Thailand Expat

Mekhong Kurt

Mekhong Kurt has kindly offered to write a little about himself for us...

Mekhong Kurt

I came to Asia almost by accident. After working some years I returned to graduate school and got a Master's degree in English. I speak Spanish pretty well, and was looking for a job somewhere in Latin America, but I wasn't even getting replies, much less job offers.

A professor friend invited me to his annual Christmas party. I went, and met a really nice guy from Beijing. He was the first person I met from mainland China, and I was fascinated by him. We became friends.

Once he knew I was having no luck getting a teaching post in Latin America, he introduced me to the Education Officer at the Chinese consulate in Houston, a gentleman on secondment from his teaching position at Tianjin University to the Foreign Ministry. He arranged a teaching post for me in the English for Science and Technology Department. (Tianjin University is one of China's main engineering and technological universities.) A fellow classmate also got a position there, so off we took in August, 1985.



I taught there for a year then moved to Beijing Normal University, where I stayed two years and married a lady born and reared in Beijing. She was an English teacher but wanted to go to graduate school to get a Master's degree in computer science, so in 1988 we moved to Texas, my home state, so she could pursue her graduate studies. In 1990, as friend who was Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau, an American, called me and asked me if I would go there and revamp the faculty's required year-long course in business communications. I happily accepted.

Four years and one divorce later, I accepted a job at Bangkok University. That was in 1994. And I've been in Thailand ever since.

I don't think I'll ever live in America again. Yes, I love my country. However, on the rare occasion I visit, I feel very much a foreigner. I don't know, as the Chinese say in Mandarin, "how to do."

Mekhong Kurt

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