Author: Clara Bekeny

Writing often is quite honestly impossible, but I’m going to go right ahead and call that a good thing because it means I’ve been keeping busy! I’m loving my life in Thailand more than I had even hoped for and Trang has really become my home over the past month and a half. I figured I should just try and touch on some highlights and tidbits that I’ve failed to write full blown posts on over the past few weeks.

One of the first weekends in Trang, Baylee, Monroe and I went on an island hopping tour of the Trang islands with a wonderful group of Thai friends. We spent two nights on an island called Koh Ngai and we spent the days snorkeling, swimming, playing jenga and foosball when it inevitably rained, kayaking, and visiting different islands and caves. At night we exchanged English and Thai card games and had our fill of delicious Thai food. Instead of giving a more detailed post I’m going to go ahead and leave my video compilation here:

Another weekend away was spent in Penang, Malaysia – a country I definitely never imagined I would have had the chance to visit! Me, Baylee, and our co-worker Sean were joined by our friend Tyler from TESOL and his girlfriend Fah who live about 2 hours south of us in Hat Yai. It was great to see Tyler again and we had such a wonderful time catching up on everything since we’d last seen each other in Chiang Mai. We only spent a short time in Malaysia in a pretty touristy little section called George Town but we definitely covered a lot of ground. I felt a little bit of reverse culture shock seeing so many westerners when I rarely see them in Trang, and I felt myself awkwardly staring at people and being surprised when they spoke to me in perfect English. George Town is known for street art and there are a handful of beautiful murals all within walking distance of each other, so we spent a lot of time walking around to see them, taking our time in the little shops, and stuffing our faces with Malaysian food.

While the weekends away have been great, the weekends at home in Trang are just as great and very relaxing after long weeks of teaching. I always try and do something new nearby. Finally getting comfortable enough driving the motorbike has also given me a lot more freedom to explore the city I now call home. I’ve gone to a waterfall, a Trang FC soccer game, the botanical gardens in Trang, and even snuck into the pool of the nicest hotel in Trang a couple times. Trang has a daily market, a weekend market, and even a once a month market!

But of course, let’s not forget why I’m here: to teach! The majority of my time is actually spent in school despite what it may look like on social media. Teaching is hard work and totally exhausting, I’m usually eating dinner by 6 and asleep before 10 during the week – shout out to my mom,the former teacher, who I’ve been making fun of for years for going to sleep so early! But, as exhausting as it is, I am loving it! I hate waking up early but once I get off my motorbike, sign in at the office, and have had my coffee, I am entirely happy to be here. When I walk through the hallways my students are always yelling “Hello teachaaaa!!!!!” and I find my cheeks hurting from smiling so much.

This past week I’ve been testing my classes on everything I’ve taught up until now. The tests are entirely speaking and the students work in pairs with me, taking turns asking questions and giving answers. To get through all 45 or so students takes almost two full class periods, but has left some extra time at the end of the second class. With my P3s I’ve been playing 7 up, a game I loved in elementary school that they all know and love here as well. With my P5 classes I’ve spent the end of the second class having them draw and write comic strips in english. Thai children are INCREDIBLE artists, so they took to this assignment right away. Today after class, I had a couple of my students come by my office to show or give me the comics they’d been working on. One girl, Mai Kaew, after giving me her comic strip and leaving, returned to my office about 30 seconds later. After struggling for a couple minutes trying to communicate something to me, speaking in Thai that I obviously couldn’t understand, she finally said “I like you and I love english!”

It’s the moments like these that make every rat on the sidewalk, every squatty potty that smells like sewage, every mosquito bite, every jellyfish sting, every student that won’t STOP TALKING, and every craving for bagels, cheese, and tacos worth it.

I have been in Trang for almost three weeks now! When I first arrived, two men from my agency picked me up and then took me to look at accommodations. I looked at six different places and then ended up choosing an apartment in a complex called V House. V House is very centrally located, just across the street from the Trang football stadium. My room has air conditioning, a mini fridge, a closet, great wifi, two small porches, and even a door on the shower – something unheard of in Thailand! The bug situation isn’t bad at all (for now), some flies and ants but nothing crazy. I have a great view of the mountains out past the stadium and in the morning I can even see the sunrise over the mountains. Overall, I am very comfortable at V House, it can get a little noisy at night but I’m generally so tired from teaching that I pass out no problem.

