Philosophical Musings on Exchange
I'm starting this post with a few observations about the quality of this blog; while it's not at all representative of my entire exchange, there are some decidedly negative parallels to be drawn, the first being what I just mentioned, or in other words, that I'm not using this blog very effectively. I don't write with much regularity, when I do, I'm prone to rambling and providing needless detail where it is unnecessary, at the same time ignoring entire events that I wanted to write about, and there are fewer and fewer pictures with each post. To that end, this will be a post with some rambling that I feel particularly passionate about, intentionally sin fotos, and the last of its kind.
Is exchange right for you?
Before I went on exchange, I assumed the answer to this question was a universal yes, the naysayers among us simply having not realized yet or giving too much weight to their understandable apprehensions. Now, I'm less sure. I still think there are a lot of people out there who want to go on exchange and don't realize it's an option. I've met some of them here. I've also found people who are on exchange and want to go home, and rather than brushing off their defeatism as personal failure to open up, I sympathize with the stresses that caused it. Exchange is rarely what anyone thinks it will be, and even if one has come to terms with a reality, that doesn't make it automatically enjoyable.
I personally believe that exchange was a right choice for me. I have had my share of problems - notably the feeling of learning too slowly, being stuck at home with nothing to do coupled with the urge to do be doing something special all the time because I'm in Thailand for a year and that's not likely to happen again (I'm coming back, just probably not long-term). But I feel incredibly comfortable. I am learning. I do have special experiences on a regular basis, which I won't be writing about here because part of my future refocusing of this blog will be to skew heavier toward the things I actually enjoyed doing. I don't miss my home except for snow and I can't think of any culture shock that was emotionally resonant. It's not that I won't be happy to see my parents or nothing is strange about a new country - I just don't need my parents here now and nothing is so strange that I can't just say "huh" and move on. The political situation (nothing to do with monarchy, but I still won't go into detail), has slowly become more and more alien to me, but in daily life, politics is almost nonexistent. The most shocking cultural difference is almost completely ignorable.
So, what emotions are right?
Most of my fellow exchange students miss their homes. Most can ramble about everything that is weird here. They beg for "normal food" and endure periods of entirely real depression. Others are even more extreme than me in their lack of struggle with adjusting, while some are in between. Oddly enough, these emotions don't seem to have much of a correlation on whether people put an optimistic or pessimistic spin on their exchange - like all emotion, these feelings are a subconscious expression that colours perception but doesn't define it. Sometimes I wish I would feel more, both sad and happy, but I'm convinced that how your brain decides to interpret the foreignness doesn't define the overall experience.
What is going wrong and right?
When I said before that I feel stuck at home, I meant that as a very real complaint about exchange. Rotary can be confining, especially with a host family as worried for my safety as mine. I've been invited to play basketball with my Rotary club counselor more than once, but my host mom has never taken me or explained why not. My friends at school have never asked me to do anything with them and I've only been to one non-sport event with my neighborhood friends. My best friend at school lives forty kilometers away and some people I've met live even further. I can barely speak Thai, and most people who really want to know what I have to say have enough English proficiency (or think they do) that they'll immediately switch languages if I take too long. One of the exchange students here (Phoebe maybe?) wrote a blog post called "Exchange Doesn't Suck, I do." In some ways, this could be applicable to me. I could ask my friends what they are doing on the weekend - except that I am rarely sure I will be home on any given weekend. I could hit the books harder on learning the language and try harder to force conversation into Thai. That is truth - although I also am pretty sure I'm one of the best Thai speakers in this crop of exchangers, which makes me wonder if I might already be doing all I can really sustain. So does exchange suck? No, by all accounts it's quite a good experience, if it does have its drawbacks. Do I suck? Just a little bit.
I've decided that I'm leaving in July, so that leaves 5 months or something (Rotary didn't send me here to do arithmetic) until I go back. That's crazy to think I might be past the halfway point (I could find out for sure if I was willing to count, but that is squarely in the "too much effort" category). I'm optimistic about my language progress about every third day, and I am making some new friends, but as I go forward, I'll hopefully be able to come up with a way to do more things that isn't too presumptuous. Right now, my old neighbor, Luke, and I have a short film in the works that would have me contributing scenes from here, so maybe turning my friends into actors and borrowing their motorcycles and cameras (this is going to be epic if it ever gets done) will be that kickstart into a bigger and more exciting exchange.
