Home Away From Home(land)

It’s an odd sensation, returning to a foreign country and experiencing a feeling of homecoming. It’s strange, a language re-emerging from forgotten corners of your mind. It’s interesting, something so exotic feeling so normal, so commonplace.

As we found ourselves back in Thailand for a second round, we were dealing with new classes, new students, new friends, new restaurants, and wholly new experiences. But, here we are in the same culture, speaking the same language, working with the same Thai co-workers, at the same loving, supportive school. It’s not quite the same, but neither is it drastically different.

Things we missed about Thailand –

• ·         The food. Hands down, Thailand has some of the most diverse, delicious food selection we have encountered in all our travels. We started anticipating, and salivating over, specific meals months before we landed back in Thailand.
• ·         The generosity. The Thais are some of the most giving, loving, supportive people you could ever hope to meet. Whether co-workers, strangers, or government employees, we have always been surprised by the lengths to which the Thais will go to help a fellow human.
• ·         The cost of living. No, seriously, it is just so easy to stretch the baht you make working in Thailand. It’s not hard to live without budgeting, travel for three months of the year, and still return home without emptying your wallet.
• ·         The compassion for street animals. As I have mentioned before, the way that Thais treat stray animals is far and away one of the most heartwarming examples I have ever witnessed of a culture having respect for the life of all beings.
• ·         The acceptance. It is amazing to see an entire country that is willing to accept homosexuality from childhood. Especially when teaching children and witnessing those who would be bullied and harassed in the US rise to the top of their class.

Things we didn’t miss about Thailand –

• ·         Tonal language. Despite being not-so-bad at Thai, I am still not a robot. And while I can effectively communicate here, divorcing emotion from inflection is incredibly difficult. Win, on the other hand, has such a hard time with it that all we can do is laugh and not worry too much.
• ·         Gossip and bizarrely insulting cultural tendencies. Though by no means exclusive to Thailand, it is difficult to constantly be asked why I do things and why I am fat. (As an addendum of sorts, we recently discovered that the asking about weight is the Thai way of saying that you care about someone and their health. But I could still do without someone rubbing my belly while saying, “baby?”)

Things that probably belong on the latter list, but don’t bother us enough to make the cut –

• ·         Squat toilets. Okay, in our travels we have definitely encountered far worse than those in Thailand. Plus, I like to think of it as a bit of a game. Target practice, if you will. (It’s entirely possible that that is nothing more than a coping mechanism when faced with something unpleasant.)
• ·         “Thai time”. It is a common joke in Thailand that things happen on “Thai time”. Typically, this means things happen eventually, but never when they were supposed to happen. Meeting at 7 can mean 8, and when something would be done by Tuesday it will almost certainly be finished no later than Friday. But, this is also something that we have encountered in numerous places and to worse degrees. Apparently, if you want things to happen promptly, move to the US or Europe; otherwise, just roll with it.

Of course when returning to anywhere there is the fear that it will not be the same. That you might in some way ruin your good memories with a new, worse experience. That it doesn’t live up to the memories you have.

We have been lucky in that regard; the Thailand we remember is intact and the Thailand we live in now is just as good (and, in some ways, just as bad). When all is said and done, we are thrilled to be back in Thailand.

It’s a wonderful feeling: to find home in the most faraway of destinations, and to know that, despite the common saying, sometimes you can, indeed, go back.

Ha Ha Ho Ho He He

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Laughter is contagious. But unlike the flu, laughter is good for your health. It boosts your serotonin levels, increases your immune responses, and leads to a general sense of wellbeing. Given enough time, it can also be one hell of an abdominal workout. It doesn’t even have to be real laughter, your brain can’t actually tell the difference. So, theoretically, that apple a day could be replaced with some forced chuckles.

 

Enter, Laughter Yoga. Even if the laughter starts out fake, in a large group it quickly turns into full-fledged hilarity. In a half-hour class, we electro-shocked laughs into one another, sprayed each other with machine gun laughter, laughed off imagine tragedies, made a belly laugh chain, and pretended to be hysterical, laughing clams. We suppressed giggles, snickered at fake farts, and guffawed in each other’s faces. We tittered, chortled, hooted, howled, cackled, and snorted.

At the end of it all we were sweaty and our sides were aching, but there wasn’t a frown to be seen.