Full-blown Crisis Mode

Existential crisis, that is. One might expect this from a recent college grad: someone undertaking a gap year abroad, before they start their career, find a significant other to settle down with and have kids. This is not what is expected of a 35+ year old woman who has graduated from college twice, who can count trips abroad on hands AND toes, who has had a career, found a significant other (uhhh, twice), settled down and had kids. We have just completed 100 days abroad and I thought that I would have been neck-deep in projects by now. I would be volunteering in an orphanage, I would be amazing my family with culinary Thai-American fusion delights, I would be on my way to fluency in Thai, driving a scooter carefree down the roadways, writing children’s travel books, maintaining a successful travel blog and spending my spare time becoming a svelte, tan Muay Thai fighting mom warrior. Alas, this has just not been the case.

Ben finished his TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification and began working part-time as an English teacher to young teens. This has really challenged him and generally keeps him out of trouble most weekends. His obsession with CrossFit resurfaced briefly until a new, minor injury sidelined him. He is taking some private Thai lessons and has a scooter to zip around town. The kids have found their groove going to daycare twice a week and have made some expat friends that meet around town for playdates. However, we had an epic fail trying to enroll them into extracurricular activities. It turns out that American kids (or maybe just my American kids) are not as disciplined as Thai kids, and they spent the majority of a karate class making faces at themselves in the mirror. Needless to say, the teacher very politely refused to let them return so we spend our afternoons playing soccer in the yard instead.

I’ve found that even abroad, I’m only really good at cleaning the house. I compared my idleness to all of Ben’s activity and started stressing out. I also found myself wondering why we came here. What did I want to get out of this trip? Was it meeting my expectations? And most importantly, how will things be different in Oregon when we return home? I looked back on my original bucket list to see how we were faring and I was pretty pleased to see that we had ticked off many of the items.

• Make paper out of elephant poop
• Take a Thai cooking class
• Ride a motorcycle across Laos (Ben)
• Lose the baby weight
• Scuba dive (Kara)
• Raise a lantern during Loi Krathong –the Lantern Festival
• Fight Muay Thai
• Volunteering TBD
• Take a junk cruise in Halong Bay, Vietnam
• Eat lots of new fruit
• Explore the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore
• Teach the kids how to swim
• See the sunrise over Angkor Wat
• Master the art of using chopsticks
• Teach English (Ben)
•  Jump off the cliffs at Chiang Mai’s Grand Canyon (Kara)

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I started to have a change of heart about this crisis-thing. Moving abroad with two little kids and setting up a new life takes time and the fact that we got on a plane with one-way tickets is an achievement all on it’s own. It doesn’t necessarily have be defined by rushing through the typical backpacking checklists of 1) see the temple, 2) ride the elephants, 3) try Muay Thai once, 4) ride a tuk-tuk, etc. Furthermore, I should be proud of the things that I have accomplished this week. I rented a car and taught myself how to drive on the left-hand side of the road–in traffic–where lanes are just guidelines and speed limits don’t matter. I completed a doula training course and I can either use these new skills to help my friends in labor or start a brand new business. And I weighed myself at the little gym in our building and I have semi-intentionally lost 10 pounds since we arrived 3 months ago. Ben may be more decisive and outgoing in his planning, but I was accomplishing things too.

I’m still hoping to discover some hidden talent for like, reiki, drum circling, essential oil application, or shamanism. 😉 Instead of fretting over getting weird diseases, I really want to rekindle my passion for studying diseases. I dream of learning a useful language or writing something and getting paid for it, starting an Etsy shop, or even doubling down and getting all those plastic surgeries I’ve joked about having over the years. Ultimately, I decided that the goal of this gap year should be to do what makes us happiest. If that means that we move to Nepal for a month so that Ben can hike to Everest base camp, then that’s what we do. If it means that I get Thai massages twice a week and grow out bushy eyebrows from not plucking, then that’s what I do. If Falcon wants to eat peanut butter for every meal, and Blue wants to play in the sand on a beach for hours then we will try to accommodate them (within reason). Hopefully, in the process we will learn more about ourselves, discover new passions and skills to achieve them, at the very least, get all this stuff out of our systems so that we can return home refreshed and more well-rounded.

