“In January 2015 after finishing yet another miserable semester of nursing school, I decided to leave college: to take a break. To find myself, if you will. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made as it lead me to teaching English in Thailand.
In March of the same year, my best friend was getting ready to graduate college in just a few months. Not yet ready to enter the workforce and begin her career, she sought out alternative options that would be constructive, illuminating, and allow her to travel.
After Googling “teach English abroad” she came across Global Nomadic’s site. She told me of her plans and I decided to go with her. We settled on Global Nomadic because Jeremy and his team made us feel cared for. We hadn’t dont much traveling at this point in our lives and the thought of booking a one-way flight literally across the world to Thailand was truly terrifying. We needed a little hand holding, you could say.
And hold our hands Jeremy did. He answered every neurotic email in a timely fashion, provided us with tons of material on the TEFL program we’d be joining, suggested packing lists, an intro to cultural expectations, and more.
We were very concerned about logistics — where would we live? How would we get from the airport to our accommodation? Would people speak English? How could they be so sure we’d get jobs? Jeremy answered all of these questions patiently and assuringly. He made us feel like despite this big crazy change in our lives, everything was going to be ok. More than ok— it was going to be great. And great it was.
Our handoff from Global Nomadic to the Samui team was seamless. We went from being well-cared for by one party to well-cared for by another. We were cultured shocked and mosquito bitten but deliriously happy and very excited.
Samui TEFl was no cake walk. It was a very thorough and, at times, intense program, but without it we would been lost in the classroom. Kathryn and Rosanne 
made sure this was not the case. We learned methods for bringing the classroom’s attention back to the teacher, creating age-appropriate lesson plans, adjusting the material based on our students’ level of English, and most importantly, how to convey information when you don’t speak the same language.
The TEFL course was transformative. Kelsey and I found jobs together at a government school in a southeast Bangkok suburb called Chachoengsao after Samui TEFL. And while we stood there knees shaking and nervous on our first day of teaching, we drew on the wealth of knowledge and experience we had gained at Samui TEFL and we did just fine.
We loved our school, our kids, our community, and the life-long teacher friends we made along the way. We ate Pad Kaw Pro and Khao Mon Gai, drank Chang beer, and rode motorbikes everywhere. My students made me cards and hugged my knees, held my hand and thanked me constantly, and cried tears out of those big brown eyes when I left. I told them I’d always think of them, and think of them still, I do.
Catherine Tansey 2018″
