Thailand: Experience of a Lifetime

by Matt Kelly, Grade 12

It goes without saying that the Thailand excursion was far more than simply a “trip.” It was far more; it was an experience never to be forgotten. The group of travelers included tenth graders Nico Hawley-Weld and Lauren Nathan; eleventh graders Kate Mischaikow, Melanie Weniger, Andrea Feuer, Matthew Kearney, Jon Beach, Marc Bonilla and Raelle Salson (a friend of the class); and twelfth graders Harry Tucker and me, Matt Kelly. Accompanying us were Mrs. Layne Stabler and our trusty guide, AIS parent Dr. Tip Weniger.

When we first stepped into Bangkok Airport after two excruciatingly long flights totaling more than 20 hours, we were met by friends and relatives of the Weniger family. They greeted us and placed ceremonial necklaces of flowers around our necks. At the time our exhaustion and discomfort made it hard to appreciate this beautiful moment of two different cultures coming together, and it was made harder by having to get into two uncomfortably small minivans for the drive through the smoggy city to our hotel. But the next day was amazing: we saw all the sights of Bangkok, including temples and palaces. We went to a gargantuan mall and ate lunch on a boat in the Chao Phraya River. The real journey, however, did not start until day four when we went to the village of Wang Pong.

We arrived in the village after a four and a half-hour bus ride from Bangkok and were greeted by friends of our chaperones who escorted us to the houses where we would be staying for the next two weeks. Later that night they welcomed us with a ceremony, in which we all had to introduce ourselves in Thai. The village was a treat and the only things that took getting used to were using a basin to bathe ourselves as well as the toilets, which are essentially holes in the ground - not for the faint of heart!

The village was where we taught the children in the local school, the main purpose of the trip. We were all paired and assigned grades. Harry and Melanie taught first grade, Lauren and Matthew taught third, Kate and I taught second, while Nico and Raelle, Andrea and Jon, Mrs. Stabler, and Dr. Weniger all taught various upper school classes. The children were a joy and they all seemed to have a blast. We taught songs, grammar and vocabulary and they took in the language very well. However, the real fun came not in the classroom but on the field, where we taught them the joys of superior American football, baseball, Red Rover, Tag, Keep Away, and uh… give one kid the ball and watch as the other 150 kids run at him with unchecked, primal rage. The children really seemed to get a lot out of the lessons, and Kate and I managed the no small feat of teaching our students to count from 1 to 999,999,999,999.

After the first five days of teaching we took a weekend excursion to a national park. We were all very excited to finally sleep on an actual bed when we got there but, to our dismay, the beds were actually harder than the floor mats we had been sleeping on for the last five days. We spent two days hiking, seeing waterfalls and monkeys, hoping to see a tiger and having all sorts of tourist safari-esque adventures. The most fun diversion, though, was swimming in the pool and playing on the kiddy slide. Finally, after two days of relaxing it was time to go back to the village to teach again.

The villagers were happy to have us back, but it was not long before we had to return to Bangkok. On our second last night we were honored with a goodbye ceremony, which was sort of bittersweet. And then, on our last night in the village we had an all American barbeque cookout, except that instead of hotdogs and burgers we had real pork and beef, instead of fries and ketchup we had rice and curry… and instead of pie we had fruit. The food was great, we watched videos of our teaching sessions that Dr. Weniger had filmed and it was all good fun. But in the back of our minds we knew that it was time to leave. We had only two stops left, one to another national park, and the other to Bangkok and our plane ride home.

The last morning the faces of the villagers were gloomy. We were told that after we had said our goodbyes and the bus left that the people of the village stood around for several minutes in tears. That moment is something that I didn’t expect and cannot explain. I doubt that any one of us could have foreseen the impact that we would have on that community. It was after we learned this that every single one of us understood our reasons for coming to Thailand. For me, in the beginning, it was simply because I wanted to experience a completely different culture from my own. However, in the end it was so much more than that. We became a part of the village and they left as strong an imprint in our lives. As I said before, Thailand was an experience not to be forgotten.