Yesterday I was finally able to move into my new home at Princess Chulabhorn School in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Since it is still break for the students and faculty, we are able to have the week off to get settled in and explore the surrounding areas of Northern Thailand. I figured that it would be rude of me not to give my readers a tour of my school and new home, so I took some pictures and a short video to make it a bit easier for people to understand what I am doing back in the States. First off, a quick tour of the school that I will be teaching at for the next 5 months...
Princess Chulabhorn School is a boarding school located about 10 minutes outside of downtown Chiang Rai. The school is home to around 800 students from many different provinces in Northern Thailand. The school mainly focuses on different sciences, but it also has a large emphasis on the English language.
At school, I will be teaching 12-15 classes per week focusing on listening to and speaking the English language. I haven’t found out exactly what grades I will be teaching yet, but I am thinking that the grades will be between 7-10th grade. All of the ESL (English as Second Language) teachers have orientation this weekend, which is when we will find out who are students will be for the coming semester!
The last stop on this tour is my new home! Located on campus, I have been given a small house to serve as my home for the time that I spend here in Thailand. Since I am the only male ESL teacher, I was given my own house. Even though I do not have any human roommates, I am sharing my home with many frogs, lizards, slugs, spiders, and ants. We have become one big, happy family.
I ended up making a short little video our of my home, but the file is too big to upload. Boo. Instead, I will just describe the home quickly. The home has 5 bedrooms, four of which are vacant. The bottom floor has a bathroom, empty bedroom, and a large empty room similar to a basement. Since there are no washers or dryers available here, this is the area where I will be doing all of my clothes washing by hand. Yes...by hand. Upstairs has four bedrooms and a small, open common area where I conveniently set up my hammock to lounge in. In my bedroom, I have a very small bed with a bright bunny rabbit sheets, a small desk, and an interesting piece of metal where I can hang my clothes from. It is a very simple house, but it is now my home for my time here.
Well, the other teachers and I are now off to go find some delicious street food to eat for dinner in the city. Tomorrow we will leave for a two-night trip to the larger city of Chiang Mai about 2-3 hours southwest to explore the temples, meditate with monks, take a cooking class, and more. Hopefully I will be able to check back and post about our trip later this week. Hope all is well back in the States, and I miss everyone!
Sawadee Khrap!
-Kyle