Chiang Mai beginnings

At the risk of sounding cliché, I can't believe I've only had one day on my CELTA course, because my cohort and I have learned so much already. Today was an incredibly intensive day, and although it was broken up with plenty of breaks, not to mention included meal service and an unbelievably posh resort locale, my brain and body are quite exhausted.

Thank goodness for experienced traveler friends who alerted me of the dress code!

As I take you on the journey that was today's exciting start, please enjoy this speckling of temple photos I took while wandering around the Old City of Chiang Mai prior to arriving at the course. They mostly consist of temple snapshots, plus a cat that looks remarkably like a skinny little carp.

One of the major highlights of my trip so far are the ladies and gentlemen on my CELTA cohort. I was surprised to be only one of two Americans in a group of 12; the others are mostly Brits with a few Aussies and one each from South Africa and Canada to round out the rest. When asked why he made the move out of England, one of our course trainers answered simply, "Because I'm from England."

Another standout takeaway is the nature of our class schedule: always interactive, intensely practical and super fun for me. I love a good meta moment, so you can imagine my glee when we were given a Thai lesson to demonstrate a few techniques we'll be using on our Thai learners when we start teaching them English. Foreign language lesson + lesson about teaching = Alex's dream come true. Give me a well done language course every day for the rest of my life and I'm absolutely set.

On a similar linguistic note, I'm supremely entertained by all the mannerisms from my British classmates, and I'm so curious as to what strange turns of phrase I'm going to come away with. Will I end up sounding condescending or simply odd?

Can you believe this was essentially down the block from my hostel?

The food has been amazing. We're provided three meals a day, plus afternoon tea (!). Naturally, we've paid for it in the course, but I'm very grateful, because I can't imagine having to think about preparing food amid all this learning and planning! We have about a million papers to keep track of, and I'm shocked to think that some people do the CELTA with a daily commute on public transit and all. We get a nice Western breakfast plus Thai options, and so far have had mostly Thai food for our other meals. It's fantastic!

Last night when about half of us arrived at the resort, we took a little trip to the "hypermarket" (think Carrefour, or a shopping mall that has a grocery store in it) for school supplies. There were a few other things I'd wanted to track down too, having forgotten them - notably, I didn't bring my hair straightener because in the past that hasn't worked well with the foreign voltages. However, the Thai employees at this "Big C" store simply shook their heads when I mimed flat-ironing my hair, and I realized, Of course! ...Everyone's hair in Thailand is already straight. Hilarious... Braids and waves for me I suppose.

Finally, I've been super homesick in the days leading up to today, surely due to a combination of jetlag, too much downtime, and a very emotional few days prior to my departure. I miss my friends more than I expected (yes, I was heartless in the past). I guess it just goes to show that, somewhere between the age of 22 and 24, I learned to miss people properly. What a relief to know I'm not made of stone, since my lack of homesickness in moves past has been rather unsettling.

It has been very soothing and enjoyable to read The Kindness of Strangers, a gift book given to me by my wonderful principal at work back home. It's brought me back to reality when I needed it most over the past few days, as well as rekindled the spirit for traveling I seemed to have lost in the flurry of homesickness and 32-hour flights.

A carp if you ever saw one, am I right?