Burma is the same as ever: colorful, beautiful, dirty at times, and eclectic. There were poignant moments like the sale of the estate I lived in during my early childhood in Burma - the rest of my extended family are getting ready to leave the country to call America their home as well. When I walked through the gardens and the empty halls of my old home and as I picked my last mangoes from the trees I played under as a child, I felt like I was saying goodbye to a very old friend. I was also in Burma during her first 'free' elections since 1988 and Aunty Suu's party won 43 out of the 44 seats. This seems monumental, but compared to the overall size of the Burmese parliament, this is still quite small, not to mention that regardless of the parliament's decisions, the military leaders still have final says on what laws actually get enacted. Burma is still quite far from the democracy that Aunty Suu envisioned, but at least the country is now much more oriented towards that path than it has been since my birth. There have been many calls for sanctions on Burma to be completely removed, but that should be done only slowly, because there still remains much to be done and pressure must be retained on the military leaders.
Since this morning, I have felt a little lost. I woke up at 5 AM to get my final packing done for Bangkok and I felt an emptiness within me. I still feel it now and I don't know why. My time in Thailand has come to a close. I am only here a few more weeks, because the Fulbright program in Thailand has asked me to give a presentation to the board members about my experiences as an ETA at the end of this month. However much I want to give this presentation, I still really would like to be on a flight back home now...back to America. I am very ready to go back I think.
My school year ended in Thailand somewhat uneventfully and somewhat disappointing, though the feeling of disappointment was more due to my own doing. I expected too much of my students to give me a decent farewell and I feel like I utterly miscalculated their affections for me. In my one and a half years as a teacher in Thailand, I can honestly say without a doubt, that I gave it my all to my school and my students. I have never worked this hard in my life while loving what I was doing. I could go to school at eight in the morning and stay until nine at night still feeling quite energized, because I felt like my time was well spent and I loved my students so much. The hours I spent checking hundreds of notebooks (I had 504 students this semester) everyday after school while my co-workers were already comfortably settled at home, were spent with the fullest of my energy and love. I never regretted working hard and I never will. I loved my students like they were my own children (albeit I don't know what having children is like, but I assume it must be somewhat like what I felt.
So with all this effort in my mind, I came out, to say the least, a little bit disappointed (a lot actually) when the school year ended and I did not receive much thanks from my students. A few students did wish me farewell and a small class gave me two teddy bears, but this was about 6% of my students. I don't know what the other 94% felt about me. In some ways I do kind of know how they felt about me. They probably thought I was annoying given the fact that I was probably the first English teacher in their life who pushed them beyond what they thought was possible and making them work hard. I did give them work and I did expect a lot out of all my students regardless of their levels or class, because I believed in them, and I believed that they could learn so much more than the games that previous teachers played with them. All my M2 (8th grade) students can now speak about themselves non-stop for at least one minute as well as various topics such as the school, their family, and their town. My M4 (10th grade) students can now competently write essays about various topics from themselves to current events and while their grammar is far from perfect, they can express their voice in their writing and tell beautiful stories. A class of my M2 students are now all swing dancers. This may not seem much, but it is a lot of progress from when I first met them (they used to hesitate even when I asked them 'how are you'). One Thai teacher pointed out to me that the students don't really appreciate a good teacher when they meet one, especially if the teacher pushes them. I would like to believe her, but at the same time, I wonder if I did something wrong. I do hope the the lack of farewells and expressions of appreciation and such were due more to unappreciative personalities rather than my incompetence as a teacher. I'm not sure if I'll ever figure this out.
In the end of the year banquet for the the languages department, over lunch at a beautiful restaurant made completely of wood and surrounded my mango trees, as I was getting ready to say a little bit about my thoughts of my time to all my teachers, I started to weep. It was quite startling to me, because I am not really the crying type, let alone one who cries in front of other people. I couldn't say much afterward, but just thanked everyone for their love and friendship and unfortunately causing other teachers to start crying too. I guess this physical manifestation was an indicator to me that I really did love my school. Sometimes I am not even convinced by what I think about things so it was nice to get a confirmation coming from the recesses of my psyche.
The one and a half years I spent in Sawankhalok, Sukhothai, Thailand, were some of the happiest times I have ever had in my life, but of course, as a human, this also came with some sadness and disappointment as well. I guess the greatest thing I learned about myself through all this is that I can be passionate about something and work endless hours fueled only by my love and conviction that my hard work is producing fruit in my kids. I have gone through the first 22 years of my life not sure if I was really interested in anything as I have not found myself as excited or energetic about any job or volunteer position I have held until I came to Thailand. I really do hope that my students did learn something from me...if not about English, I hope they learned about life, how precious they are, and how much potential they have in them...thank you Thailand and thank you God for this amazing experience.
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| A full blooming padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) tree in Rangoon. There is an old saying that these trees bloom only one day a month a year. The flower blooms in the morning and falls the very same day so I was very fortunate to see one. I also got a close up look of its tiny yellow blossoms surprisingly at the immigration counter as I was leaving for Bangkok. |
