Dear Charles #18,

i have a feeling this will be my last post while i'm abroad, which is the craziest thought ever. me and conner leave for the longest few travel days of my life tomorrow at 3:30 pm. i leave thailand. i come to tacoma. i leave friends. i come to family. i leave family. i come to friends. its all a part of me now :)

tonight p'lut is having a going away dinner for me at the coffee shop :) i've never had someone have a going away thing before that wasnt my idea. so it will be great. and kyndra will be there which makes it a thousand times better. she got home from the states on thursday while me and conner were making a quick trip down to chiang mai to do some normal stuff...see some baby monkeys, go to the markets...bungee jump. you know. :)

i've been on the internet catching up on stuff for the 2 hours or so, so i will write about the bungee jumping in a bit. most likely when i get back in the states, but by that time i can just tell you to your face now cant i? i wonder what i'll do with this blog...maybe write on it every now and then. i can transfer it into my 'going-to-college' blog. it will be much less exciting though. so maybe i'll save myself the trouble of no one reading it and have this just be my thailand blog, a fun...short lived but tremendously successful series of posts about a treasured time in my life.

thank you thank you to everyone that has prayed for me and supported me while i've been here. there really isnt enough that i can say about this experience. and you helped me! you helped me get here and you helped me stay here! this time in my life has been a polished spoon out of a set of tarnished ones...bad analogy, but you get the idea :) i'll see you all very soon.

Dear Charles #17,

18 days to go, and the countdown begins.
i can not believe that my time here is this close to being over. i need to be honest with you, i am not ready to come home. thats not entirely true actually, im ready to come home but i'm not ready to leave here. thailand is in many ways my home now. i have a physical home, a room that i've decorated, a bathroom that has all my stuff in it, a fridge with all my food in it, a shoe rack outside with all my shoes in it, but its more then that. i have relationships here, i love people here, my heart is joined with places and people that will forever be apart of me, and thinking about having to leave all of this behind, feels like i'm ripping part of my heart away and leaving it here. a piece i think i'll always be looking for, and will only be able to find in thailand.

these last couple of weeks have been the most emotion filled of my life. there was a time, at the beginning of this long process of grieving, that i was ready to buy a ticket home-early-just to be home, i was missing it so much. that feeling turned, in about a week, into absolute sadness when i thought about what going home would mean. that i would be leaving thailand, and everything i've fallen in love with here. since then that feeling has persisted, i've done my best to just make the most of every situation and soak up my last moments, but even then the sadness is hovering in the back of my mind reminding me that no matter how much i appreciate a moment, in just a few weeks its going to be gone, and thailand will be a memory, no longer my current life. well, for awhile it'll still be current, but i wont be actively living it.

i have had a lot of hard talks with my parents and some friends on my thoughts on leaving and one of the things that i've mentioned to them is that, when i think about the heart ache i'm experiencing and am going to experience from the time i get on that plane to when i get home and beyond, is that hurt worth the trade? for this whole experience? i know it is, it's a stupid question because the answer is obvious, but in the moments of the deepest hurt sometimes it doesnt feel like that. what have i gained from pouring my heart and life into something thats just going to be taken from me? a better world view? an expanded ability to love? a cultural experience? is that worth this feeling of emptiness? this almost visible, thailand shaped hole in my heart?

what do i do when i get home to tacoma? and thats what it is now, it is my home in tacoma, not my home. after this, i dont feel like i have a home-home. if anything thailand feels more like my home-home because i've made a life for myself here, separate from my parents, or friends, or american lifestyle. i cant just go back to tacoma and nestle my way back into the life i lead before i left, and it scares me to think of it like that. i dont know how exactly my life is going to be different, what changes are permanent, if im going to feel like an outsider now that ive had this experience that no one else is going to fully understand...

will i be different? will you not like the changes? am i going to be able to handle the transition? can i live with myself knowing what i'm leaving behind here? how is it possible that all these question pass through my brain in less then five seconds, in order to make room for all the billion other ones i have floating around...'?

