Jet lag and a new city

Jet lag has left me feeling like one of those crazy cuckoo birds that juts out of their clock haphazardly with no sense of rhythm or purpose. I am always tired but rarely sleepy, which has made this first weekend in Bangkok a fitful one. I am often awake, but feel as though I'm living in a thick cloud of neon fog, thanks to my own exhaustion coupled with the electric chaos of this city.

To describe living in Bangkok as an experience of sensory overload would be to put it very lightly. The perfume of the streets is complex with fried dough and sweet water for mangoes, spicy with scalded peppers and fish whose pupils are deep and inky and stare at you as you fumble through new currency that might as well be monopoly money for how well you understand its value. There is a hum of honking bright pink taxis, drivers yelling their offers of inexpensive tuktuk rides, the music of high schoolers practicing a dance in the shade of some crumbling building. It is a city that stretches for miles, crawling through ruins and clubs with bright signs that say things like "WE PLAY AMERICAN MUSIC" or "WE DONT CHECK IDS".

It is easy to feel lost and small here. I don't yet know if this feeling is a permanent one or one that will dissipate as easily as the large plumes of smoke that erupt from the cracks of Bangkok's hookah bars.

Tomorrow we officially begin orientation. Back to the classroom to learn ESOL teaching skills, the Thai language as well as Thai cultural norms.

Hopefully next time I write things will be less dizzy.

Cody

Ready or Not...

This time a year ago, I would be slowly working my way through dinner in the Proctor booth room at Middlebury. Wednesdays were hard days, so I'd treat myself to long dinners that started at 4:30 and ended somewhere around 7, meals that wound through as many people and conversations as I could get my hands on. These days were filled with some of the last English courses I would take to fulfill my major: Shakespeare's Comedies & Romances, a James Joyce seminar and a less-than-favorite elective called Multi-Ethnic British Literature. I'd finish dinner, throwback two cups of coffee and head off into the crisp purple night. I'd be wearing a cardigan and a scarf and would complain about how it was too early for it to be this cold. Once I got home, I'd read until my eyes were blurry and polish off an episode or two of some trashy TLC show with my suite mates before settling into my little 95 sq. ft. slice of dorm-room heaven for sleep. Then the spilling of sunlight into the room come morning and the bittersweet repetition of an academic life.

It's hard to believe that this isn't my life anymore, that tomorrow I will be embarking on a journey that was nothing more than a seedling in my mind a year ago. I will be swapping cool Vermont weather for Thailand's wet season, stomping my way through flash floods instead of piles of brightly-stained leaves. If you'd asked me a year ago what I thought I'd be doing come next September, I would've predicted a lot of things, but certainly not anything as wild as this. Yet, here I am, on the brink of my new, unpredictable life. It's scary and, even though I know I should be excited, I can't help but feel more anxious than anything else. I am lucky to have this opportunity, but it's difficult to be joyous about something when the sting of what you have lost is still so fresh on your mind.

But,  ready or not, here I come. Stumbling, maybe, but forward-moving, certainly. I shove off tomorrow from Dallas at 12:45 PM. I'll be taking a 13 hour flight from here to Tokyo and then a 6 hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. When all is said and done (with shifting time zones), I'll land in Bangkok ~11:00 PM Friday evening.

The whirlwind of a lifetime is fast approaching. I pray for steady hands and an open heart and of course a quick dash or two of luck. I won't say goodbye because it isn't really goodbye, since most of you won't physically see me before I leave. I'll continue to exist here, through email, facebook, and a handy dandy free app called Viber that allows people to call/text for free via a WiFi connection. It syncs with your phone contact list and allows you to do everything you'd normally do with a phone. Get it. I'll be lonely and will need the company.

The next time I write a blogpost, I'll be sitting pretty in The Mansion, a hotel in Bangkok that, by the pictures, looks slightly worse than a Best Western, but definitely better than a Motel 6, so I'd say that for the next month, I'll be rolling in a slightly shaky lap of luxury.

Thank you all for reading and for all of the wonderful support/words of encouragement I've been receiving. I appreciate all the little messages and youtube videos and funny articles that make you think of me. It's amazing to see a community continue to exist even when its members are separated by miles and countries and even an ocean.

Until Thailand,

Cody

Vaccinations & Insomnia

And with one final vaccination, I am medically ready to head off to Thailand. Over the past few weeks, I have taken vaccines for Typhoid, Japanese Encephalitis and the Flu and have gotten medication for Malaria, medication that my travel vaccine nurse Amber tells me will make this porcelain sun-poison-prone Fulbrighter's skin even more sensitive to the sun. Hooray. I just pray that I can find some SPF 50 sunscreen somewhere in the bowels of Bangkok, or at least a sunhat large enough to cover my entire body in shade. 

