The Dilemma

It’s 2016. 

That means that next year, we have to move back to the US.

Why do we have to go? Everyone asks. Here’s the deal:

Our school district generously gave us two years’ leave. They are holding our jobs for us for when we come back. This is unheard of in almost any workplace. Are we obligated to go back? No. Half the school expects to never see us again. If we do, we pick up right where we left off, which is about six years away from being able to collect our pensions. That’s a salary for the rest of our lives. Granted, at that point it’s a very small salary, about the same amount as Social Security, but it’s something. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Get our pensions and move back overseas, easy-peasy. 

At the earliest point we can collect, Sascha will be between 10^th and 11^th grade. My parents will be 77. Leaving the country doesn’t really sound doable at that point. So maybe we wait until Sascha graduates. Even if Sophie is willing to go to another country for her remaining 3 years of high school (without her big sister), now my parents are 79. Waiting until she’s out of high school? My parents are 82, and Nick and I are in our late 50s. What school will want to hire us at that age? 

Now is a great time to be abroad. The US is embarrassing. The girls are becoming fantastic travelers. If they stay in private international schools for the rest of their K-12 years, all of their school friends will come from educated families with money. For the rest of their lives, they will have powerful connections around the world that they would never get from living where we could afford to in the US. And we all know that who you know is far more important than what you know. My god, the possibilities!

So let’s say we stay out of the country for another decade or so, then go back to MA to finish out the years required for our pensions. Obviously our old school is not still holding our jobs at this point, nor would we expect them to. We run the very real risk of being hired at step one. First-year teachers’ salaries. More and more districts do this now, because they can. First year here? First year salary. Not only would this be ridiculous to try to live on (and demoralizing with 20+ years of teaching experience), but our pensions would then be based on those salaries. 

Now you see why we don’t have much of a choice. It makes me feel sad and frustrated. I’m trying to make myself feel better by thinking of ways to make our lives easier when we do go back, like living as close to work as we can afford (even though that may likely be a $400K shoebox that hasn’t been updated since it was built in the 1950s-- seriously, behold), only having one car, and hiring some domestic help. I try to get excited about shopping for household goods at IKEA, sticking to our new minimalist ways. It does help to know that we love our old school and colleagues, and if we don't live too far from school, we’ll be able to get involved in more school functions than we could before. 

We also miss our friends. In a way, I’ve found my people here. Nobody is local; even my one Thai friend’s hometown is three hours away. We are finally, once again, not the only rootless outsiders. It may be all in my imagination, but I feel that common ground with every expat here. It feels like home, that “everywhere and nowhere” feeling I’ve been searching for since 1991 when I left Germany. It’s that feeling that everyone’s world is The Entire World. People can talk about Dubai or Cape Town or Ecuador, and it's just another place. Back in the US, most of our friends were born and raised right there. Most of the teachers at our school graduated from there, as did their parents. Their family trees all have deep roots and one zip code. I say this without judgment because I truly believe that neither is better than the other (my nomadic upbringing has certainly had its disadvantages), but on some level, we will never fully understand each other. 

However, we’ve put in up to a dozen years of history with them. We have shared weddings, surgeries, home purchases and sales, job promotions and near-firings, births, miscarriages, and major holidays. There have been tears, vented frustrations, and (mostly) drunken howls of laughter over and over again. We love them like family, and we are already tucking away the best jokes we hear for when we’re with them again. Maybe we managed to grow a few roots after all. 

It’s a constant dilemma. I started writing this post a few days ago when I was feeling really sad about leaving, sad about not having a choice, sad that I can’t be reunited with my beloved Europe anytime in the foreseeable future. That night, Sascha was telling me about how lonely she is, and it kind of shook me awake. As I’m toodling around town on my bike with a huge grin on my face, soaking up the endless sunshine and dreaming of planning trips to Vietnam, Japan and India; she’s just trying to be nine, and is surrounded by kids who don’t speak English. Sophie can get along anywhere, but it’s really hard for Sascha. If we were in a less isolated town with more westerners, it would be different. And the choice ahead would be far more difficult.

