Too tired to think of a title...

I sat down tonight to write and realized that it has been awhile and I am not sure where to pick up my story….

Jeremy has been here for a couple of weeks and it feels like he was never not here. I try not to think about 4 weeks from now when he has to leave. I will give his update for him. He is enjoying the boatyard. They sent him home today with two gorgeous miniature longtail wooden boats. No idea how we will get them home along with all of the other gifts and dogs and decorations I am accumulating! At this point it is starting to look easier to ship our DC life over here and give up on ever leaving. Ok, just kidding mom and dad! Anyway, Jer is fine and much tanner than me already. He buzzes around on the motorbike, gobbles down all of the food with no stomach problems, is currently hanging a light for me in the house, and has mastered some basic Thai.

Last week we went to Bangkok for my monthly meeting with Save the Children and UNICEF. It is supposed to be a 2 day trip each month but with travel time it really takes up 3 days and thus feels like a waste of an entire work week.

We left on Tuesday morning, drove down to Phuket airport, flew up to Bangkok, took the taxi ride to the hotel (each leg of this well over an hour) and finally I got to the office. It was strange being back in Bangkok since I feel like I have fully left the big city life. Two places could not feel farther apart than Bang Niang and Bangkok. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t describe it. Just noise, cars, smog and buildings. It is very pretty right along the river, and I remember that there are beautiful sights around the outskirts, but the heart of Bangkok which stretches on and on seems so lacking of anything lovely or peaceful to balance the other stuff. It just doesn’t seem quite Thai to me.

I had my meetings which went really well. So far I absolutely love SCUK. They are receptive, caring, generous, and helpful. They treat me like a professional and we all just work well together. I couldn’t have asked for a better organization to work for. It was a great two days to review what my team has done so far and get feedback. Talking about our work here makes me realize that we actually have accomplished quite a bit in such a short amount of time! It doesn’t feel like it each day but it accumulates. Save the Children want me to propose an extension of the project for up to one year which they are hoping to ask UNICEF to fund. I haven’t decided yet what that would look like and if it would necessarily involve me staying here but it is exciting because there isn’t any way we can make real changes here by the end of June. It takes time to build up local capacity before leaving…

For a bit of fun Jeremy explored the city, well he managed to get to a museum, and the next day we managed to meet up at the grand palace and reclining Buddha for some tourism. We also hit the night market where amazing shopping energy overcame my need for sleep (the night market is open until 1am and is enormous) and Jeremy was dragged for many mind numbing hours around while I accumulated a pile of presents for everyone back home.

I am amazed while I type this but we ALSO actually fit in an evening trip across the city to Bangkapi area where I volunteered 10 years ago. We had dinner with Steve Cable who was my “boss” back then at Santisuk Center and ran into an old friend that was one of my English students!

Despite the fun outings, never have we been happier to get on a plane and leave a city. Sadly our trip home was marred by an “Office Depot incident”. This is when I arrive at Office Depot at the Phuket mall (a 30 minute drive in the opposite direction from home) and I am overcome by the sheer stupidity and lack of brain power presented by the Office Depot employees as they struggle to fill my binder order. This has happened a few times in the past and generally the incident is characterized by my entrance, their confusion about my order (where it is, why the delay, whether they ordered 33 binders or 140-yes, this came as a question during the incident in question), followed by my own feeling of nausea that quickly turns into general malaise and weakness followed by a desperate need to drink water and nap. So. During my FOURTH trip to Office Depot this time (seriously I have been there 4 times now trying to sort out the 140 binders needed for the project) I had a terrible moment of extreme dehydration or exhaustion or something yet again. This culminated in what I view as an extreme act of desperation…an emergency nap on a chair in the mall! Ok, it was a cushy chair next to Au Bon Pain (yes they have them here too) but it was still very embarrassing. I just couldn’t take another step. It was starting to look like an Ecuador sickness relapse and while I do like the looks of the Phuket hospital I thought maybe a preventive rest would cure all. It did. I made it home. They actually came up with the correct binders after first offering me 33 and then forcing me to count every one of the 140 even though I was about to die. Amazingly I am still here to write about it. :)

In other news, over the weekend we moved into my new little house behind the Bang Niang market. It is in a weird sort of development where all the cute little houses look the same. Not what I look for in a neighborhood back home. But it was my best option here and is a sweet furnished little place with a great front porch. The photos are posted here.

There is one down side and that is a terrible mystery smell emanating from the bathroom. It is looking like a plumbing/sewage draining problem and since my rent has been paid up front and the owners are off to another province I am hoping that this can be resolved without the sewer fumes creating a fireball in the kitchen as soon as I light my burner…Concerning, yes. But it is Thailand and you just take it one day at a time. One stinky bathroom at a time.

Love from Bang Niang.