5 American Habits I’m Learning to Kick in Thailand

We have been in Chiang Mai for nearly two months now and are starting to find our groove. The kids are happily settled in daycare for 12 hours a week, Ben has finished his TEFL program and has accepted a part-time job teaching English and I…well honestly…I wish that I could say that I have been more productive but I have been nesting hardcore and am just now starting to explore some options for my free time. However, don’t let all this domesticity fool you. Leaving the house is like venturing into an alternate universe, complete with new language, new alphabet and a new calendar. A place where Netflix movies are banned, there are decency laws preventing inappropriate and rude behavior, the year is 2561 B.E. and the language does not contain the conditional tense (i.e. I would have…) A place where the words for ‘plain rice’ are recognized by one vendor one day, and are not recognized the next. Even things that I thought were mundane or mainstream are proving to be very, very uncommon. Not that I am complaining. We asked for an adventure and Thailand is delivering. To prove my point, here is a small compilation of the behaviors that I didn’t even realize were strictly American until I moved to this strange land.

1. Forget racking up the mileage.

Although widely accepted in the United States, debit and credit cards are not often accepted in Thailand. Cash is king here. My grand plan of getting a travel-focused credit card with hefty rewards for flights and eating out has been completely foiled. Only the grocery store, taxi rides and a few tourist places are the exception. There appears to be a universal look that people give when I whip out the plastic, like I maybe the dumbest person on the planet for merely suggesting that credit cards could be used. I’m settling in and learning to keep a wad of small bill cash on hand.

Flaunting their wealth–65 cents each for bubble tea at our favorite vendor

2. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Having moved from Southern Oregon where recycling is basically a religion, the lack of environmental consciousness here is at a near head-exploding level. You can’t walk down the street without finding trash on the side of the road. I get it. This is a developing nation, garbage disposal is expensive and a challenge, but what I don’t get is the near obsession with plastic bags. Every single item is packaged in its own plastic bag, and then placed in yet another plastic bag containing all of the plastic bags. Even our breakfast cereal box contains five individual cereal bags and then yet another bag full of five separate dried fruit pouches. We eat at food vendors quite frequently, and therefore, produce a lot of trash. We have experimented with bringing our own Tupperware to the street vendors in an effort to minimize our impact, but this act has been met with much confusion, and overall, much disdain. For now, we are easing into it by dining in and using reusable bags whenever possible.

A simple single dinner to-go

3. Safety Third

The expectation that rules and laws will keep me safe seems uniquely first-world. There may be laws about not having more than three people on a scooter but that doesn’t stop parents from riding with multiple kids on their mopeds. With few traffic signals and lots of traffic, I have virtually made an Olympic sport of crossing the street, dodging cars and scooters with two toddlers and our bags in tow. Frankly, I like that common sense prevails here. It promotes personal responsibility and self-reliance, as well as, provides the perfect place to observe Darwinian evolution in action. From the scooters swerving in and out of traffic to the insanely low railings for the wild animal enclosures at the zoo, the rules are basically life guidelines but it is up to the individual to survive.

Neck-height railing for kids= Hip-height railing for adults

4. Dry Bathrooms

The availability of toilet paper is a real crapshoot (pun intended) and it is nearly non-existent in smaller towns. However, I can always count on the presence of a squirt gun to spray my nether regions. These mini-bidet shit shooters are all the rage; however, they take a level of dexterity and maneuverability that it seems few have mastered in order to keep the spray within the confines of the toilet. That being said, having a poo-mist and puddle-ridden bathroom is the norm in most places. I have learned to make contact with as few surfaces as humanly possible in public bathrooms, but imagine having toddlers with access to a hose placed at eye level and an unlimited supply of water in your home!

The infamous bum gun and our kidney poking toilet paper roll holder

5. Sun Protection

For a fair-skinned girl prone to freckling, the equatorial heat and intense sunshine in this country is something to be feared. While I spent the majority of my life casually applying low-SPF sunscreens and lounging in the sun hoping for a tan in the summer, I find myself now liberally applying SPF 70 head to toe every time I go outside. Although it is ferociously hot, long sleeved shirts are used for sun protection and umbrellas are used for shade just as often as rain.

Year round umbrella use