At Home in Paradise

As I was driving home today, ticking off my "To do" list in my head, I realized, life is back to normal!  I was driving without GPS, the crazy traffic, tuk-tuks, and motorcycles weren't giving me panic attacks, things were good. I need to remind myself, each time we move, that the great stress of upheaval and newness and change (along with the accompanying excitement and intrigue) eventually passes. I've realized that six months is my magic number. Give me six months anywhere, and it will become home. This morning I went shopping, stopping at three stores to get the best deals on oats, dairy products, and pantry staples. I came home and made granola and baked oatmeal and prepped dinner. I took one kid to a birthday party and the others to a playdate and lunch across town. I nonchalantly flicked an ant off my glass before I took a drink, barely noticing. I walked the dog around the neighborhood while our kids laughed and rode their bikes alongside.  I handwashed dishes without stopping to mourn our lack of a modern dishwasher. I took the kids to the orthodontist and planned meals for the next week. I checked email and submitted insurance claims and played a game with the kids. All in all, it was a wonderful day. An ordinary day. One of the very best kinds.

Hating Paradise

Today, I am a hater.

I hate everything. (Cue chorus of "I Hate Everything About You.")

I especially hate this city and everything about living here.

This  morning when my alarm went off, early on a Saturday morning so I could drive my husband into work (work on a Saturday?!), I hated the alarm, I hated the over-enthusiastic cheerful warblings of the birds outside, I hated the truck driver that hit my husband so that now he has a broken foot and crutches. I hated having to carefully inspect my toothbrush for ants before brushing my teeth, I hated the still-unfixed toilet after four service calls to get the flusher fixed. I hated the unfamiliar house that will never really seem like home, even though it is, for the next couple years. I hated the smoky dirty air, and how it is attacking my lungs, even in the house where we have air purifiers and filters running 24/7. Then I hear my littlest angel cough and I double-hate the air, no, triple-hate it for giving him asthma (and for the emergency room visit and hospital stay that is part of the reason that I am so bone-dead exhausted). I hate that I got pneumonia right when we got here and now that I’m better, I feel like I might be coming down with something new. I hate the language I can’t understand, no matter how hard I try. I hate the complete helplessness of illiteracy. I hate trying so hard to learn a phrase, only to have someone stare at me like I’m speaking gibberish. I hate tones. I hate the chaotic driving on the wrong side of the road, where I am constantly fearful of blinking and missing an erratic movement of a motorcycle driver or scooter or rickshaw or truck or pedestrian, all of whom seem completely oblivious to any common sense rules of the road. I hate the sense of panic I feel when I misunderstand my GPS’s instructions and miss a turn (should have taken a sharp left, not a slight left) so that a 20-minute drive turns into a 45-minute ordeal with several U-turns and tiny, crowded alleys. I hate having someone explain where something is and not having any idea what they are talking about. I hate the weird smells and feeling constantly slightly nauseated because of something I ate that my stomach isn’t used to. I hate the bugs, the mosquitos, the ants (everywhere, the ants!). I hate the litter. I hate how I never know how to answer the question “Where are you from?” I hate not having roots. I hate not having any friends (friendly acquaintances are not the same). I hate the tears that threaten to erupt and then start and just will. Not. Stop. I hate everything. And most of all, I hate myself for hating everything when I am living in paradise.

And this,  my friends, is culture shock. It’s amazing how clinical it is. You can read up on the symptoms of culture shock and know exactly what to expect and that it’s completely normal when you move to a new country, no matter how awesome that country may be. Still, it’s different living it than reading about it. I feel guilty for feeling it. I know there are a million things to love about this place. A million reasons to be grateful I am here. I try to strong-arm my emotions into happy and positive and confident. And tomorrow, probably, I will be grateful to be here and in love with this adventure. But today? Today I am drowning in the misery of culture shock. And I hate that I can’t just drive down to Safeway and buy a gallon of Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream to drown my sorrows (add that to the list: I hate the fake ice cream here!).

(Update, three weeks later: Obviously, I don't hate living in Thailand. Culture shock makes you think crazy things sometimes, but the great thing about it is that it is temporary. For me, part of transitioning and settling into a new place is acknowledging the bad along with embracing the good. This post was extremely cathartic and I can confidently say that culture shock this go around is done, but I won't be surprised when it hits again the next time we move.)

Settling into Life in Paradise (January)

We arrived to Chiang Mai on a rare rainy day (it generally doesn't start raining until April) in January. That didn't stop Funny Guy from begging to check out the pool (surprisingly cold during the cool season!!). Our neighborhood is absolutely beautiful and so is the pool.

There is even a tiny little café that serves hot chocolate (luke warm, but I guess that is plenty hot enough in Thailand!). Perfect for after a day of rainy swimming!

Our house is beautiful with hardwood floors throughout, beautiful landscaping, and a nice open floorplan. We don't have a dishwasher, but we do have a washer & dryer (none of which are normal commodities here).

Our first attempt at going to church didn't work as well as we'd hoped. We thought we hired a taxi driver, but he didn't show up. Finally we tried to just hail one from the road, but they don't stop out where we live so we started walking toward a busier street (more than a mile away). Amazingly a nice lady stopped and offered us all a ride. She didn't speak any English but was super nice and My Man got to use his mad skills and talk to her all the way to church. Once there, we found that although there are a couple other English speaking families, it will be a very different experience from church in Korea where we had a huge English branch. This is a small Thai branch with a good effort at translating. (I teach Primary with a missionary who translates for me into Thai; Sacrament meeting is translated by missionaries into English and we can listen with headphones; etc. We sing songs in Thai and English at the same time, whichever we happen to speak.)