The morning after she and I talked, I woke up feeling less sad about going home next year. Not ready, of course, but not as fatalistic. I suppose the next 18 months is going to feel like that awful pirate ship carnival ride that swings you back and forth. I never liked that ride, but maybe it's better than watching from the sidelines.

Happy New Year from The FUTURE!

The future is AMAZING. There are flying cars!

I just wanted to throw this up here quickly because we're very busy toodling around Bangkok so I will not get a chance to craft a perfect blog entry, and I've been dying to show everyone the full video of the day we spent with elephants. The camp is called Patara, and they are the real deal in ethical conservation. This was one of the best days of my life.

Now, before you get too jealous, I have to tell you what happened a few nights ago. Our washing machine is outside, like many Thai houses. I went to load the laundry and felt something soft squish under my bare feet. There are snails everywhere here, so I figured I'd stepped on a slug. Nope. It was a leech. It looked exactly like they do in the movies, except it was brown instead of black. I stepped on a 3" leech with my bare foot and kind of popped it open. Vile.

Happy 2016!

Take This How You Will.

I said I would talk about this, so here goes. I hope this doesn’t make anyone mad. My blogs are so good at that. I've already been unfriended by a few conservatives on Facebook, so this might put the remaining few over the edge too. I'll understand.

When I am not living in the US, I get to wash my hands of its problems. Gun culture, Trump, racism (and worse, the denial of it)? Chuckle… not my problem anymore, you guys enjoy that ridiculous mess, all the loud, spitty barking stupidity. When I read “if you don’t like it, you can leave” in every political comment thread, I feel smug and accomplished. *Done!* (A side note: Why is it only one side that gets to decide how things have to be, and if the rest of us don’t like it, we can leave? Do you honestly ever hear people saying, “Roe v. Wade made abortion legal… don’t like it? Leave!” or, “Gay people are allowed to get married… don’t like it? Don’t let the door hitcha on the way out!”) A few years ago, a conservative friend of mine mentioned wanting to live in Europe. I’m embarrassed to admit that the idea of that enraged me enough to lose sleep. You don’t get to vote against things that would make the US more like Europe, and then go live in Europe! No no no, you made your bed, you lie in it; you break it, you buy it. 

I am not buying it. I left. And it is everything I thought it would be. 

Here’s the cheating part: I don’t have to deal with Thai problems either. It’s not my country. I can walk by piles of trash on the side of the road, and even though it sucks, I don’t feel a personal disappointment. No matter how much I love living here I don’t have any ownership or stake in this country; not even informally, as in my infatuation with Germany. I don’t understand most of what goes on here. (A side note: I have to get a friend, an American guy well-versed in Thai culture and politics, to explain everything to me. Because I can't read Thai either, I often find myself brushing away thoughts of The Handmaid's Tale. Nevermind.) Maybe the general population is just as shrill and obnoxious as Americans, but I don’t speak the language, so I get to smile and move on with my day. When I buy cheap over-the-counter prescription meds or contact lenses? I feel like I’m cheating. When I can walk or ride my bike anywhere? When I can leave my kids alone in the house for 45 minutes while I go for a run, and I don't get arrested or at least scolded for it? Cheating. When I buy fresh produce at an outdoor market and it’s actually cheaper than the store instead of the other way around? When I get a nice restaurant meal or massage for $5? Cheating. There were no toy commercials on TV leading up to Christmas. We bought the girls like three things and they're still playing with them, happily. Life is not supposed to be this easy. Aren’t I supposed to be stuck in traffic somewhere, late for something, frazzled with noise and exhausted to the point of misery?

I get to live amongst stunning scenery that’s not only for the rich, and see parts of town that are gritty and graffiti-ed and smelly, but not dangerous. There is nothing beige-and-gray or big-box about my surroundings. Nothing is off-limits, and everything is interesting. I can feel parts of my brain, creative parts, opening and growing. This place is crack for the curious mind.

