Greetings!

I am currently writing to you from my tiny desk in my room on what I thought was a Saturday morning, but now that I look at the clock it is 1:24pm…I have been lounging around and it has been glorious!

What a crazy journey it has been up to this point. So many new normals, reevaluations of previous views/thoughts, realizations of what you "need" in your everyday life, the education system…pretty much everything except rice, that is one thing that has stayed the same.

After a couple…interesting….meals in a row, my fellow teachers and I decided to go downtown to get some pizza. We caught wind that they use REAL cheese on their pizza and that it tastes just like pizza in America. Although I found this hard to believe, we began out journey by calling the cab. 

Sara, one of my roommates, called the cab at 5:18pm when she was told that it would be an hour before the cab would get to us. We were hungry, but we all decided that pizza was worth an hour wait. Laying in bed a while longer watching some youtube videos and getting caught up with our American friends and family on Facebook, we started to get ready for our night of fine dining. An hour had passed before we realized that the cab company did not ask Sara for her phone number, something they did every time so the cab driver could call when they were close. Sara called back asking for a cab again and they told us a half hour. 

Impatiently waiting, we microwaved a bag of popcorn and got out a deck of cards. A flush, four of a kind, or any other winning hand would buy your taxi fare to and from dinner.

A half hour passes and Sara's phone rings, the taxi drivers speaks no English. Here we go again. It seems that the moments we are most excited, or starving, are the moments when it is most difficult to attempt to explain where we are, where we want to go…or anything for that matter. Frustrated, we walked outside our door, found a student and had them talk to the driver. Twenty minutes later we are back on track for dinner.

Upon getting to town we make our way to the pizza place. When we entered through the doors we realize the entire place filled with Americans and Europeans. Classic. 

As we were waiting for our food we started talking about how expected we all were to eat something familiar that did not contain rice. Believe it or not, I wasn't even craving a Chipotle burrito…a burrito has rice in it. I wanted something that was as different from Thai food as it could be!

We also started to talk about what brought us to Thailand in the first place. The four of us had gone through this entire experience together, but we never really had this conversation.

Sara, from Missouri, has her masters in Education. Not wanting to go straight into the world of Education in the states, she wanted to go abroad and go on an adventure. Sara is similar to Kyle as far as not being too worried about the future, just going with the flow and planning when it's time. Monique, on the other hand, has a similar story to mine. She had been working for the same company for 9 years while attending school full time. She just graduated and was considering her options when she decided to sell everything she has, pack her suitcases and go on an adventure. 

Monique started to talk about how she has been feeling a little freaked out lately thinking about the fact that all she has is what she packed in her suitcases. Although she has comfort in knowing that she could stay with her parents when she gets back to the states, that is not ideal in her mind. I assured her that I had the exact same freak out moments when I was selling all of my possessions. By the time I left Tennessee I had everything I owned packed in my Honda Accord. Often times I would be with Kyle and one moment I would be beside myself thinking about how cool my life is that I am moving to Thailand, and in the very next moment I would have a pit in my stomach thinking about the fact that I just sold my microwave, I terminated my lease, I quit my steady job and I was thinking about selling my car. What kind of crazy got into me?!

But, the more that I thought about it as we were sitting there, the more and more I realize how blessed all four of us are. We have support systems, and faith in ourselves and our abilities to pack up everything we have and move halfway across the world the live with people we had never met (at that point) to teach at a school we have never seen and to stand in front of students that don't understand us.

We are so lucky to have even the resources and support to allow such a crazy idea enter our thoughts, and soon consume them allowing us to book a flight and commit to a position. 

I have always been a grounded person. I have worked since I was 14 years old, I have always had a great, loving home life and I have had opportunities fall into my lap. I had no reason to leave everything I knew, a job that I loved and a land that understood me. But, comfortable is not what pushes you to grow. Comfortable is not what allows you to truly understand what others are going through if you have never put yourself in an environment where nothing is easy; where deciding your next move is based on whether you can communicate your needs to someone. 

I do not want to get into this too much because I do not feel that I am educated enough. But, in the US when everyone was debating over Obamacare I often wondered to myself if they have ever known anyone that has lived in poverty. The people who are complaining about allowing people who have struggled their entire life to have healthcare…have they ever gotten a taste of what it's like for every decision you make to be one that involves feeding your family or medicating your child?

This is one reason why I wanted to be uncomfortable. I wanted to travel to a land where not only do I not speak the same language as the people, but I don't even look like them to start to understand the struggles that people in America go through every single day. I want to live in a house with no windows, ride my bike a couple miles on the side of the road to town to do my laundry and struggle to do something simple like hail a taxi to go to town. 

When you have grown up with opportunities, resources and a loving family, its hard to know what its like to not have one, or any of those things. Although I will never know what it means to not have a loving family, I have learned to manage my resources and I have learned how it feels to have no one understand you. 

I was laying in bed today catching up on some of my favorite TV shows when I heard this song. Every lyric in the song is perfect, and the girls do it justice. Take a listen:

Thank you to everyone who got me here, and to all of you who continue to support and encourage me. Although it has been challenging, it has been everything and much more than I hoped it would be. 

Stay tuned for more. 

Love and Miss You ALL!

Meg