Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast where we dive into relevant topics and issues
related to the world of business, technology, education, and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders, and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
In today's episode, we explore the topic of cultural transitions, and I'm joined by our
student co-host, Lyon and Linda.
We also welcome our special guest, Mrs. Amber Quick.
Thanks for joining us.
But before we jump into our interview with Mrs. Amber, I'll turn the mic over to our
co-host.
Let's hear the quote of the day.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, if life were predictable, it would cease to be life and
be without flavor.
Remember, my listeners, always live your life with flavor like KFC's famous fried chicken.
But before we get to Mrs. Amber, here are some headlines from our news desk.
ICS Carnival was a smashing success.
Thank you to everyone who attended.
In other news, Bangkok continues to rank 11 in the world's worst traffic.
However, if you look on the bright side, Thailand ranked 6th place in 2022 bright side beauty
pageant.
And for some international news, a drought in Europe has recently revealed hidden villages,
sunken ships, and lost hunger stones not seen since World War II.
Thank you for those headlines, Linda.
Now let's jump into our first segment with Mrs. Amber.
Thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy schedule for this episode.
Our co-hosts have some great questions they'd like to ask you about your journey through
different cultures.
But first, I'm not sure everybody knows your last name.
It's Quicked, correct?
Correct.
Speaking of your last name, how quick are you, Mrs. Amber?
If you, Mrs. Karen, and Mrs. Donnie, race in a 50-yard dash, who do you think would
win?
Oh, that's pretty easy.
Mrs. Donnie would be all of us.
And actually, you may not have known this, but for a long part of my life, I was a runner.
I went to university on a scholarship for running, and ironically, I don't have a fast-twitch
muscle in my body.
I was a long-distance runner.
Another story, another time.
We've heard that you've traveled a lot.
Which countries have you lived in for how long?
Yeah, thanks, Linda.
I grew up in the US and lived there until I was about 27, and then we moved to Hong Kong,
and we lived there for nine years, and then now I've been in Thailand for five years.
I actually have a Chinese name.
It's Kui Ba Ya.
Those tones may or may not be correct, and a lot of my students at my last school would
call me Kui Lao She.
Very nice.
Makes sense, yeah?
I like that.
I think it's a great name, Mrs. Amber.
So, when you decided to move to Bangkok, what were some determining factors?
Yeah, we were looking for a different sort of lifestyle.
My husband and I were kind of hesitant to get caught up in this ideal kind of American
dream lifestyle.
We had a lot of friends around us that we felt were kind of looking for these certain
things and always trying to get this kind of American mindset, and to us, that wasn't
really a definition of success, so we were looking for a little bit something different.
I had a best friend that taught in China for many years, and she was always trying to convince
us to move overseas and try teaching overseas, and so after several years of talking to us
about this, it was finally something that we looked into.
It must have been hard for you and your family to adapt to a whole new culture.
Did you encounter any obstacles or culture shock?
Actually, a lot of times when people transition, they say you go through this kind of certain
... You kind of hit this honeymoon phase, and then you hit this deep transition culture,
which can be really hard.
I know for the seniors, when you guys do some of your transition stuff, they'll talk about
this.
I feel like for our transition to Hong Kong, it was actually kind of this whole upward
thing.
It was all just very exciting.
We loved it.
We really embraced Hong Kong.
We love Hong Kong.
So there wasn't so much, but obviously pretty much everything was new.
I remember the first time in the grocery store was absolutely overwhelming.
These teeny tiny aisles packed with people.
You don't know what anything is.
You don't know where anything is, and just kind of some of those moments being really
difficult.
Can I share about an embarrassing story?
One of our first... Yes, of course.
Of course.
This may or may not have involved some of my older sons.
If you know what the Poon Choy festival is in Chinese New Year... At Chinese New Year,
everyone decorates their houses and the temples, and every village has an ancestral building,
I guess you want to call it, a bit of a temple.
Everyone has those orange trees, those mandarin orange trees.
It's decorated out front.
It's symbolic of wealth and all this.
At the temple, we like to go to the temple because right next to it was a little fish
pond and you could feed the fish and everything.
Some of my children who will not be named went one day when they were playing, and they
were playing with their friends at this temple, and they found these oranges on these bushes
that were outside of the ancestral worship center.
It's also a really beautiful building, not only just for worship, but it's also where
they keep the genealogy.
These families who live in these villages, it's amazing, can track back their genealogy
for so many generations.
It's really incredible.
Anyway, this one had an entranceway, but then in the middle of the foyer, we'll say, there's
a cutout, a sun roof, whatever, this empty spot.
They thought it would be really fun one day to take these mandarin oranges, and they started
throwing them like a basketball game.
They were trying to get however many oranges they could get up over the roof, through the
hole in the center of the roof, into the building, which was the worship center.
Obviously, the village leaders saw them and came running out.
It was horrifying.