Luckily church is downtown and we didn't have too much trouble getting a ride back home on a red songtaew (truck with bench seats along the sides in the back). Our neighborhood has lots of coconut trees (which Ana loves to collect and try to crack open) and a little fish pond where we sometimes go feed the ginormous catfish. It's a bit far from the center of town, and we have only found one other family with a few kids (Sam's age and younger), but it is definitely beautiful.

The kids started right into school Monday. Since we didn't have a car yet, I got to ride the van into school with them. It picks up kids from another family in our neighborhood, then some older kids in another neighborhood on the way in to school. The school is wonderful. It's a small Christian school (the oldest international school in Chiang Mai). The teachers seem great, there are several sports and after-school activities, and the campus is nice. The kids all thought it was great and transitioned easily to their new classes. 

Young Man started right into football (soccer) and Darling Daughter started track & field (she found out she loves the high jump!). Young Man's first game was that week! I really wanted to go and support him (and needed to pick him up anyway) but had a tricky time getting transportation worked out. Finally I got a driver who would come out to pick us up. The problem was he didn't know where the field was, and neither did I. I had a map and we finally got to where he thought it was, but no one was there. By then we were more than half an hour late, so I knew that couldn't be the right field. I talked him into trying one more time and eventually we did find it. I didn't realize that it was the only game of the season that would be at such an obscure location (usually the games are at international schools!) or that except for the tournament at the end of the season, parents don't generally attend the games. But we were glad to finally make it there to support Young Man. And the girls' teams played first so we were able to watch the whole game.

He even got to play goalie for awhile when the team's regular goalie got hurt. He did great even though he hasn't ever played goalie before.

I thought it would be easier getting home than getting to the field, but again we couldn't seem to find a taxi. It was getting late and everyone was hungry, so I ordered some unidentifiable rice noodle soup and everyone loved it. And eventually, we all made it home. Who knew going to a soccer game could be such an adventure.

The consulate community is great about setting up activities to help you get out and explore and get to know each other, and they had one set up for our first week in town. It was a trip down south to a ceramics factory, followed by lunch and a quick visit to a temple there. It was great. We got to see them making and painting the vases (all by hand!). There was a great section of "seconds" (imperfect pieces) that we browsed and I splurged and got a beautiful little tea set for under $5.

The next day, the kids had a short day of school. Darling Daughter had track & field practice so I picked up the boys from school and took them with me downtown Chiang Mai. Sometime on our way out here, my laptop screen got broken and I needed to get it replaced. We'd heard the best place was at the top of the moat (the main downtown Chiang Mai is a giant square surrounded by a moat of water).

Since there are tons of temples (wats) in that area, I thought we'd walk from the school over to the computer place, stopping to enjoy some of the wats along the way, then go back to pick up Darling Daughter after her practice. It turned out to be a much longer walk than I'd realized (from off the map on the top right side to the top left corner of the moat) but the boys were good sports and really enjoyed exploring the different temples. Especially when I promised we could take a tuk tuk back to the school afterward. We only saw four (out of more than 300!), but the ones we saw were great.  We stopped at a little hole in the wall restaurant near one of them and had the best Thai food we've ever had (still hoping to go back!).

And then I got pneumonia. Well, I got the flu first, thought I was getting better, and then it turned to pneumonia. The next few weeks were spent with me in bed, wishing we were out enjoying the most beautiful weather of the year in the most beautiful tourist location in the world! Instead, I was sick in bed, we were trying to work out logistics like getting a car, figuring out where to shop, homework, and so on, and My Man and the kids did their best to carry on without me. I don't recommend it: pneumonia in general, and pneumonia when you are settling into life in a new country in particular.

Near the beginning of my bout of pneumonia, our first shipment arrived! I had mixed feelings when I looked out and saw the truck. It was fantastic to get our stuff so we could settle in and feel at home, but the pile of boxes was completely overwhelming with how sick I was. It took a long time to unpack and organize and make our house feel like a home. Thankfully, My Man is very patient, because variations on this view greeted him every time he came home from work for at least a week!

I think the kids' favorite part of my being sick was when My Man would take them out for dinner and they got to ride in a tuk tuk (basically a motorcycle rickshaw). It is definitely their favorite way to travel.

Before we moved to Chiang Mai, My Man heard about a paragliding launch just a few minutes out of town. He was super excited to get back into flying since Virginia had been such a disappointment in that respect. Unfortunately, Chiang Mai isn't going to be a good place for flying either. Apparently, the launch has been abandoned because winds aren't good enough. Still, we decided to check it out.

I was still sick with pneumonia but we were all sick of being stuck inside and I figured the change of scenery might be nice. It was. The launch was really pretty. We enjoyed the sunshine and nice views, and the kids enjoyed chasing lizards and bugs. It's actually a great launch and if My Man can find anyone else to fly with it would be a convenient place.

So life in Paradise is already going full-swing, if off to a somewhat rocky start. You know things are going to be OK though, when you go in to tuck your little one into bed and find this.