🌱 New Beginnings in Chiang Rai

Week one in Thailand (Letter 234)

Aloha fellow learn-it-all 👋

Greetings from Chiang Rai, Thailand 🇹🇭

Before I dive into the other good stuff, first a win:

My book Letters to My Life is an Amazon Bestselling memoir!

Thank you to all who purchased it and left a review. If you’d still like to buy a paperback, you can here. Kindle version is on the way.

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It feels like its been a lifetime since I last wrote you. I cannot believe it’s only been seven days.

The only constant in my life has been change. Yes cliché, I know. But it’s the truth. 

I wanted to do a reflection on the month of October, but then I got overwhelmed looking at my camera roll and the chaos within my journal pages, so I haven’t processed that quite yet. 

So instead of zooming out, I’m zooming into my life. 

At a glance, so far, I’ve:

• eaten the best pad thai of my life with the perfect amount of crunchy peanuts and citrusy lime and saucy noodles

• torched my tongue on some chicken khao soi

• butchered the pronunciation of hello in Thai in an impromptu speech to the whole school on day one

• tried liver from an unidentified animal

• been called a witch at school by strangers

• Accidentally showed my whole class my Kahoot login information on the projector

• Sweat through a plethora of shirts

• Accidentally almost peed in the men’s bathroom

Like Julie Andrews sings in Do-Re-Mi, let’s start at the beginning; it’s a very good place to start.

Let’s dive into letter 234 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

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❓Question to think about

What’s life been like lately for Teacher Jen (Khru Jen)?

🖊️Writing

My first day of teaching was Thursday on Halloween, so naturally, when I was shopping at the mall the day before for home goods like linens, a Swiffer, and yoga mat, I bought 1500 baht of candy and a purple witch hat. 

I’m teaching at an academy in a public boarding school in Chiang Rai, Thailand. I cover five different grades of English (grades 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12) and various topics, including public speaking, intensive reading, and science and technology vocabulary. There are student names up the wazoo—upwards of 140 students! I can’t remember the last time I met this many people. The students’ names are all challenging to pronounce, and I can’t always recall who said what. I have never felt more tone-deaf with the five tones in Thai. I am grateful to have co-teachers to support me. It’s going to be an adjustment, and I’m trying my best to grant myself grace.

What’s grounding me at the end of the day is how happy the students are to meet me.

Let me walk you through a snapshot of my day.

Friday morning I woke at 5:30am to the school horns across the gravel road from me. I live on the campus. The students woke up, I went back to bed until my 6:40 alarm. I woke in a puddle of sweat because my aircon was leaking water, and I was anxious that it would flood my cute little mango-colored house. I took my first shower of the day, journaled, woke up my roommate, ate a funky tasting banana and a Costco protein bar, and was off. My walk to school is four minutes. To sign in, I scan my fingers and eyes before 7:45 AM. There was another school assembly in front of the school, with flag raising and the school song and announcements, all in Thai. I learned about this at the last minute because my Foreign Language school office was empty, and I didn’t know where everyone was.

My first class is 2nd hour at 9:20 AM for M6 or 12th graders speech class. An M6 girl started shrieking the previous day, looking at her phone right before my class started because she got into her dream college. Quite the start to my teaching career.

As I started my class, the HDMi chord wouldn’t connect. Thankfully, my co-teacher’s computer would. So, on the fly, I uploaded my PowerPoint to Google Drive, emailed it to her, downloaded it on her computer (with slow Internet), and started class only 10 minutes behind schedule. On the class objective slide, I shared that students would win candy for participating, but I left the candy down in the foreign language teacher's office—what a cruel joke. Being disheveled makes me absent-minded. I’m bringing them candy next week.

Students, thankfully, still participated and volunteered in pairs to share the dialogues I asked of them. When I asked them about their dream travel destinations, one said they’d like to move to Minnesota to play professional basketball, another to Japan to be around handsome people, and another to Paris to see the tower and be around fashion. One of my student’s names is Adele, and he cannot wait to play volleyball with me. The student named “buttah” won the Kahoot quiz about getting to know me.

After my two classes, I ate lunch with Emily, Boom and Goy at the canteen. I felt like I was speaking slow English because that’s how I speak to my students. It’s weird to try to simplify and filter how I communicate so others can understand me better. My safe and bland vegetable stirfry and boba tea cost 50 baht, which is $1.48. Not shabby.

In the afternoon, I sat in the Foreign Language Teacher's Office. Pi Kob toured me around, and I saw the teacher’s lounge and met the copyroom man Frahn, who will be my new best friend very soon. I started to lesson plan and meet with my other three co-teachers to plan the syllabus for the semester. The Japanese and Chinese teachers near me speak Thai, so I have no idea what all the teacehers are saying when the other teachers speak Thai.

A lot is going on at this school. It’s sports day on Thursday and Friday, so I need to account for that in the syllabus, considering I meet only once with each of my fourteen classes. There are set midterms and finals my students are graded on. Students aren’t allowed to get below a 3 out of 4; otherwise, they lose their scholarship. I get paid in cash on the last day of the month. It is all a lot to take in. As expected, things are different here. I can handle it.