Trang is in southern Thailand, about 4 hours south from Phuket. The great thing about living in Trang is that even though it is located near the beach, there are very few, if any, tourists. When I walk around the city, I never see any farang (foreigners) unless it’s another teacher I know. Because of this I often get a lot of stares and many people want to take my picture or take a selfie with me. I haven’t gotten sick of this quite yet, but I’m sure it will start to get old eventually. I have access to anything I could need living in the city, but it’s also very easy to escape the hustle and bustle of city life. About 45 minutes west of here is a pier and there are many beaches close by. A couple weekends ago I went island hopping on the Trang islands, but I’ll post another time on that trip – hopefully once I finish putting together all of my GoPro footage from that weekend! If you go east from Trang, there is a large national park and caves, waterfalls, hiking, and rock climbing. There is no shortage of things to do near here!

I have been working for almost three weeks now, but my students only just started on Monday. I’m teaching P3 and P5 at Buranarumluek School (Burana) in Trang, essentially 3rd and 5th graders. I have 5 classes of each level and then I am also teaching two elective classes, one for pratom (or elementary school aged), and one for matayom (high school aged). I have about 45 students per class, (25 in my elective classes), so in all I have about 500 students. I have to be at school from 7:30-4:30 every day, but I actually teach about 22 hours a week. Every Monday we wear yellow shirts for the king, and every Tuesday we wear pink shirts for the queen, but other than that the dress code is dark colored skirts past the knee, and light colored shirts that cover chest, shoulders, and armpits (preferably collared and button up).

I got really lucky with my placement. Not only is Trang a great city with a lot to do, but Burana is a great school. During TESOL our instructors basically told us to prepare for the worst: horrible organization, no schedules, and changes being sprung on us constantly. However, Burana is incredibly organized. We had two weeks to just lesson plan and we were given a schedule with our class periods as well as a curriculum to follow with textbooks and workbooks. The only downside of having a textbook is that it can get tricky trying to be creative or fun when you have to follow a specific module. We were also given an actual calendar of all the days we have off for the next school year – just as unheard of as having a door on your shower! There are 5 English teachers other than myself, and we share an office with the Chinese teachers at our school. Our school also has air conditioning in almost all of the classrooms, and free lunch. Not a bad setup at all.

I’m almost through my first full week and I’ve now met with all of my classes at least once. Having such large classes is definitely going to be the biggest challenge teaching here as it makes it much harder to give each student the proper attention that they need. It also makes it harder to think of fun games where everyone can be involved. I’m sure as time goes by, this will get easier as I get more accustomed to teaching such big classes. It’s also going to be impossible to learn all my students’ names, and it doesn’t help that not only do Burana students have a uniform, but everyone also has the same haircut – girls must have their hair cut very short (a little longer than a bowl cut), and boys must have their heads shaved around the sides.

There is definitely a large range in proficiency, both within each class and from class to class. For the most part, my P5s are way more proficient than my P3s. Going over rules and introductions I felt like I was talking to a wall at times in my P3 classrooms, but with the P5s I actually felt like they could understand the gist of what I was saying.

Some highlights from my first week:

• Students with ridiculous English names, including: Poo, Pee, A-nus, Beer, It, Yogurt, Ick, Queen, Sprite, and so many more. I have no idea how they get these nicknames but they make literally zero sense
• One adorable P3 boy named Oak with giant glasses gave me a sucking candy at the end of one class
• One P3 girl named An-Da came up to me after class to tell me “Teacha, beautiful!” while pointing at me (this got super awkward when she just stood there staring at me even after I thanked her)
• Standing outside my office at the end of school every day to wave goodbye to all of the students, particularly the kindergarten students who are LITERAL nuggets

Teaching is proving to be exhausting already, as expected, but I feel entirely confident at the front of the class. This week we were instructed to be as strict as possible because the rest of the semester will follow suit (if we go too easy on them now, they won’t take us seriously and will misbehave the rest of the year). Although I’m not a strict person at all with kids, I think I’ve done a pretty good job laying down the law this first week and hopefully that will help in the long run. I can already pick out which students are troublemakers, and which ones are most proficient in English. I’m looking forward to getting to know my classes and my students much better over time and hopefully I can actually teach them a thing or two in English!

I’ve been in Thailand for just about a month now, and I have finally moved to my placement in Trang City and found an apartment! But let me back up just a second real quick.

