1-6: Kolkata

A perfect apartment / temple pilgrimages / Durga Puja preparation & celebration / neighborhood friends / cinematic, sensory, symbolic overload

From Diane Eck's Darśan, on 'human symbolism':

"People lifted out of the ordinary visible data of the world a shape, a form, which crystallized experience and, with its meanings and connotations, told a story."

From my journal:

"10/5  Stirred from bed this morning by the joyful sounds of drums and woops. Our doorbell rang and we threw on clothes as quickly as possible, wary of the apartment owner or housekeeper, only to find a Hare Krishna devotee at the door. He bowed to Jacob and showed off his finger-tapping and chanting to me while Jacob ran upstairs to collect some spare rupees. Framed in the royal blue doorway of our colonial building, cast in morning light, anointed with saffron down his hairline, lifting his white robes to wipe the sweat off his forehead and expose his big round belly -- all unforgettable images to sleepy eyes."

7: Ooty

Flee the city / clean cool air / best friend times with Ben-la

From my journal:

"10/12  Sick in Bangalore; lost a day, but at least in transit. Miserable 8 hour bus ride through the mountains after not sleeping and shitting my pants* the entire night before and not eating all day. Still beautiful, somehow. We drove through a nature reserve and I saw my first ever truly wild elephant, lots of deer, monkeys, boars, and peacocks. With about an hour left in the drive we cleared some of the biggest mountains I've seen in India -- definitely rivaling the Himalayan foothills -- and witnessed an insanely gorgeous sunset on the other side of the clouds.**

South India so far is pristine, spacious, and deeply friendly. Writing from the top of a water tower, on top of a mountain, lying on top of the dome beside my boys.

*At a bus stop, Jacob made me cry at the sheer mention of paneer masala

**So much so that we saw a National Geographic team setting up to photograph it!"

8-9: Madurai

In love with India / each other / Tamil Nadu coffee & 'nachos'

From my journal:

"10/17  WOW we loved this place! South India's holiest city and home to the best coffee in Tamil Nadu, which is actually saying something -- none of that Nescafe crap around here! Jacob and I missed Ben a lot ("friendship hangover") but rejoiced in indulging once more in each other & our travel habits. We tend to stumble across the BEST places in town (or at least approach them w/ continual, overzealous enthusiasm) and frequent them regularly & make friends there. Our cast here included the 'nacho' (!!!) stand guys, jovial round-bellied latte man (Jacob, on every member of the coffee shop crew: "These guys are all so happy and caffeinated that you can't catch anyone's eye without a huge smile and a head-bobble."), and juice stall bros.

Of course the Meenakshi temple -- one of the most spiritual architectural wonders I've ever seen -- helped, too. Our first of four visits in the span of two days occurred right at evening puja. It was like stepping into St. Peter's Basilica, or through the Roman Forum had the whole thing been meticulously maintained and devotionally in use across its hundreds of years. The only way to properly describe it is to invoke that heart-racing, spine-tingling, breath-taking and chill-inducing feeling I can only call 'HOLY.' "

10: Chennai (Madras)

Brutal big city heat / suburban train rides / goodbye for now

From my journal, at the Chennai Airport:

"10/19   India India India. Telling stories, creating our own meaning is all we ever have. I had been feeling so uninspired, but now I feel an enormous weight lifted, like I can really breathe and think and feel again. I'm so in love with Jacob; we have the biggest and best parts of our lives together, and only so much more to look forward to. We talked again and again about how much the things we see mean to us -- reading Eck's Darśan on this trip was an excellent choice -- and for people always seeking visual stimulation, this place will never disappoint.

I remember some early afternoon walking around Kolkata and peering down a dim alleyway to see a women in a flowing red sari step out her door into a whirl of wind and incense smoke. In another nook an old women in bright turquoise, contrasted sharply against her shock of white hair, is crouched scrubbing some silver knick-knacks vigorously with a toothbrush. Sleeping street dogs under this foot, motorcycles flying by on that side, cow shit and human shit to avoid -- none of this even the main event, a huge makeshift mirror hall pandal under construction occupying most of the city street.

All of these overwhelming details at all times, and somehow everywhere also something central and cinematically grande. Especially, though, that first red sari scene struck me; it stands with me as a symbol of why I like this country so much. Every bit of it looks made for H(B)ollywood, yet feels more real and human than anything else I've ever experienced. It's the simple images that mean the most, even if I'll never properly identify or process what exactly it is that keeps me coming back...

