What volunteers like to do

First of all, what hopefully all volunteers like to do is the volunteer work they are here  to do, and I am no exception. I don’t enjoy every minute of my work and especially in the beginning I had some issues adapting to the teaching environment. But I have really grown on my task and I feel like I have come to appreciate the job of teaching way more than I did before during my first 6 months in Khon Kaen. Of course, there are always good and bad days - for me, as well as for my students, my buddy teacher and everybody else. The key is to not let your mood be influenced by all the bad stuff and teaching can be extremely enjoyable and rewardable.

What makes the teaching so fun for me personally are mostly my lovely children in grade 3,4 and 5. They are always happy to see me and many of them are eager to learn English and talk to me as good as they can, and even though not all the students have the will to become fluent in English there is a great individual personality in all of them. That’s why I also love to play football and other kinds of sports with them in the afternoon.

If I don’t do anything with my students, I hang out with the other volunteers most of the time. Especially on the weekends, we often go to the city together and spend our afternoons there, but also during the weeks we often meet in the gym, play cards together, go to 7 and sometimes go out to eat Pad Thai and wash our clothes together.

When I have nothing to do, my Buddy Teacher sometimes asks me if I want to go with her, when she is going to a market or to the next town, which is really nice, because I get to see new places that way.

Sometimes there is no normal class, so we join the special activities or celebrations, like Teacher Day, Thai Language Day or Buddha Day. To me, it’s always very interesting to see how different these kinds of celebrations are compared to anything in my country.

To sum up, I usually don’t get bored, because there are many things I like to do throughout the day in my volunteer work.