In this interview, we hear from Bianca Palese. Bianca is a Peace Corps volunteer working as a Education volunteer in Thailand. What Bianca shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. Bianca talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations. Join us as we learn about Bianca’s journey and see how volunteering with Peace Corps can change lives.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises, Challenges, and Personal Growth
- Community Projects and Interactions
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Can you tell us more about serving as an Education volunteer in Thailand?
One of the things I like about the education project, formally named the Teaching English for Student Success (TESS) project, is that it’s relatively structured and has clear goals. TESS volunteers are assigned to a specific school and we live out the lives of any other school teacher; planning lessons, teaching class, and doing extracurriculars with the students.
My school spans from Annuban (kindergarten) through Mattiyom 3 (grade 9) and has 314 students, which is relatively midsized. The thing that makes Peace Corps Volunteers different from native teachers, besides the obvious, is that we are co-teaching alongside our counterpart(s). The other volunteers in my group have one or two counterparts, but I started with three.
As volunteers, our mission is to not only teach the children English but to develop the capacity of their regular teachers. On a normal day, I will teach three or four classes and then spend my planning periods writing lesson plans and making teaching materials with my counterparts. After school we all meet up to do Crossword Club (in Thailand Scrabble is called Crossword) where the students always beat me and that concludes the workday!
When I don’t have Crossword Club I might join a volleyball game, have tutoring with my language instructor, or go to the market with some other teacher friends. I also attend all the various school events like sports days, cultural ceremonies, cub scouts, field trips, academic competitions, and holiday parades.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Thailand?
The first time I heard of Peace Corps was during a history lecture about President John F. Kennedy during my freshman year of high school. I went home and did some research on Peace Corps after that and it sounded like my dream program, getting to travel and give back to the world. I snuck into a recruitment luncheon at the University of South Florida, an event I was not invited to as I was not a student there, and learned more about the Peace Corps and got to talk to some RPCVs who convinced me I needed to do this.
One thing that stuck with me from that event was hearing “PC Thailand really is the jackpot!” As I was finishing my degree in International Studies and Human Services at Elmira College in New York I worked with an online recruiter to polish my application materials and sent it off. I applied to serve anywhere because the service was more important than the location to me, but I did write about in my statement of interest how my grandparents inspired me to want to work with kids abroad. They moved to Thailand after retirement and taught English at a school in Nonthaburi province for 5 years. I was young when I came to Thailand for the first time to visit their school, but I never forgot about it.
Almost everyone in my family has been here now, my uncle came and taught a year too, and my grandparents hosted a Thai international student back in the States afterwards as well. So, it’s safe to say my family has a special connection with Thailand. After waiting 2 years through the pandemic to finally hear back about my application, I got the invitation to PC Thailand and I don’t think it’s a coincidence they placed me here. I am very proud to be the third generation in my family to teach in a Thai school.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Tell us more about your home situation:
Volunteers spend the first three months at site living with a host family and then can choose to stay with the host family or move to separate housing. I chose to continue living with my host family. Our family consists of a mom, a dad, four daughters, a brother-in-law, and two grandchildren. Residing at the house with me is only three of my sisters and one of the children. My four host sisters are all around the same age as me and I feel fortunate that I was placed somewhere with four built-in friends.
They were super close with the volunteer who was here before me too, so they have some English ability and cultural perspective that makes it easier for me to relax. I spend the evenings playing with my sister’s daughter, who is turning 3 soon, and eating dinner with the whole family. It makes it a little less lonely when there’s always someone around.
My community is very rural, and while my house is one of the nicer ones in the village it still took some time getting used to living here. Many houses including mine do not have running water and lose electricity frequently, particularly during the hot season. We have to fill up large buckets at the family’s farm and load them onto a truck to bring to the house. Sometimes when resources are low we do not have water for days at a time.
Our house is an open-air home, meaning that only the bedrooms and bathroom are inside, four-walled rooms. Everything else is exposed to the elements. I was promptly instructed to shake out my shoes before I put them on in case there was a scorpion taking refuge inside. I’ve seen two scorpions so far, though neither time in my shoe thank goodness.
My host family installed screens on my windows and door so I can open them without letting the mosquitos in because dengue fever is prevalent in our area also. I don’t have AC at home so opening the windows and turning on the fan is essential during the summer.
The most difficult thing about living at a rural site, and I think many volunteers would agree, is the need to rely on other people for basic needs. It’s about 40 km roundtrip to my district hub, so I can’t buy food or anything really without asking for a ride. I can’t do laundry or take a shower without someone delivering water to the house. I can’t access an ATM without a ride, and if I need to visit the bank the nearest one is an hour away. The hospital that I am approved to go to through the Peace Corps doctors is 2.5 hours away.
Everyone is nice about helping me out, but I do feel like a burden always asking others to do things for me. Back in the States I am a stubbornly self-reliant person, so giving up that independence is tough. Part of being a PCV is accepting that you’ll have to make some sacrifices.
Surprises, Challenges, and Personal Growth
4. What has surprised you most about Thailand?
The orientation of Thai families is so interesting to me. People commonly live with their parents their whole lives and once married the husband might move in with the wife’s family or they continue to live separately. Households commonly have many people and more than one generation living there.
