I love being home

I sometimes think it's a bit of a stretch for me to call Thailand home since I never really lived here for any extended period of time, and my only schooling here was in preschool. However, I spent every single school holiday here up until I finished college and for an expat kid, it was the closest thing to home that I've ever had. Also home is, to a certain extent, wherever my parents are.

I'm blogging from a seat in the garden of my mother's family compound, a 8 or 9 acre property that was subdivided by my great-grandfather and doled out to his sons, who all built houses of various designs with shared gardens and a great pond stocked with a bazillion fish and one very old turtle (at least I think it's still there). My parents' house is a few miles away, and only has dial-up (yes, there are people in the world without broadband!) internet access so I'm happily using my tech savvy cousins' wifi right now. It's relatively cool, the fountains are burbling away and someone just brought me a glass of iced water :)

I love being back in Thailand, I switch into Thai very happily (although I find my Thai vocabulary to be somewhat limited at times). It's a bit of mess here right now - the country is just finishing up an extended period of mourning for the King's elder sister, and politicking is supposed to be suspended. However, the country is very divided on the political front - with people wearing red vs yellow shirts to show their support for two dueling political factions. Apparently, the other day, a Thai Airways captain refused to board three different Thai members of Parliament because he was on the opposing faction. Can you imagine that happening in the US?!