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By Céline Annette Brüggemann Volunteer in Intercultural and Language (ICL)- RPK50 Khon Kaen, August 2023-July 2024
It's been almost a year now since I arrived in Thailand. A lot happened in the last 10 months which helped me to learn a lot about the country’s culture and also about myself. After our ori
After our orientation week in Phayao, we made our way to our project, a boarding school in khon kaen. Here we were assigned a co-teacher whom we helped in English class. I got to teach M.3-M.6 which is about 9th to 12th grade in Germany. Given the rather small age gap between the students and me, teaching secondary and High school brings some really interesting experiences. My lessons are all about speaking English and especially about pronouncing words correctly. We work with texts and then each and every student has to read the text out loud to practice.
On weekends we also have many events like sports days we can sometimes join. In the last september week, we celebrated my birthday and all the students had their mid-term exams. When all exams were written, everyone left school for the long holidays in October. I went to Bangkok where I was able to attend many events, e.g. T-pop concert and a book convention
After 3 months the first visa-travel was due. I flew to Penang, Malaysia for the visa extension and got to stay there for a week. In that week I explored the city with its famous street art and the penang hill.
At the end of November I got to celebrate the thai festival “loy krathong” with the school. Everyone was wearing traditional clothes and made their krathong themselves. The students also prepared a performance which I really enjoyed. Since it was the colder season in Thailand, many students and teachers fell sick. But in the end most could join the christmas celebration on the 25th of December. After a costume competition, the students again prepared a lot of performances for the whole school to watch.
The days after, all students and teachers prepared to go home for the new year. I decided to stay at the school and celebrate the festival with a friend in Khon kaen. In the first week of school we volunteers had our mid-term evaluation in Khon kaen and only joined class after that.
In January we had a field trip. I went to Nong Khai together with the secondary school. There we visited a famous temple and a market after we started our journey at 5 in the morning. In February I started to make plans for after the volunteer work ends, especially what I want to do in university
The second visa-travel took us to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this time. We were very nervous whether the extension of our volunteer visa would work because of the other volunteers not being able to get it there. But luckily it worked for us and we could enjoy our time in the capital of Malaysia. We really enjoyed visiting Chinatown and the famous twin towers in the city
After we came back to the school, Mia and I were able to join a parade for a festival in our district. We wore traditional clothings again and also held umbrellas. There was also a great number of dancers who then performed traditional thai dance for the visitors.
And then the term ended. Everyone was busy with exams and in no time, the school was empty as everyone left for the 2 months of holiday. In march, a friend spontaneously decided to visit me in Thailand and so I got to show him Bangkok for a week. Because the holidays were very long I decided to join another project for 1 month in April. I drove all the way down to Songklah where I worked together with other interns at the folklore museum there. After some arrangements I stayed with the two malaysian interns at the university dorm of TSU. Together with them and 4 other Thai interns I prepared tours for tourists, cleaned coins and made an English class for the employees of the museum. After work, we often went out to eat with friends and also went to the cinema.
Since one of the malay interns was a muslim, I got to celebrate Hari Raya Aidilfitri, the end of fasting, and they also gave me a Baju kurung, a traditional malay dress, to wear.
In April was also the Thai new year, Songkran. The museum prepared activities for everyone. Dressed in thai clothes we made traditional desserts and my favorite of the day was the performance of Nora, a traditional southern thai dance art. On another day we interns went to the public celebration of Songkran at the beach. At the end of the evening we were drenched from top to bottom. I also got to see how to weave fabric traditionally. I really enjoyed my time at this project! And I wish I could've stayed longer.
Shortly after I came back to the school in khon kaen, the activities for new students were held. But after only a few days I had to leave Thailand again for my last visa-travel.
For this last one, I decided to fly to Seoul, South Korea. I visited many museums, art galleries and also the old palaces in the city. The view from the Namsan Seoul Tower was very beautiful day and night. By accident we got to join a beauty and wellness festival and we saw the last drone show at the Han River.
After I came back to Thailand, there were only 3 volunteers left from the original 5 people. 1 had to leave early because of visa difficulties and another changed the project. Since we had only about 2 months left in Thailand, I started to mentally prepare for going back to Germany. I also prepared a small gift for the students, a paper butterfly I'll give them in the last week. We had a singing and dance competition where I got to be the judge. It was very difficult to decide the winner but it was very interesting. Now everyone tries to enjoy our last weeks in the school and make the best of the time left.
I look forward to see all my friends again and I'm really excited to start university soon too. Of course it's sad that I have to leave Thailand after one year of living here but for me I am ready for that. I enjoyed most of my time here and I'm really thankful for even being able to have this very special experience.
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