Airport Thoughts Part I
Emily with all of our luggage.
Thoughts at the San Francisco Airport:
Today is the day. Today marks the first day of a journey that Emily and I could not be less prepared for. Of course we made sure all of our luggage was under 50lbs, we have a zillion copies of all documents needed for air travel in the time of Covid, and Emily has been in constant communication with colleagues for months. We are as prepared as we know how to be. We certainly aren't completely prepared, but how could we be? We don't know know what we don't know yet. We don't know what mistakes to avoid yet. We will be living in a country where we do not know a single person, or the language, culture, customs, history, food, or any other part of how life works in Thailand. Even if we were "prepared" with knowledge on those subjects, no one can prepare you for experiencing a new country in tandem with a global pandemic. One sobering fact that I like to remind myself of is that Emily and I are coming from the most dangerous country in the world when it comes to the response to Covid (the U.S. 🤦♂️) and are moving to Thailand, which has had one of the best responses to Covid-19.
I say we aren't prepared for this next part our lives because we simply are not. I do hope that our previous experiences with travel, my biracial upbringing, our combined interest in learning about how other cultures live, and our general excitement for the future will help with the start of this new chapter. We are going to be constantly learning every day there! We are going to be doing so many things for the first time in the next few years. As well as things we are used to but in such a different setting for the first time. Just like when we moved to Seattle five years ago, we are preparing ourselves to explore the city of Bangkok in detail and try to learn how things are done. Immersing ourselves as much as possible in local experiences will hopefully lead to a broader understanding of all the aspects (language, culture, history, etc.) we aren't currently familiar with.
All of these aspects that will be new to us will take time to adjust to and for us to begin to understand the differences we encounter, experience, and observe. We look forward to this process, and will try our best to remind ourselves of the time it will take and encourage patience in each other.
I can speak for the both of us when I say that while we may be starting off at a level .5, we hope to constantly be teetering on the edges of comfortable and uncomfortable as well as always pushing ourselves to try out new opportunities and filling our bank of global skills.
All of our thoughts for the past several months have been about preparing- packing, paperwork, luggage, tickets. And now all that preparation is coming to fruition. We are on our way, we are doing it! Now all we can do is experience this transition and move to the next phase of adjustment and settling in.
Here's to always traveling, eating good food, broadening our horizons, and taking risks. Cheers.
P.S. Never written a blog before, so we'll see how this goes!
