Balance and Composition

Currents

11:55 PM

Current Reminders that I'm Pregnant:
big baby kicks
constant pee breaks
soooooore low back

Currently Eating:
Mulberries
Mangos

Currently Reading:
Steal Like an Artist

Currently Listening to:
Don't You - Wet

Currently Contemplating:
The state of fear in America

Currently Impressed by:
This guy.

frugality

Ch...ch...chhh...chaaanges

6:22 AM

This holy body swells with change,

my surroundings fly by,
clouds cushion our landing

back. Home.

Warm.

As my body changes and accommodates a growing little one, I continually find myself interested in matching that physical growth with growth in my spirituality and community as well as an inverse desire to shrink our budget and our typical lifestyle radius - because we're committed to not owning a car and minimizing our scooter riding to non-rush hours, it makes the most sense to shrink the bubble we live day-to-day in. We're also committed to simplifying our eating and habits, putting healthy, simple ingredients in our bodies, paring down our possessions so we're not weighed down by caring for them when caring for our baby becomes our main priority, and lowering our spending to a more reasonable Thailand lifestyle.

We hadn't planned to make a visit back just 7 months after we left, but it ended up an amazing opportunity to regain perspective. When we landed in Chiang Mai it was pretty overwhelming to completely start over and we began just reacting as things came our way. Leaving that context and going back to MN was a chance to understand where we came from, reconnect with those we love, and re-establish some of the goals and hopes for our time in Thailand that we felt so deeply when we left last spring. I also just re-read my Prayer for 2015, and I'm so glad I took the time to chronicle my fears at that time as well as my hopes. 2015 is over, but a few weeks into 2016 and 5 months into a beautiful, dynamic thing called pregnancy, I can feel how "gratefulness without fear" will be an ongoing prayer for me.

Departure

3:28 PM

Today we leave Thailand for the first time since we moved here 6 months ago, to visit family and friends in the US and Canada. On the taxi ride to the airport, I was watching our new home city go by and saw a golf cart adapted into a police vehicle round the corner with lights swinging. We both thought it was pretty funny, the juxtaposition of power and control with the speed and size of a golf cart and it led to us joking together about all the driving scenarios we would have to avoid repeating in North America.

- Drive in the right lane, not the left!

- No driving between cars or on the yellow line to pass or skip ahead of traffic

- It is not customary to bribe officers – DO NOT ATTEMPT AT HOME

- and so on…

So much of our daily lives has changed in such a short time. Many things have stayed the same too, but besides the new baby bump, it’s unclear to me what, if a lot or a little, has changed in us. I think that returning to family, friends, and familiar places – HOME – will be the biggest indicator of how this relatively short period of rapid change has impacted us.

Onward!

Home in Chiang Mai

Loi Krathong Festival

Local market behind our house

Home Sweet Home in the Green House

Our City

beginnings

Three Months in

9:14 AM

Wow, more than three months have gone by! We moved to Chiang Mai to slow down our lives but the transition phase has been anything but slow. To be fair, one of those months was on Koh Phi Phi taking everything slow. I'm so glad we built that time into our moving plans. After that we spent a month housesitting before we got our place. Another week was with Jess back in the islands again, and we've been doing a fair amount of sightseeing together in addition to that. At a certain point though, this is all part of life and we need to find a way to settle in around those welcome interruptions and variety of life.

Last night, the rest of the ISDSI students arrived into Chiang Mai for the start of Fall semester. Today they are all buzzing around and I am reveling in the way life goes in cycles, remembering that startling breath of hot air as I stepped out of the airport air conditioning into the hot Chiang Mai summer air, and the first moment I met my host family as they came walking up that same driveway entrance to pick me up.

Feeling 22

7:04 AM

A very happy birthday to my dear sister Jess, who just turned twenty-two and managed to make being on camera and listening to Taylor Swift all day look entirely adorable! We are grateful to be able to spend the week with her in one of the most beautiful places on earth - Koh Lipe, Thailand. This video is an example of what Tory Roff, Jessica deLange and I do for fun.

Behind the scenes:

Chiang Mai

This Must Be the Place

3:12 AM

We came over here with two suitcases and carry-ons.

A big part of the move for us was a great opportunity to reset and live into our values. I'm still grateful for that chance, and have been thinking about and tracking all our purchases as we bring them into the house but I think the surprising part is that the 'set up' part of reseting is taking much longer than we expected. Now that we've re-established some kind of normalcy and level of comfort at home, I feel like I can finally reflect on this process a bit.

In some ways, Thailand is different than back home, things are done differently, and just take longer in general and take longer to figure out with the cultural and language barriers. In other ways, we have personally changed our lifestyle so we have different resources than we might have if we just tried to replicate our life in Minnesota.

I remember the exhaustion of learning everything new from last time I was here but I didn't realize how exhausting it would be to start over from scratch, even if it's a really cool experience. There are lots of fully furnished condos in Chiang Mai but we didn't want to find a tourist-oriented house with tourist prices. So we found a little neighborhood with an large unfurnished rowhouse, and we have been steadily filling it to a level of comfort that we basically arrived at today, meaning, somewhere to sit, somewhere to sleep, somewhere to clean and cook and somewhere to put things down. It's so strange to be in this phase of mandatory consumption. Thai kitchens are much simpler than we're used to and usually freestanding, so we had to buy an entire kitchen (fridge, counter/table, sink set, shelf, and propane stove - the final missing piece). But we're getting there! It's a relief to know that we may be able to slow down again soon, in the meantime we've been trying to relax and create and relish all the sweet moments of beginning again.

If you can take a minute, slow down, go somewhere quiet with someone you love and listen to this Iron and Wine cover of the classic "This Must be the Place." It has reached us perfectly in this time.

This must be the place!

home

The Art of Carrying

6:19 AM

We have been little scavengers lately. The benefits of finding our gem of a place through non-touristy ways are abundant and the challenges are too :)

The people of Thailand, our friends and colleagues have been very generous to us helping us adapt and learn how to function, more or less! This is the first photo series on the subject of "how much can Tory and Rachel (and Jess) transport via scooter and bicycle?" Enjoy.