Moving blogs!

Attention!  I will be starting a new blog at http://madelainemnm.wordpress.com/ because I will soon be back home in Los Angeles.  My new blog will cover a range of topics from life lessons, travel, sex, anger, relationships, God, men and of course my spiritual growth and journey.

Check it out at madelainemnm.wordpress.com!!!

Embracing the Unknown

You know how thoughts of home, particularly when on a long winded journey abroad, conjure up thoughts of security and comfort?  Well frankly, they currently don’t do that for me.

After months of deliberating, I decided to go home instead of stay in Thailand for another semester or go teach in another country.  There are multiple reasons for this.  One of them being that I realized I really would prefer to travel abroad much more than actually live abroad. 

The interesting thing about this decision is that not only was it difficult, but it felt so uncertain.   I decided to go home, but I’ve realized that deciding to go home was actually the more brave decision for me.  It took courage to book that ticket back to Los Angeles.

The reason for that is that going home is actually full of many more uncertainties than staying in Thailand, believe it or not.  Although I’m bored out of my mind here, my life here is beyond simple.  I have a job, not too many bills, a few friends, a crazy amount of time to relax and the ability to travel around (when I’m not teaching of course). 

However, I chose to go home despite the complete “up in the air-ness” that awaits me.  Not only do I not have a job or a particular field I want to go back to, I also will be once again living with my parents at the ripe age of twenty-five (almost twenty-six).  Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents and I’m grateful for their generosity, but I also have loved the independence of having my own apartment here.  I will go home to face the debt I’ve accrued while here.  I will also go home to an incredibly ambivalent relationship status.  Also, before I left I had been feeling over the last few years also that my circle of friends has gotten much smaller since my early 20’s which has been a difficult thing to adjust to.

So basically I’m going home to LA and yet I feel so much fear to go back to the reality that awaits me there.  I can already feel the reverse culture shock setting in.  I’m already dreading looking for a job as well as all the other things I have to figure out.  And yet, even with all the uncertainty and fear, I feel that it’s the right decision.  For some reason, as much as I love Thailand and think it would be wonderful to live in a bigger Thai city with a group of my foreign teacher friends next semester, I just know that I need to go back to LA.  It feels right.     

I guess the truth is that life is always uncertain, always full of mystery.  Life, after all, can and often does change in an instant, when we’re least expecting it.  In this situation, the difference seems to be that I’m expecting the mystery.  I already know that I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen when I get home or why I’m even freaking out about it now, obviously that will do nothing but create anxiety which of course it already has.

I know things will work out, they always do and for now I will just have to trust.  So here’s to embracing the unknown as terrifying as it might be!  After all, life at its very essence is a big whopping unknown.  

Some of my favorite shall we say “different” experiences

Given that this is my last month of teaching in Thailand (can’t believe how quickly it’s gone by), I’ve been thinking about all the interesting experiences I’ve had and particularly the funny and most memorable.  Living in a different country provides many opportunities to have weird things happen and see some unusual sights.  Sometimes these are small and mundane and sometimes they are absolutely mind-blowing.

1) Getting pissed on by a tiger.

Yep, that’s right.  I got peed on.  When in Bangkok on a tour of the Tiger Temple, I was strolling behind a big kitty when all of a sudden I felt my foot getting wet.  When I looked down, I saw that he was spraying his business all over my foot.  It was both disgusting and hilarious.  Those would be some carpet stains I would not want in my house!

Right before the "incident"

2) The occasional complete disregard for my teaching.

While I always have a mouthful to say about my students, this one I have to credit to one of the teachers.  During my lesson that I was doing on the chalkboard, the teacher went to the computer which was right next to me and began listening to YouTube videos on full volume attempting to learn English without headphones or as so much of a second thought that it was incredibly rude!  You would think she would just participate in the class instead.

3) The infamous ping pong shows.

So while I think it’s best not to go into details, mainly because I don’t want to relive it in my mind, let me just say that I would have NOT made my Women’s Studies professors proud for being there.  For those that have not heard of these, they’re basically these shows where women put all sorts of disturbing things inside their, um, “happy place”.  It’s pretty much really gross and degrading but somewhat like going to Rome and not seeing the coliseum, you just gotta go at least once.  Okay, maybe the whole Rome analogy is a bit of a stretch there... 

4) A complete stranger holding my hand.

At the Tiger Temple, we had to walk next to a guide while we went around to each tiger to pose for a picture.  Every person had their own individual staff member.  The funny thing was they held your hand the entire time unless you were posing for a picture.  My lady showed absolutely no emotion as I smiled and giggled at the excitement of being so close to such amazing animals.  She also had a little handheld mirror and was checking herself out throughout the time that we were holding hands.  It was such an awkward yet comical experience. 

5) Being blessed by a monk.

At the Big Buddha in Phuket during the early part of my time in Thailand, I received a blessing from a monk.  I thought he might say some really profound words.  He chanted in Thai for a moment and then said quite simply “Good luck, long life for you” while tapping my head and shoulders with some holy water.

At "Big Buddha" in Phuket

6) Students saying “f*ck you” to me and clearly not knowing the meaning.

It was quite obvious that someone had told them the word and let them know it was a dirty word without actually explaining the meaning.  Their beaming smiles showed they were proud to know a naughty English word and yet were completely clueless to what they were saying.  Nonetheless, it was still quite shocking to hear the f bomb out of their 8 year old mouths.  I definitely went into scolding teacher mode and put them straight…while of course trying not to laugh.

7) Elephants.

This has happened both in my town as well as in other cities while away for weekends.  I’m walking down the street and all of a sudden there’s a little elephant just walking by with its owner.  Ya know, just in case you start to forget that you’re in Thailand.

8) The Long Neck hill tribe.

So when my friend Claire and I signed up for a tour of Chiang Rai, we didn’t think much of the fact that it included a “tour” of the local hill tribe made up of “Long Necks”.  For those that have never heard of this, there are hill tribes in Thailand that are made up of Burmese minorities.  These hill tribes vary but there are some in which the women wear brass coils around their necks and sometimes other parts of their bodies.  The coils press down on the collar bone creating the look of an elongated neck and they often begin wearing them at the age of five.  The rings never come off throughout the woman’s life and they are often seen as signs of beauty as well as a cultural custom.

Anyway, while putting brass rings around your neck may seem absurd to some, I felt much more absurd for having paid to observe them.  It felt so invasive and like we were watching animals at the zoo.  I felt so icky about it that I didn’t even post the pictures I took on Facebook.