Thailand is teaching me as much as I’m teaching!

The slow-paced local life in Thailand taught our intern Jasmine a lot about learning to be patient, and go with the flow! Read her blog for more.

The half way point is an odd concept, a concept we are obsessed with; we’re happy that we’re half way through our school year, we reach lunch and we’re glad to be half way through the day, half way through the week and half way home. It’s a concept that we focus on because we might be unhappy in the now. Is it the best use of one’s efforts, putting all our energy into “just making it to the half way point” because we then we feel like we might survive the other two days in the office?

We’ve reached our half way point in Thailand, that is a fact, but this has been reached with an element of surprise. Coming to Thailand and diving headfirst into one of the biggest challenges of my life has made my obsession with time quite irrelevant. Anyone who knows me when I was living in England understands that my Filofax was my bible, the words and times inside were gospel fact resulting in me forever having to rush off because *insert excuse here*. This meant my time with anyone was cut short, my attention distracted by the clock and so the quality of my being in a situation was diminished…….sorry to those who were a recipient of a less than attentive Jasmine!   I do not think as a modern society in a western country we understand how much we obsess over time, as well as our telephones. If we are not rushing off, telling ourselves “just to make it to lunch” or posting on Facebook about how “pleased we are that it’s lunch time” we feel like our brains are unoccupied. We are forever searching or worrying about the next step when truth is that it is unlikely that we haven’t even focused our energy on the one we’re in, or put our phones down to actually truly look around and let our brains be free of this extra clutter.

All of that has been dropped now, every second here on the internship is a challenge in itself. Thai life, especially in a village and school is unquantifiably different from England. Whether it be the spiders in the bathroom, the scary dogs down the road or constant itching of a mosquito bite. My attention is focused on a challenge every second because it is a way of life I am not used to, and this means my concept of time has disappeared completely. One thing I have noticed is that most of the clocks in my classrooms are broken because the teachers are not focused on time; they are teaching what the children need to know, not obsessing with an hour of this or 13 minutes of that. Do you the students have too much energy? Let them learn outside. Do the students understand? Teach them until they do.

This concept bleeds into everyday life outside the classroom too and this has made travelling on the weekends a massive challenge. The board might say the bus leaves at 4 but if it’s full they start their journey, if it is empty they move onto the next place. Thai’s truly live life in the here and now and if something happens other than predicted people shrug their shoulders and say “Mai Pen Rai” which means “no worries, never mind”. I feel this is something we could all take a lesson from because let’s be honest; does what you’re stressing about really matter? Probably not. The internet and the deep realms of social media are not readily available here, I do not constantly have access to Wi-fi so I have no choice but to lift my head up from the screen and take every situation on as it happens with my full attention. This has been a massive learning curve and a blessing in disguise. We have sat and played with the children every lunch time, I have looked out the window every single bus journey and we even spent last night in our little modest house on the school grounds chatting away, colouring and laughing. Moments I will treasure because the internship has forced me to truly live in the moment and I have never been happier!

With all this being said I have now realised that I am more than half way through my time here and I have to admit; I am gutted that it is soon to be over. The saying “time flies when you’re having fun” is one I have to agree with. I have learnt so much from these children and this way of life; a lot of these children do not have telephones, watches, filofaxes, or coffee dates to get to, or even proper shoes for that matter. Yet they are all so happy just to being running around alive today because the concept of “just making it half way through” does not register with them. This internship has taught me so much, most of this I would not have learnt with the time obsessed life I was leading previously. So much of what I have learnt here I will take with me and apply to my life wherever I may be. Do not stress about time, do not stress if you’re 5 minutes late because in the long run what does it matter really? The only thing that matters is getting right now right.