Moving

Tomorrow morning I move out of this house in Chiang Mai. Thai lessons are done, and I'm heading three hours away, to UHDP's farm, which houses the ECHO seedbank project as well. For the rest of my time in Thailand I'll be living there, with a community of the various staff members--who come from a mix of different hilltribe backgrounds including Karen, Shan, Palaung, and Mon as well as a few westerners--and their families.


I have mixed emotions about the move, to be honest. I'm excited to go--after all, working at the UHDP farm is the main reason I came to Thailand, and it will be nice to start the "real" internship work, to become a contributing member of the staff community that has welcomed me so graciously. I'm certainly looking forward to being in more of a community, no longer alone in a house.

At the same time, there are a lot of things about Chiang Mai that I've learned to love, and friends I've made that I'll be sorry to leave. I feel like it's only been in the last week or two that I've been able to really enter this place in any meaningful way, and now it's time to move on. I know I'm in for another period of cultural adjustment, and having just spent a month adjusting to life in Chiang Mai, I'm less than eager to "set myself back" in that uncomfortable process. The discomfort of being foreign and new is too fresh for me to have any illusions about a smooth, perfect transition to yet another culture. Chiang Mai and Fang, the town the farm is in, are going to be very different. Also, most of the people I've interacted with in Chiang Mai are Thai or Western, whereas the majority of people at the farm and in Fang are from one of the various hilltribes, which have different and distinct cultures.


But then, to flip back in the other direction again, I'm excited to see those differences. I'm excited to have the opportunity to work in UHDP's pretty unique context--very few other NGOs, especially those working in the Golden Triangle area, have a staff that is so indigenous as opposed to western. And very few others live, work, and eat together as they do at UHDP. I'm lucky to have been invited into this environment. It presents unique challenges, though--it's a bilingual workplace, and my coworkers will have varying abilities in English. It will be a stretch, linguistically. Time to put my newly acquired, very limited Thai to the test.


So. Prayers as I travel (going long distances in the rainy season on dirt roads can be an adventure...), prayer as I start to adjust to another new place and establish relationships with my coworkers and in a way, extended family for the next five months are definitely appreciated! Thank you for your prayers, emails, and comments throughout my first month here--I am so thankful for the community of friends and family I have supporting and encouraging me from home. You guys are great :)