One Year Reflections

Our one year anniversary in Thailand came and went more than a month ago. I think we were in the middle of hosting volunteers and dealing with gastro intestinal issues, something we do on a fairly regular basis living here, so we didn’t even mark the occasion until later.

We’ve been here one whole year! I’ve barely blogged.* There are dozens of hundreds of unfinished stories to tell. I think Instagram has eaten my blog a little. I let the pictures to the story telling work for me, and then I feel like I’m done, like the story is told, even though there is much more to tell. Also, we had intolerably slow internet for most of the year. It’s hard to blog when it takes hours for your pictures to load. The company that we asked to come out, when we first moved to our house last August, told us we would have to wait until they completed a big government contract. (Why hire more people to install internet when your client base is expanding when you could just make them all wait half a year instead?) So we struggled along with 3G modems for a long time and then one miraculous day in March they finally arrived to install it.

At the end of April they finally fixed whatever was broken in the water pipes. So now, we have consistent running water. You have no idea how much rejoicing that has brought, nor how many baths and long showers we’ve enjoyed, because we can!

No more of this. Filling the tanks with a hose from the fire trucks.

As fun as it was to watch them fill the reserve tanks, we don’t miss their somewhat irregular visits.

Not that I enjoyed the lack of internet or running water while they were missing, but the lack sure does serve to make us recognize these things for the miraculous wonders that they are once they arrive.

Perhaps that’s the good to be found in the always hazy polluted sky as well. Besides the fact that it does keep the sun from feeling as hot. It makes it so that once the rains come, and wash all the pollution out of the sky it takes your breath away with how beautiful it can be. Suddenly the sky opens up, and you can see all the way to the horizon, and this prairie raised girl yells in wonder at her children every time we drive somewhere, or look out from the balcony, “Look at the sky! Isn’t it beautiful?”

Look at that sky! isn’t it beautiful?

Gorgeous.

 We’ve adapted to this place. At least, we’ve cleared the first big hurdles. We’re taking Thai lessons in earnest now, because that 2 year plan thing? Yeah, that was ambitious. We’ll be here a while, a long while.

I’m writing from my big office room upstairs, and looking through the giant picture window that opens out onto the balcony, watching the kids play and run around in circles. We almost always do school up on the balcony, so it works out for my office to look out on it. I can sneak away a bit and do some work while keeping an eye on those who ought to be studying.

It’s rainy season once again. I love rainy season. It makes all the other season worthwhile just to see it like this once the rains have swept through and the cloud scudded sky. A year ago I was worried that I would not find anything to love about Thailand. [On Weathering Storms] It was all so foreign and uncomfortable and hard.

But then the rains came, and the storms blew in clean air, and I breathed deep and started to settle my heart into this place.

I drive down the country road that leads to our house and think about the things I want to show to my family and friends when they visit and it hit me, I have started to call this place home.

The road home.

 *I’m planning to do some back story posts, to catch up on the many tales that remain untold. Like that time we road elephants, actually, twice now.