i need to warn you before i come home, that i don't want to hear the question, "how was thailand?" anyone of you that have traveled somewhere longer then...a week, know that that is an impossible question to answer. theres no way that i can sum up 6 months of life changing experiences into a phrase that is going to satisfy you before you start talking about your new car, or what else happened while i was away. it is going to take months and months for me to be able to figure everything out, and when i do, how exactly im going to incorporate that into the life that i will be entering into. my "american life". im terrified of that transition. i have no idea what to expect because i've never dealt with anything like this before.
i'll do my best to prepare a blanket statement for when i will inevitably be asked how my time here was, if you are subject to such an answer from me, i apologize if i sound..emotionless (?), as i am most likely trying to mask every emotion that is trying to pound its way through my words. every emotion that i can't express with words.

as of right now, i'm not ready to give this all up. i'm not ready to force myself back in a life that seems like a ghost to me now. i'm not ready to walk down a street in tacoma and be content with my life. i'm not ready to think about thailand and not be able to walk out my front door and live it. i'm not ready to say goodbye, and i know that two and a half more weeks here isnt going to change that. i'm not ready for the impending heart break.

bear with me and my transition home, friends. please.

Dear Charles #16,

today i met with esther to continue our math lessons. it's been going as usual...she sasses me, i don't take any of her crap, i pretend i remember how to add fractions and she gives me a hard time for not remembering how because i'm, "american, and i should know how"
so today i was trying to explain a problem to her, to break it down so that we could both understand it better, and she talked herself out of it telling me she "so knows how to do this, this is for babies" so i said in a teasing tone "ok, you can do it by yourself, if you don't want to be respectful towards me then i guess you don't need my help" and i faked a big reaction, turning myself around, putting my arms over my chest and sighing loudly...
a few minutes later esther, the 8 year old, puts her hand on my shoulder and says "ok, if you really want me to respect you then i guess i can. will you help me miss anna?"

haha. shes funny sometimes.

Dear Charles, #15

today broke the mold of the last few weeks. i have been "enjoying" the hot season for awhile now, listening to the rain hitting the pavement only at night, when i'm snuggled away in bed, wishing the cool relief would come during the day. and today, it did! it rained most of the morning, and although it's stopped now the sky is still cloudy which gives me hope for it to continue. granted it is only temporary relief as tomorrow the weather will pick up on the moisture from today and harness it for it's own, deathly humid, purposes. you win some you loose some though right?

besides the overwhelming heat of the past few weeks, the events have been normal: wake up, hit snooze, hit snooze again, shower, skip breakfast, get picked up for school, take off my shoes, check my email, acknowledge that my mom, dictionary.com (with the word of the day) and urban outfitters were the only ones to write me, sigh, turn on the fan, settle myself in my plastic chair, begin the work for the day, listen to the sound of the kids running past my room, muster up patience to work with kids who speak english as their second language, eat too much lunch, continue work, think about what the people i love in america are doing, hear the bell that lets everyone out of school, wait in the parking lot to go home, sweat, sweat some more, get home, shower, nap or read, walk to the market and get something delicious for dinner, commence some activity that's usually different every night, get in bed, try to ignore the heat, clear my mind, sleep, wake up, love my simple life. repeat.

a few weeks ago my room mate, and good friend kyndra left to go home for a month. she's there to raise support and visit her family after being here for almost a year and a half. i miss her like crazy but i'm really glad she gets to do this. before she left here though her friend julie came from WA to visit her and i got to spend a week with the two of them. it was one of the best weeks i've had here :)

one of the days of that week the three of us and p'lut made our way up to a tea farm, and coffee shop close to the border. we ate breakfast and drank coffee. i drank coffee! i figured it was about time to accept my fate as a washingtonian and like the stuff before i get shunned out of the state. plus i'll be starting university next year and i want to fulfill every college stereotype possible, including the ability to say "i've got 2 finals tomorrow that i haven't studied for yet. i think i'm gonna have to pull an all-nighter, starbuck's here i come.." or something of that nature. then achieve mad respect from my friends when i pass both exams with flying colors. all thanks to that little black bean ground and juiced.
so we went to a couple different places where they harvested and sold tea that day and got to see the workers pulling the tea leaves and got to take part in something like a 'tea ceremony' without the fancy clothes or mats on the floor. all of this took place on the top of a mountain, and as we got ready to go i remembered what i would have to face on the way back down: a road shaped like outcome of a silly string fight.

