About Us

Hi All, and Welcome to our blog! We created this blog to keep our friends and family (lets be honest... our moms) informed about what we are doing and where we travel over these next 2 (maybe more?) years! 

 Ever since Rhianna completed her student teaching at the British School of the Netherlands in Den Haag, Holland, she knew she wanted to pursue her dream of international teaching. We joined Search Associates (an international teaching data base) 2 years ago, and after many early morning, middle of the night skype interviews, 2 job fairs, job offers and prayers, we finally accepted our "perfect fit" at the American Pacific International School in Chiang Mai, Thailand. 

 Rhianna grew up in Washington D.C. and Clifton Forge, Virginia. She always knew she wanted to be a teacher. Pursuing her dream at James Madison University is where Ben and she met.  She currently teaches in a Grade 5 Primary Years Program (PYP) Classroom. 

 Ben grew up in Naples, Florida. He started working in University Recreation, but decided to concentrate his efforts on education. Ben is lucky enough to run around in shorts and a t-shirt all day, teaching Middle Years Program (MYP) Health and Physical Education for grades 3-9! 

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And the journey begins...

Rhianna and I got our official offer letters from the  American Pacific International School  today! Very excited to start getting everything together for the trip. Check our our "Our Journey" tab to read the fun process we went through to get to this point!
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Officially Expats

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We have been here for a month and with our own bank accounts and work visas we are now expats! When we are out and about around Chiang Mai we can tell people we live here and lose the tourist label. But if we are to go anywhere outside Chiang Mai we are back to tourists :) It has been 4 weeks of school and we are starting to get in the groove of teaching and knowing more about the kids. What we've realized is kids are the same everywhere.  We have students that lose papers, don't do their homework with the same excuses of "I forgot we had homework", "I lost it", or my favorite "I did it !...but I left it at home." We've been coaching the boys soccer team and they complain about running, have a new injury each week, or can't come to practice for the normal reasons.  We are starting to learn how to the students came to our school and why they chose this school.  Some students move every couple years because of their parents jobs, or they wa...
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First Impressions

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We are here! Its been about 10 days of transition but it all was worth it! The plane ride was your expected tiresome journey but we arrived with no hick ups! Two days later Rhianna got sick from what we think was traveling and a lot of new food / water but recovered in 24 hours. We were told to be ready to be sick more than just once while we are here, and you become close really fast with everyone at the lunch table discussing various stomach issues!  We arrived Wednesday and the school picked us up and took us to our apartment. Our apartment is very big with lots of windows, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large kitchen (with more cabinets and counters we know what to do with) and nice dining room area.                                                   On Thursday and Friday we had New Staff Orientation where we met all o...
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