Thailand and all

Over break you may have gone home for a while—maybe you had a good time, sat around the fire, took part in a holiday celebration: New Years being the most recent. . I bet you spent your break sitting on the couch, maybe packin’ on pounds you’ll undoubtedly not shed so you could get through this quiet, freezing and uneventful break as the winter solstice came to dwell. I bet you ate a whole cake by yourself. I bet your mom uttered between baking sessions: TMT—that’s too many Twinkies for those of you who don’t know.

But by chance those four weeks in between grueling finals and spring semester hysteria led me into another direction. My sister’s been in the US Peace Corps for about a year and a few months now. She’s been in Kyrgyzstan, that’s in the middle of Asia, near Tajikistan, Afghanistan, the Stans. So my parents and I decided to ditch my four brothers for the warm summer-like climate of Thailand to meet up with the prodigal sister.

There’s nothing quite like seeing someone you had felt you would never see again, even though that person may be the one closest to you. Perhaps that’s why it hurt so badly when they left. But alas, over a year later my parents and I saw her again, and it was as if she had never left at all. Although we were more than jazzed to be with her, international traveling is always a hassle. That’s the story no one seems to tell, there’s only the term “jet lag” to speak of.

There is more to it though: You get off the plane. You search endlessly for your luggage, that inevitably was the last piece to come out of the turn-around, or if you’re really lucky it never comes out at all. You stand in line some more. You can’t understand your foreign tour guide. He doesn’t care anyway, because let’s face it: you’re foreign in his country. You’re tired. You’re flight was eighteen hours.

People don’t feel bad for you. You’re an international jetsetter.

You fly around; time turns back for you depending on which direction you’re going. Bangkok back to Chicago, really it’s about a day’s worth of travel, but time lies and says it’s only been psh-six hours. You’re confused. It seems as if your body clock has said, “It’s too hard to keep up with you.” And it is too hard: after all it’s been 24 hours but the sun has a different story to tell: Jet lagged and walking around on an hour of sleep.

Sometimes its better just to stick it out for those three or four weeks, take up shop on the couch and call it a break. But then again, new situations, rekindled relationships, and excursions abroad open up a whole other world.

So I got over the time difference, and visited the King’s Palace.