Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-058
Natalie Gee Hall served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand from 1967 to 1969 as an English teacher. She met and married her husband during training in Hawaii. Due to Peace Corps policy, they were forced to resign from training with their first group, Thai 18, because they had been accepted initially as single volunteers. They were required to reapply as a married couple. After being accepted again, they trained in DeKalb, Illinois, with the Thai 19 group that received part of its training during the summer of their junior year in college and part after they graduated. Hall discusses the negatively competitive "de-selection" process that asked trainees to rate each other's likelihood to succeed. Once the Halls arrived in Narathiwat, Thailand, Natalie taught English in the girls' high school and her husband taught in the boys' high school. Together, they also taught English to adults using a language curriculum developed in Thailand. Hall discusses the on-going insurgency in southern Thailand as well as the presence of Air America U.S. contractors conducting secret supply runs to Vietnam, and local support for the U.S. fighting the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. She ends by talking about her advocacy work for Peace Corps funding and changes in Peace Corps health care and disability policy. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, January 16, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).