Multi-Cultural Personality Disorder

Lalo and I with some of my co-teachers and friends. Yellow is the color for the King and Thais love their king. Love. The entire country is a sea of yellow.

Going back to your Peace Corps site is kinda like going home after your first semester in college. You realize that you will always be a guest from that point forward. Your life as you knew it no longer exists. Strange things have happened to your room (my old house in Thailand is now a motorcylce repair shop) and you are acutely aware of the most minor changes that have occurred since you left. In your mind that place is frozen in time, but in reality time has marched on without you. One of the biggest shocks for me was how big some of my students had gotten. They were grade school children when I left and now they are young adults in high school. It made me stop and think about time and how precious every day, week, and month is. [read on]

Sunset on Ko Samet

Not really. It’s anything but boring and I’m averaging 4 meals a day, not including snacks.

I haven’t blogged in weeks mostly because I was either in areas that have poor internet connections or because I didn’t want to spend the final days of my journey in front of a computer. Thailand is also such a familiar place to me that it doesn’t seem all that exciting. I’m afraid I’d bore you. I haven’t even taken any pictures for a week. I felt like I was home as soon as I walked off of the plane, but when Jessica and Lalo arrived in Bangkok, I really felt like I was home. Almost like I had never left. [read on]

My first trip to Thailand was six years ago. I was living in Japan at the time and it was just a quick vacation. I immediately loved ... [Continue reading this entry]

I'm in Thailand. Hallelujah.  It was definitely time to move on and Thailand is exactly what I needed. I've been thinking alot about Tibet as I spend my days ... [Continue reading this entry]

My final excursion in Tibet was a two day trip to Nam-Tso, a holy lake about 3 hours Northwest of Lhasa. I saved this trip for last because ... [Continue reading this entry]

The beginning of the kora at Gandan monastery, Tibet We spent a couple of days this week hunting down local buses that would take us to a few monasteries outside ... [Continue reading this entry]

Tibetan women walking the circuit around the Jokang Temple in Lhasa It was raining when we arrived in Lhasa at 8:00 pm on Tuesday evening. I didn't have a ... [Continue reading this entry]

View from the dining car There was a definite excitement in the air as we all waited to board the train to Tibet in the Beijing West Railway Station. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Late night shoe repair, Beijing I've been in Beijing for 8 days now and although I wasn't exactly excited about spending another week of my vacation here it was exactly ... [Continue reading this entry]

It took two trips to Beijing, but I finally made it to The Great Wall. Yesterday I hiked 10 kilometers on one of the less developed stretches of ... [Continue reading this entry]