Around the dinner table, during coffee breaks, on long garden walks, and over hot kitchen stoves, we’ve been talking. Here we meet in Berlin, Toby and I and his parents, all transplants from sunny southern California, now living in Asia and Europe. And repeatedly the conversation turns back to comparisons: how convenient life was in the States while here it takes hours to get any errand accomplished; the greater access to culture and history and ease of travel in Europe; the unparalleled food and low cost of living in Thailand; transparency on one side, polarized politics on the other; to-die-for fashions and dreamy weather juxtaposed against injustices and stilted freedoms.
We see America differently from having lived abroad, now appreciating some things we used to take for granted, yet also taking taking advantage of other things we previously could not access.
This trip to Germany is not my first, but I’m getting the sense it will be a first. It’s my first time coming here after living in Asia. Where once, from the perspective of a flight from LAX to Tegelhof, stepping on German soil felt exotic and foreign, now it feels comfortingly familiar – so much so I’m often caught by surprise by the fact that I don’t speak the language and that I have to re-learn basic things like how much to tip and to stop smiling so much at strangers.
And this trip to Europe will actually be my longest stay in Europe yet. Instead of just popping by, I’m getting an opportunity to truly immerse. You orient yourself differently when you know you will be in a place for just a few days versus several weeks. It’s a different way of traveling; a different way to be.
Henry Miller once said, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
I wonder whether and how a month in Eastern Europe will change my way of seeing. Already I begin to sense the addition of more cultural milieus into my thoughts, awareness, and orientation. I begin to sense that the more you’ve been everywhere, the less you begin to fit in anywhere.
But that’s okay. If the world is a book, I’d prefer to read the whole story, not just one page.
but by the moments that take our breath away.”
- Author Unknown
What moments stole your breath away this week?
Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us!
By all that was well-advised, I shouldn’t have gone there. I should have just walked across the street to our friendly neighborhood restaurant for lunch, so I could be in and out and back home tackling my to-do list in less than 45 minutes.
Yes, that is a truck bed full of passengers bearing umbrellas in an optimistic, if futile attempt to stay dry. Second only to the passengers bearing umbrellas on motorcycles in the rain.
Happy Tuesday everyone! Would you like a macaron with your coffee? I have some raspberry ones, passion fruit, caramel…I’m pretty sure chocolate is involved there too. Take your pick! These are from the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi’s bakery. When I saw they were 18 baht a piece (about 55 cents) I snatched them up like a fiend because the last time I saw macarons was in Hong Kong and they were more like US$5 a piece.
The streets basically turn into a parking lot, with music pumping from loud speakers, vendors selling hot grilled snacks and water guns, pedestrians aiming water pistols at people passing by in trucks, and pickups full of people dumping buckets at everyone else. It took us approximately 5 hours to drive 3 kilometers.
I think it effectively captures the pure glee you see on everyone’s face. The water fight lasts 3 days and still it never ceases to amuse.
We met a young Thai farmer, Ahn, who had grown up on a farm, working with his parents. He had left farm life to go to the city and get a university degree, but after completing his education, instead of staying in the city where he could get a high-paying job, he decided to go back to help his parents work the farm.
His father had worked in agriculture his entire life as well, as had his forefathers before him, but he started to get sick. The doctor said he was getting sick because of the chemicals he was working with. The family decided then to switch to more organic processes, using things like fermented bananas and sugar mixtures instead of pesticides.
Happy Tuesday, everyone! How has your week been? Did you have a nice Easter weekend? Out here, the big excitement coming up is Songkran, the Thai New Year, where as some of you might recall from my posts last year, Thailand erupts in a three-day long water fight. That’s coming up starting Friday, though water guns and buckets are already being sold everywhere alongside gift baskets of incense and candles, monk’s cloths, and soap which people buy to bring to temple to make merit. With all that excitement going on here, I almost forgot it was Easter until just a couple days before.
I make mine with a dose of cumin and Burmese curry powder. It adds a nice zing. How do you make yours?
Awesome.
By the way, if any well-meaning (but uptight) person warns you not to eat the street food in Thailand…IGNORE THEM. The food is cheap and varied and good – an experience not to miss. Sure, there isn’t the FDA or OSHA coming to check on them, but if you see a bunch of Thai people eating the food there, it’s a pretty safe bet it’s good. Also, most of the street vendors buy and prepare their food each day, so in many cases it’s fresher than what you would find in a restaurant where the food has been housed in a huge refrigerator for several days.
I kind of want to take them home with me, except for the whole part where baby tigers become big, actual tigers. With fangs and claws. And diseases. And we wouldn’t need a litter box so much as a litter vault. Keeping them fed might be a challenge too.
We also got a chance to check out this reservoir nearby we keep hearing about but never managed to go to. They have these fantastic little huts floating on bamboo poles right on the edge of the lake. You can sit inside and they bring your food right out to you, and you can eat and cool off in the lake all you want.
You can also teach your dog that she can swim. Whimpers, claw marks, and scratches included, free of charge.
She may act like she’ll never forgive you, but it’s pretty cool seeing the look of pride on her little face when she makes it to safety and everyone is cheering her and giving her snacks.
Oh, and the food they serve includes goong dthen, literally, dancing shrimp. Because they are still alive, in their shells with antennae, served in a chili and lime sauce, when you eat them. Remember how last week I said I was a pretty adventurous eater? Um, yeah, I didn’t eat the shrimp. My husband did, and his comment was you have to chew quickly.
What’s in your cup today? I’m curled up on the couch with my snoring dog, and I’ve got me some Earl Grey to soothe the itch in my throat. I’m not sick (anymore, thank goodness!), but it’s burning season here. They’re burning all the crops and the air is filled with nasty smoke. Healthy. Our friends left town to go down south to Hua Hin (smart), but we can’t because my husband has Thai language classes in the afternoons and I have to be up here for work.
I think I’m a little bit in shock that February is almost over. March is going to go by just as fast, as I’ll be going out of town every weekend for work, except for one weekend: the one my husband’s cousin arrives from Germany for a visit! I’m super excited for her visit and the things we have planned for work, but there won’t be any lazy weekends for the next little while!
But they are perfectly comfortable and relaxing, soothing and quiet. Unless the Thai women are chatting…and then it’s just damn funny. I don’t think I laughed so hard through a massage session as I did last night.
All right, it’s time for me to grab some breakfast (LUNCH!). Tell me, what’s going on in your corner of the world today?
Coffee, pen, and paper…my favorite way to start the day. I didn’t actually start today that way though. This morning, I got up early for a yoga session, a quick shower, and then a trip to the American consulate to renew my American passport (and finally get my married name on it). I was all geared up for yet another bureaucratic pain in the A…but it wasn’t. Everything was smooth, friendly, transparent, thoroughly explained, and efficient. And in two weeks, I should be all up to date with brand-spanking-new passport. Oh melt my heart. Why can’t all bureaucratic functions be this easy to work with? I drove away from the consulate on my little scooter feeling all international and a bit like Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter, and for about five minutes, I pretended I was a U.N. official and I might have sung a few Imogen Heap lyrics inside my helmet.
I took off my flip flops – I was afraid they’d fall right off and then where would I be? Shoeless on a pachyderm, that’s where I’d be
