Nee is still in Bangkok, getting classes on farming, as we are also buying a piece of land here in town. My town is Fang, Chiang Mai, a farming community 150 kilometers north of the city of Chiang Mai. I am only a few kilometers from the Myanmar border. For the last year, I have been teaching English in a large private school across the street from my one-room apartment. Starting next week, I will be in a house just behind the school in a very modern neighborhood, similar to one I might find in an American suburb. If I had stayed in the US, I might have been able to regain my momentum and gotten another house. My luck looked like it was more likely I was going to be living in my car, though, and so I am here.
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| My new home starting this weekend |
Meanwhile, I continue to teach. This year started quite differently from last. The first time I walked into a classroom then, I had never been responsible for teaching a class before. I had been through brief teacher training, though most of that was in front of nursery school children. My first job long-lasting job was at my current school. I had done a brief assignment in the south deep inside a rubber plantation and far from any shopping or entertainment and rain fell every day, all day, leaving all I owned damp and miserable to wear. I knew I wanted to go back north.
As of this writing, I have one more month of teaching until I end the first semester of my second year here. I feel as if it only just began. Teaching here is exhausting, occasionally frustrating, challenging, but most of all, it is great fun. Each day I come into one of my 16 classes of 50 students each to see their smiles. Whenever some personal matter came up that left me feeling depressed, I would go to a class and all would be forgotten. My only thoughts are of my students and how I can get them to speak more clearly and feel confident in their own abilities.
I will continue to write my adventures as it looks like we may be heading in directions I had never considered before. Stay tuned.
