Arriving in Thailand [Part 2]

When I eventually got into my hotel room - body aching, sweat lashing, head buzzing – I collapsed onto the bed like a tree falling in a storm. Jenny, Vas and I had arranged to meet up again in about an hour to explore the local conveniences. The hotel would be serving dinner at around 7pm so the plan was to attempt to stay awake, have a proper meal, then watch a movie before going to bed at a reasonable time to try and beat the inevitable jetlag.

Dinner was a buffet of various rice, noodles, meats and vegetables in spicy, sweet, sour, sticky, and indiscernible sauces. Timidly, we poked around the vats of steaming cuisine, trying to discern which concoction would upset our stomachs the most and therefore avoid. Vas, being vegetarian, had the chef make up some tasty looking vegetable fried rice at the amazing cost of 30baht (around 85p – a sure sign of just how cheap things can be here in Thailand).

Not entirely satisfied with dinner, we set off for the Seven-Eleven around the corner to pick up snacks and anything else recognisably western for the movie, which was to be Disney’s Bolt (the one about the superhero pooch voiced by John Travolta). Needless to say we all fell asleep at some point or another throughout it and we eventually decided to call it a night at around 9pm.

The following week is a bit of a blur to remember now, as more new interns started arriving (inc. my awesome roommate for the week Craig - who’s also from Scotland) and the orientation schedule began; combined with the nightly drinking sessions around the hotel pool or visiting the notorious Koh San Road. All that I do remember is meeting wonderful, excited, like-minded people with varying stories of how and why they ended up in Thailand; that and just how farcical orientation week would end up being.

Lecture after lecture of the same stuff we’d been cramming into our heads for the past few months (or weeks depending on when you signed up), and then suddenly a huge chunk of information that came as both a shock and a surprise because it’s the kind of news we definitely should have been given before we even left the UK!

(Susie goes into more detail about what went on during orientation so please go and check out her blog. Although it’s safe to say there were more than a few unhappy interns around the hotel that week.)

FAST FORWARD ONE WEEK >>>

After all of the ups-and-downs, miscommunication, and misinformation of Orientation Week* I was finally relieved and excited to receive my Information Pack on Wednesday telling me that I would be teaching Kindergarten/Primary school students in a province called Lampang, in the north of Thailand (about 150km from Chiang Mai – the second largest city in Thailand behind Bangkok). As Primary is the level I am most interested in teaching I felt like I was more than happy to make the 10hour drive in the back of a mini van with virtually no information about my placement, my apartment, the local facilities, the size of the school, the number of English speaking teachers, and no other Intern to keep me company. Luckily I wasn’t going to be alone in my travels; fellow Interns Neel (who’d been placed at a University about an hour and a half to the East) and Angela (teaching Kindergarten/Primary roughly two hours to the South) were also coming along for the ride. The only crucial bit of information we did know was that all of us would be the only Intern teachers in our entire province, whereas some others would not only be situated in groups of 3/4 but they’d be making a short hop-skip-and-a-jump South from Bangkok to one of Thailand’s glorious beach settlements. When did I pull the short straw, I’d love to know?

Anyways, we all rushed back to our rooms and started to pack our suitcases again ready to leave Bangkok after AYC’s “closing ceremony” the next morning. If I thought it was a struggle getting the case closed back in Scotland with the help of my mum and dad, you should have seen me this time.

TO BE CONTINUED…

As always, if you have any questions about the AYC Internship here in Thailand, or simply about TEFL in general, please leave me a comment below. I'm more than happy to help!

*I was going to go into it all in detail, but I’ve decided to put it behind me and make the most of what I’ve got. If, however, you’d like to ask me any questions please feel free to send me a note.

• AYC
• internship
• October
• 2010
• teaching
• TEFL
• ESL
• Thailand
• Lampang
• Thai