Rose and Sam's Excellent Adventure

Well, the great RASEA has come to an end, for now. The adventure continues, in a more normal way back in Australia, but what I’m left with, is a heavy heart and a fairly harsh adjustment period from the energy and highs and lows of being a ESL Kindy teacher in Vietnam, to an IT “professional” in Perth.

It’s been extremely difficult, personally, getting back into the swing of Australian life, and leaving Vietnam, my students and my friends behind – to the point where it’s not easy to write about it yet. We’ve been back 2 weeks so far, and it seems to be getting worse, not better, in terms of missing everyone and some cool things we had going there.

Certainly, there were many difficult and frustrating things about living in Vietnam, espeically in the last 2 months, but the friendships we formed were very deep. A friendship formed overseas, when language is such a large barrier, seem to be much deeper as each small conversation, and each shared moment where both people understand and recognise something funny or a personal joke, seems to be an epic overcoming of barriers and obstacles. Because of the effort taken in learning each other’s language, a small conversation understood is a much more substantial offering than a casual throw-away conversation you have with a new workmate in Australia, to the level where it’s incomparable.

My co-teachers Trang Loan and Mai, the other assisstant teachers at JK and of course, my boss and friend, the gorgeous Ms Ha. My students, especially the ones I was very close to and had a special connection with like my White Rabbits 2 class. My workmates like Chris, whom I became quite close, and the many friends we’ve made including our landlord, Ms Hanh, and her family are on my mind a great portion of the day and give you that “missing” feeling in your chest when you think about them.

I miss you all and look forward to coming back next year and visiting you all and seeing White Rabbits 2 graduate.

I can’t thank you all enough for the mad experience that teaching at Just Kids was, and how much it taught me about myself and what I’m capable of doing. I won’t forget a single one of you!

- Sam

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This entry was posted by Sam on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Travel Stories, Vietnam, returning home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.