A Busy Weekend

   I celebrated my first Thanksgiving  in Thailand 2 days ago.  A friend at work-Donella and her family invited me to join them at a neighbor's house where many people were coming together to celebrate.  It was fun and I always enjoy hearing stories from people who have lived in Thailand awhile.  Adapting to a new culture has many amusing moments and always fun to laugh about afterwards.  Donella's family are here as missionaries and they regularly serve at a children's home every week.  Other people at the dinner are also missionaries and many have been here for years.  It was nice of our school to give us a half day at work so we could celebrate Thanksgiving during the day by tradition.  Other international school's do not do this.  It was incredibly weird working on Friday the day after however.  Its been years since I've done that.
Friday marked the beginning of the Balloon Festival that our neighboring school puts on each year.  Apparently its an international thing.  I got up earlier than usualy of Friday so I could watch the first launch.  I was also hoping to catch a ride.  These are hot air balloons that were launching and really big up close.  I will add pictures but since my camera is dying, they are a little blurry.  The night show I missed but maybe tonight I can catch it.
Tomorrow I move to my new house.  While the move should be quite quick as I don't have a lot of stuff, its still a little stressful making sure I didn't forget anything.  Moving somewhere new is always good but its hard to tell before I live there if I will still like the place after I officially move there.  I'm optimistic though.  I will miss being so close to the coffee shop near my house and the coffee stand that I no longer need to place orders at.  This one coffee stand, I always order an ice mocha and I go regularly.  So now I simply show up, say 'hi' and she starts making an ice mocha.  Its awesome!  And its only 30B which is approx. $1.

Life Goes On and On and On

I realized my blogs are getting farther and farther apart.  Its not that there isn't anything worth writing about.  Actually there is plenty.  I just have so many distractions,  I think.  I'm actually less than 2 weeks away from moving again.  A couple of weeks ago, after losing sleep yet again when my housemate and our houseguest came home late at night and loud again, I had time to get mad and have another chat with God about whether or not I should continue to put up with this.  We recently became houseguest free a few days ago after having a houseguest for 6 weeks.  It was a very long time to have a non paying housemate and it got even longer when the late nights started.  Shortly after she arrived, my housemate started going out to bars and other places and would return late at night.  Usually they would laugh and carry on til much later into the night.  Our house transmits sound very well.  Even with my door closed and no hearing aid on, I could hear full conversations going on in the kitchen downstairs.  A few times especially in the beginning weeks, I got up or sent a text asking them to please quiet down.  They usually would and the next day I got apologies.  But then it would happen again and again.  A few times I just waited it out, not wanting to get out of bed.  I considered moving after being woken up 3 times one week.  A friend that I confided in, suggested that I pray about it first.  I did and didn't feel like it was the time to leave.  Then a couple of weeks ago, I was awoken again only this time they brought home 2 guests.  Mind you this was already after 1am.  As I lay in bed frustrated, I used the time to talk to God again about moving.  I felt like this time, I needed to leave.  It had become clear that there was no effort on my housemates part to try to be considerate after hours and waiting for our houseguest to leave didn't guarantee the end of it. 
The next morning I got up for church and discovered that some food I had just bought the day before was also eaten during the late night.  Tiredness and frustration spilled out when I did run into my housemate and guest and instead of talking to them, I yelled my frustrations and said that I was moving.  Then I left for church.  My moving plans began immediately as I told both my pastor and a new couple from Canada that I was househunting
After church, my housemate came to me and apologized and we had a calm conversation.  I can't recall if I apologized for yelling in that conversation.  A day or so later I did apologize and asked forgiveness as I don't usually yell at people when I'm mad.  I do feel bad for how I handled the whole thing as I let my emotions do the talking in the moment.    She also thinks I planned to move long before I told her as I found a place within 2 days of telling her.  I think it was just a quick answer to prayer as I didn't start looking until after I told her. 

 Currently, my housemate and I are on eggshells. I don't know if she's forgiven me as she asked for space following the incident.  I've been giving her that.  I found a new house 48 hrs after I started looking and signed a 1 year lease yesterday. I think ultimately, it will be better for both of us.  She's moving to the neighborhood she's talked about going to that I never wanted to live in. I'm getting my own 2 bedroom house in a Thai neighborhood.  I think it will be easier to immerse myself in the culture as I am surrounded by farangs in my current moo baan.  I'm excited about my new place and look forward to getting to know the neighbors who don't speak English.  From what I hear, that's all of them.  I also can have cats in my new place and dogs arent' allowed.  Sorry dog lovers but the dogs here are not nice.  Now that I'm comfortable on my motorbike, its not a problem being farther away from work.

waiting for the launch

many lanterns in the sky

Quick little note, we celebrated Loy Krathong here in Thailand just a week ago. Loy means floating and Krathongs are these floating things adorned with banana leaves, flowers and incense. My favorite part was setting off the large lanterns. There were millions in the sky. My camera doesn't do it justice. My least favorite part were the fireworks. Anyone can buy fireworks no matter how big and dangerous they are. So professional type fireworks were being set off outside my house mostly the last 2 nights and off and on all week. There were some bomb sounding ones that went off at midnight and I finally had to plug my ears and pray the fireworks only went up. Its neat to be able to be here during a festival though. I will goto the hot air balloon festival in a week at the school next door to ours. Apparently its not to be missed.

Just after we let it go

off it goes

Waiting for the hot air to fill the lantern

The Rest of the Vacation

The day after I got back from Foursquare Thailand convention, I hopped a plane, a sky train and a bus down to southern Thailand.  I had planned to spend nearly 5 days in Hua Hin which is on the inside coast of the tail of Thailand.  Since I was tired and it was so hot, I chose to   relax my first night including a massage and hanging at the hotel.
The next morning I awoken to the sad news that my friend/coworker from my days at Valencia Elementary, had passed away during the night.  Mary has had cancer for as long as I have known her and has done fabulous in her fight against it.  But more recently had deteriorated and was no longer on chemo.  I'm incredibly grateful to my other friends for keeping me in the loop about Mary's health.  Even though I left Valencia for China a few years back, I still have very fond memories of my time there and have maintained some contact over the years with various people that I got to know.  One of my best memories of Mary was when she told me to 'smile'.  She didn't say it in a mean way but rather a 'life is short-enjoy it' kind of way.  We had a challenging job working with students with special needs and smiling and laughing made things better.  I still remember to do that now because it really does make a difference.
To be honest, I alway thought Mary would beat this disease.  She was always such a strong optimistic person.  While I know that alone can't kill cancer, I personally think it keeps a person healthier than one who is is depressed all the time. 
I can't say that I continued in vacation mode after hearing the news. I actually really wanted to go home to Chiang Mai.  But the cons of checking in to my flight early was that I couldn't change my ticket.  So I spent the rest of the vacation trying to be distracted.  I read a lot, swam a bit and got massages and that was a great distraction.  I actually didn't realize just how effective a distraction it was until I headed home finally on Sat.  Heading home was an all day affair but I finally got home safely.  After my housemate and our houseguest left for a Halloween party that night, I finally got out everything that I didn't know I was holding in.
I realize that there is no good way to end this particular blog.  So I'll end with this.  I want to make sure that I don't keep assuming that I'll still have tomorrow when it comes to family and friends.  Because as I discovered in Mary's case is that even though I knew she was weak, I still held out and hoped that she would be around for awhile.