Last weekend Tamara and I hit up Chiang Mai! It was about time to see the ~Great City of the North~ and, honestly, to get out of Nan for a bit.

1. We ate lots of delicious, cheese-soaked foods (and I finally had a GLASS OF RED WINE!! whatwhat!!!!)

2 - 3. We visited all sorts of funky temples, included this dog-statue-themed one that produced some really grim prophecies for us via the Buddha Wheel of Fortune.

4. We acted like real tourists, yall!! Walked all day and saw the sights and wandered off the beaten path into cutesy little neighborhoods, where Tamara flexed her Thai skills and baristas professed their unending, giggling love for us

5. We -- FOR ENTIRELY INEXPLICABLE REASONS -- attended the sketchiest rooftop bar imaginable. One of those places hinted at in Lonely Planet to sell you weed or something... All we really wanted was a drink before dinner, but somehow we found ourselves ascending three grungy, graffitied flights of rickety stairs into the type of place neither of us would normally be caught dead. And at 6:30, of course, we were the only people there. And after dinner, naturally, the group we met up with wanted to go back! I would've been happy just hanging out at the Loco Elvis karaoke diner and sipping mango margaritas all night, but oh well. Dirty douchey expat fun was had.

6. Further requisite sightseeing: Wat Doi Suthep. A great little day trip up the mountain on Sunday.

7 - 8. Cheezin and mountain-ing!!! What a great little city. Like Kathmandu meets Portland, or something.

Nan only flooded a little bit!

I kissed Jacob's face ≥8000 times (He visited!!!!)

Saw Apocolypse Now for the first time. Review: excellent, but avoid watching if you essentially live in the jungle!!

My motorbike got a flat tire :(

Did a little waterfall / rice paddy / countryside wat exploration

All the printers in our office stopped working -_-

There was an uber adorable Mother's Day / Queen's Bday celebration

I commandeered all the ingredients needed for amazing flourless dark chocolate peanut butter cookies... and never baked them

We crowned the winner of 6/1 Idol -- Pin, with an astounding (and perfectly memorized English?!) version of "I Will Always Love You"!!!

Jacob started growing a mustache

Bought three new dresses that make me look like a waitress at a 1950s pie diner (the amount of shit I get away with at work is DIRECTLY correlated to how cutesy I look)

My sister turned 20!!!!! Congrats on being born, Chlobo!

There were some cool sunsets viewed from my porch

I developed a sesame seed steamed bun addiction

Our faces are now on a giant billboard outside of school, in the middle of town. I can't go to my favorite coffee shop without staring my eerily-smiling, larger-than-life self in the lazy eye

A bird shat down my shirt

AN ENTIRE MONTH PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Guys, I'm sorry for (so, so predictably) not keeping y'all updated. As you may have noticed from my lil list, life has become sort of... regular around here. Yeah, it's still a bizarre and beautiful new world. But three months into this (?!), it's my world. My day, my job, my friends, my meals, and my home life have all become bogged down with...  ew... normality. And the acceptance of these circumstances as my basic living conditions has come with some much needed critical thinking about what is and isn't satisfying, what I want out of this year and OUT OF LIFE~* Big stuff, right?

Not to say the honeymoon period is over -- I've got a big trip to Chiang Mai this weekend to look forward to, about which I will surely have lots of fun fluffy things to share! -- simply that it's taking me a little more time to figure out what to say about the huge parts of my life that established themselves fully over the last month. I hope to impart some words of questionable wisdom about teaching, being an employee and (gasp!) an adult... including what it means to be figuring that all out in Asia... at some point in the coming weeks.

Pretty trippy spectacle as the first rainy season flood is about to unfurl here in Nan!

Hello and happy post-Asanha Bucha holiday!!! If you are a monk, you are not reading this because you are now off on rainy season retreat! If you are not a monk, drats you missed your prime chance for the year -- Buddhist lent is now in full swing!

Also if you are not a monk, maybe you spent this long, holy weekend doing some less than holy things. Perhaps you visited Bangkok, Thailand's Sin City, and got to hang out with some of its coolest native residents. Somehow you went to clubs where the cheapest drink on the menu was 75 US dollars and you got whisked away to a crazy Punjabi beach resort wedding party and you were welcomed repeatedly into a family home just off Sukhumvit (imagine the Upper West Side... or better yet all of Manhattan, minus city planning, just sprawling endlessly from one main road as its axis: this is what Sukhumvit is to Bangkok).

