"how lucky I am to have found something that makes saying goodbye so hard"- Winnie The Pooh
The last few days have been a whirlwind of
emotions. I have gone from being unbelievably over joyed to start my journey,
too an unbelievable crying mess in the middle of a forgien airport and
everything inbetween those two emotions. I am so blessed to be able to embark
on such a wonderful journey. I feel so much joy about this opportunity.
Unfortunately I never really thought about how hard saying goodbye to my loved
ones would be or how hard it would be to be unable to communicate with my new
family.
My goodbyes started early as some of my closest
friends left on their own journeys, Ath was off to Greece, Brook left to
Ontario to spend the rest of the break with her boyfriend and his family, and
Sar left me to go pretend to be a pioneer for a few days and then she was off
to EFY. I don’t think when I said these goodbyes it had really hit me, how long
the goodbye would be for. As the days began to fade away I found myself saying
my final goodbyes at the security gate in the Calgary airport. My parents and
Jake walked me to security, where we exchanged our final hugs. Although I was
at the airport ready to go, the fact that I was really saying goodbye was still
yet to sink in.
As I walked through the line in security I was
trying my hardest to hold myself together, but with every step things only
seemed to be get harder. Of course in a time like this I would be picked for a
random security check, where the rummaged through my bags, and swabbed my
laptop, of course for some reason this made me start to bail my eyes out even
more. From there on out I hoped that my travels would be a little be easier.
Unfortuntley my hopes did not do much good.
My flight to Vancouver was slightly delayed,
which ended up working to my advantage, because my flight leaving Vancouver was
delayed for over an hour. Sitting in the Vancouver airport by myself for three
hours was pretty lousy and uneventful. I basically sat there attempting to hide
the fact that I was crying, until it got to hard and then I just let it all
out.
From Vancouver I had a thirteen hour flight to
Hong Kong. I attempted to sleep the entire plane ride in order to fight off
some of my future jetlag. Sleeping in an airplane sucks. When I arrived in Hong
Kong I ran to my next gate in order to not miss my connecting flight to Chiang
Mai. I boarded my plane as soon as I arrived at the gate, and again tried to
sleep to ease my jetlag.
When I arrived in Chiang Mai I went through costumes,
which was fairly easy, and then went to the baggage claim. I stood there
forever watching the same few pieces of luggage go around, until I finally
realized mine was not coming. Lets just say that the airport luck was not on my
side today. Fortunately my bag should be here by tonight.
My host family greeted me with open arms, and
automatically started to feed me, they must know airplane food is not all that
great. From the airport we went to the market to pick up a few things, and then
home. There house is beautiful to say the least. There are a thousand of sticky
notes around the house with thai words on them for me to practice. As soon as I
had some alone time in my room all of the emotions began to hit and I was a
crying mess once again.
I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. Everything here
is so different. I feel super alienated, I cannot read any signs, or understand
anything people are saying to me. I can’t even recognize my Thai name, let
alone say it. I can however tell you that it means “clear blue sky”. It is
super hot here plus 35, and it is currently pouring rain. The fan I have blowing
on me is not doing a very good job at keeping me cool.
Well that’s about as far as my adventure has
gotten. I would like to take the time to thank my sponsor Rotary club for
giving me this amazing opportunity, as well as my friends and family for all of
the support.
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| Hong Kong |
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Chiang Mai |
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