The job actually started yesterday. There I was, dressed in all my boring and professional glory, epic amounts of sweat dripping down my back, standing in front of 36 miniature people with teeny tiny hands and no sense of personal boundaries with two cards in my hand, one of the letter A, and one a picture of an apple. These were my tools. With them and a whole lot of loudly and poorly sung songs I made it through the day. I taught four classes for an hour each. The first three pretty much went by as a blur, it was incredible how long an hour could be when I only have the letter A to fill it with, and, lets be honest, the letter A is really not that thrillling but that is what the Thai curriculum wants from me (my ability to say "A. A. A. AAAAA. A.")

But at least Day 1 is over. And none of the other days will be as bad, because I won't ever be that nervous again, and hopefully, I'll learn some of how to do this as I do it.

The students were good, really. I feel rather bad for them that they have to try and listen to me teach them things for a straight hour (though, they have figured out, that really, they don't have to listen to me and at any given time at least 2/3 of them are totally off in their own little worlds). An hour is a really long time for me to concentrate on things! So it must be harder for them. They do get chocolate milk. And nap time. That would help. But they play along. They like to clap and jump and yell. Some of them do try to repeat after me like they're supposed to.

This teaching gig is going to be exhausting. I already find myself tired all the time and I don't know if that is because of the heat, or because life in another culture can be overwhelming, or because my main form of sustenance is white rice, but add to that needing to stay high energy all day long to clap and jump and run around. Wow. I will be tired. I wish they had real coffee here.

Would you like the chance to become one of my favorite people ever?

It's easy! Send me mail!

Emily Prengaman
Bangyai Square 137/135
Talingehan-Suphanburi Road
Bangrakpattana, Bangbuathong
Nonthaburi 11110
Thailand

and hopefully such lovely things as you are sure to send me will speedily make their way to this side of the word and bring me immense amounts of joy!

Today was my first day of work. I went to my school, met some of my fellow teachers, ate lunch in the cafeteria, etc. Best of all, I did not yet have to teach any children! This is a good thing, because I was feeling entirely unprepared to just jump in to the wonderful world of teaching without the time or direction to plan out a lesson. As it turns out, the students don't start school until next week, so I do actually have some time to steel myself for the challenge that lies ahead.

The challenge being..... that I will be teaching students who are 3 years old. THREE. Seriously, three? In what world do you send your 3 year old child off to school for the entire day and entrust their care to an utterly unqualified farang? Oh. Oh ok, right. That world is Thailand.

So here it is that I, Emily Prengaman, the newest English teacher at Kasintorn St. Peter School in Bangkok will be teaching English to multiple classes of (of maybe about 30 per class) 3 year old Thai children everyday. This could be insanity.

Here is a question for all you early childhood education folks out there, all you education-in-general folks out there, and hell, any of you that have had a kid... what on earth can I teach a 3 year old? Especially when I will have 30 of their fellow students running crazily throughout my classroom?! The next six months of my life are going to be filled with tears and snot and naptimes and songs and art and maybe the alphabet if we get around to it. Today's news has simply left me feeling utterly overwhelmed.

I suppose I'm still looking forward to it. It shall still be a grand adventure! Just one with more diapers than I was expecting.

In other news, I do now have my own little apartment. (so if you have any interest in sending me exciting mail, I can email you my address!) It is a tiny little efficiency place that as of right now does not have any electricity, but does have a very shiny new television that I dream of turning on. It is on the side of a freeway, but also next to 3 giant malls, a million vendors lining the streets, and the handy little internet cafe that I am sitting in RIGHT NOW. It is certainly not the prettiest location, but looks aren't everything and the price is right and I'm quite close to school.

Basically, in the past 3 days, my life has gone through immense changes. I have a job and an apartment on the other side of the world. I have a couple friends here, I'm hoping to make some new ones. I'd forgotten how intense a city Bangkok is, it is so hot, so humid, so smelly, so busy, so chaotic. The traffic is terrifying. The number of people that live and work here is massive. I forgot what it feels like to be surrounded by a language I do not speak.

