The world we live in: Last weekend with the family

It dawned on me this weekend that I'm living in Thailand for the next five months. That sounds really obvious, but the reality actually set in. When I thought about it more, the timing makes sense. I've been in Chiang Mai for a month now, and before this, the longest I'd ever been out of the country was a month. After a month in Calcutta, I felt like I'd gotten the feel for Indian culture but was okay leaving the difficult aspects: heat, lack of air conditioning, squatty potties, etc. Traveling for only a month, you can experience a country/culture enough to understand it pretty well but leave soon enough that you don't have to fully integrate and adjust to everything.

That's not an option this time around. If anything, our time here is about to get exponentially more difficult. Living in Chiang Mai for the last month really hasn't been that hard. It's a large city. My family has all the basic amenities I'm used to. After learning my way around the city, I've been able to access anything I would want (coffee, fruit, snacks, basic supplies). But is out last week with our families. This weekend, we'll move into apartments in the city. We'll have next week in the apartments as we start our Agroecology course in the classroom at ISDSI, after which we'll be heading out on our first field expedition. At that point, I have no idea what to expect. I know we'll be in two locations for the three weeks in the field-- a farm and an agricultural research station. But as for lodging, food, schedule, a place to settle in... I have no idea!

In light of all that, I really enjoyed the relaxing last weekend I had with my host family. Saturday I went to Katluang Market with Meh to get the traditional Lanna outfit all the students wear to our Farewell Dinner this Thursday. It ended up being a really fun mother-daughter shopping trip. We rode the bus into the city together and shopped all morning. We spent about an hour at different hair accessory stores-- not because I was browsing, but because she was. She showed me the latest hair trends, the most inexpensive stores for different little accessories, and bought a number of things for herself.

This weekend, Meh's father (grandfather: Teh) came from their home four hours north to stay for the weekend. He has to go to the hospital once a month for treatment, but was also coming because it was my sister Pim's birthday on Monday. While him being in town changed the family dynamics somewhat, it was also really enjoyable because the entire family got together a few times throughout the weekend.

On Sunday, our immediate family, Teh, and Meh's younger sister Lek all went to a hot springs. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the experience ended up being exponentially more enjoyable than I expected. The area was bascially a big park built next to a hot spring/geyser. The hot water is channeled into streams that people sit and dangle their feet it, while some children swim in small pool areas.

Families were eating picnics all around the park, with the main affair being boiled eggs. There's a small pool where you can hang baskets of eggs in the water to boil and then eat. They never cooked all the way through, but were still delicious and a lot of fun! We added fish sauce (naam blah) to them-- a staple of Thai food. Alloy! Delicious!

The hot springs really reminded me of parks in the US, and was quite the multi-generational family affair. It was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon.