Goodbye Teacher!

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

-Winnie the Pooh, the real OG

Teaching in Thailand is in the books! I taught my last class today and can’t believe it’s over. I’ve been incredibly flattered over the last week with all the kind words the students have said to me as I’ve said my goodbyes. To be honest, I didn’t always feel like I made an impact in the classroom. I have 550 students that I see usually see for a half hour once a week. But a few things the students said and did over the last week really warmed my heart. Here are a few snippets of my favorite quotes over the last week.

“I want to travel.”

“Oh? Where to?

“America! Give me money.”

“Teacha, you live by Lotus Salaya?”

“Yeah, why?”

(Starts jumping up and down) “I see you exercise.”

“Teacha show six pack.”

I can’t tell if it’s calling me a bad teacher, but the rest of it was very sweet.

Thai kids love selfies. I had to start ending class 10 minutes early so the students had enough time to take pictures with me. Not a bad problem to have.

Since I’m leaving, my students have been bugging me for my contact information for the last few weeks. Phone number, email, facebook. Anyway, I caved and decided to make a second facebook account that the student could add. I started giving out my name of “Mark Watraikhing” during the end of the week. I logged in after a few days and saw this.

450 friend requests???? Are you kidding me????? I lost it when I saw this and laughed like a crazy person for a few minutes alone in my apartment. Thai kids love their facebook.

I had a few messages from students along the lines of “Hello Teacher Mark 555” (555 is the Thai version of lol). A student even sent me a photo album of pictures of me teaching a class…taken by the student. I think I’ll go with flattery rather than being creeped out. Here's a few of the student-made facebook photos.

I will really miss a lot of these students. There was a really good dynamic in most of my classes where they could joke around but be serious when they needed to. But I'm not worried about not seeing them - I've got 620 friends on facebook after all.

The ol’ Switcheroo

I get students mixed up all the time. I feel really bad when I do it, but hundreds of students in uniforms gets really confusing. Anyway, I noticed that I had a student appearing in multiple different classes. Her nickname is Not and I asked her why she was skipping her other class to come here. She responded with, “No teacha, not Not, New! Sister Not!” Apparently her nickname was New and I was mistaking her for her identical twin sister, Not. Super embarrassing.

Last weekend was an absolute blast with all my teacher friends coming into Bangkok for one last hurrah. We rented out a few hotel rooms and enjoyed some quality food and pool time. It blows my mind that I’ve been here for almost a year. It seems like yesterday I was meeting these people and trying to navigate this wild country. I’ve been really blessed over the last year with some good friends that have made Thailand so fun.

This weekend there’s a big sports competition between the local schools. I’ll be representing my school in the basketball shooting contest. Hopefully I can bring back the magic that won me a knockout tournament in 8th grade.

Mark