As we are approaching the one year anniversary of coronavirus being considered a global pandemic, everyone has found themselves walking in the steps of this new normal. Take out has become the new going out, masks have been added to the phone and keys check, and Zoom is checked almost as regularly as email. Of course, no one thought we would be here a year ago. We thought we would be on our 7th month of our Southeast Asia adventure, living that new normal opposed to this one.
Myanmar is also not the country that it was one year ago. If you haven't caught up on the news, Myanmar is going through a military coup, where the once all powerful military junta have decided that they want their all-powerful-ness back. Our students and fellow teachers are safe, and we continue to hope for their safety, and for Myanmar's future, every single day.
With both of these realities staring us in the face, Nolan and I felt helpless to what the world was throwing our way. In December of 2019, we thought we had found a pretty good gig in this international teaching job, and we still know that this is the path for us, but the world was just not letting us experience it. Although endlessly grateful for our parents hospitality, we were ready to be back living in our own space. Myanmar was clearly not opening its borders to new foreigners anytime soon. We seemed stuck, until our head of school sent the staff a very intriguing email about a possible Plan B. He told us that Thailand had opened its borders to tourists (even long stay tourists) and we could apply for the Special Tourist Visa and live there if we wanted to. Now, the school would not be assisting us in the move, he was just letting us know that this was a new option.
We immediately started considering the idea. We could go and live on our own. We could teach a normal schedule. We could start our Southeast Asian adventure. After long conversations with each other and both of our families, we decided that this was the option that we wanted to take. Thailand is rated within the top five countries in the world for handling the pandemic, there are no military coups taking place, and there is only a 30 minute time difference to Myanmar. By way of filling out hours of logistics, we decided to take our lives back into our hands.
The last piece of our move that we seriously had to consider was the possibility of receiving the COVID vaccine. The vaccine would make our travels all the less intimidating, and would allow us to be back in our classrooms if we could enter Myanmar at some point. We decided to go ahead with our travel plans, hoping that the vaccine would continue rolling out, and hopefully we could get it before leaving. And, just two weeks before our leave date, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine (a single dose) was approved, released, and shot into both of our arms. We could not be more grateful for the science and essential workers that made it possible for us to get this vaccine.
Now, we have always been two people looking for an adventure. When we decided to become international teachers, we knew that the risks for us would be higher than for someone taking an office job in their hometown. There are flight complications, and culture shock, and (unbeknownst to us) pandemics in the way of a comfortable, easy life. But, the easy isn't what excites us. Some of you may be thinking, moving to Thailand during a pandemic? Nope, I'm good! And if that's what floats your boat, I wish you calm seas and happy sailing. When we thought about either continuing to live with our parents and working at night versus moving to an exciting city filled with endless alleyways of new experiences, even with all of the scary logistics and potential problems, we decided to set sail in that direction. Even though that direction does include 18 hours of flying and a two week hotel quarantine. Clearly, comfort is not what we are going for here.
So, starting March 19th, we will be the lucky new residents of Bangkok, Thailand. We have rented a lovely apartment in an exciting neighborhood of the city that we can both teach out of (we are within a 20 minute walking radius of three different street food markets!!!). We will continue teaching there until the end of the school year when Nolan and I will have to have the very hard conversation of if we want to spend the summer on the beaches of Phuket, or in the jungles of Chiang Mai (our lives will be so hard). And after that, we will just wait and see. The world is constantly changing, so we will continue to pray for the safety of the people of Myanmar, and see where we are at the beginning of the next school year. We could not be more excited to get started on our travels, and bring all of you along with us.
Comments