The past couple days have not been easy. I don't quite feel like I'm living my actual life yet, it is all quite surreal. I feel exhilerated one moment, exhausted another, and exasperated the next. I think what I am coming to realize is that teaching (or glorified babysitting?) is simply going to be so much more work than I was expecting.

My training program is about halfway over at this point. And that is simply crazy.

Today, for the first time, we got to practice teaching in front of a classroom of real Thai students. It was incredible. Exhilerating. Nerve-wracking. Coming out of that half hour lesson was like coming down from a ridiculous adrenaline rush. But. I think it went pretty well. I taught a lesson about sports to a class of 20-25 (they kept coming in and out) 7 yr olds. I got to use lots of pretty coloured pictures and lots of very basic words. I sang a song. I did a dance. These are not activities I do well, but I did them. I wore a granny skirt, a classy long-sleeved shirt that buttoned up to my neck and practical shoes. My hair looked neat - not my normal attire. The kids spent a lot of the class wiggling in their seats, and we played a lot of games to keep their energy up, but maybe they learned a couple words? That is pretty much all I can hope for.

Tomorrow I'll teach again, this time a lesson to an older group of students, they'll probably do a better job of staying in their seats. They probably won't be quite as ridiculously adorable either, so I won't be at risk of wanting to just squeeze all the cuteness out of them (note. I did not squeeze any children today... but I wanted to)

The most incredible part is that my program has my teaching job all lined up, I will officially be a teacher in less than two weeks. Incredible. At a Catholic School with about 3000 students here in Bangkok. Crazy. This will not be the rural, primitive experience I may have been expecting... it will be... gasp! A job. Work. Eek.

But, I'll have a paycheck (thats a pretty crazy thought, eh?) and an apartment and I'll have weekends and holidays to explore more of Thailand.... Check out the beaches, the islands, the jungles.... and the great news is that some of the friends I'm making will end up in different parts of the country, so I'll have people to visit, and potentially couches to sleep on!

Speaking of couches, I will let the world know as soon as I have one of my own, I would love visitors. At the moment, I don't make the most capable cultural ambassador and tourguide, but I'm getting better at the language every day (I can count to ten!!!) so by the time you get here, I'll be pretty pro.

Sawadee kha!

So here goes.... my first blog entry from Thailand! It is my third day here, and today was my second day of teacher training. And well, so far so good. My initial impressions are that it is hot, most of the people are smaller than me, and that I am so ridiculously happy to be here.

The day before I left was a ridiculous and traumatic day in a lot of ways, that don't at all seem worth getting into, but suffice it to say, that I am very happy to even be here. The flight was fine. It only took about 32 hours from leaving home to get to my hotel in Bangkok. That seems... reasonable? Funny enough, for the flight from Chicago to Tokyo (the longest flight) I sat next to a guy who is in a masters program at CMU. Small world. But he was a nice guy, and it was good to have someone to laugh with as we entered jet-lag delirium together. When I arrived I made it through customs, found a taxi, got to the hotel, all easy-peasy like I'm good at this or something. And really, that easiness, that things-are-going-my-way feeling hasn't worn off yet. There is a good vibe in the air in Thailand. It feels good to be here.

My program is super-duper exciting. I have met incredible people in the past two days. We come from all different walks of life. I was expecting more people in my situation- the I can't find a real job, and I don't really want to variety - but instead there are those types and people who are twice my age or older, who are retiring or mid-life crisising. We come from the US, from the UK, Australia, Portugal, and lots of other places. I am hearing so many different Englishes, that in itself is exciting. My roomate is great. I want to talk to her all the time, which is challenging, because I want to talk to everyone else all the time, AND I want to talk to all the Thai people.... perhaps six months will not be enough time?? (sorry, parents......) The variety of life histories and experiences that have come together to do this is fascinating. There are people who haven't been in one place for more than a year in years and there are people who have never left their native countries. Incredible!!

