Love takes us to faraway places.

“When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don’t even understand the language the people speak. So you are like a child just out of the womb. You begin to attach much more importance to the things around you because your survival depends upon them. You begin to be more accessible to others because they may be able to help you in difficult situations. And you accept any small favor from the gods with great delight, as if it were an episode you would remember for the rest of your life.”
From “The Pilgrimage” by Paulo Coehlo

My spirit has not yet caught up to my body. Looking back on this first week in Thailand, I realize that I am very much in the midst of a transition. Arriving here excited and content to be in Asia again, it was easy for me to forget that I have a lot to process. I have a lot of sorting out to do.

Yesterday, Perm Sak, one of the Good Shepherd employees here, invited Kia, Katrine, Eva and I to his house for lunch (the other three girls are Danish volunteers). Initially, we were going to drive an hour and a half to a waterfall, but the day started out with gray skies and nonstop rain. So we relocated to Perm’s house, where he lives with his wife Fun, his one-year-old son Neung, his mother, with some of his siblings next door. We arrived around 9:30am and played for a while with little Neung, who is one of the most affectionate babies I’ve ever met! He kept crawling all over me, giving me kisses, and blowing raspberries on my stomach. So cute!

Then we got in the car, to drive about thirty minutes to Fun’s family’s farm (say that three times fast), to pick up some fresh fish for our lunch. Perm lives in town and Fun’s family lives in the country (it’s not exactly rural, since it’s so easily accessible by paved roads, but it’s definitely not town anymore), so we had to drive through more greenery than I’ve seen since arriving in Thailand.

I’ve been consciously missing Malaysia the last couple of days, but driving through the rice paddies and banana trees and country homes, the homesickness for Pukak hit me hard. All I wanted was to be back on the crowded, bumpy, sweaty Sabahan minibus, driving up and down through the lush, jungle-covered hills. All I wanted was to be going back to Courtney’s and my home with Auntie Dorothy and Uncle Danny. It’s so vivid in my mind right now as I type this. When I was there in Sabah, I predicted that that windy drive from Tamparuli to Pukak would be one of the things that I missed the most. Now here I am in Nong Khai, actually feeling that awaited nostalgia. It makes my stomach turn.

And so I continue to transition from Malaysia to Thailand, from the US back to Asia, from that place to this place.

My spirit has not yet caught up to my body. When I think about it though, I realize that we, all of us, are constantly going through this transition. We are constantly learning new things, meeting new people, starting new phases of our lives. And the special thing about traveling is that it magnifies all of that. Like Coehlo says in the above quote – your survival depends upon the transition. And so it is. Here in Thailand, where all the signs are in the Thai script, where I often cannot understand the heavily Thai-accented English, where I have known my new family for a mere week, here in this new world, I must adapt. I am the fish out of water and I must learn how to breathe this new air.

I really am like a child just born! I love what Coehlo says up there about rebirth. Just like I predicted that I would be painfully missing the jungles of Sabah, I also predicted that this year in Thailand would invite a huge spiritual shift into my life. But before, I couldn’t really define that prediction. However, now, in reading Coehlo’s words, I know that my intuition suspects exactly that – a rebirth.

Rebirth tends to have mystical, mysterious, maybe even wacky connotations (anyone remember Lady Gaga’s performance where she came out of the huge yellow egg?). But the awesome, paradoxical thing about rebirth is that although it usually is special, intense, life-altering – it is also so ordinary. Like the birth of any child. For each one, the universe opens up again. All of creation comes to a climax. At the same time, the birth of any child is like a single breath. So fabulously simple and mundane.

In my first couple of days here in Thailand, I felt very comfortable. My skin started to clear out the redness and puffiness incurred during my whirlwind month in the States. As unknown as this new place is, it is more like Malaysia than any place in the States, and that was like a security blanket (of sweat). My whole being was celebrating – “Yes! This is my second year of volunteering in southeast Asia, I’m going to rock this out.”

During my second full day here, Antonia and I had lunch with Thida, another Good Shepherd employee I had just met. Thida bought dreamy chocolate covered ice cream bars for Antonia and I for dessert. In my other worlds, ice cream is part of the wallpaper. But here in this sweltering, country town, it was Thida’s thoughtfulness and a special treat. As Coehlo says, it really was a small favor from the gods.

But I think that brief honeymoon phase is over. That’s not to say that the joy and gratitude of small moments like that have disappeared. It’s just that the breath held, adrenaline pumped, blissful take-off is gone (in fact, all of last month kind of felt like that). I’m back on solid ground. I’ve arrived once again. Let’s see what I’ll find.