Remember that time we went to an insane beach wedding... in BANGKOK?!

  Okay, so we're not talking about you anymore. This is my life and my most recent vacation, facts that I need to occasionally pinch myself about. I had approximately zero expectations going into this trip, simply excitement about seeing Jacob and getting to hang out with Eeshaan, one of his best friends from UVA. But I've never fallen in love with a city so quickly and so thoroughly -- down to every last thrilling, gross detail.

You've seen The Hangover 2, right? Bangkok is significantly better than that (in so many ways!). We were lucky to have the perfect hosts: Eeshaan, his family, his sisters, and his friends have lived in downtown Bangkok all their lives. They showed us the exact sort of wild time you would expect, but in the most comfortable way possible. As I walked down Khao San road repeatedly turning down nitrous balloons and personal buckets of liquor; as I chugged my mimosa and handed over my phone over to Radhika, hoping not to get thrown into the beachside infinity pool at our resort in Hua Hin; as we wandered for hours in the world's biggest malls, across town on the Skytrain, through the most decadent temples I've ever seen... what should have been insane and overwhelming instead felt totally natural.

Eeshaan, our humble host, on Night 1 at Khao San road... circa 3:30 AM

Eeshaan treated us to an ~insider experience~ both in terms of quality and acceptance. A highlight of the entire trip involved, yes, another surreal scenario -- sipping a $20 shot of whisky on the night of Asanha Bucha, while the rest of Bangkok refused to serve alcohol and the streets were eerily empty, looking out over it all from literally the highest rooftop bar on earth -- but consisted mainly of elaborate reminiscing by Eeshaan and his friend Rajan about their middle and high school days. Their whole crew reminds me intensely of my friends from Chattanooga, everything so cozy and crazy all at once. This was totally their version of shooting the shit on the dock, just with a slightly more epic view. All Jacob and I could do was bob our jaw-dropped heads in awe as they casually, nostalgically spun the most bonkers stories I've ever heard.

At the same time, for having grown up in a place where the first party you ever go to is probably the most insane party in the f#*%ing world!!!, these guys were so down to earth, easy and incredibly fun to be around. It's very possible that simply being surrounded by good people -- as Eeshaan mentioned was the key to growing up in Bangkok: "It's all about your family" -- translated the city's utter chaos into simple, wonderful overstimulation.

Just us kiddos on top of the world~

Blinking up from a thousand car traffic jam into a twelve story neon billboard where some lily-white incarnation of Beyonce dances for a Pepsi ad while a street vendor yells at you to buy a squid stick and the Skytrain whizzes straight over your head... Bangkok is urban life on strange Asian steroids. "This is so Blade Runner," was our mantra for the weekend, as we attempted to navigate the city's four levels: street, upper sidewalk, train tracks, and highway. Of course rising from all that are another hundred floors of skyscrapers, and then randomly some roads are actually canals and sometimes renting a longboat down the river is a better way to get across town than a taxi.

Stormy skyline via boat

There is also a pure, deep version of consumerism at work here; a mega-mall (I mean MEGA -- sevenish sprawling stories, enough to leave you wondering how there could possibly be enough people on the planet to buy all that shit) on every corner; pop-up tables everywhere dealing any type of pirated DVD, prescription drug, or whatever other illicit material you could possibly want; girls visibly for sale outside every other street-side establishment. It's disturbing because it's all worn on the city's (undoubtedly stylish) sleeves. Bangkok is one of the most bizarrely open places I've ever been. It's entirely lawless, runs on a very defined and efficient system of bribery, and it doesn't even try to hide that. I was amazed to see a city so developed, so functional in the context of its many unappealing realities. The same brutal shit goes on everywhere, but Bangkok at least makes you look it in the eye and spend some time everyday thinking about how effed-up people are. The juxtaposition of that and how comfortable life can be there -- if you have the choice (i.e. the money) -- is a little unnerving. Ultimately, for me at least, it boils down into a hectic sort of charm. It's what I've always loved about cities: Why did so many, such different people come to live in one little area? To be together, to see and have it all -- the good and the bad -- at once.

Asanha Bucha festivities in the shadow of a mega mall

...

1.) Judged my fourth impromptu English speech competition. I'm a pro, send me to Bangkok yallll! Pretty remarkable (and adorable) that a 7 year old can draw a random topic and talk semi-comprehensibly for 2-3 min in a foreign language.

