One Year Later

Exactly one year ago today I said goodbye to my small town, my family, friends, my boyfriend…. And boarded the plane to Thailand. I never admitted it to anyone until just a couple of months ago, but when I said my final goodbyes at the airport and walked through that security gate all on my own… I burst into tears. The year that followed was definitely the experience of a lifetime.. And I will never regret deciding to go to Thailand, even if the Thai culture and lifestyle has shaped me into a different person.. A person who no longer “fits in” in Canada. Yesterday was Canada day. I wore a t-shirt with the Thai flag on it… and maybe on some subconscious level I was making a statement about which country I really prefer (although I wasn’t thinking about it in the morning when I was getting dressed.. All I thought was that it was the nicest clean shirt I had…) Honestly, I wish I could tell you all that life was going great here, and that it was like I never left… I wish I could tell AFS that they were wrong when they told us going back to our home countries would be harder than going abroad…. They gave us these huge pamphlets when we were getting ready to depart back home about how when we got back there were 2 routes we could take:

1. We could just forget about everything we learned and experienced while away, and fit right back into society and with our group of friends.

2. We could refuse to forget about everything we learned and experienced while away, but in turn probably not fit in with society or with our group of friends.

And really, AFS was right when they gave us this information.

Personally, the idea of forgetting everything I went through terrifies me… if I’m just going to forget it all, then what was the point of going on exchange in the first place? As much as it disturbed me at the time, I don’t want to forget what it was like to walk past a group of men watching a cock fight while getting my laundry… I don’t want to forget what it was like to not know what the hell I was eating… to realize that the loud bang I had heard outside my bedroom window was a bomb… to be woken up at five in the morning by the mosque call… to travel through downtown Bangkok (one of the scariest, craziest cities in the world) on public transportation all by myself…. To have friends who didn’t speak my language at all.. To truly feel like a member of a family who were a different race and a different religion (okay, now I’m starting to get a little too nostalgic and sappy (something I’m never a fan of)). Why is it that I feel like I fit in more when I was the only white girl in a school of 3,000 Thais than I do here?

Even before I left for Thailand, I didn’t feel like I completely fit in here. And honestly, even then I didn’t really even want to. And now I just… really don’t want to. At least not with these people. Maybe things will be different when I head off to university? A couple weeks ago I went to an amusement park with my family.. And while we were sitting around eating crap.. I noticed that there was a group of Asians sitting at a table near us…. They weren’t Thai, but nonetheless I had this ridiculous overwhelming urge to go sit with them. Like that was where I belonged (as cheesy as it sounds..).

When people here ask me what it was about Thailand that I liked so much (because really, people here seem to think I‘m crazy to be in love with a country that is full of prostitutes and is devoid of technology… and how on could I love my Muslim family.. Since all Muslim men are evil and beat their wives?? (and really, these stereotypes piss me off more than I could explain here)).. I really don’t know what to tell them. It’s not something I could really explain. If I were to try though, I would say that a lot of the whole “mai bpenrai”.. just enjoying the moment part of Thai culture rubbed off on me. People here get too stressed out about making decisions. Everything needs to be planned and organized down to the last detail. Thailand is just so chaotic that it could never be organized. But somehow, amid all the chaos.. Thai people know how to relax.. Just sit around and enjoy a good meal. Eat somtam and khao neow until you get diarrhea (because really, somtam is so good it’s worth the diarrhea).

I watched one of my Thai movies I brought back with me last night… and it made me incredibly homesick. All the Thai things that the Thai people would do in the movie were just… so Thai. Things that I used to do on a daily basis. And now.. They’re just missing from my life.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my future lately. What kind of career I want to have… Part of me thinks I should be a hardcore student in the next few years, get a crazy degree and then settle down in Canada ((because lets face it.. I pretty much have the brain power to be a surgeon)). But another part of me (the part that realized, while in Thailand, that for the first time in who knows how long.. I was really living) thinks life is too short to spend sitting in a classroom working towards a degree. And I just feel so incredibly conflicted in my beliefs. It’s kind of a crazy time in my life…. Trying to figure out the two different sides of myself. The girl I was before I went abroad.. The kind of girl who did all her homework, was involved in a hella lot of extra curricular activities, spent all her time studying and did uber good on her provincial exams. Then me in Thailand….. I did absolutely no school work that year. All I studied was how to give Thai massages, do Thai art, Thai dance, etc. etc. But.. I think that I learned more last year than I learned during my whole high school career in Canada. Now, being back in Canada I’m faced with the decision of which girl I want to spend the rest of my life being. Or figuring out how to integrate both with one another. And honestly, I don’t know what to do. I have no answers. All I know for sure is that Thailand made me a better person (maybe a snobby, thinks she too good for everyone else type of person (at least that’s probably how people her perceive me)) and I don’t want to ever forget the journey I went on to reach this point.

Maybe I’ll let you know how things turn out in a few years.. But for now, I think this is it.

Take Care Na,
Kristen.





p.s. if any of you ever get the opportunity to go to Thailand in the future… go! And always remember, “ka” is for females, “krap” is for males”… if you ever encounter a squat toilet, the left hand is for wiping… leaving food in the sun kills bacteria and therefore makes it safer to eat… food is eaten with a spoon in the right hand, fork in the left hand…. And always remember to smile (you’ll be in the Land of Smiles, after all)



And NEVER say/do anything that is offensive to the King (he is practically the God of that crazy country).