Arriving in Chiang Mai:
Arriving in Chiang Mai left me with the
familiar yet enjoyable feeling of excitement and apprehension that a new and
foreign place often conjures up, only this time with another edge; I was here
not to explore, enjoy and move quickly on; I had arrived with the intention of
settling, starting a life and hopefully a career here in this relatively alien
city.
I had purposefully arrived in Chiang Mai a
good two weeks before the start of my
course, I wanted a chance to relax and get to know the city before embarking on
what I believed (quite rightly so!) would possibly be the most intense 4 weeks studying
of my life.
First Days:
The first few days I spent wandering the
city, enjoying the sights and adjusting to the change in culture, temperature,
language and food among everything else. I enjoyed being a free agent,
responsibility free and with my only real main objective being how best to
enjoy myself. The only problem with staying in a city like Chiang Mai when of
the aforementioned mind frame is that days sooner or later become nights, and
nights can very quickly become jolly and
fun-filled, meaning your days usually end up shorter, blurry and incredibly
unproductive.
It was Sunday afternoon as I sat sweating
in a beautiful riverside café nursing a pounding headache and pondering my
existence when it suddenly dawned on me I only had a week before my course would
begin. I had got lost in holiday-mode and had almost allowed myself to forget
my motive for being here in Chiang Mai.
Preparing:
That afternoon I unearthed the pile of
English language related books that I had brought with me and designed to
plough through as much as possible in the coming week. When purchasing and
packing said books my mind had been full of optimistic images of myself
referring to certain pages and using ideas from them for years to come. In
reality the books now sit collecting dust on my desk and generally act as an
annoyance whenever I move house or decide to travel anywhere. But that said, in
the commencing week the books got a lot of use; I was rarely seen outside of a
coffee shop, pouring over complicated grammar rules and obscure teaching
methodologies.
I allowed myself to grow anxious about the
impending course date, was I prepared? Did I know enough? Was I even the right
character? I had little experience teaching, and I had never stepped foot in a large
classroom when not on the receiving end of education.
Part 2 Coming Soon
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