I wonder if I’m cheating by getting out of my responsibilities as a citizen. I mean, at the local level, I still bring my own grocery bags to the store, I never litter, and I will be absentee voting next year. The main citizen-duty I can think of that I’ve stopped doing is trying to talk politics. I’ve stopped caring so much. I still read everything though. I used to attempt meaningful discussions with people from the Other Team, and it devolved into snotty bullying immediately. Those discussions with rigid "patriots" made me hate my country. So many people have no interest in considering anything other than their way, whether it works or not (like for-profit healthcare... I saw yet another cancer treatment crowdfund plea on Facebook just this morning. This is what people yell and scream to defend. Turns my stomach). There is no awareness of the fact that nearly every other place in the world is doing things differently, and many of those things are working. Nope! WE'RE STILL #1 SHUT UP LALALALALA.

I am totally cheating on my family back home. We are completely unavailable for any family obligations, which means we get to be selfish. When we travel somewhere for the purpose of traveling, not visiting, it feels strange and I feel guilty. This is absolutely not intended to make my family say “FINE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO VISIT EVER AGAIN!” I love visiting my family; they are without a doubt the coolest people I know. But traveling just to travel? My god. It’s so indulgent, it has to be wrong. Cheeeaatinngg.

I've been trying to get this finished and posted for two weeks. Christmas was crazy even in a country that doesn't celebrate it (although it made shopping easy... I started and finished my shopping on Christmas Eve!). Here's a small slice of our lives lately. 

 

The next post will have to be about the elephants. We spent a few days in Chiang Mai and went to this elephant camp. Along with our wedding day and the birth of our girls, it was one of the best and most memorable days of my whole life. I'm only waiting because they gave us four CDs full of pictures and videos, and my laptop doesn't have a CD drive so I have to take it to school to upload all of it. So that's next! Soon! Today the girls are going to play at their friend's house, and Nick and I are going to spend $1.20 to sit in some hot springs.

I'm sorry this was such a bummer. Honestly, it's what's on my mind most of the time. I know we can't stay here. We have to go home (for our pensions), and I don't want to. I love New England, I miss my family, and I love the town where we worked and everyone at our school, but I'd be happy to never live in the US again. I've spent 24 years longing to be an expat. "Expat" is my favorite word in the English language. It's barely been six months here and it's already the fastest two years of my life.

Thankful for lanterns

Gaaah—okay, it has been a really crazy few weeks. I’ll get right into it.

The day before Thanksgiving was a big Thai holiday called Loy Krathong. Very briefly, it’s where you light a lantern to illuminate Buddha and release it, along with all negativity, into the sky or down a river to make a wish and thank various gods. The day started out with making krathongs and a show in school, then ended with an incredible dinner at a local hotel. There was a huge beautiful buffet, live music and dance performances. It was expensive, but worth it. All around town it was a less dignified affair—closed-off streets, loads of food vendors, fireworks going off everywhere—noisy, alive, fun. I couldn't believe what I was seeing all night, and so far it's my favorite Thai holiday. I made a video but didn’t add music to this one because I’m having trouble making the music come in & out when my videos play (but be aware, sound does blast into this one at the 33 second mark), and I’m so behind on updating this blog, so screw it-- here’s the quick/rough cut:

The very next day was Thanksgiving. Obviously we still had school, but the main event both Thursday and Friday was the MUN conference. Model United Nations is THE club to join at this school. All the cool kids are doing it and involvement is huge. This year, our school hosted a massive regional conference that brought 300 kids from other schools. On Friday night, there was a big party at school and parts of the campus were decked out like a Thai night market. There were about 30 food stands, live music, a DJ by the pool; it was noisy and fun and unlike any school function I’d ever seen.

I made about 300 dill pickles for the event, which is what I was doing on Thanksgiving night. I should explain the random pickles: a co-worker here likes my pickles (I’ve told that story before). During a staff meeting, when the MUN organizer asked if anyone could contribute anything as vendors, pickle girl turned to me and said, “You should make pickles.” I turned to the MUN teacher and said, “I can make pickles,” and he said okay. So that’s why there was a random pickle stand at the party. Some of the Thai people were so confused by the flavor.

