Back to the first day, I have never felt so immediately welcomed into an environment in my entire life. I walked into the classroom and before I even introduced myself they gave me a huge round of applause!! I was so taken aback, coming from a country like Canada where, much like America, exchange students barely receive a double take. I met my wonderful class and got to know them better over the next few days, attempting to speak Thainglish with them in the hopes they’d understand me and hopefully like me a little bit. If I expected the caring, joyful attitude to die down over the week, boy was I ever wrong. The students all took a personal interest in making me feel comfortable and welcome, which has motivated me to no end to work much harder on my Thai speaking, reading and writing.
Walking around school is like being in a display case. Being blonde, blue-eyed and very very white, I am never going to blend in here. I am also a solid head taller than the other girls at school, no exaggeration. I’m only 5’8″ which is pretty average at home but here I am a giant which means I get a lot of stares, especially when I walk with Gift and Cheer who are probably around 5’0″ each. Even the staring in Thailand is super friendly though, and when I meet someones eyes they just flash me the giant Thai smile. When I wander between classes it is pretty common to hear students, especially the younger ones, yelling “Hello!!!” or “Good morning!!” and waving furiously. I exaggerate not, I have probably received close to 150 friend requests in the last seven days from students at school, all of whom want to chat in a personal message to say hello and introduce themselves. I can’t even describe how welcome I feel here, it made me pretty embarrassed of Canada’s treatment of foreigners at school to be honest.
Classes are very different in Thailand as one would expect. Teachers are treated with a lot of respect, receiving a “wai” or small bow every time they walk past. However very little attention normally is paid during class and it is a lot of talking over the teacher, but it really doesn’t seem to matter! The classroom environment is different as well because everyone is together in the same group all day, meaning they are all very close and get along with everyone. Sometimes the teachers show up to teach class, sometimes they don’t, there’s very little regard for time unless the teacher is kept waiting for students. The classroom is also BOILING HOT. There’s rarely air conditioning which means everyone just roasts throughout the day and the restrictive uniform doesn’t help one bit.
The daily schedule at my school looks something like this. I arrive at school at 8:00 where we sit down on the outside sport area made of concrete and listen to a 30 minute-one hour assembly of sorts where we sing the national anthem and pray. From there we bounce around from classroom to classroom in a small unit until about 12 o’clock when we have lunch for an hour and fifteen minutes. After that we go back to class and finish around 4:00 PM where I go home but many students stay for extracurricular activities or to study. I hope to join some activities in the near future!