well, its a new year and so i'm returning to my neglected blog. i'll have to do a very quick summary of the last almost six months. the first term ended well. there were moments of stress, but it all ended with me getting on plane back to the states. i had a wonderful visit back in raleigh for a couple weeks at the start of october. when i came back my parents came with me. we arrived in a very bizarre and confusing situation. thailand was just realizing the extent of the flooding disaster it would experience. the water was starting to move south. we managed to salvage the visit, somewhat. we went to khao yai and did our jungle trek- saw some wild animals, including holding a scorpion and a mass exodus of bats from a cave. the only difficulty we dealt with was the lack of stock in the grocery stores. due to a flood of contradictory and vague information, people had over stocked on necessities like water and rice so the shelves were pretty empty. my parents flew off during my first week of extended vacation. in the end, my october break was extended by six weeks. i was lucky that my part of the city stayed dry, but countless thai people in other parts of bangkok were devastated by water up to a meter high. for me it was a fairly quiet couple of months- enjoying the free time, but never sure of when school would start up again.
we returned to school at the beginning of december. the second term had to be rearranged a great deal to make up for the additional six weeks of break. the most significant changes were the canceling of christmas break and a two week extension into march. and now i am just focusing on work, trying to deal with the unusual situations that keep changing.
while i was back in raleigh, i settled my decision to move back at the end of my contract (march 16). there are many thoughts and feelings that went into that final decision, so i'll just sum up a few of them. first of all, i am floundering a little with my teaching- it is such a different situation than the one i trained and planned to do. here i am teaching four different classes (one hundred boys) and only one subject. i am doing ok, but as a new teacher i don't think i am establishing the best practices for the future. so i want to go home and teach in an american elementary school for a few years. i need stability and consistency to develop basic teaching skills. all in all, i believe i can be a great teacher, but i am not there now and i don't feel that i am even on the right path here. i can see moving abroad again in the future, but now is not the right time. also, asia is just such a foreign world to me. there are several things i really like about living here, but on the whole i just want to be back in the western world. one year has been good, but i am ready for the adventure end. i am tired of the rootless feeling of the last few years.
well, i am going to try to actually use this blog over the next few months. so this is hopefully the start of a year of more blogging.
