Elsewhere Letters

When I was in university my dream was to study abroad. However,  that dream never became a reality. I graduated college in 2019 and began looking for jobs to teach English in China in 2020. I looked into joining the Peace Corps. I looked into anything to get me out into the world that I have never experienced while still feeling like I was doing something. Then, the pandemic hit, and the world shut down.

In 2022, I quit my job and moved out of my apartment. I sold all my furniture and my car, and I went to California and hiked in the wilderness of the Sierras with friends for about 10 days before having to bail out due to altitude sickness and my own unpreparedness (another story within itself). I then spent another week attempting to hitchhike, taking buses, trains, and, eventually, a plane back to Texas. I used the rest of my money on getting TEFL certified and a one-way flight to Thailand for a six-month teaching internship through Premier TEFL. (You can read my interview regarding the internship here.) 

As an English major, I got to hear from many professors about their stints teaching English abroad. One professor in particular greatly inspired me, and I am forever grateful to her for encouraging us English majors to try and teach abroad at least once— because it opened doors that I didn’t have the keys to before. 

I left my home country for the first time ever and dove headfirst into the experience. I landed in Bangkok in the middle of the night. One of the perks of my internship was being able to connect with the other teachers, many of whom would become my friends, before even arriving in the Land of Smiles. I was in contact with another American girl and we had planned to meet up in the airport because we were both arriving late at night into this unknown city. 

We navigated together to our hostel. Through the teaching agency, we created this little network of teachers all throughout the country. After three days of training at the beautiful Thammasat University, we set off to our assigned locations. I headed north to the Issan area of Thailand to a small town called Chum Pae. My home for the better part of a year. There were three other teachers from my agency working there who would be my comrades and friends during this experience, which I was very grateful for. My housing was provided in my contract, and I was paid the equivalent of about 800 US dollars per month, or 35,000 Thai Baht. The work was rewarding but challenging. Even through the phases where I was often stressed it was worth it because I loved the students, and I loved learning about Thai culture. At the school I got to partake in festivals, make merit and receive blessing from a group of monks, and visit places basically untouched by tourists.

I also amazed myself at how I was able to adapt to anything that was thrown my way. I am a much more confident version of myself since this teaching experience.

I was able to travel regularly while living and working in Chum Pae, Thailand. I was blessed with working in a school semester that had extensive holidays. Many of my work weeks were four or sometimes three days long. There was an airport an hour away by van. I frequently visited Bangkok and spent Christmas there with a big group of other English teachers from our agency. I went on a solo trip to Chiang Mai for New Year’s. I visited lesser-known islands that I fell in love with—like Koh Samed and was frequent visitor in the city of Kohn Kaen which was a cheap and easy one hour van ride away from my new home. Some of the places I came to know were places that most tourists had never heard of. I felt immersed in the beautiful Thai culture and felt like a true traveler. After my six-month contract, I did have the option to extend, but unfortunately family troubles meant I needed to return to the USA for awhile. After some tough goodbyes to my students and new lifelong friends, I used the money I had been saving from my teaching salary to backpack through the country for another month. I was finally that solo female backpacker I had envisioned myself becoming. I then spent another month solo traveling Vietnam.

I went back home to the United States with only about $300 to my name. Fast forward to May 2024, and what was originally meant to be five months in Texas has turned into a full year before I could set off on the next adventure. I began teaching English online while also waiting tables to save money and headed to Central America. 

My way of traveling may not be glamorous; I sleep in hostels and take 16-hour bus rides. I will walk an hour to save money; I live out of a backpack. But the beach is free and sometimes that is plenty enough for me.

I hope to be as transparent as possible, to show how you do not have to come from money to experience the world. However, I must acknowledge the privilege my passport gives me, a privilege my immigrant parents fought for, that I now get to take advantage of just by virtue of where I was born. It would have been much more difficult (in some cases, impossible) to teach English abroad if I was not a US born native English speaker. Now that I have finally lived my dream of traveling abroad, I only crave more. I may even teach English abroad, most likely in Thailand, again. Teaching online has given me the opportunity to solo travel to nine countries (and counting)! The industry is not perfect by any means, but I have to credit TEFL with opening the doors of the world to me.