Pre-placement reflection

I am sitting at my hotel window, looking out over the skyscrapers of Bangkok in the gathering dusk, listening to the calming tones of Bach's Air on a G string and collecting my thoughts on this final evening before I head off to my placement tomorrow. We had the final day of our in-country training today - the employer workshop. It was an excellent day, despite the fact that there was no representative present from my organisation. We explored the three-way relationship between VSO, the partner organisations and volunteers, the expectations of each and possible scenarios that could arise and how we might deal with them.

The workshop was held in English, but I got the chance to practise my Thai a tiny bit during breaks. The language is actually very simple grammatically - only one verb form for all tenses and people; no articles; no gender; no plurals; a simple and consistent sentence structure. It is the tones that make it really challenging. I am aware that I will have to make a real effort to create opportunities to use and practise the language every day. While we were doing the language training I was quite immersed in it, hearing and practising it every day and getting lots of repetition. Already, after a few days with no lessons I can feel it fading a bit.

Bethan and Kozue have left already for their placements. I have another night in Bangkok, as it turned out that there were no spaces left on the night bus to Mae Sot so I am flying tomorrow instead. A 1 hour and 15 minute flight instead of an 8 hour bus trip, and I will be met at the other end by Alice, another VSO volunteer in Mae Sot. The only problem is that I cannot take all my luggage, as the maximum you are allowed to check in is 25kg. So I  spent much of yesterday evening repacking all my bags so that I can leave my big rucksack behind with items that I should not need straight away. The rucksack is going to be put on the bus and I will pick it up from the bus station in a couple of days. I hope it makes it!

One of the things we did on the workshop today was to look at the respective "journeys" of the volunteers and the partner organisations - all the stages that have happened so far to bring us to this point. It was a great opportunity to reflect back on everything that has happened since I sent in my application at the beginning of July last year. For such a long time it all felt so unreal and I could hardly believe it was really going to happen. Even during the language training I felt cocooned in a protective bubble. It is very exciting, after all the preparation, finally to be setting off to start working. I will need to remember everything that the VSO training prepared us for, in terms of having realistic expectations and taking time at the beginning to listen, observe and seek to understand local needs rather than rushing in with great ideas for change.