November 11, 2004
A year in the life of a Young Adult Volunteer!
The decision has been made. You’re going to teach English
in Thailand for a year. Your only qualification for this position
seems to be that you are a native speaker of the language (a fact
your parents have often called into question). And yet you are
excited. The first step is attendance at 10 days of orientation
in the United States where, by and large, you have to listen to
a bunch of old people carry on about what volunteers experience
in general, about how you have to eat the fried cockroaches, and
about how privileged you are and how underprivileged the rest
of the world is. Blah. Blah. Blah. You begin to feel either angry
or guilty. The familiarity and comfort of your surroundings is
already beginning to change.
Soon enough you are finished with the orientation and you are
on your way to the “real work” that you have been
“called” to do. You can’t wait to get there
and the only thing standing between you and glory is a 17-hour
flight that is actually going to take almost 28 hours because
of the standbys. But it’s worth it because you are going
to do something great. Yes, you’re still not sure about
teaching English but it’s not the English teaching that
you are going for—it’s the opportunity to make a difference
in someone’s life, to make an impact, to help those less
fortunate than yourself.
In spite of the suspicious looking young Muslim men on the airplane
(that you later find out are actually Sikhs from India) you arrive
safely, tired, jet-lagged from a 12-hour change in the time zones,
but eager to get to your work. Then the reality sets in that you
still have another six weeks of orientation to go and you begin
to wonder why you can’t just go to your work site and study
the language there.
Confident of your site coordinator’s ability to discern
your needs for training, you hunker down to your Thai, culture
and language studies as well as your adjustment to the food, the
climate, and that weird 12-hour time change that leaves you wide
awake at 3:00 a.m. and makes you groggy and unable to function
by 5:00 p.m.
The tones. Up. Down. Up then down. Down then up. Flat. “How
in the world does one change the meaning of the word by simply
changing the tone of your voice?” you wonder aloud, but
again you trust that these people know what they’re doing
and you try and try again to hear the change in the tone of their
voice when they speak. You complete this six-week period of training
and head to your school where you will finally get the chance
to do the work to which you are “called.” The journey
on which you began some two plus months ago now is almost over.
You can now order food and bargain for prices in Thai.
Then you find your class schedule is written in Thai, which you
cannot yet read. Only one of your four Team Teachers speaks English
(and not very well). You’re hard-pressed to find anyone
else in town that you can carry on a reasonable conversation with
in English. Those six long weeks of language training now seem
surprisingly insufficient. The class size is between 40 and 60
students. The teachers are teaching six to eight classes a day
so they don’t have time sit down to make a lesson plan with
you, but you soon realize that they probably wouldn’t use
it even if they had one. You are considered the expert even though
you’ve never taught in your life. The children don’t
seem to be interested in learning the language. The Thai teachers
sometimes leave you alone in the classroom. The church services
are all in Thai and there is no one to translate and you begin
to wonder why on earth you thought you could teach English in
Thailand. You’re lost. You’re alone. And you are a
long way from home.
Then it happens. One morning, while you are almost in tears,
longing for McDonalds, of all things, a young Thai student comes
up to you with a big smile and says in solid military cadence
“Good-morn-ing-Tee-cha.” You burst out laughing. You’ve
worked for six weeks to get that “d” on the end of
the word “good” instead of the previous “s”.
(“Goos morning” is just not right.) You know your
troubles aren’t over but that somehow by God’s grace
you will endure a year of unknowns, stretched far beyond what
you thought possible. You’ll understand a little bit more
about this wonderfully complex creation God has made and you’ll
go home the one changed, thanking God for the opportunity. Because
it’s not about teaching English it’s about trusting
God.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your
own understanding.
Proverbs 3:5
Glen, Carol, Zakk, Natalie, Jacob, and Caleb Hallead
Chiang Mai, Thailand
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
207 |