2.) Also note the super private judges' deliberation session.

3.) Red white and blue jello shots and Beyonce for my sixth graders!! "Happy July the Four," as all the Bandon students would say!

4.) Got a package from home, a letter and a hand-woven gift from Sunita, my beautiful Tibetan friend at the Sikkim Happiness Home!! Utmost joy bringing.

5.) Finally got a chance to do some local tourism -- Wat Phumin, the most famous temple in Nan!

6.) I love folkart, village history, and Buddhist shit, so naturally I joined everyone in town and became a fanatic for the murals here, including the infamous Nan Whisperers.

7.) Also turns out we have our own special rendition of the Disney Buddhist Hellscape! Gotta look this phenomenon up; my Theravadan iconography is really not up to par to explain such a bizarre thang...

8.) Woo NAN FC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Having played soccer for 10ish years, I like to think I'm capable of sitting down and enjoying/understanding any ole futbol game. Except that the Nan Black Ivories, with their elephant mascot and purple & gold spangled stadium, were inexplicably decked out in bright orange jerseys for this game, while the Tak FC rival seemingly sported our own home jerseys? This led to some confusing seating and cheering mistakes.

By now, if we are connected anywhere on the real-life to Facebook-friends spectrum, you might feel overexposed to my recent vacation. This was just one of those weeks that no amount of enthusiastic oversharing or photographic documentation will ever do justice to. I've considered several strategies for this post. Simply listing the endless amazing ways we filled our days is overwhelming enough. A few samples:

Friday, June 21st:

Wake up on a bus in Bangkok, catch a flight to Phuket, hop another quick shuttle. Arrive in Phang nga, eat some amazing pad thai, hike up a cliffside to a stupa, rent motorbikes for the weekend, check out the Heaven and Hell temple --

-- try to regain our composure, wander back into a huge cavern with these incredible walkways and bridges carved into it and, finally, about a thousand meters back, an amazing shrine sitting alone in the darkness just before a vast underground lake. Hike to another mountain stupa, grab an extremely successful meal of enough curries, veggies, and fish at the market to feed eight. Go to bed fat and happy.

  Saturday, June 22nd:

Take off for the beach. Amazing drive on the back of Jacob's motorbike through some "serious Jungle Book shit" -- rolling mountains, wild jungle, rubber tree farms, random lakes. Arrive at the Khao Lak tourist strip within an hour. Head to Bangsak beach, sit down at the first random restaurant we see and order the most insanely delicious and fresh steamed crabs and spicy papaya salad and a coconut shake right out of the shell for a matter of dollars. Spend the whole day bodysurfing big but gentle waves with Jacob, looking for sea glass on the shore during intermittent breaks.

Head back to the tourist town and find a crazy cheap guesthouse for everyone, after a tour and several inexplicable room changes conducted by the beautiful (seriously; kathoey do it right) ladyboy receptionist. Drink some cheap rice wine, eat a fancy Western dinner, grab dessert at the McDonald's, break into a five-star resort for skinny dipping a huge infinity pool surrounded by elephant statues, followed by a midnight stroll along the coast

...

  Monday, June 24th:

Finally experience Phang nga's legendary Muslim chicken breakfast (verdict: UNREAAALLLLL!!! Go for the fried chicken and sticky rice with chili sauce, the sweet yellow rice and tender dark meat chicken with basically a salsa verde on top, or the roti bread with fried egg and chicken curry on top. OH WAIT those are literally all their options and I ate them all and every one is amazing!!) Take advantage of Stephen and Jacob's day off to explore local temples, Phang nga's spirit house, accidentally accrue some negative karma by collecting the beautiful gold-leafed paper thrown from a funeral procession. Another quick motorbike ride -- again, through the most stunning terrain imaginable -- and, oh, look, this time there are elephants everywhere!! Just chillin in the woods, peoples' yards, sometimes harnessed for tourists to ride on top, other times playing carefree and splashing water on themselves from mountain creeks. Get real deep into the jungle and find an amazing waterfall, where it felt insanely good jumping from rocks above into the cold swimming hole below.

After a slightly longer bike ride back, we find the Monday market in full swing -- a huge weekly offering of the best food and clothing and all sorts of bazaar fare. Jacob and I each acquired some swag from the thrift stands, then stuffed ourselves silly with squid kabobs and homemade ice cream and more more more.

...

