Melancholy Excitement

Next week will begin many “firsts” for us. We’ll be living in another country, learning a new language and culture, and dealing with embassies on a regular basis. We’ll be in a different climate and a different time zone.

This week we have run across several “lasts”; the last time we will be able to do certain things for a very long time. Things such as:

• ·         take a ride on a Washington State ferry,
• ·         see our granddaughter in person,
• ·         complain about being too cold,
• ·         drive on the right (hand) side of the road,
• ·         be able to read a menu,
• ·         go to an English-speaking church…

      the list goes on. Pretty much every activity now brings reflection on whether it will be our “last” for a while. It’s causing a condition I’m calling “melancholy excitement”.

This is something we’re been planning and looking forward to for a few years. And it’s a good thing. But it’s also a realization that life is changing. We’re saying goodbye to friends, but we’re also saying goodbye to a way of life. We’re saying goodbye to comfortable.

There’s exhilaration. It’s a new adventure. But there’s also sadness and closure. 

Melancholy excitement. 

Transitions

We’ve gotten our stuff packed into our suitcases. We’re not shipping anything (a friend had asked me how many crates we were shipping… none). We’re not taking any shoulder bags (another friend asked if we were carrying anything beside the rolling bags… nope). All of what we’re taking has been stuffed into six checked rolling bags and four rolling carry-ons. The rest has either been left with friends or donated to someone with more need for it than we have.

I know that sounds sort of harsh, but we learned a lot on our Survey Trip. Among other things… when traveling through Customs – multiple times – don’t carry anything you don’t have to. It gets heavy. I almost think we might have brought more stuff on our Survey Trip. Just kidding. We have decided that most of what we will need we can get once we arrive, and most of the stuff we would have to ship really isn’t worth shipping.

It’s frightening, but it’s freeing.

Tomorrow – 19 June 2015 – we will drive out of Eugene for the last time for a long time. A week later we will be heading to Thailand with what we have deemed as the most necessary of our worldly possessions; most of our clothes, computers, one guitar and a mandolin, some Christmas decorations, and a few other things to make life in another world just a little more familiar. It’s a very exciting time, to say the least.

Unless something significant comes up, the next time I update this we will be in Bangkok. See you on the other side.

Bringing Back the Blog

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." – Bilbo Baggins

When I originally began this blog almost four years ago, the idea was to keep a running commentary on our preparations for going overseas. We had recently joined Pioneers and were anticipating launching into Southeast “SoFarAwAsia” pretty soon after that. That’s not how things have worked out. Over the past three-and-a-half-plus years, we’ve learned that God’s timing is not always our timing. And quite honestly, we were beginning to wonder if it was ever really going to happen.

Slowly, over the months, the blog become more of a commentary not of our preparations, but of our attempts at self-encouragement. It became a tally of the ways we were telling ourselves that it surely had to be happening soon. But as time wore on, that became more and more difficult. And so, eventually, I stopped updating it entirely.

Here we go again.

Our tickets have been purchased. Our visas have been activated. We’re now (finally!) scheduled to land in Bangkok in the early morning hours of 28 June 2015, and then to Ubon on 3 July. The first few weeks of July will be orientation to the Team, then a Team Retreat, then back to Ubon to begin language and cultural training.

It’s time to bring back the blog.

“Tongue-Thai’d” was intended to be a play on words: exploring the joys and pitfalls of learning a language and culture that are so vastly different from what we’re used to. We chose that because we were going to begin learning language prior to departure. Yeah… that didn’t happen. But it’s about to begin, so we’re keeping the title.

I’m hoping over the next few weeks to share some of the processes we have gone through recently; getting our visas (a great story of the hand of God), saying final goodbyes, condensing our belongings into just a few suitcases. And then once we land in Thailand it will become a more of a tally of lessons learned (both in and out of the classroom), and the joys and trials of following God to a vastly different side of the world.

"I think I’m quite ready for another adventure!" – Bilbo Baggins