i braced myself, rolling down my window and closing my eyes, although by the time we had been driving for more then 3 min. none of that did any good. i felt the food and gallons of tea in my stomach dance like a group of seniors at prom. no, make that a group of hard-edged teenagers moshing at a rock concert. i guess my toast and eggs had some sort of vendetta against me for eating them, and the tea decided it wanted to flush my system early. i was miserable. the beautiful scenery around me began to blur, and i clutched my stomach, ready right then and there to sacrifice my clean jeans as the receiving place for my breakfast. kyndra tossed me a plastic bag from the front of the car that ended up being my crutch the rest of the ride. the suckiest part about it all was that i never threw up. i just had the anticipation and the feeling, and the taste with no relief. it took us like 25 min. to get down the mountain, and about 4 and a half hours for me to recover. i think i'm officially motion sick.

the only other exciting event i can think of that has happened since then is my "assignment" as it is now called. a man that goes to the university near my house was at the cafe one day, talking to his friend about how he needed someone who spoke english to look over his thesis paper to make sure his english was good. of course p'lut suggested a wonderful american girl he knows! so i met with supian (from indonesia) and accepted his offer to have me correct his thesis paper for his masters in biotechnology. it was the craziest thing i've ever done, i wish i could remember the title of his paper but i literally didn't understand a word of it. i did my best with the corrections, but when i gave it back to him i reminded him that i am not en english major, and most of the words he used i have never even heard. either way i got a thousand baht out of it which is sweet!

i'm going to write more soon about my thoughts as of late, but for now i'm going to go wait in the parking lot for my ride home, sweat, sweat some more, go home, shower...etc etc...

Dear Charles #14,

how did i come to be so blessed by living in such an incredible country? as i looked out over the sunset on the rice patties near my house the other night, i couldn't help being awe-struck by the beauty of this country. i have been richly richly blessed by such a beautiful place.
i had the opportunity to go down south to a beach called hua-hin for the first part of song-khran last week, and experience another fantastic portion of this country. the journey starts however with the trip there: the night train.

if your thoughts automatically turned to harry potter, and the hogwarts express, we are one in the same. i have never been on a train before, and as i am in the process of reading the series of harry potter when i first heard we would be riding a night train i got child like giddiness at the thought of sitting in a little cart and snacking on chocolate frogs, or 'berty-bott's every flavor beans'. the only unfortunate thing for me is i am in thailand, not in a magical fantasy novel. instead for me i got thai tea, rice and mysterious fruit that looked like a giant maggot but tasted something like a grapefruit.
as we approached the train and i pulled out my ticket to see what platform we were to board on, the tiniest part of me was indeed hoping to see 'platform 9 3/4' but alas. we were to board on platform 3, and muster up the excitement to squeeze onto the train that would be our home for the next 14 hours. i was unable to attain ced excitement.

so i settled into my seat, with my bags at my feet thinking what i could do for the 6 hours proceeding the making of the beds. i decided to take a walk through the train and check out the other compartments, hoping to feel better about my own and to see if the extra 3 dollars was worth it for the bed i paid for. it turned out it wasn't...all the compartments were carbon copies of the one previous. can't someone be upper class even in thailand!? jheese! last time i pay $18 to get across a country...

so after my brief walk, i made my way back to my seat and pulled out my good friend harry potter and got ready for an enjoyable few hours of quality time with him. that didn't last long as my fruit smoothie and 2 waterbottles full of agua finally caught up with me. i dont know what i was anticipating the bathroom on the train to be like, but once i opened the 60 lb. steel door and caught a peek, i knew i was walking into one of my better 'foreign country bathroom stories'. anyone who is uncomfortable with light-hearted potty talk so skip the next few paragraphs.