I spent that weekend cooking for our family’s tiny Thanksgiving dinner. Due to the limited availability of some things, it took extra effort. For example: green bean casserole. No French-cut green beans, so I bought some Chinese long beans, blanched them, and French cut them by hand. Made my own onion topping, which was the best my kitchen has ever smelled. I have roasted my own pumpkin for pie for the past few years, so that wasn’t a big deal, but the sweet potatoes took a little more work to make sure I found all of the unsavory wiggly things inside of them. (yep.)

Kim Davis and her pies. "I'm gonna eat them ALL!" I could only find 6" tins, so I made four instead of two...

And there was no turkey to be found in Thailand this year due to reported bird flu in the US, so I roasted duck legs instead. They were so cheap, so easy, and so delicious that they will be on my regular dinner roster now. 

Only some of the duck parts available at our "Costco." Lots of heads. My culinary school would have been thrilled to find big cheap packs of duck skin. 

And this is totally off-topic, but while we're at Makro, guess what this is? MSG. All of it.

Here are those processed meat balls I mentioned before.

So our Thanksgiving was on Sunday night, and we had a teacher in-service day on Monday. All of us were expecting the usual day full of meetings with a few mildly amusing team-building exercises thrown in to keep us awake. We’d received an e-mail about wearing active clothes and bringing bathing suits, and most of us sort of rolled our eyes about it. Greeeat, blergh, what lame thing are they going to make us do...

WELL. Weren’t we all thrown for a gigantic loop.

They surprised us with this full-scale, professional-grade “Amazing Race” thing. They had team t-shirts printed, and had name tags already stuck on them. We threw on the shirts and were sent off to a local coffee shop, the hospital, the school’s computer lab… some of the clues were in balloons floating in the middle of the pool (hence the suits)… We had to build tents and solve puzzles… there was a thing with half the team blindfolded and the other half shouting instructions using code words. We had to play a hole of golf in exactly 12 shots. We had to rappel off the roof of the school. Check out this professional development right here!

I wore makeup that day, and you can see in this video that I had sweat it halfway down my face at this point. Also, fun fact: a few days after this video was taken, I was wearing those same shorts while scrubbing bathrooms and split the seat wide open. They were just that old and threadbare. I'm so glad they held out that day, although the video shot from below would have been hilarious.

The hardest challenge, by a long shot, was the frog. Get this: we had to cook and eat a frog. But they were live, in a basket. We had to kill it first. No joke. I don’t know anyone who didn’t have a problem with this, particularly the Thai teachers who are mostly Buddhists. I am normally a good sport, but I flat-out refused. One of the school heads, a British guy who is pretty religious, was on my team and I could hear him in the kitchen going, “I’m sorry mate! Oh god, I’m so sorry!” It was awful. Then we had to cook it and eat it, all hacked up and bony and UGH. I’ve had frog before, but it was the legs, and it was in a swanky French restaurant in Holland, they were in garlic butter and I’d had a bit of wine. Very different experience. (A side note to my vegan friends: I know the setting makes no difference in the life of an animal. I know I just talked about how delicious duck legs are. The hypocrisy does not escape me. And admitting that does not absolve me.)

Anyway, the couple that owns our school also owns a resort in town, which is where we played the golf and where this crazy goose chase ended. They had a huge lunch buffet for us and gave out awards to the winners. I haven’t done anything even close to this since my camp counselor days in college, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had at work. I said to an American co-worker, “So this is what money can do [in a school].” Ten days later, it's still a big topic of conversation at school as we all have stories of what went on within our teams (and discuss animal-killing hypocrisy).

So that’s where I was, a bam-bam-bam of activity in less than a week. Over the weekend, Nick took his solo trip to Chiang Mai, then it was time to prepare for finals, which are now almost over. Whew. 

Next week is our last week of school before Christmas vacation, and the whole week is dedicated to preparing for the school Christmas show. This is apparently a quirk of Thai schools: they love performances. We’re just honoring local tradition. The C student in me thinks this is great, although I have volunteered to put together the staff dance routine, and given that the majority of our staff is heterosexual men, it’s hard to find dance moves that don’t involve… well… shimmying.  