  Saturday, June 29th:

Jacob and Stephen help interview some kids for a study abroad opportunity, while I attempt to finish One Hundred Years of Solitude (aside: I didn't actually end until I stepped off the plane back in Nan. Reading those final pages walking down the tarmac as the sun went down purple and pink and the wind swirled all around... probably one of the most beautiful moments of my life). We check out the bus ticket situation and realize it'd be cutting it close for me to make it to Phuket in time for my flight the next morning, so we hop on the motorbikes one last time. Cross a huge bridge onto the island, stop at the first -- gorgeous and empty, as always this time of year -- beach we see, get salty and sunburnt, and make Stephen take a ~hilarious~ batch of couple-y pics of us.

Truck another 45 minutes into town, and happen to find an affordable clean hostel right in the middle of Old Town Phuket! The architecture and the chaotic city life and the food and the drinks and the many farang -- all made for an aptly thrilling send off.

...

You can see, it's difficult enough to hit the highlights day by day, let alone for the week. I don't know if I'm even explaining it all correctly, because every single day was this way. Jacob would be teaching class one minute, the next we'd be in a park filled with caves fighting off monkeys so that they wouldn't steal the mirrors off his bike. We'd eat a huge delicious meal -- massaman curry? coconut macaroons? an oyster omelette? a delicious halal beef burger?  (damn, Phang nga has the best food!) -- and feel like walking it off, and we'd all the sudden be under the sacred mountain Khao Chang looking for a way to kayak the river that runs through it, and immediately after we would want to drive and then discover Jacob's very house is 5 minutes from the bay and its many islands and beaches. Being in Phang nga was a miraculous trip, mostly because I can't believe it's someone's -- let alone my someone's -- real life. Having some of the most beautiful places in the world and the most fun, unique, and exciting experiences accessible to me at the drop of a hat is something I could definitely get used to. I haven't really processed everything or been able to apply that mentality to my life in Nan -- YET! I get my own motorcycle tomorrow, though, and can't wait to commence cruising once more. Recounting the major events here, it's obvious why this was an ideal vacation; I called my mom the day after we got two-hour long Thai massages at the local hospital for 200 baht and she said, "I want to visit Jacob, not you!!"

But what the pictures, the destination and activities lists leave out are only the most important parts of last week. Constant horrible seafood breath and huge bellies; sand between my purple and mint Thai-painted toes; huge smiles and glowing recommendations from P. Than and P. Nimit and literally every kind stranger we encountered; holding onto Jacob as we drove up and down all of southern Thailand -- having half-yelled, holy-as-whisper conversations through our helmets in the raging wind, singing Born To Be Wild (and other selections from the Easy Rider soundtrack) and enacting our biker personas, Big Country and Cheyenne, while inventing ever more elaborate background stories. Feeding him Tylenol at 3 AM to help bring down the potential pre-malaria fever; snapping at each other over lost sunglasses; nearly missing ANOTHER one of my flights. The good and the bad and the grandest experiences of our lives and the tiny daily adventures: I left my ten days in Phang nga feeling happy and healthy and more in love than I could ever imagine, with the town and a boy and the idea that life can always be this good.

Barely a week and a half into my new job, I feel fully entitled to a 9 day vacation. Okay, not really, but I did make it all the way through ~Unit 1: About Me and My Friends~…. exams graded and everything!… and that alone seems worthy of celebration. Especially since if I had to spend one more class period teacher-voicing through, “Hello! My name is Natalie. I have green eyes. I have short hair. Tell me about yourself?” I’m pretty sure I would glitch and get stuck in that overly enunciated, simple-sentence style of speech forever.

Anyway, didn’t I get cheated out of a summer??? Sure, there were those two weeks of drinking leading up to graduation, and another week of partying and relaxing by the lake in Chattanooga… But that was all so exhausting! Then I had to pick up and move to Thailand and immediately begin interacting with brilliant beautiful smiling children everyday! Life is terribly hard. So we must spend the week in tropical paradise with our boyfriend whenever the opportunity casually arises.

In this case, the once in a lifetime / once in the course of employment chance fell promptly into our laps thanks to The Nan Games. Our pretty little city was selected to host a sort of youth olympics for the entire Northern region. As we virtually speak, hundreds of students from Chiang Mai and all over the countryside are funneling into Nan to compete and sleep on our classroom floors. Thus, school is closed… And as much as I’d like to stick around to witness the primary school body building contest (?), I would much rather follow fate’s design and spend this huge chunk of time off exploring Southeast Asia in the limited capacity my current single-entry Thai visa affords me: I’m headed south!!! One 10 hour overnight bus ride to Bangkok, a quick flight to Phuket, then another short shuttle to Phang Nga later, and I will be reunited with Jacob and the other fellows there!