At 4:30 PM, I wanted a sweet treat at the end of my first (2-day) week of teaching. At the canteen, I wanted some fruit. In addition to my watermelon, I got a scoop of chocolate ice cream on a cone. A teacher helped translate the menu for the server that the mango sticky rice was all out. With my dripping ice cream cone in hand, I didn’t know where to sit at the teacher tables section, so I made eye contact with another teacher and sat at their table. I made a new friend named Puna. She is a new teacher from Chiang Mai and gave a speech before me to the whole school on Wednesday on our first day at the assembly. 

She mentioned she never had a massage before and how I was craving one. She immediately offered to drive me to the night bazaar to get massages. I sprinted home to take my sweaty pink school dress off for some flowy clothes and met Puna. Shawn Mendes was playing in her car—Aircon blasting. We took a detour to the mall first. I bought some more conservative athletic clothes for sports day. The head of the foreign language department told me that I needed to wear yellow on Mondays and purple on Wednesdays, so she gave me a new mission. Once at the night bazaar— my second night in a row— I bought a traditional Thai purple top. I did my first barter and got my top for 220 baht instead of 250. Mom would be so proud of me. 

After shopping, we got massages. It turned out the Thai massage wasn’t Thai. The whole time that the therapist was speaking, I thought it was Thai language, but Puna later told me it was some form of Burmese. She didn’t understand a single word. On top of that irony, Puna’s massage therapist asked me to pay smaller bills for the 250 Baht hour service and where I was from in a perfect British accent. I was so confused. I asked him where he was from, and he said Chiang Mai, but Puna thinks otherwise; she’s from there, and no one speaks the way he does.

Hunger surfaced from the massage, and we found ourselves at the market. I placed my first order for Khao Soi. I asked for “mai pet” (no spice) but the woman said barely any was in it. The dish was flavorful and delicious. I got a jug of bottled water since a cup of milk was nowhere to be found. The mango smoothie for dessert cooled my mouth off well. Puna drove me home.

I collapsed into bed. I put the aircon on with a bucket below its leak and slept the hardest I have in the past 10 days since I left America. What a day. What a life.

♥️ I am grateful for

1. my past self for writing my book that I find myself reading for positive reminders of calmness in the seeming chaos of my life

2. co-teachers who help make this transition into teaching smoother for me.

3. I haven’t needed to use the charcoal for problems with my digestion (yet)

4. pictures to share my world and create new connections

5. The friends I met at orientation

6. Sleep

😲 Surprises (& some culture shock)

1. I never knew I could sleep this much from teaching. I am exhausted.

2. The transition to eating out every meal and paying in cash is a shock. In Hawaii, I grocery shopped every other week at Costco and ate out once a month. Now I eat out three times a day. Spending money this regularly is freaking me out.

3. While working remotely, I took afternoon naps. I’m trying to rewire my body so as not to need those, and I miss them.

4. My feet hurt from standing so much.

5. It’s sad how much I feel I consume by drinking bottled water.

6. I’m stressed but too exhausted to relieve stress by running outside.

7. Everyone is so polite that I don’t know what I’m doing. How do I know if I am being disrespectful? This is such an indirect way of communicating here.

8. Eating is allowed 24 hours, 7 days a week here. There are more seven-elevens here than I’ve seen in the States

9. My nervous system will take some acclimating. The bright, neon lights are everywhere. Constant noise. I’m grateful I bought a warm lightbulb for my bedroom.

10. I never knew so many students would keep on giggling at me. I bowed when I gave the students Cadbury chocolates, but I did not need to because I am their superior. This hierarchy situation is going to take some getting used to. 

🔍Word to define

Mai Pen Rai: One of the most used phrases in the Thai language, translating to it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. 

Example: You are presenting to the class about handing out candy but are too disheveled to remember the candy downstairs. The students respond, “Mai pen rai.” 

🌟Quote to inspire

“The basis for friendship, relationship, partnership - isn’t proximity or time spent together - it’s values.” — Naval Ravikant (Source: this tweet)

📸Photos of the Week

🙏Shoutouts

• Overseas Education Group (OEG) especially Fiat, Kelsey, Kody, and MJ. 

• My new friends for making this transition feel less isolating including, Katherine, Emily, Bella, Liv, and Madi.

• My school coordinator, Boom, for all her support and for picking me up from the airport!

• to Emily and Pi Mary who celebrated birthdays on Halloween

• to Jammy, Jam, and Puna for invitations to take me to the night bazaar!

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I appreciate you reading this!

If ideas resonate, I’d love you to press the heart button, leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetjl@gmail.com.

Keep on learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

PS - If you’d still like to buy a paperback of my book and leave a review , you can here. It means a lot <3 

PPS - in case you missed last week’s letter, I wrote about 🎉 My Book Is Live! + A New Adventure in Thailand 🌏

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