January in Thailand

The next year started with the three days that were left of the holidays. Directly after that, we had our midterm camp with VSA in Khon Kaen. The midterm camp started on the 3rd of January and lasted until the 7th. During this time, we talked about a lot of different things we experienced in our first half year on the project. How it’s like to be a volunteer and how we are doing on the project. We talked about the differences, in the culture that we witnessed and about things that are different here in school except in the schools in the country where I grew up.

We also explored Khon Kaen. We visited the Ton Tan Market, the market at the University of Khon Kaen. At the university, we visited a small shop that’s all about bees. They have a cafe with lots of honey and make cosmetics out of it. As well, we went to the most famous temple in Khon Kaen. We played some games and had an online meeting with another English teacher to get ideas and advice for teaching. We also talked online with a group of university students to have a conversation with them in English. Overall, it was a fun and interesting week.

Back in school, I got back to teaching as usual. We had lots of new topics. The older students had a test about all the topics we learned this past school year.

On the 13th of January, we had activities because it was Children’s Day. The children performed dances and got presents from all the teachers in school. Later, one teacher and us volunteers helped scoop ice cream for all the students in school; it was really fun but also some work. After lunch, the students had a party with music and dancing. A few days later, it was teacher’s day, and some teachers from other schools were here, and they had some events.

On the 19th of January, the school had a field trip. The little students did go to some places around Khon Kaen. The students from middleschool visited Nong Khai, and the high school students went all the way to Ayutthaya. Me and some other volunteers joined the high school students.

Visiting Ayutthaya was really amazing; the old temples are really beautiful and look historic. At one temple, you could take some stairs up and walk around the temple. We also saw a lot of little markets and had some Thai food there. It was also ordinary compared to our usual days because we were not the only foreigners there.

Overall, the school trip was really fascinating. I also find it interesting to see how different the school trips are here in Thailand in comparison to the ones I went on in Germany.

Janne, volunteer in VSAMLTV2301-6 Intercultural and Language (ICL) - Khon Kaen August 2024 - August 2025