With my departure for Thailand coming up in fifteen days, I've been thinking a lot about one of the very first questions posed to me as I began the application process for my Fulbright grant: Why Thailand? This question was one of two personal essay questions to which I was required to respond and I found it to be a very challenging one at that. Even now, it is still a difficult question for me to answer, yet one that I am asked all the time by family and friends trying to understand all the little decisions that have added up to me being just two weeks (and a suitcase full of linen shirts) away from jumping over many time zones and landing in a rural village in South East Asia.
So, why Thailand? Why not Malaysia or China or India or England or Mexico or, heck, the United States of America? Why did I have to teach English (something you can literally do anywhere) in a country thousands of miles away from all of my friends and all of my family? The simplest answer is that there isn't just one answer to the big ol' WHY question that keeps me (and I'm sure my family) up at night. In fact, there are several, which contradict one another as often as they compliment one another.
One answer is that as a senior in college, I felt like there was no where I couldn't go and so why not go somewhere completely foreign to every experience I had had up until that point. Another answer is that Thailand is beautiful and I wanted to see the elephants and pray in the temples and learn the language and its people. Another is that after spending four years thinking deeply about myself and how things affected me, I wanted to do something less selfish, wanted to do some good for as many people as I could. And finally, an answer that seems all the more true as the number of days left shrink into hours into minutes into my feet on the tarmac, that I wanted (and want) to do something that would scare me, not in any terrifying or perilous in-danger-for-my-life way, but in a way that would truly put me (with all of my education and personal experiences) to the test, to see what kind of stock I was "truly" made of.
Satisfactory? Partially. A number of the other Fulbright grantees to Thailand have personal reasons for wanting to spend the year teaching there: family history, personal connections to projects in the country, familiarity with the language and the culture. I do not have these things, but that does not mean that I am entering this new year empty-handed. I have a deep sense of adventure. I have an intense belief that language is one of the most powerful and important gifts we can give one another. And I have a desire to be changed by what will soon be a less-than-foreign country and a willingness to accept and welcome this change into my life.
And even as my reasons for going are complicated and not entirely whole, I know that it is the right decision for me to go, and that seems like reason enough for me.
Cody
So, why Thailand? Why not Malaysia or China or India or England or Mexico or, heck, the United States of America? Why did I have to teach English (something you can literally do anywhere) in a country thousands of miles away from all of my friends and all of my family? The simplest answer is that there isn't just one answer to the big ol' WHY question that keeps me (and I'm sure my family) up at night. In fact, there are several, which contradict one another as often as they compliment one another.
One answer is that as a senior in college, I felt like there was no where I couldn't go and so why not go somewhere completely foreign to every experience I had had up until that point. Another answer is that Thailand is beautiful and I wanted to see the elephants and pray in the temples and learn the language and its people. Another is that after spending four years thinking deeply about myself and how things affected me, I wanted to do something less selfish, wanted to do some good for as many people as I could. And finally, an answer that seems all the more true as the number of days left shrink into hours into minutes into my feet on the tarmac, that I wanted (and want) to do something that would scare me, not in any terrifying or perilous in-danger-for-my-life way, but in a way that would truly put me (with all of my education and personal experiences) to the test, to see what kind of stock I was "truly" made of.
Satisfactory? Partially. A number of the other Fulbright grantees to Thailand have personal reasons for wanting to spend the year teaching there: family history, personal connections to projects in the country, familiarity with the language and the culture. I do not have these things, but that does not mean that I am entering this new year empty-handed. I have a deep sense of adventure. I have an intense belief that language is one of the most powerful and important gifts we can give one another. And I have a desire to be changed by what will soon be a less-than-foreign country and a willingness to accept and welcome this change into my life.
And even as my reasons for going are complicated and not entirely whole, I know that it is the right decision for me to go, and that seems like reason enough for me.
Cody
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