This is my backyard...

With scenes as beautiful as this in my backyard, how can I ever leave this place?

The end and the beginning

It has been 3 months since I've written. I haven't disappeared into the jungles of Thailand. I've simply been busy teaching my students and loving them more and more each day. This past week is the marker of one year since I have been in Thailand on a Fulbright. We also met the new batch of ETAs coming with ready minds and open hearts to come teach in Thailand. I've met my replacement in the wonderful person of Korin. She is SET UP for success...that's all I have to say. I couldn't have chosen a better person to come and teach at Sawan Anan as a Fulbright ETA. Although I've decided to stay on and teach one more semester (big news!), I can only describe myself this week as having "jai hai" syndrome...translated to "a lost heart," because I cannot deal with the fact that this amazing year of Fulbright has officially come to an end and my fellow sister ETAs are heading off to travel in Southeast Asia before heading back to the homeland. Perhaps I am in denial with all of this, so I've put an invisible barrier between my heart and my head. It has been a very fast year, and the fastest one since college where years seem to be only as long as months. I will reactivate my blog and write as much as I can about these next 5 months in Thailand and my wonderful students and friends. I'll post pictures and write more later.

Rain Rain Rain

It has been raining nonstop for two days now. The air is cooler, but my metal roof sings all night in harmony with the droplets of rain. It is really rainy season now. I've spotted those red, hairy rambutans, bumpy custard apples, brown longans, and red salas at the market. It is also fruit season.

There are also a lot of these:

Everything seems so much more passionate in Thailand including the weather. The heat is so forceful sometimes that it squeezes the sweat out of me like juice from an orange. The thunderstorms are so loud it feels like enemy planes are dropping bombs. The rainstorms are so sudden that one moment, raindrops the size of small pebbles fall hard, and a few minutes later, the sun appears so swiftly that the sky has no choice but color itself up vibrantly.