In my community, many parents leave to go work in bigger cities and send money home. As a result, many of my students are living with just their grandparents and the teachers step in to act like parents. I had a very Western notion of what a student-teacher relationship should appropriately look like coming into this, and I had to adjust my perception when I gained this insight.
Everyone here truly takes care of each other and acts like one big family. I think my little host niece is so lucky that she gets to grow up in a home with all her aunties caring for her. It’s really sweet and I wish American neighborhoods had more of this feeling.
5. What challenges did you face while working with community members in Thailand?
One challenge has been getting compared to the previous volunteer who was placed at my school. Peace Corps does reuse sites, and a decent percentage of the current volunteers in Thailand are at sites that have worked with the program before. And there are whispers of talks about re-using sites even more in the future.
In my situation, my school and family had the past volunteer for a year before the pandemic and she did a great job integrating. That made some things easier for me, but it also meant I got a lot of comments judging my appearance, language ability, and general personality in comparison to her. It was hard to feel like everyone liked her more than me. Several people told me that she was not a foreigner and I am, which hurt my feelings and made me retreat to not wanting to be in public.
It feels a lot easier to form relationships with the kids in the community than the adults because kids don’t really care what you look like or what language you speak as long as you’re down to play with them. Once the adults started seeing how their children always run up to talk to me and give me hugs, they started to trust me more. The language barrier is always going to be there to an extent but getting over those feelings of resentment and making an effort to talk to people helped.
6. How have you grown and developed during your time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand?
This is a hard question! I know that I have grown and learned a lot but overall, I am still very much the same person. Peace Corps makes you stronger and more informed, but I don’t think it changes who you are. I believe Peace Corps has made me more resilient to being uncomfortable and made me experience truly being “othered” in a way that I never had to back home.
I understand the dynamics of a close-knit community in ways that a textbook could never teach me, and I want to bring this kind of knowledge to my desired future career in international development. I’ve also been humbled as I had to accept that I can’t learn a language overnight, fix every problem in the Thai education system, and make every person accept me. Yet despite all the hardships I can still meet my goals and find ways to make a difference.
Community Projects and Interactions
7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved?
I co-coach the English Crossword Club at my school. Crossword is the same as Scrabble, with a different name and expanded dictionary. I play with our small group of students after school and accompany the team to tournaments on the weekends. I actually don’t really like Crossword because I feel like the dictionary is gaslighting me with what it does and does not count as a word, but I do love to watch my students compete. They’re really good, usually taking home at least third at the tournaments. And I love hanging out with them at these things because they’re the funniest, goofiest kids who always make me laugh.
Another secondary project that I am working on right now is developing a reading program/book club for our students. We were recently blessed to receive a donation of English books from Darien Book Aid and my students are really excited about them. They love to flip through the beautiful pictures and ask me to read to them. We work on reading skills a lot in class, but I’m thinking of ways to have the library available to them all the time and how we can develop their critical thinking skills through stories.
While not exactly secondary projects, it is also worth mentioning that a component of the TESS project is hosting at least one English camp for the students, one technical skills training for English teachers, and one teacher development training related to Student Friendly Schools (corporal punishment and hazing of students, unfortunately, exists in Thailand).
8. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had with community members?
So many!! Some funny, some awkward, some crazy. One thing about Thai people is that they love to have a good time and know how to throw a party. I went to several retirement parties this past year for teachers at my school and surrounding schools. These usually entail good food, gift-giving, karaoke, and drinking.
I was at one party where I was pulled on stage to become a backup dancer to an older gentleman in a fedora holding a small dog and crooning his heart out. I must have done a good job because I made about 120 baht in tips that night. I also lost that amount of money to the same gentleman recently in a Thai poker game, so the scores are settled.
Advice and Support
9. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as an Education volunteer in Thailand?
Do your research on the Peace Corps experience beforehand and know what you’re hoping to get out of it. The difference between a Peace Corps teacher and any regular American who moves here and gets a teaching job is that PCVs live at the level of the community around them and truly become part of that community. It’s very challenging but very rewarding.
Don’t set your expectations for yourself too high, regardless of how selfless a person you are, you’re going to feel bothered when it’s scorching hot, your legs ache from biking, the spicy food gives you a stomachache, there’s a spider in the bathroom, and you’re never 100% sure you understand what people are saying to you. I mistakenly thought that I would be invincible to the hardships because I’d wanted to serve for so long and I’m strong-willed. Be realistic with yourself over what you can and can’t tolerate.
In my experience, if you believe in the cause and do a good enough job integrating, you’ll overlook all the inconveniences effortlessly. And if you’re wondering whether or not the Peace Corps is for you because you have a significant other at home, while it is a mixed bag I can attest to long-distance relationships being possible. It’s not always easy or fun, but again if you believe in the impact you can make and your partner is supportive then don’t let that hold you back.