• Rode on the back of a motorbike for the first time to a golden pagoda just outside of town!

• The sunset was gorgeous. Here, have lots of pictures.

• A lizard friend moved into my bedroom

• Went on lots of rainy reservoir runs

• While learning the future tense, my sixth graders came up with some funny plans for my holiday (they demand photographic evidence upon return)

Friendly vendor at Nan's Saturday Festival

Friday:

Nothing. I was good old Indian-Nepali-Tibetan style shit my pants sick. Invested in some white bread, that I successfully toasted using our rice cooker, then failed to digest.

Saturday:

Strawberry ice cream for lunch! Yay for restored health!

THE NAN SATURDAY FESTIVAL!!! I feel like I have a new favorite thing about this town every day, but this might actually take the cake. A la Nightfall in Chattanooga, every Saturday night a main drag is closed off except to pedestrians, who listen to live music and watch precious little traditional dancers and wander the literally hundreds of food stalls, where I sampled:

1.) 2 fried & seasoned crickets, friendlily forced upon me for free (Not bad! Basically barbecued popcorn!) 2.) 1 boiled larva (very bad, unless you are into a soft squirmy chew then sudden ooze sorta thing) 3.) A blue dough ball (also for free! How are people so nice?!) made of milk and honey and flour and stuffed with ??? and rolled in shredded coconut. AWESOME! 4.) Enokitake wrapped in sizzling pork. Mushrooms inside of bacon = basically a sign from god that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be in life 5.) A gigantic crepe filled with vanilla and chocolate sprinkles and chocolate syrup and sweet milk 6.) ~4 takoyaki, a first and a new favorite for me! Yes, even I was cripplingly full at this point... but these little squid-filled doughnut holes were too good not to suffer for!

There's more. I know. I'm disgusting. 

Finally: four glasses of beer (with ice?) and a late-night pork burrito. Mexican food?! In Asia?!!!! This is what you should be think-shouting, at least. In Kathmandu, through all the stomach weirdness and dal bat, the thought of delicious, well-done Mexican food was often the only beacon of hope in my heart/intestines. This, of course, was not even remotely possible. BUT IT TURNS OUT THAILAND IS AWESOME AND HAS EVERYTHING!! We met the rest of the farang in Nan at last, as all 10ish of them were all gathered at Srinual Lodge with a friend visiting from Chiang Mai. Mario, originally from Mexico, has been living abroad long enough to know his way around an Asian kitchen and how to adapt to the available materials appropriately. Insanely spicy slow-cooked pork, salsa, honest-to-god legit Mexican rice, guacamole (!!!), and -- the kicker, the most impossible thing to find even in Thailand -- CHEESE! Despite being damn near physically incapacitated from all the food I had consumed, I could not say no. This is the food I will be dreaming about after 3 months of noodles.

Sunday:

A real and aroi mak cappuccino! I'm telling you man, Thailand has everything

Amazing & free pad thai served along with the 500 baht the local high school gave us for judging an English speech competition

Gai pad king (if you love ginger, order this next time you go out for Thai food!) at the REAL night market, to which I rode on the back of a motorbike for the first time with one of our new friends, Tricia

The most incredible roti dessert imaginable!!!! Sugar and milk and bananas on open-faced, crispy Indian-style bread, from our own neighborhood afternoon market. It's so great to have new, experienced Nan friends to show us the ropes and introduce us to their Thai friends -- like the actual Thai beauty-pageant queen Da and her family, who run the roti stand and even gave us extra for breakfast tomorrow!

I honestly wish I could have cut this list short or fudged a little about the sheer volume. But dang I just want the record to show all the crazy-good stuff I came in contact with in the past 48 hours. This has been a grossly long and detailed post for just the food portion of an altogether awesome weekend.

What is it with me and bizarrely morbid situations abroad? Death just, like, follows me around Asia or something. (.... please still consider visiting!)

Yesterday Bandon Sriserm's director's father passed away. He informed us of this information in stilted English and with a gigantic smile on his face: "I am very sad!"

