I am no longer in the Land of Smiles. My last couple of months there were frenzied with work, activity, spending time with students, co-workers, friends, and when I left, I cried on the plane, thinking that perhaps leaving was the worst possible idea for me at the time.
I am currently in Taiwan now, teaching English. Only a three hour bus ride from my family in Taipei, I'm at a perfect distance where I'm alone, but I am still close enough to my family so that I can spend time with them.
The reason for not posting anything right after I left Thailand was due to the fact that I couldn't find any sufficient words to 'end' my time there, because I feel like I can't ever really not go back to Thailand. I've established a family there, and there are always students who sneak on facebook during class and send me cute little messages. Right now, I'm planning on saving up some money to go back and visit Thailand.
I also realized that while I was out having fun and enjoying my time teaching, I never got a chance to relate that to my blog which has been a bit of a downer when I did blog. I hope that this offsets whatever negative experiences that I've posted in the past, as I discovered that the reason I hadn't been enjoying myself is due to my ability to taken in my surrounding emotions and internalizing them.
My first semester in Tak was unhappy. Not only was I struggling in a new country, new job, new context, but I had been struggling making friends. My work environment was filled with negative energy, and it started to take root in my own head. I was having problems with my own personal life as well, and I didn't have enough positive reinforcement to keep my morale up. As a result, I plummeted into the dark swirl of cultural shock, not understanding why things weren't going the way I thought they would.
I returned to Taiwan for a month to see my family during Thai New Year, and realized that I wanted to do a lot more with my time in Thailand. When I returned, a very good friend reached out to me and started to give me things to do that stirred both my professional passion and my creative passion. I learned the guitar. I wrote my own song *composed by another friend of mine*. I started teaching government officials. And during this time, we had two new teachers arrive at the school--both amazing, compassionate, with positive energies--and I was opening myself to meeting more people and doing my best with my students. I took a more lenient approach on how my students should be learning the material I'm presenting them, and somehow things took off. I met friends all around Thailand, and began to understand that there was more to me than just a sulking, brooding mess and a failure of an educator.
I learned plenty about myself when I was in Thailand--and the turn-around couldn't have come at a better time. I felt that I was strong enough to pull through anything, but I was also realistic enough to know when I need a good cry, a good lockdown in the room with my favorite movies, snacks, and skype with my friends back home, then I should indulge myself once in a while to do so. I've discovered that the best thing about being me is that I shouldn't deny myself any negative feelings, should they crop up, as long as I kept it under control.
Currently, settling down in a specific place and country for an indeterminate amount of time is still not something that I can wrap my head around, but I am content being near family and in a different place with different people. I now work for a private English language school, which is still very different compared to a public, government-funded school. There are differences, and there are difficulties. But just as I pulled through in Thailand, I know that I can pull through anywhere else!
Thank you for those of you who have been following this blog and have been supporting me and cheering me on when I needed it most. I don't plan on continuing blogging any future adventures, as I've opted to keep a journal instead. Life is one incredible journey. The best thing we can do is live it and enjoy it, even during the bad times.