It was absolutely embarrassing.
Then, in true Chinese culture, of course, instead of being upset with us, well, I mean,
they probably were upset with us, but instead of shunning us, they actually came and invited
us to this Poon Choi Festival.
Our friend was like, oh no, you have to go.
You have to take the red envelope, and you have to basically repay this.
It was a very neat cultural experience.
It was also very embarrassing because everyone in the village knew what our kids had done.
I would say that was a way that we were not very respectful of different cultures in that
term.
But they forgave you.
They did forgive us, yes.
My children lived to tell the tale.
Very good.
That's a very fascinating story.
Thank you, Mrs. Amber.
Our next question is, what were your family's initial reactions to moving?
Yeah, well, we just had two boys at the time, Ben and Isaiah, and they were pretty little.
So they were kind of excited about it, but a bit clueless, really.
It was just kind of like, OK, mom and dad are excited about it.
It did take my husband two years to say yes.
This was something I talked to him about for many years, and he was really resistant.
He grew up in one town in Indiana in the middle of the cornfields, and then he went to college
like an hour and a half away.
And that was really like the expanse of his travels.
But he did over time.
This was something that he really started to look forward to as well.
Our final question for this segment is, what is your favorite food in Hong Kong?
So many good foods in Hong Kong.
I love dim sum, so hao gao.
I mean, hao gao is my favorite.
That's my favorite one at all.
Chicken feet really aren't bad.
If you haven't tried them, you shouldn't try.
I know.
The idea is hard, but the flavor is so good.
So almost any dim sum food, any bubble tea, jeon ju lai cha is like a regular ordering
that I'll go to.
Yeah, dumplings, bubble waffles, so much good food.
OK, with that, we'll be right back in a moment with more from Mrs. Amber, world traveler,
principal and the 50 yard dash champion.
ICS's very own literature club is hosting a book drive for pre-loved children's books.
If you have books suitable for lower elementary students, please consider donating them.
Our collection boxes will be placed at the front of school, past the turnstiles and in
the media center.
If you have any questions, you can contact the leaders, Linda Cho, Eliza Mast and Ron
Kottari.
We are back with part two with Mrs. Amber.
It's always fascinating to hear the personal journeys of people we know.
With that said, let's jump back into our questions.
So Mrs. Amber, was there anything difficult that you experienced when you moved from Hong
Kong to Thailand?
Or was it a smooth start?
That's a good question, Lion.
It was not a really smooth start.
I think because the move to Hong Kong had been so seamless, I was kind of expecting
that.
But it was hard.
Leaving Hong Kong was really hard.
So there was a lot of emotional turmoil, right?
Just saying goodbye and leaving another community.
But then when I came here, I actually had several...
I had a very rough first year, if you ask anyone.
It was close to me during that time.
About I don't know, week six or seven of being here, I was already kind of emotional and
stuff.
But about week six or seven, I ended up in the hospital.
I actually nearly didn't make it, honestly.
They ended up having to do an emergency surgery.
Anyway, it was a very long ordeal.
I was in the hospital for about three weeks.
And it was hard.
It was a really hard situation.
But I think through it, God really used that to bring community around and help me kind
of connect with people in a very different way that I wouldn't have obviously reached
out for.
This isn't what I would have asked for.
But it was a rough start.
But it was really beautiful, too.
And after that, I feel like I really kind of settled into life here.
Since the culture in Thailand is different from Hong Kong, what do you love about Thai
culture?
Yeah, Hong Kong and Thailand are very different.
And when we looked at coming here, I thought, oh, man, I don't know how I'm going to do
with Thai culture because some of the things I really valued about Hong Kong was its orderliness,
it's very on time, like every train, you know exactly how many minutes till the next one
comes in the station.
And they're very fast.
It's only like two to three minutes usually.
Things just run a different way.
And that tends to be maybe how my mind runs.
That's what I kind of value is efficiency and things being done on time and things running
smoothly.
But Thailand has this, it's kind of raw.
When we looked at coming, I kind of was like, oh, it feels a little bit like the wild west
of me, kind of compared to Hong Kong.
But I've found that I've actually really fallen in love with this culture and prefer it in
the long run.
I found that in Hong Kong, I was really just like we were running at this breakneck speed.
It was insane.
The lifestyle was just like we were constantly busy.
Everyone was.
It was just kind of the lifestyle and it was fun.
It also is maybe not a long term thing that I could have kept up with.
So this is this to me feels like a more relaxed culture.
It feels like there's time for people.
It feels more friendly to me now.
It's an unfair statement to make on a whole group of people I know.
But as far as like what people present, it's not as polished here in Thailand.
There's a lot of rough edges.
You go down, you know, Bangnathrath and you'll pass like almost basically like a slum.
And then the next time you have like one of the biggest malls in the area right next door
to each other.
But I really love that.
It means that like there's not this hidden poverty, right?
