Final reflection

So after 5 days of (unsuccessfully) readjusting to EST, catching up with old friends (and falling asleep during TRON and The Grinch), eating non-Thai food, watching hours upon hours of Food Network, and playing Warriors Orochi 2 with my sister (and, um, accidentally falling asleep), I finally found the time to reflect on my experiences over the past 4 months.

To take an idea from Brett, I think there are two stories that I could tell about my experience: the postcard snapshot or the real picture. On this blog, I feel like I've been telling the postcard snapshot.

To be honest, throughout most of the 4 months, I hated my program.

I hated how we only had 16 free days (12 of which I actually got free due to having to plan for facilitation twice and having to take 2 of my Thai finals on my two last personal days). I hated the language barrier and the constant barrage of questions like, "Are you Thai? Japanese? Korean?"

I had my own Thai class. Just me and Ajaan Maliwan. It was just so much pressure just on me about every other day for about 3 hours. Then I would go for about 2 - 3 weeks without Thai due to being away on unit or other various reasons. I would then forget the majority of what I had learned in the past lessons and feel horrible about the next lessons.

I hated having to facilitate. I hated the constant reflection. I hated how much we had to spend talking about the ~group process~. I hated how much we had to give each other feedback and criticism. Hell, I hated how much time I had to spend with my group.

To give some context, the student group spends SO MUCH TIME TOGETHER. I felt like there wasn't a minute where I was truly by myself or with my other Thai friends. And in terms of facilitating, before every unit, a group of 3 students called Unit Facilitators had to prepare the "lesson plans" so to speak for the rest of the student group. Then, those 3 students were in charge of the entire unit: the briefing, reading discussion, activities on unit, workshop. Those 3 were always monitored and evaluated by the interns, and then the students would give those 3 feedback at the end of the unit. It would be anything from a 1-10 scale or detailed feedback on each person. Since my group was so small, most people had to do it twice. After each unit, we would have a few sessions where we would only reflect on ourselves and talk about our group and how it's developing. I thought it was an absolute waste of time; I felt that the whole process just detracted from my learning about the issues.

But in reality, it wasn't even really about the issues. Because of all of that reflection time, I learned so much about myself and gained so much more confidence in my skills. Because of the experience in facilitating, I feel like I wouldn't have gotten that experience anywhere else Because of all that feedback, I really saw myself grow. Because of my Thai classes and people constantly asking me questions about my ethnicity, I have become much more fluent in Thai and am exploring my Asian American identity further. And because of the rigor of the program, I feel that I was able to immerse myself in the process and really progress more in terms of simply being a human being or, as CIEE likes to put it, a "global citizen."

So even though I hated most aspects of the program, I eventually found it valuable in so many ways. And I'm absolutely thankful that I had the opportunity to go through it with an amazing group of people.

Thank you all so much for reading! And who knows? Perhaps I'll keep posting sporadically in the future. But for now, thank you so much for following me on my journey! If you want to talk my adventure or your own adventure, I'd be glad to! Take care, all! :D