so the toilet was surprisingly, western style, which is hard to find in thailand. for some reason the thai people think that squatty potties are still a good idea. (someone needs to come educate them) i scanned the perimeter and tried to think up a game plan for the most efficient way to get the job done, with the least amount of contact with any hard surface, including the walls. after a few minutes of standing 'surf-board style' (as to balance myself and not fall over with the jerking movements of the train) i had no choice but to begin the process. unfortunately for me i didn't think through the apparel i was wearing before entering the situation, as i started to un-do my thai style pants which expand to about 4 times the size of a normal person....i was looking at the difficult task of holding all that fabric from touching the grimy floor, standing in a way that my bottom didnt touch the urine lined seat, and avoiding grabbing hold of the stained hand hold next to the toilet. all the while fuming at the train driver for not anticipating my predicament and stopping the fast moving hunk of metal.
let me just say that boys have no idea how good they have it. i've made my peace with the fact that i will never have such an easy bathroom-going experience, but every once in awhile, as in situations like this one, i relapse a little.

so i was doing all that i could, but there were just too many factors preventing me from having anything short of miserable experience. my future was beginning to look a little brighter being almost done, when tragedy struck. the train made one jolting motion and all was lost. it's surprising to me how domino-like affects can happen in moments of turmoil. i was thrown to the side, forcing one hand to the nasty rail and the other to surprise, dropping my pants to the floor. in my stumbling motion my foot got away from me and tapped a lever on the floor that i found out controlled the sink in the tiny room, dousing me, and the small roll of toilet paper left, with dirty train water. in shock of water coming flying at my face i made the fatal mistake of closing my eyes. note to all: when is such a situation, closing your eyes and becoming momentarily blinded to your surroundings is detrimental. i lost what little control i had left of my limbs and landed harshly on the toilet seat. (inner dialogue once i felt the cold on my rear: "yeah..this would happen..") i jumped back up as quickly as i could, to discover that the startling jolt had meant that the train had stopped to let on more passengers. i staggered around and looked to my left where, obviously there was a window looking out on the docking platform and a heap of thai people looking curiously into the barred window. the situation generously finished itself off with the realization that the toilet paper was ruined, and that my flip-flop had somehow come off in the mess, leaving my bare foot resting on the floor half in a puddle of something wet...the contents of which i didnt care to investigate.

the train staff came around to make the beds a little while after that and i climbed the thin piece of metal meant to be a latter, i think, to my bunk ready for a nights rest. you can only guess that didn't come. as i was on the top bunk, i was right next to a fan, and the light..neither of which they turned off. i also had the pleasure of being right by one of the doors to the train that wasn't properly closed by whatever fool came through it last, and heard this door debate whether or not to be opened or closed all night by the wind rushing frantically outside. it was a good experience though..?

we finally made it to bangkok at about 6:30 am the next morning, and got into vans that were to take us down south about 3 more hours away. i tried my best to redeem some sleep that i had lost the previous night, but felt like we were there before i could shut my eyes. when we got to the hotel i snatched the key to my room and ran like the wind to the air-conditioned room i knew was awaiting my stay. that air-conditioning was not turned off for one second of the week that we stayed there. amazing.

so the week at the beach was incredible. just as i pictured it would be. i went down that afternoon and spent the evening there watching the blue green water run up and down the white sandy beach. as was my routine everyday that week. wake up late, walk down to the beach, set myself up on a chair, lay in the sun until sweat was coating me and take a break in the cool water. repeat as necessary.
the walk back up from the water to my seat was a brutal one because by that time the sun had heated up the sand, i'm guessing, to about 310 degrees...resulting in what was a common sight on the beach: a casual walk, that picks up a little, paired with a face of anguish, breaking into a full run to the nearest shade.

so all week was just super relaxing and awesome. the families that i went down with are all really neat people. two of the families have 16 year old sons, who are some of my students. they are pretty typical 16 year boys - you can assume that i was the subject of some torment at their hand during the week. including but not limited to: sand down my swimsuit, squirt gun to the face, wet sand to the face, rapid-fire dunking in the pool, pinching, punches to the leg, target of flying cockroaches, etc etc etc. but they are really high-class gentleman. *cough* *cough*

there certainly are more stories from the week but seeing as this is the longest blog i think i've ever posted, i'm going to spare you and maybe write more next time. also more fun things have happened in the last week since i got home which i hope to write about soon.
i had a little post-trip depression, leaving a beautiful tropical beach, for a stunning rural mountain city. *sigh* oh the hard life. no, the reality of the post-trip depression was leaving free air-conditioning for a tiny room with a rotating fan. i will never take AC for granted again.