We had just met the prestigious director the day before, when we signed our contracts and repeatedly agreed to various rules insuring the continued excellence of ~his school~. "My school is very on time. My school has appropriate teachers. Please do not wear shorts around town, because you work at my school." He's a good-looking, sharply dressed man of entirely uncertain age (I would guess early 40s, but then again I mistook Prakop's 27 year old son for a preteen the other day). He has been nothing but kind -- raised our monthly salary 2000 baht from last year's ajan farang, built a western-style toilet in our office, and is giving us 10 days off after next week (!!!?!) -- yet something about my reflection in his impeccably polished shoes and the calendar in his office with regal pictures of himself scares the bejeezus out of me. I guess I'm always a bit wary of authority figures, but this eminent man especially intimidates me. Then again maybe it's just because he has to sign off on my lesson plans each week.

Anyway, Prakop pulled me aside during my final class yesterday and asked if we wanted to go to the funeral. I expressed my sympathies and said we would do whatever was expected of us. "I think you should," she suggested. I suppose it is a good idea to show support during your boss' major life events. We were picked up by Prakop's husband and piled into the back of his pick up truck at 7:30, and arrived shortly at Wat Suan Tan to a jovial scene. Every one of the other teachers were there, dressed in black and crowded under festival tents in rows of plastic chairs. We all smiled and wai-ed to one another like it was just another day at school. Cheerful attendants circled and distributed cold water and "candy" that turned out to be cough drops. My 6/2 class made a starring appearance, playing some snazzy jams on traditional Thai instruments while the crowd gathered and gathered -- I put my camera away before the real masses showed up.

What followed next is a steamy blur. Though we had been seated outside audience style, this was obviously only a prelude to the main event. We soon funneled into a reception hall full of plastic flowers and heavy, incensed air.  It was really a nice set-up: fans rotated futilely above, the rows of seating were lined with more snacks, water was provided to pour later for individual offerings, and those set forth during the ceremony were neatly wrapped and festooned -- a far cry from the plastic sleeves of Oreos at altars in Nepal. But the two and a half hours dragged on in ceaseless incomprehensible Thai speeches and Pali chanting. I was sweating then, I had sweat my body weight earlier on a run, I sweated all day at school, and I was pretty sure I was going to faint at some point if this didn't end quickly. Then I thought of the poor monks seated elevated before us, with their perfectly practiced harmonies and arrow-straight spines, who hadn't eaten since their one bowl of white rice at noon. In desperation I remember thinking, "Please let one of them pass out first."

This is what a five-hour layover in Shanghai after a twelve-hour flight looks like!

This is what a 5 AM sunrise over Bangkok from the window of a shuttle bus between airports looks like!

This is what the approach to Nan looks like from above! (distant mountains!!!!... and not much else)

This is Nan's morning market, where I buy mango sticky rice or a couple rambutan for breakfast! 

This is the beautiful countryside a couple kilometers outside of Nan where we biked last weekend!

This is a funky wat Lydia and I found out in the boonies!

    This is my desk at school!!!!

It felt cool all day; four classes straight in the afternoon and I didn't even sweat through my shirt!* Fatigued from travel, or more likely just being lazy, I still hadn't gotten around to any real exercise in Nan -- unless you count the thirty minutes of unintentionally hot yoga I was doing every morning after sleeping on my brick slab of a bed. Today was the day I was finally going to take advantage of Nan's glorious river park and reservoir.

The River Park

  I slipped into my longest running shorts and said hello to my knees again. I felt scandalous in a baggy t-shirt, but reminded myself that Ajan Prakop said it was fine to wear exercise clothes. She said this in a generous tone, after ominously emphasizing (for the fourth time) the necessity of our proper and modest dress around town: "We are teachers. Everyone knows who we are."

The Thai reverence for teachers, professionals in general, and -- above all -- appearances has guided my daily life with a surprisingly firm hand. Mind you, this all fits seamlessly somehow alongside a totally sabai sabai attitude. I had heard Northern Thailand described as conservative and old-fashioned before I arrived. And while the barista at the coffee shop where I'm currently writing certainly bowed reverently to greet me, she's also wearing a trendy spaghetti strap/booty short romper. I'm pleased to find in Thailand a similar sort of modified common sense present elsewhere in Asia, and probably observable to anyone outside any given society. All the formalities and cultural sensitivities are completely conditional, full of congruous inconsistencies, and, I feel, judged even less stringently here than at home. If I were in some small town in the States where everyone knew my name and my business and my daily activities and expected me to dress and speak and behave a certain way, I would probably do something crazy like, I don't know, shave my head and dye it blonde. The people in Nan are so kind, though -- in the most genuine sense of the word: smiling and easy going and truly concerned about my well being -- that I want to do everything I can to behave correctly and fit in.