And then... Thailand. My gosh. It is beautiful and it is welcoming and sometimes it smells really bad. There are bright pink taxis. There are pictures of the king everywhere. There is food everywhere. It is SPICY. It honestly feels really good to be back.

Bangkok is huge. And chaotic. It has a very different feel than the tiny little rural village I was in before. I think maybe all big cities have something in common, between the crush of people, the tall buildings, the opportunity for almost anything.... and yet, of course, it is special and it is unique and I am looking forward very much to the weekend so I can spend some time being touristy and taking pictures of everything I see (no pictures yet, I'm sorry, I haven't had time). There are so many places to go, just exploring the little alleyways around our hotel is interseting and exciting.

I feel like I'm absolutely blithering right now, this post is perhaps lacking in an overall theme other than "oh my god this! oh my god that!" but that is simply the state of my brain and my life right now, so, dear reader, you'll have to accept it.....

Classes have been really interesting so far. We are learning how to teach, learning bits and pieces of Thai language and Thai culture. It is both theoretical and practical and I feel like I will actually know what I'm doing when the three weeks are over. I am also quite sure the real teaching will be far more difficult and challenging than I can even imagine. So that is a bit of a contradiction. But it will all work out. Buddha says its all okay.

So that, in a nutshell, is everything and nothing about the past couple days. There was a lot of freaking out that happened inside my head the week before I left, and now? Actually there is a lot of peace and a lot of happiness. So I think that is a great sign.

Sawadee kha!

(it means hello and goodbye!!... sortof.)

Right now I am finding it incredibly difficult to believe that I week from today I will be in an entirely different country. After approximately 27 hours spent on airplanes and airports I will be on the other side of the world. The time spent traveling seems more than reasonable for that kind of magical transportation (and yet, if you were to ask me how I feel about it on hour ten of the fourteen hour flight to Seoul, I might answer quite differently).

Am I ready to go? No. Not at all. I need to clean, I need to pack, I need to make a million lists, and do a million tiny errands. I need to say some serious goodbyes. But will I be ready by the time I board my plane? I sure hope so.

The truly important question: how many pairs of pretty shiny heels do I get to take with me? None. I've got a pack (brand new and pretty blue from REI) and I plan on fitting six months worth of material goods into it and onto my back. That in itself will be an adventure. In restraint.

The fact that I am sitting at my computer, wrapped in many layers, woolly socks, and fuzzy slippers, watching thousands of snowflakes fall on top of the two feet of snow that has already accumulated inspires in me a rather ridiculous amount of excitement that a month from today I will be far far away from snow, in sunny warm Thailand, ready to start a new job that will hopefully provide much fodder for the writing of an engaging blog.

Where I am.

Yes indeed! If you haven't already heard, and I have no idea if you have (and likely, no one is even reading my blog anymore, so I'll have to tell you all about it again) I am going to Thailand in March to take on a job teaching English. I couldn't find a real job here in this country, so I found one abroad! I'll spend my first month there in training, learning how on earth one teaches another language without speaking any of the language one's students speak. The new school semester doesn't start right away, so I'll spend the next month traveling goodness knows where and hopefully having some grand adventures! The job will start after that, a 4-5 month teaching position at a Thai school. I'm not sure yet exactly where that will be, or what ages my students will be, but I'm excited to find out.

Where I'm headed.

So I have about two weeks left here in Baltimore, and then I'll pack up my life, pray that it stills fits into my car and head home to Ohio, hopefully stopping to see some favorite friends and family on the way. Then a week or so at home where I can unpack, repack, store everything else in Mom and Dad's attic (thanks guys!), get some shots, see the dentist, freak out about everything etc., etc... Then I fly away on March 5 and spend more than a day in airports and airplanes. I'll arrive in Bangkok in some surely crazy, exhausted, exhilarated, and most likely hungry, state of mind and start my training program the next day! Can't Wait!