10. What skills or qualities do you think are most important for a Education volunteer?
If you like working with kids, care about education, and love to play games then you will make a great TESS volunteer. It’s a myth that you need a background and experience with classroom teaching to make a good teacher. During my PST (Pre-Service Training), many people expressed that they felt awkward with the idea of telling the native teachers how to teach when they have never been teachers before. While it does seem kind of backward on paper, trust me it will not be an issue. The experience of mutual learning and exchanging knowledge with your counterparts makes the project all the more meaningful for both of you.
It’s important for a TESS volunteer to be patient and persistent with their counterparts. The better relationship you build with them the easier your service will be. Building good relationships with the students also is important. They will reflect whatever energy you give them, so smile and be excited to interact with them and they will make your service magical.
The most important skill for being a PCV in general I would say is being adaptable. You HAVE to be able to go with the flow and not get too overwhelmed. Thai school calendars are like a loose collection of events. You will be told you have a meeting an hour before it starts, your principal will change the dates of events a million times, and sometimes your counterpart will show up at your house at 7 in the morning and tell you you’re going somewhere. I’ve gotten in the car under the pretense we were going to the tailor, and it ended up being a 4-hour road trip to a bank. The cultural concept of time is the opposite of what we’re used to as Americans, so just be prepared for anything to happen at any time!
11. How has the Peace Corps staff and training helped you during your service?
This might ruffle a few feathers, but I genuinely believe PC Thailand has the best training staff of all the countries. Sorry, not sorry! They’re just that amazing. The PC staff here are seasoned vets who have been through many training conferences and they pretty well understand American culture and have open and honest conversations about how we will be perceived by Thai people.
The language adjaans are like our personal confidants; they’re ready to answer all our cultural questions even though some topics are kind of uncomfortable.
I had the best time during my PST. I have had two site visits from my program manager and assistant program manager just to check in and I really appreciate the support they give as well. When I was feeling like a failure for being overwhelmed with the adjustment at site, they had a lot of comforting words and let me know that I was given this site because they knew I could handle it.
Unfortunately, my group hasn’t had the opportunity to do an IST (In-Service Training) Conference due to the budget. We will have Mid Service Conference in a couple of months and then a Close of Service Conference in November, then get sent home early next year.!
Practical Tips and Language Learning
12. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Thailand volunteers?
Clothing that wasn’t on that suggested packing list that you need (for people identifying as female): light and breezy track pants to wear on sport uniform days, a black skirt for swearing in, and bike shorts to wear under your dress or skirt at school. I also wish I had packed melatonin because I have trouble with insomnia. I recommend bringing lots of stickers because they are an effective bribe for classroom participation.
I would also recommend bringing two-year quantities of any skincare and haircare products you like because the environment can be tough on your skin and the majority of products in stores here have whitening chemicals in them. However, there is a Sephora Thailand that ships around the country so if you want to use your stipend to order products they carry the shipping is really fast!
13. How has learning the language been?
I taught myself some basic phrases before I left the States, but nothing serious. I learned basic Thai speaking/listening during the three months of pre-service training and worked really hard to be in the advanced language group. So, it was a bit of a shock to the heart when I got to site and they all spoke Lao. Thai and Lao are very similar languages but have distinguishable accents and swapped vocabulary.
My site is in the Northeastern region, also known as Isaan, and sits on the border of Laos and Cambodia. Like, we can drive to either country within an hour. The people in my community identify as Isaan Lao; speaking the language, eating the food, and using the cultural customs of Lao people. I felt very defeated in my first weeks here not being able to understand simple questions because they were posed to me in Lao instead of Thai or they had an accent I wasn’t used to hearing.
During PST regional dialects were only covered for an hour and none of the language instructors grew up in an Isaan province, so I didn’t know what to do or who to ask. My counterpart helped me arrange tutoring with the Thai language teacher at our school and I asked her to just teach me how to say things the way she would say them if talking casually. My host sisters helped me a lot too, and having a three-year-old in the house was an advantage because I was learning how to speak properly alongside her.
I found an online book called Speak Isaan Thai that I bought in my panic and being a visual learner, it was helpful to see the words written out phonetically. I also really like this dictionary app/website, Thai-English Dictionary, because you can spell out what you heard and it will give you the match for what it means. So I listen, I research, I write it down, and I practice. My pronunciation is still not so great and I have trouble following when people speak fast, but I’ve come a long way.
My advice is to just keep trying. If you can’t join a conversation because it’s going too fast, just listen and try to pick out new words and look them up in the dictionary later. Translate your school’s group chat and pick up vocabulary from that. If someone says something to you that you don’t understand, ask them for clarification. It’s a long journey. You’re not going to learn how to speak a language so drastically different than English through osmosis so learn what works best for you during PST and then make the effort during your service to keep improving.
Final Thoughts
14. Any last comments or observations you’d like to pass on to future Thailand volunteers?
Get ready for a wild ride and good luck!
Bianca Palese’s story about being a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand teaches us a lot about helping others in different countries. She tells us how exciting and challenging it can be. Bianca shows us that making friends and learning new things can change our lives. Her advice is to be patient, flexible, and open-minded. If you’re thinking about volunteering abroad, Bianca’s journey reminds us to be ready for anything, but also to enjoy the adventure and make a positive impact wherever we go.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Thailand Government.
