My Year on the Other Side of the Planet
By Carol Hinsdale
I would like my students and friends to follow my journey east. I have been a teacher at Hinesburg Community School for twenty three years. Life flies by quickly and one day you wake up and say,” Wow! Where did the time go?” And that is why I have chosen this adventure. It is time for me to experience the world outside of my global neighborhood and most especially, my comfort zone and so it is that I have chosen to take a year and move to the other side of the planet to try something new and different. I look forward to being immersed in another culture and meeting people from all over the world and this is how my story begins.As a little girl growing up on a dairy farm in Charlotte, Vermont, we rarely had the opportunity to travel. The summer of 1967 we made our way to Expo 67' in Montreal. This is where I came into contact with my first taste of Thai culture. I placed my hand on the side of the most beautiful temple I had ever seen and vowed to visit this amazing country sometime in my life. I was almost lost in the crowd as my family wandered forward and I lingered behind to see more of what this exhibit had to offer. I already felt a strong connection with Thailand at a very young age.On July 17th my journey begins with a seventeen and a half hour flight from New York to Bangkok on Thai Airways. Montfort College in Chiang Mai is where I will call home for the next year. It is a school of 5,000 students and about fifty foreign teachers. I will be living in a house with several foreign teachers from all parts of the globe, traveling to many neighboring countries is how I plan to spend my free time. My intention is to post to this blog once a week and to keep in contact with students and friends back home. Follow along with me. Visit my new school at http://www.montfort.ac.th/english/index.php and visit my blog from the school home page under teams or go directly to my blog at :
http://carolhinsdale.blogspot.com/