for some chaos to help us climb back into the top four, crazier things have happened.

The light shining down on Melanie
in the cave

Everyone relaxing on our boat ride

Being that this was Thanksgiving week/weekend I have been thinking a lot about just how much I have to be thankful for. I’m so thankful that I had the opportunity to go on this adventure, and that Molly could join me for it. It has been such a pleasure travelling around the country, living and working with her. I’m thankful for my friends and family at home who I do miss dearly out here. It will be so fun catching up when I get back to the states. I’m thankful for all of the incredible people I have met through this program; it has been so fun getting to know so many new friends.

Here are some blogs and videos made by some of my new friends that you should check out:

Video from Willie

Hannah Charney - hannahcharney.com

Sean Peters - Teachings from Thailand

Hilary Powers - Adventures of Hilary Jane 

Paige Roberts - Turningthepaigesite