The weather changes pretty often in a lot of the world. It's usually pretty unpredictable no matter what Al Roker or any other crazed weatherman/woman tells you.
Have you ever travelled to visit friends or family on a day where their weather happens to change from warm to cold or vice versa? If yes, then have you found people saying things like "oh, you brought the sun with you," or "ohh, why did you bring the rain with you from England?" I am an innocent traveller. I do not 'bring' weather with me, it changes when it wants to change and pays no regard to my travel plans. If it did, I would never 'bring the rain from England' as I often seem to do. Despite how aware I am of how weird this phrase is, I've found myself thinking it, and I may even have said it at one point, not sure, to our new visitor Matthew, Kelly's boyfriend.
Matthew lives in San Diego, where Kelly also resided until she decided to jump ship and come to Asia like the rest of us in the CIEE programme. Anyone in a relationship can understand how hard it is to be away from your partner for long stretches of time and the experience has been just as difficult for Kelly and Matthew as can be expected. Apparently one week ago Matthew finally decided that it was just too long since he'd seen his sweetheart. Last Monday night (or Monday morning for Matthew) he managed to get Kelly to give him all the information he could possibly need to get from Bangkok to Tha Wang Pha including the name of the bus station, the name of our town, everything, using some fake story about a bar tender who told him that trains were better than buses in Thailand (which is FALSE...refer to
this post from a couple of moths ago for more details).
So on Tuesday morning San Diego time, Matthew hopped in his car, drove to LAX, took a plane to Tokyo (several hours in layover), then another plane to Bangkok (several hours hanging out in the airport), got a taxi to the bus station (a couple of hours of waiting...), bus from Bangkok to Nan, BARELY caught the last local bus from Nan to Tha Wang Pha, then hitched a ride with two students who found him on the side of the road, and showed up at our front door completely unannounced on Thursday night, about 38 hours after he had left. Wow. Talk about a
big gesture.
Meanwhile, I was happily cooking away in the kitchen (which is in Kelly's room) when these two students pulled up. I couldn't see them in the dark, only their headlights, and all I heard was "hello," and then "Marianne, I don't know..." So I went outside only to see Matthew walking towards my front door having assumed that the room I was in was actually mine, not Kelly's. I recognized him because....well I'm a Facebook stalker (there I said it), and in breathless hysterics tried to explain to Kelly who was outside. I don't think she understood what I was saying until Matthew had been in the room for a good 30 seconds.
So here he is. White person #5 to temporarily reside at Thawangphapittayakhom school. Unfortunately he's only here until this Friday when he will return to sunny San Diego to take care of some things before going to Australia and then back to Thailand in March which is when he was supposed to show up in the first place. Speaking of sunny - back to how I started this post. I know I just recently wrote about how incredibly cold it has been around here, especially at night. Well since the night Matthew showed up with his bags on the back of a student's motorbike it has been surprisingly mild. I wouldn't call it warm, but I no longer have to sleep with every item of clothing I own. I still have two duvet covers, but Matthew has, as they say, 'brought the warmth' with him. So thanks Matthew, for bringing a little sunshine to Tha Wang Pha and for giving this village some new gossip to chatter about.
In other news, my friend Kim just wrote a blog about life in Thailand that I think does a great job of describing all the little everyday things. The only thing that differs between her life here and mine is that I do not have a 7-11 on every corner. We do have one, it's a pretty cool hangout. But in general, she's right about the abundance of this 24/7 convenience store. Also, my school does not have buffalo, we have pigs.
Kim's blog.
That's it for now. We tutored all this past weekend which was just as fun as it sounds. This coming weekend we are more than likely going to be running an English camp for the students, so I'll let you know how that goes.
Finally - I want your comments. Tell me a story (any big gestures committed/witnessed lately?), say hi, talk about what life is like where you are, I don't care, I just care that you share it with me and the rest of the blog-o-sphere.
Bye for now