Dear Charles #13,

didn't think I would be posting another blog so soon eh? gotta keep up with me...you never know...im like a cat...or a...different animal that's unpredictable...

this weekend me and kyndra had to renew our visas so that we could legally still be living in thailand. lucky for us we live right up north so our drive is much shorter then someone coming from ..chiang mai or somewhere else more south. the border is a mere 45 min. drive, which we ventured together on just a few hours of sleep and no breakfast (although we did stop on the super highway to get some pineapple...frickin 20 baht for a bag. such a rip off...haha just kidding)
mae sei was our destination which is the last city in thailand before the border to burma. mae sei (for any of you who read kyle's note on facebook about his journey to mae sei and burma, this is the same place....just in case you couldn't tell by the identical names of the places..) i feel like is a 'last effort of selling things in thailand sort of city. you're driving along the super highway, looking out the window to rice patties and mountains, and then all of the sudden there are big gold signs and out of no where a million little shops..all pretty much selling you the same overpriced strings of beads, and fake jade bracelets. once you find a place to park, the process is way more simple then i feel like it should be...simple to the point of being sorta sketchy.
here is the process of getting into this other country (burma) and getting your passport renewed: you walk up to this building that looks like a giant house with a car port that you might find on proctor street in tacoma, and into a room whose door is a piece of fabric draped off of a string at the top of the door. this room is dimly lit, with two desks and three burmese officials and ghetto old computers from before computers were even invented....in the corner of the room there is another piece of fabric which i can only assume covers the bathroom, as right beside it right there in the office is a rusty leaky sink with a stained mirror and soap scum lining the faucet. you give your passport to one of these officials whose desk it littered with thai and burmese and american passports...and he trades you for a piece of paper that is your 'temporary' passport while you're in burma. basically if you loose this piece of paper, you are magically a citizen of no country and you are stuck in burma until...they become a free country.
once this process is done you walk across a little bridge like deal, and are welcomed into burma by crowds of song-tao drivers wanting to take you to all the tourists attractions in burma, then down a flight of cement, uneven stairs into the market where you are bombarded by every burmese merchant known in the country asking you if you want to buy cigarettes and viagra. doesn't matter that they are asking two single women.....they just need to make that sale, however scandalous or illegal.

me and kyndra had clear goals for our time in burma so we did our best to power through the crowd, and kindly but firmly let them know we didn't not want their pills or playing cards. we came there for dvds and bailey's...and we were gonna get it. our first stop was 'scorpion dvd' where we both scored a stupid amount of illegal movies and tv series for..dollars. i managed to get the entire series of 'friends' for $27, as well as 31 other dvds for a dollar a piece. all of them being blue ray and most of them either still in theatres in america or not out on dvd yet. the only not so good copy i got was of 'the curious case of benjamin button' but even then..its still watchable. we tried to move quickly as half way through our browsing a policeman came into the store and started to paroozed around. he never took off his sunglasses, which from the movies i've seen...is never a good thing. we hurried up, unsure if he was about to take that place down or bust a couple caps.
we made our way deeper into the market where we ended up being followed by a teenage girl trying to sell us playing cards. kyndra graciously bought some from her, which made her like us and decide to stick around. the next thing on our list was to get a new bottle of bailey's irish cream, but we didn't want to go into the liquor store with her watching so....we busted out the polariod camera and took a picture of all of us. she was fascinated (as was every other person in the market, which was evident by the crowds and crowds of people that swarmed us, grabbing for the girls picture to see it. it was very..charlie and the chocolate factory, when charlie finds the last golden ticket) which distracted her for enough time for us to grab the bailey's and meet her back down the road.
we decided to make our way out after talking with the girl for a little while (mostly kyndra because she spoke no english) but before we left she gave us a huge smile, pulled the picture from her tray and said that we were beautiful and held up the photo. i have a feeling she'll probably be hanging on to that for awhile.

we traveled back into thailand after that, picking up our passports in the sketchville office (luckily they were still there), and spent the rest of the afternoon at one of our favorite cafes in mae fa luang (about a half hour past our house) called 'parabola' where we talked for hours and looked through thai home-keeping magazines.

so it is now my mission to get all my movies back into america without getting caught. i've heard that for every dvd you bring back into the states, its around a $500 fine :/ let's hope i don't get caught, eh?