If I ever want to get this posted, I’ll quit here. My mind has become possessed by thoughts of how much I love living here, love being an expat (next post: Cheating at Life… my god, am I cheating it so freakin’ hard), and I never want to go back to the US. I have to, but every day I'm like nooooo don't make me go back pleeeeeease. If I get into that now I’ll be writing for hours. Stay tuned for some cheery Christmas anti-patriotism!

Stuff I've Noticed

I played with "culture shock"-type titles for this post, but nothing has been a shock, or really a surprise, and not always cultural. So here goes some stuff I've noticed.

I was expecting the local fruit to be different. We'd seen some Anthony Bourdain show where he was eating some fruit that was too perishable to be shipped, so you could only get it in that country. He was going nuts over how great it was. Now that we're here, we've found that local-only fruit! Longan, mangosteen, rambutan, to name a few. Annnd... They're kind of disappointing. Most fruits have their own unique flavor: mangoes, pineapple, and passion fruit all taste only like themselves. The other ones I've had here are very sweet, but they're blandly sweet, like plain white sugar. It's kind of a bummer. Maybe that's why I'm not a big fan of figs, either. Sweet, but... just sweet. I have yet to try durian, which definitely has its own flavor, but I'm open.

Also, right now it's apparently strawberry season. In November. That's amusing to me. Wanna know the Thai word for strawberry? It's strawberry, but the emphasis is on the "REE" at the end, which is fun to say. And the local strawberries are very small, like blackberries.

Thailand loves hot dogs. I mean, it loves hot dogs. Smooth, single-color processed meat comes in all shapes and sizes and shades of gray to pink-orange. They're on every breakfast buffet, labeled "sausage." (No.) (However, there is a local Northern Thai sausage that is incredible.) A great deal of the street food stalls offer these baloney-like meats, usually in dime-sized balls on skewers. I made pigs in blankets for Sascha's birthday party, and the pigs were probably the easiest thing to find (no crescent roll dough; had to make it from scratch, but turned out great).

My sister asked me the other day if there are grocery stores here. Yes! Closest to us is a Costco-type warehouse store. Here's the fish department... that stuff is fresh.

About a ten minute drive away, there are two stores. One is a very pretty market in the mall that carries a lot of Western goods.

Free samples... of raw fish. Can you imagine? In the US? *LIABILITY!!*

The German section. American Style Hot Dogs! And chocolate called "Feelings." Marketing geniuses.

The other one is sort of like a Super Wal-Mart. It carries everything. I took this a few months ago, but this is the one we normally go to.

More Random Thailand:

That last video was barrettes that I saw in the market. The first one is made of pills. Then there's a pasta barrette, beer bottle caps...

Here's a recent culture shock/stupid light-bulb moment: I was at school thinking about what to do for dinner. I thought, ehh, maybe we can just go out. But then I thought, gawwh, can’t we just go somewhere that’s indoors? With walls, and air conditioning? And then I realized: this is exactly what you wanted, you idiot. You spent months trapped indoors, and you wanted to be outside. Most of rural Thailand is exposed, and this being a small/new city, a lot of Chiang Rai is exposed as well. There's plenty of middle-class (and up) housing, but many, many people here live in … houses? consisting of basically a platform and a roof. Here's a video I took of a house close to our neighborhood. It's hard to tell if it's someone's house, or a little restaurant, or both. I slowed it down to half time so you can see right through the house to the other side. It's just wide open. I felt a little intrusive taking this video, I have to admit.

Or if it’s a regular house, it has screenless windows.

This is a government building downtown, but I wanted to get the traditional Thai window design.

So. Plenty of fresh air. It is what I wanted.

This post is all over the place (as am I, as I write it from school, and home, with kids talking to me and dinner and baths in between and whatnot). I'll finish with this final video I took today. It was a typical situation: I went to get Sascha's bike fixed downtown. I was not looking forward to it because I always think they're going to think I'm a stupid farang, not knowing much Thai, with my big mouth, big boobs and big wallet. Anyway, I hung out in the back of the bike shop while a huge truck unloaded its cargo right next to me (liability!) and I watched the guy fix her tire. As I was sitting there half-grinning in my usual state of "oh my god I can't believe I am living here, I am so happy," I heard monks chanting from the temple next door. I got a 30-second video as I left.