Hello everybody and welcome once again to this blog!
Everybody faces new challenges a different way. For some people certain things don’t even represent a challenge at all but pure excitement, while for others what could be little issue might represent a total disaster.
Fortunately I didn’t face any major issues or struggled much with common things people might struggle when living abroad such as cultural shock, food, whether, independence for basic chores, etc.
Still, there’s definitively some things I had to face so today I’m going to talk to you about 3 things I had to go trough these first three months since I moved to Thailand.
These are my personal struggles I had when moving to have a long term internship abroad. This means I had to adjust to a new country, language, culture, way of living; to a new job experience, people and environment; to living alone and completely independent.
1. People in the working environment
Every working environment is different. No matter the field or industry you work in or the company. Certainly, there’s always going to be better places and people to work with than others but there’s always going to be little things and people that are very difficult to work with.
In my company, as in any there’s people who are too concerned or stress about themselves and their personal lifes. They have issues that are brought to the work place and unfortunately end up affecting third parties.
This is actually a problem I had to face before any other thing as I arrived and started working straight away. I had to learn the system and environment of a front desk position and also I had to learn about the people I was working with: Their position, names, personalities, personal issues between them and the company or other workers.
Past history of friction and misunderstandings between people, etc. And by learning this I was constantly being warned about taking care of myself from situations and people in general.
As usual a new working environment and general things to learn are difficult sometimes but the specifics on the situations that have been happening and the constant gossip and “warnings” were a little too much for me.
I was fortunate tho, to have had experience this type of environment before as this is not my first ever working experience so I thing I could manage pretty good the situation (and I’m already passed through it) but this surely represented a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety in my first days.
I wanted to be friendly and talk to people to learn the system faster and do a good job but I repitidly heard many times from different sources the frictions and warnings, add up the fact that there was a “language barrier” and a lot of times the Thai staff would just talk within themselves without acknowledging me, without actively including me and not teaching me enough about the operations of my job.
Leading to a lot of doubt and miscommunication. Wandering if they were gossiping, judging me, ignoring me, or they where just shy?
In general there was a lot happening and it was very stressful and quite difficult to handle while trying to adjust to everything else in the list.
Now a days (three months later) I’ve already work all the shifts at reception, I talk to everybody and I’m pretty confident about my job and my place at iSanook. I couldn’t be more grateful about this position and this job and I’m grateful that so far in my life I’ve been through things that have made me stronger and helped me to get easier through new challenges and experiences in life.
1. Getting ahead of and being hard on myself about my expected progress
Pressuring myself to want to be and do everything at once. Being too hard on myself and having very high expectations on my accomplishments.
I had to remind myself that this trip and life in general is supposed to be loved and enjoyed. And things are not supposed to be any different from what they are.
Take everyday at a time and enjoy every little things.
Don’t worry about the future that much, about being perfect and having a plan. Just be present and enjoy the moment.
3. The feeling of loneliness – defining my lifestyle and values
Along my issue number 3, the feeling of loneliness started hitting me the penultimate week of march when I tried to live a more “frugal” life for money sake and also because I started working afternoon very often and I had to stay home for the morning.
I was battling with myself to reevaluate and redefine my desire lifestyle and values. I’ve always tried to live a minimalist and simple life so anything out of the basic would be not good and I would feel I’m not doing good enough.
4. Defining my desired lifestyle and general values
I was trying to be a little bit frugal because I was having the idea and I couldn’t decide between wanting to really settle down and let myself start investing on the lifestyle
So I tried to keep up with the cooking at home and don’t go out that much. I also started working afternoon shifts the last weeks of February and it started to add up as afternoons are actually easier to work but it means you have to go to bed late and you wouldn’t want to wake up very early either. So you start you’re next day quite late and you don’t get enough time to do anything!
Unless you want to be running around Bangkok to get somewhere really early and then get back at least one hour before to shower away all the sweat from the heat and get a little bit of lunch after shift!
That said, I was spending waaaay too much time at home and alone. I also didn’t feel great about constantly privatizing myself from any luxury meal or a little shopping here and there to brighten up my home and life.
I just realized I need a little bit of something in my life. Materialism is defensively not the path I’m looking forward to follow in life but as much as I want to get myself into minimalism and zero waste I’m just not that kind of person! At the end of the day my journey is a whimsical path so I have to give myself some nice things from time to time.
Cecy Esparza 