Dear Charles #12,

hot season has officially started. can you sense the excitement in my voice? i thought it was hot when i first got here, but oh no. i had no idea that 100 degrees and 99% humidity were on their way over here from africa. i swear if i don't come home with the most perfect golden brown skin, i'm gonna be not stoked.

as my mom and kyle were here a couple of weeks ago, i got some days off of my volunteer job (haha, it will never get old) to see a bit more of this country with them. for the most part, they stayed at school with me during the day which was great! the kids really took a liking to kyle and no one took a liking to my mom....(just kidding mom, please don't throw me out this summer. i bet you look really pretty right now...*nervous laughter*). they were able to help out in a bunch of different areas of the school, including making costumes for the elementary green day play we had last week. they were so cute..just like you would picture costumes for a play like that, big flowers and fish made out of felt and paper, with big holes for their heads to poke through. the play turned out...like was anticipated. there were crowds of kids who didn't know where they were supposed to stand, the one who thought no one could see him picking his nose, the kids who didn't know any of the words to the songs situated right in front, and the girl who just waved at her parents the whole time. the gang was all there :)
so the days we did have off from school, we made it to a couple of hot spots in chiang rai, as well as chiang mai, including, but not limited to...waterfalls and bamboo forests, crazy temples, beautiful flower gardens dedicated to the queen, boat rides through a river, riding elephants, going to a zoo and feeding giraffes....oh wait, i'm sorry, did i just say riding elephants!? why yes! yes i did!
this was the coolest thing in my opinion..i may be partial cause elephants are my favorite animal, but it was the coolest experience. me and my mom shared one elephant, and kyle got his own. i was surprised once we were done that we, and so many other trust the seat on top of the elephant, as it looks like a small park bench that is roped the the elephants body. one false move and...i don't know. i don't want to think about it. after about 20 minutes the driver got off the head of the elephant and grabbed my arm and pulled me down to where we was previously sitting, so for the rest of the time (about 30-40 min) i got to ride on the elephants head. unfortunately for me i was wearing a skirt, and the elephant forgot to..shave its body....i don't know how many of you have felt an elephants hide but it is..not soft. my inner thighs were quite sure of that. other then slight discomfort, it was by far one of the coolest things i've done since i've been here.
having my family here was so exciting. being able to take them to all my favorite places to eat, and having them try all the weird foods i now crave here, walking through my neighborhood and meeting the people who i am currently sharing life with. im pretty sure they had a wonderful time...either that or they really are as good of actors as their college diplomas say they are.

since them leaving my life here has slowly gotten back to normal. i finally made it through the series 'friends' this past weekend. finishing the last episode out of 39 disks....(ugh i'm so pathetic), managing to laugh til i peed a little, cry til i realized that any extra condensation on my face was murder, and take an afternoon of acceptance that i wouldn't see these friends everyday. i was actually depressed on saturday when i finished...depressed. if this is how i act for a t.v. show, i am screwed for coming back to america after 6 months here. you all better get me some darn good welcome home presents.

the realization that this school year is close to ending is creeping into my brain. after this week at school, we're into april where we only have two weeks of school then song-khran (2 week spring break) then we only have may left, and then conner comes to visit and we hang out for a few weeks before we both go home. i basically have like 5 min. to do everything else i want here...*sigh*
i might not get to posting anything again before i leave for my vacation in a few weeks. so to hold you over until my next one...i'll leave you with these thoughts to be extremely jealous of me. i am going with a few other families from the school here to hui-hin for a week. hui-hin is a beach in the south of thailand. for those of you who dont know about the beaches in thailand they are....literally paradise. when you think of paradise, what do you think of?....a room full with bags of sour patch watermelons, and hugh grant serenading you...? no, although that is...a wonderful thought...
no. this paradise is white sandy beaches, blue/green water, palm trees, cool drinks, hammocks...aaahhhh. for a whole week! i can feel my sun burn forming already. so while im doing that, hey, washington...enjoy that rain and slushy crappy snow. i'll be thinking of you while im sipping a cool 'non-alcoholic' drink ;)