It's there for you to see.
And I do like that because it reminds me of well, it reminds me, A, of how blessed I am
and then like challenges me.
What should I be doing with this?
What can I be doing to give back to people?
So to me, there's very much this culture and beauty that's so evident in Thai culture that
I've really grown to love.
Very cool, Mrs. Amher.
I also agree that Thailand has a certain charm to it.
But how are the students different between the countries where you have taught?
So the schools are actually the schools are somewhat similar, but the schools themselves
are different.
So of course, the students are different.
This school here is definitely more diverse.
Our last school had probably started that way, but then over the years changed.
And I really love the diversity here, whether that's like ethnic diversity, socioeconomically
or religiously.
That's just something that I think ICS Bangkok, my last school was actually ICS also, which
can get confusing sometimes.
ICS Bangkok brings to it.
And it's something that I really appreciate about this school.
Because you've been a part of both ICS middle school and high school, could you describe
some of the big differences between them?
Yeah.
If you've spent much time with middle school students, you'll know that there's a pretty
big difference between middle school and high school students.
Both of them have a very fun spot in my heart, but obviously for different reasons.
Middle school students have been the ones that I spent most of my teaching career teaching
was usually with middle school students.
They're crazy, they're fun, they're wild, they're very like awkward.
It's fantastic.
It's a fun group of kids to work with.
High school students have some of those same things, those same traits as well, but in
a much more like really working to kind of like, okay, I understand or I recognize these
things about myself.
Now, what does that mean for me?
Or how is that making me?
I've always loved working with high school students over the years more and like I would
do more of like a mentoring or discipleship type role.
And those are always like my favorite kids to kind of connect with.
And yeah, that's that's something that I really love about high school students versus middle
school students.
Although of course, they don't need to be versus they're both.
They're both great in their own right.
So how did you become the high school principal?
What's the transition like going from your previous roles with this role?
Oh, man, it's been fast and furious.
I came to ICS Bangkok as the sixth grade science teacher.
Part way through my second year, this role, this role opened up this assistant principal
role.
It was something that I had really been interested in for a number of years been kind of thinking,
oh, this is something I think I would like to do, but I would like to do assistant principal.
That's really what I wanted to do.
So far away through my second year, that position comes up and I get it.
So I'm kind of trying to prepare for that.
And then I thought, oh, this is what I want to do.
I want to be assistant principal for like at least five to six years.
It was a new position so I could kind of create it.
I could really work to like, what do we want this to look like?
How is it best going to serve the school?
What will it look like before I even think about anything else?
That did not happen.
We had to shift like the next year.
Mr. Darren, our beloved headmaster at the time, head of schools left and we thought
things might say so, but they didn't.
Everyone kind of shifts and I find myself in the high school principal position.
So it was way sooner than I had thought or expected.
But yeah, I am really enjoying it and it's been a fun ride.
And then COVID.
And then COVID times three.
Yes.
Lastly, do you have any advice for seniors who may be preparing to move into different
cultures?
Yeah, I love what we do at the school.
Mrs. Jen and the counselors, they will host some transition type things.
I guess my advice would be hang in there.
This last year, a lot of it's going to feel, I don't know, I feel like this time of year,
there's often seniors that get frustrated with things.
I don't know if the other things they have to do or the way things are.
And I think that's very normal.
And then as the spring goes on, it kind of turns around and I think a lot of seniors
realize like, oh wait, I'm leaving.
And then they become very reflective and very, very sweet and it's fun.
So anyway, it is, it is can be, I don't know, it can be a bit of a roller coaster, I feel
like this last year.
But hang in there.
Yeah, I mean, I would say listen to the advice of the people who went before you.
But I know when you're in that, you don't really want to listen to those people.
But it is the same, the same kind of feedback comes back year after year.
Oh, I wish I had done this.
I wish I hadn't done this sort of thing.
So I don't want to bore you with that.
I will say when the time comes when the transition, we offer like transition seminar, Mr. Sean
has been leading some transition things which are excellent.
Like go to it, try to take it to heart, even if it doesn't feel real at the time.
Yeah, and just enjoy the time you have with your friends.
Make the most of it, dig in and enjoy the time that you have here.
And with that, our time is running out for this segment with Mrs. Amber.
Thank you for giving the seniors some great advice about how to move into another culture,
especially as many of them are thinking about going off to college or university in other
countries.
Our quote of the day connects very well with the subject of culture.
Culture can seem unpredictable at times, but the unpredictability is what adds flavor to
our life.
As we end this episode, we'd like to thank our listeners for joining us.
Please stay tuned for the release of more episodes as we continue to dive into topics
and interviews relevant to you, our listeners.
This podcast would not be possible without the hard work and support of our international
student production team.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives
sharing copyright free images, videos and music.
And we are signing off until next time.
We are Students Incorporated, because your voice matters.