The past month in Chiang Mai has been the longest shortest time of my life. I feel like I’ve been here forever and I’ve known my TESOL friends forever, but at the same time the month of April flew by just as I was warned it would. Let me first say, I feel so fortunate for the group that I had the pleasure of taking my TESOL course with, as well as the wonderful XploreAsia staff that made transitioning into life in Thailand so welcoming and smooth. Having a group of only 22 people made it easy to become close quickly and develop significant relationships with every single person in my group. I’m already becoming homesick for Chiang Mai and missing my friends, but it’s good to know that I have people all over the country and I’m confident that we will all see each other again soon.

Without going into a crazy amount of detail, I want to try and briefly touch on some of the highlights of the past month:

Week one was orientation…if you haven’t already seen it, I posted a video compilation of a lot of what we did in just that week. We went to a rice plantation and planted rice, we took a muay thai lesson (Thai boxing), we got to visit Doi Suthep (a temple high up in the mountains of Chiang Mai), as well as a Tunnel Temple in Chiang Mai, and we took both Thai language and culture classes. The orientation activities began to ease us into realizing, yes we are actually in Thailand.

Our first weekend, and our only real full weekend (we had some class on the weekends because of our songkran break), about 11 of us decided to go up North to Chiang Rai for the weekend. My friend, Aida, had been to this place called the Bamboo Nest before and highly recommended we go, even handling all the booking which made it really easy. We took the bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai and then had a couple hours to walk around Chiang Rai city and check out the White Temple before getting picked up to go to the Bamboo Nest. The Bamboo Nest is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. It was up in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains. We had the place at capacity with the 11 of us and three other travelers that were there. There were 2 people to each small bamboo ‘nest’ – they were made entirely of bamboo, each with a balcony and a bamboo hammock. It was just peaceful and serene and unlike anywhere I’ve ever been in my life. We decided to go on a hike with Noi, the man that works at Bamboo Nest and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He spoke perfect English which he learned solely through speaking with guests over the years. Noi led us through the jungle and showed us how to cook rice, chicken, and eggs simply using bamboo. After our hike we took a boat to a small village and got to walk around and see their very minimal way of living. After everything we said our goodbyes and headed back to Chiang Mai.

Later that following week was Songkran. I also posted a video compilation in my last post from Songkran because I can’t even begin to explain in words how much fun this holiday is. We got two days off of class for Songkran, the Thai new year, which we spent on the streets of Chiang Mai engaging in water gun fights with every man, woman, and child we came in contact with. It was even more fun than it sounds.

In our second to last week, we had three days set aside where we got to actually teach! Because that is why I’m here, isn’t it! I got paired up with my friend Alex and we came up with a lesson plan on superheroes and a lesson plan on snacks. We went to two different schools, one very small school where we had a class of about 5 boys, and then one massive school where we had around 40 kids per class. It was crazy to finally get in the classroom, and although it definitely proved tough I think that everyone did a really great job. We got to spend some classes teaching, and others observing which was helpful because I’m definitely stealing great ideas from everyone else’s lessons! I entirely lost my voice, and then developed a cough which I still have two weeks later, but it got me even more excited for what’s to come once I start teaching.

The last major thing we got to do, which I planned literally week one, was to go to the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. Almost everyone in our group came, about 14 of us, and we got to feed, bathe, pet, and walk with rescued elephants at the park. This park in particular is really special in that they make their visitors aware of the maltreatment of elephants all over Thailand. People should not ride elephants, elephants are badly broken and beaten in order to use to make money and entertain tourists, as well as carry out manual labor. All of the elephants at the park are rescue elephants, some have missing ears, broken bones, holes in their ears from hooks, and many are blind. It was really horrible to see, but also amazing because the elephants at the park are free to roam wherever they like and are treated as they should be, with kindness and respect. They are such gentle and smart creatures and it was surreal getting to actually meet so many of them. The park also has many other rescue animals – dogs, cats, water buffalo, goats, etc. Everyone had an inspiring and incredible day and I highly recommend this particular place if anyone is in Thailand and wants to get a chance to really interact with elephants.

Finally, in our last week we had our exam and graduation (and a screening of the season premiere of Game of Thrones on our classroom projector – obviously equally important). I’m really excited about my placement, and I got incredibly lucky because my best friend Baylee got placed in the same school as me! I’ll give a full description of my placement city, my apartment, and my school in the next post!