While it's great that I've been able to receive medical care that will ensure that I don't die or suffer permanent brain damage while abroad, I really wish I could take something for the terrible bouts of insomnia I've been experiencing lately. I'm fine during the day, but as soon as I lay down at night to sleep, my mind starts racing with thoughts of Thailand. Everything from logistics to feelings to attempts to visualize the small house I'll be living in to thinking about possible ways to ward off arm-sized lizards from nesting in my luggage; at night, my whole body is exhausted with worry. 

 

Which is to be expected. This is what happens with new beginnings. We try to think ourselves out of the fear of the unknown. We like sense and we like patterns and we like being prepared. At least I do, which is why I've been trying so &%^*&($ hard to make shapes of the darkness. 

In lieu of being able to sleep, there are several activities I've been doing to occupy the hours from 2 AM - 5 AM:

• Watching reruns of Rupaul's Drag Race. I like it for its sparkly entertainment value, but also for the lessons it teaches us about being true to who you are and pursuing your dream regardless of the adversity you might face. 
• Watching films on Netflix that pertain (loosely or literally) to travel: Lost in Translation, Cairo Time, Safety Not Guaranteed, Endless Summer. Good travel films showcase both the euphoria of adventure but also the apprehensiveness/fear/loathing of moving out of one's comfort zone (in regards to place, language, culture, etc.) 
• Listening to "Wide Open Spaces" by the Dixie Chicks on repeat. 
• Google image searching "Kalasin Province" and always being a little bit disappointed that there aren't new images.
• Typing "Learn Thai Language" into Google but get so discouraged by the first available link that I go back to Rupaul. 

So as you can see, I keep myself pretty busy, and though I've been trying to squash the insomnia with sleeping pills (or a hearty glass of wine or two), I think it's good to wrestle with this anxiety instead of pushing it away with false encouragement/bravery. Traveling has taught me the importance of acknowledging the things that scare me, but not letting these things overpower my boldness or will to explore. I've learned that one of the first keys to dismantling fear is to name it, to appreciate its presence instead of trying to stuff it into carry-on-ziploc bags or the over-highlighted pages of a travel guide. 

And even as I continue to tango with the doubts and concerns of sleeplessness, I do so knowing that no one expects answers of me. I know, too, that these answers will come eventually: perhaps haphazardly in a flutter of sideways revelations, but will come when I need them most. 

A mere 9 days away from the great shove-off. Wish me luck (and some much needed ZzZzZ's),

Cody 

PS. A little video treat:

Why Thailand?

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 

An Introduction

For my fellow Midd alumni: 

Hey there. This is the blog for that thing I mentioned I was going to be doing for a year after graduating. We talked about it when we were both a little tipsy at the Last Chance Dance or maybe when we were running to Proctor in the rain right after Commencement. No, no, not Teach for America. The Fulbright! Yeah yeah. But not Spain. No, nowhere Spanish speaking. Thailand.

For my family:

This is my blog for my year teaching English in Thailand. I'll post a lot of pictures and make sure to fill you in a lot about what I'm doing. And yes, I'll download skype and viber on my phone so that we can talk on the reg. 

For everyone else: 

Hi. My name is Cody Gohl and for the next year I'm going to be living in Thailand. The Kalasin province to be exact, which is located in the Northeast of the country. For reference, take a gander at the image below (and also keep in mind that Bangkok is to the very south near the water and that Chiang Mai is in the North). 

And although the Kalasin Province is known for its sticky rice, silkworms and touristy statues (my particular favorite being that of a figure that holds a magical staff and a teapot in its hands), I will not be working specifically with any of these things. I will be teaching English to Thai students at the local school (The Yangtalad Wittayakom School) between 15-20 hours a week, as well as acting as a facilitator for clubs and tutoring students in conversational English. I'm not sure what "conversational English" means yet. Hopefully it doesn't mean that they want me to teach Thai students to talk like I do when I'm speaking with my friends, which would result in an influx of sass, lewd commentary and gurrrrrrls amongst the high schoolers. 

I'll spend the year living in a small home provided by the school that I have been promised has a rice cooker, microwave and hotplate. The Fulbright scholar who is at the school now tells me that she doesn't even notice the lizards in the house anymore!, which seems a hearty endorsement for the zany adventures and mishaps I am just 23 days away from experiencing. She also tells me there is a 7/11 within walking distance of the house, where I imagine I'll be spending most of my nights drinking slurpees alone. 

All joking aside, it's realllllllly hard to imagine that I will be leaving for Thailand in 23 days (23...WHAT?!). I am scared, nervous, excited, anxious, joyous, worried and utterly perplexed, but almost entirely ready to jump right into this experience, dragging all of you blog-readers/followers right along with me. 

I thought I'd keep this first post short and snappy, but over the next couple of weeks, I plan to write about all of the preparations that have gone into my experience thus far, as well as the journey of how I went from a college student with no Fulbright to a college student with a Fulbright and what IT ALL MEANS! 

Best,

Cody