Tomorrow, June 1, I finally get to go to work.

In December, after finishing up 3 1/2 years of course work at Payap University, I began my internship in Saohin village, where I lived for about 3 months. I am at the point now where I can talk about my experience there without crying, but I still miss that place like crazy. Many people, especially Thai people, don’t understand why I would miss a remote place where there is only electricty run by solar panels, and the wifi is exceedingly temperamental, and dust and smoke cloak the world in the hot season, and there are no coffee shops and malls, and the room I lived in had no wardrobe or clothes rack or mirror or fan. One of my friends thinks that there must be a guy living up there that I have fallen in love with or something.

There isn’t.

They don’t know that there is something addicting about waking up at 5:45 AM to build the fire with wood and boil water for the coffee, and make the day’s portion of rice over an open fire. They don’t know that funny bleat of a buffalo and the cry of the tukay at night are much more calming music to listen to at night than the roaring of traffic in the middle of the city. They don’t know that people in a village like that go to each others’ homes when they need to talk because there is no phone to call instead. They don’t know the charm of baking cookies on a fire late at night while crickets chirp. But most of all, they don’t know the charm or the love of about 80 Karen and Tai Yai students from the ages of 3 to 15, and how much that love can pull you on and on.

Actually, I wasn’t really planning to write all that. A good writer would go back and cut it out because it doesn’t have anything to do with today’s post. What I was going to write about was the start of my new job tomorrow and some of the things that I did in my spare time. But I never said I was a good writer.

So after my internship finished in late March, I went back to Chiang Mai for a few weeks, and then moved back to Mae Sariang in the middle of April. Of my time here in Mae Sariang, much of it has been in either quarantine, semi-quarantine, or semi-lockdown. I am now out of quarantine and things are opening up more and more here in the town. Tomorrow I begin my new job teaching at Boripat High School, the local district school of Mae Sariang. I was originally planning to start work on the 10th of May, but because of COVID19, the school’s opening was pushed off until later.

It’s better for me NOT to have a lot of time off just before I start something new. Otherwise, I tend to sit and think a little too much about it. The past 5 or 6 weeks have been difficult in terms of getting very little social interaction, especially face to face with live humans. It wasn’t until last week that I began to realize that it was slowly wearing down my emotional health. I have never before known how much relationships with others are necessary for emotional wellbeing. I do know now, and hope I will never take it for granted again. Normally, I am not much of a social butterfly. I love time alone and crave it. It’s just that 5 weeks of near aloneness is too much.

But I did enjoy doing a few projects here at home. I had fun ordering some things on Lazada for the house and for my room. I also had fun doing some furniture building of my own.

My favorite project was the bamboo table. I spent three evenings making it. The making of the table itself was somehow an incredibly special time for me. Sitting on the east porch with my cat after the heat of the day had ebbed away, cutting the bamboo, hand-drilling in holes to insert each shoot, and listening to the night sounds around me was relaxing and life-giving. With a hammer, a saw, a measuring tape from a small sewing kit, a flat screwdriver and a bottle of white spray paint, and string from a kite my cousin gave me, the little bamboo table was born. Oh, and bamboo from the bamboo that grows in the edge of the property.

Below are some pictures.