My biggest adventure thus far

Omgeeeeee! Today lasted forever. Some days I wish I had a normal 9-5 or even 8-4, 10-6 job and didn't have to work 10 hour days. Granted I get a nice long lunch break, but I would trade it for 30 minutes if I could work 8 hours and be done. Anywho, for today, the question sparking my post is to talk about the most out-of- character decision that I have made. There are not too many things that I have done in 30 years that are truly out of character (at least that I would mention in my blog that is :) but the one that seems to ring the truest is deciding to uproot my life in Portland, Oregon and move to a small city in Thailand to teach English to Thai children for a year.

When I first told my parents, family and friends that I wanted to move to Thailand to teach, they thought I was kidding. Jokes were made, laughs had. They were all aware that I was looking into applying to join the Peace Corps in order to hopefully get some of my student loans forgiven in addition to new experiences outside of my comfort zone. This adventure would be semi supervised though and moving to Thailand was basically a leap into the far, dark, other side of the world. However, I ended up deciding that two years seemed like too long of a commitment. I also was a bit concerned that I would end up somewhere I had no desire to be. Short story short, I applied for a job at a private school in Nakhonsawan, Thailand for the simple reason that I already wanted to travel there, why not just spend a year exploring and working there in Thailand? I ended up getting a call back and a phone interview that went extremely well and ended in a job offer to teach two, three and four year olds English at Yuwapat Kindergarten School! :) The rest is history as they say, I had about a month to get sorted, packed, say my farewells and book my flight. Not aaaaaaall were on board, enthusiastic and confident in me at first, but man did I prove them wrong! I can honestly say that I flourished while living and teaching in Thailand and made so many wonderful friends and memories that I will cherish forever. I also found out what I am really capable of and just how small my world really was.

To this day, I am grateful that I trusted myself and took a chance on adventure!

*Below is the tattoo I will be getting in the very near future to remind me of Thailand always :)
The bottom elephant ;)