Is exchange right for you?
Before I went on exchange, I assumed the answer to this question was a universal yes, the naysayers among us simply having not realized yet or giving too much weight to their understandable apprehensions. Now, I'm less sure. I still think there are a lot of people out there who want to go on exchange and don't realize it's an option. I've met some of them here. I've also found people who are on exchange and want to go home, and rather than brushing off their defeatism as personal failure to open up, I sympathize with the stresses that caused it. Exchange is rarely what anyone thinks it will be, and even if one has come to terms with a reality, that doesn't make it automatically enjoyable.
I personally believe that exchange was a right choice for me. I have had my share of problems - notably the feeling of learning too slowly, being stuck at home with nothing to do coupled with the urge to do be doing something special all the time because I'm in Thailand for a year and that's not likely to happen again (I'm coming back, just probably not long-term). But I feel incredibly comfortable. I am learning. I do have special experiences on a regular basis, which I won't be writing about here because part of my future refocusing of this blog will be to skew heavier toward the things I actually enjoyed doing. I don't miss my home except for snow and I can't think of any culture shock that was emotionally resonant. It's not that I won't be happy to see my parents or nothing is strange about a new country - I just don't need my parents here now and nothing is so strange that I can't just say "huh" and move on. The political situation (nothing to do with monarchy, but I still won't go into detail), has slowly become more and more alien to me, but in daily life, politics is almost nonexistent. The most shocking cultural difference is almost completely ignorable.
So, what emotions are right?
Most of my fellow exchange students miss their homes. Most can ramble about everything that is weird here. They beg for "normal food" and endure periods of entirely real depression. Others are even more extreme than me in their lack of struggle with adjusting, while some are in between. Oddly enough, these emotions don't seem to have much of a correlation on whether people put an optimistic or pessimistic spin on their exchange - like all emotion, these feelings are a subconscious expression that colours perception but doesn't define it. Sometimes I wish I would feel more, both sad and happy, but I'm convinced that how your brain decides to interpret the foreignness doesn't define the overall experience.
What is going wrong and right?
When I said before that I feel stuck at home, I meant that as a very real complaint about exchange. Rotary can be confining, especially with a host family as worried for my safety as mine. I've been invited to play basketball with my Rotary club counselor more than once, but my host mom has never taken me or explained why not. My friends at school have never asked me to do anything with them and I've only been to one non-sport event with my neighborhood friends. My best friend at school lives forty kilometers away and some people I've met live even further. I can barely speak Thai, and most people who really want to know what I have to say have enough English proficiency (or think they do) that they'll immediately switch languages if I take too long. One of the exchange students here (Phoebe maybe?) wrote a blog post called "Exchange Doesn't Suck, I do." In some ways, this could be applicable to me. I could ask my friends what they are doing on the weekend - except that I am rarely sure I will be home on any given weekend. I could hit the books harder on learning the language and try harder to force conversation into Thai. That is truth - although I also am pretty sure I'm one of the best Thai speakers in this crop of exchangers, which makes me wonder if I might already be doing all I can really sustain. So does exchange suck? No, by all accounts it's quite a good experience, if it does have its drawbacks. Do I suck? Just a little bit.
I've decided that I'm leaving in July, so that leaves 5 months or something (Rotary didn't send me here to do arithmetic) until I go back. That's crazy to think I might be past the halfway point (I could find out for sure if I was willing to count, but that is squarely in the "too much effort" category). I'm optimistic about my language progress about every third day, and I am making some new friends, but as I go forward, I'll hopefully be able to come up with a way to do more things that isn't too presumptuous. Right now, my old neighbor, Luke, and I have a short film in the works that would have me contributing scenes from here, so maybe turning my friends into actors and borrowing their motorcycles and cameras (this is going to be epic if it ever gets done) will be that kickstart into a bigger and more exciting exchange.
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