That being said, going on a run right after school let out might not have been the most appropriate thing to do. I was a spectacle dodging bright green uniformed high-school students and an inexplicable plethora of Toyota pick-up trucks on the roads. I thought I found a sidewalk, but it guided me dead into the middle of a parking lot full of over fifty Thai women in long sleeves and sweatpants and neon headbands being led through a dance aerobics routine by a man in a rainbow tank and tiny pink shorts.

Clearing the obstacle course of town, I finally made it to the riverside. I'd like to think of Nan's river park as what the Chattanooga Riverwalk might have been in some 1980's vision the dystopic future. Graffitied, populated by stray dogs, and constantly slightly flooded, it still has the advantage of the most beautiful scenic views of the town and surrounding mountains and being at least 5 degrees cooler than anywhere else. It dead ends unannounced, but when you climb the wall and cross a little mud field and a "highway," you find the reservoir. Out of nowhere, there is a wonderful paved, mile-long running loop -- gated, much like my high-school track, to prevent vehicles from entering, and absolutely bursting with eager & devoted runners. Thai people are obsessed with exercise (again with the appearances); they were so pleased and excited to see me run that everyone I encountered clapped and cheered as I passed.

  The Reservoir

  So I felt a little self-conscious, but in a positive way. That was not how I felt after completing my lap and heading back through town. Thankfully the streets had emptied of students and parents, but the aerobics class was just wrapping up and the whole horde of beautiful, sweat-less (in 4x the fabric), perfectly made-up Thai women suddenly engulfed me. For the first time since Nepal or India I could sense every set of eyes on my face, baffled over something intrinsic about me. Was it my hair? My pink headband? My bright purple shoes? No, crazy clashing colors are a plus here. Then I realized they had probably never seen someone so red-faced and sweaty in their lives. They thought I was dying or something.

Disheartened and worried about worrying others (how Thai of me!), I stopped to walk the final half mile. I seriously felt like the sad Charlie Brown music was playing, a la Arrested Development. Disoriented also, I accidentally cut off an old lady on her bicycle as I stepped right when of course she went to pass on the left. She smiled sweetly at me and said kap khun ka as I moved out of her way. Despite her serene demeanor and the Hello Kitty stickers covering her bike, my attention went straight to the English words I was happy to recognize on her shirt. Walmart-style, it read "I AM SO HOT EVEN I AM JEALOUS."

"Nan (น่าน) is a town in the remote valley of the Nan River in the Northern River Valleys region of Northern Thailand, bordering Laos. The area is heavily forested with arable land used mainly for agriculture. It is an ancient city steeped in history with its long association with the Lannathai culture and the Sukhothai kingdom." - from Wikitravel

I haven't been here very long, and hope to keep these impressions updated as I (hopefully) become more knowledgable. So far, though, I can say that Nan town is just about the most adorable little city imaginable. 

Remote is right, but you'd be wrong to think that necessarily means "rural." It's about 4 square kilometers of neatly organized (paved, lighted, and LANED!) streets lined with pastel-colored store fronts, homes, and wats all wedged together; those roads filled with whizzing motorbikes, crazy crowded morning and night markets, and our wobbling fleet of ajan farang on beach rental style bicycles (mine is bright pink, naturally).

Our school, Bandon Sriserm, sits about dead center in the middle of town, and we live three blocks away towards the river in a little lime green house where we are lucky enough to have running water, electricity, internet (eventually), a washing machine, and even AIR CONDITIONING! This is especially important because the heat is... indescribable. I'm on a three-shower-a-day sorta plan, and it's difficult to say when my hair dries from bathing (~4 minutes?) and wets again from sweating (7 minutes flat). It's technically rainy season right now, but I think we have yet to see what that truly means. So far only a few casual midmorning sprinkles and some thankful afternoon overcast/respite from the sun.

This is my home from now until March 2014. I will co-teach sixth grade with our principal, Ajan Prakop -- the most adorable sweet hard-working HBIC in Nan -- and also all the kindergarten classes (!!!). Professionally, durationally, and hygienically, this will be unlike any experience I have ever had in Asia or otherwise. Can't wait to keep you posted on all that being a Nan girl entails!