My stay in Thailand- an emotional rollercoaster:

The first 4 months in Thailand are already over and therefore I want to give an impression of my experience so far. 

On the 28th of August I and the other volunteers started our journey by taking our flight to Chiang Rai. The flight felt quite normal and I hadn’t realised yet, that my adventure which I had been looking forward to for such a long time really had started. 

When we stepped out of the plane there was a giant heat wave directly welcoming us to the climate in Thailand. Luckily I adapted to it really fast. After that some teachers picked us up and we started our orientation camp in the RPK 24 school close to Phayao. 

What was harder to adapt to than the weather was the spice food, which I still couldn’t get used to completely.  After our orientation week, I and another volunteer went to our future project: The Ban Prao Num school in Mae Cham, close to Chiang Mai. 

In the first weeks, I started to quickly build a connection to the students and gained lots of experience in teaching. Sadly I didn’t feel all too well in my new project and couldn’t adapt so I changed to the RPK 24 school where I‘ve been before for the orientation week. 

At the beginning of October the school vacations for about 5 weeks started, which me and the other volunteers used to explore Thailand. We went to Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Koh Samui, Koh Tao, Krabi and Koh Lanta and had the best time. I fell in love with Thailand as a country and all the variety it has to offer. 

Time passed way to quickly and suddenly it was time to teach again, but this time at my new school. I’ve got used to my new lifestyle as an English teacher really fast. Even though there wasn’t too much to do at first because the new semester just started and teachers as well as students had lots organisation work to do it was just nice to be a part of it all. 

A typical day from there on looked for me as follows: Every day starts at 08:00 o’clock with the morning assembly. Therefore all students and teachers come together to sing the national hymn and make announcements for the day. Then I usually have 2-4 lessons per day. Sometimes lessons can be really boring, because Thai teachers have to explain something in Thai and I feel useless, some lessons are filled with lots of energy and fun activities where I am supposed to be creative. Those lessons I enjoy the most. So it really depends. 

After my lessons, I usually head into the school kitchen to cook myself lunch. Normally the school provides lunch for us, but as a vegetarian, I‘m supposed to cook for myself. Luckily I really started to enjoy cooking even though I didn’t have many options or ingredients what to cook. Therefore I had to get used to eating the same food every day. That can be both: A blessing and a burden. On the one side, I‘ve got to a point where eating got something really monotonous and it is more about being filled than actually enjoying it. On the other side, I really learned to value the variety of food I have at home, which I always took for granted before. And every time I get the chance to eat something different or western for example on the weekends in Chiang Rai, I start to enjoy it so much more. 

One time, it was during Christmas time, my mother sent me a package from Germany filled with Christmas presents also containing a special chocolate from Germany I haven’t eaten in 4 months. I was so thankful to eat that again that I nearly started crying tears of joy. After lunch, there are sometimes extra activities like cooking class where we have the possibility to join which is fun if it doesn’t get canceled. 

The evenings I normally spend, going to the gym or playing volleyball with some Thai students which is always my favourite part of the day. Sometimes we also played some card games with students from our class which made it possible to build a kind of connection despite the language barrier. 

On the weekends we usually plan a weekend trip to Chiang Rai. Sometimes there is a teacher who takes us to his house, showing us around otherwise we take a small local bus. For me going to Chiang Rai and experiencing city life offers a welcomed variety to the rather calm rural local life I experience during the week. 

Since I am here I have the highest ups. But what are the highest ups without the deepest downs? I‘ve learned to be so grateful for every small moment that brings me joy and for every new experience I go through. If I experience something bad I try to learn from it and to just let things happen. Even if I've just here for 4 months which feels way longer, I can already say: Those months have been the most changing, most filled with experiences and the craziest time of my life so far. I went through every emotion a human being can feel and I‘m really looking forward to what is coming next. The thing I’ve learned most about so far is to let things happen. The positive and the negative. It is all part of the experience and it will form you into the person you are meant to be!