The easiest explanation is:  I am going to Thailand, via Rotary Youth Exchange, from August 2, 2007, to an unknown date in July 2008.  I will be learning Thai (or, as an inbound student from Mexico once said, drowning in it), going to University (learning cooking and flower making), and as has been explained by almost everyone, changed irrevocably.  As if the Academy hasn’t already treated me to a bit of molding, folding, and twisting–but this is on a much grander scale.  Suddenly, it’s gone from intrastate to international.

So the question, “What am I doing?” implies other questions.  Ones like, “Am I crazy?” or “What am I thinking?”, neither of which I know a definitive answer to…however, the reality is likely that I am crazy, and I am not thinking at all.  I also know myself well enough to recognize that I probably won’t even realize I’m gone until three weeks or so into this whole adventure–and even then, only partially.  I might understand something more around Christmas time, when there is nary a snowflake or Santa Claus, and children aren’t decorating trees and putting sprinkles on over-frosted cookies.   After all, it took me a year and a half to muster up some actual homesickness driven by something other than hormones/exhaustion/lack of food while away at school.  Then again, we were all shooed away home every month for three or four days, and then there were the holidays.   So, a five-month estimate–about halfway through all of this–seems most accurate.

On a random note, I bought a new ringtone–Billy Joel, “Still Rock and Roll to Me.”  Quite possibly the best song ever.  But the ringtone just had to pick up when he says, “Where have you been hiding out lately honey?  You can’t dress trashy ’till you spend lots of money…”  So I’m keeping it.

[I still don't know how to say goodbye in Thai yet, though I do know how to say, "Shut up," & "Check that boy out"],

Holly