Part Seven: Back in Mae Sot.

I arrived back home at 10pm. My house was full of cobwebs and mould. I took one look at my closet and saw that every single item of clothing I had was infested. The only clothes I could wear, therefor, were the ones I had packed in my carry-on. I had been through most of those already.

I arrived at work the next day, therefor, in a strange combination of clothes, only to find that we would be doing a presentation to our funders, important people from USAID (United States Aid for International Development) were arriving. The presentation went well and I jumped on a truck to get up to the refugee camp to teach that afternoon. I taught and jumped back on the truck to get back to go to dinner and a USAID smooze-fest.

The good news is that it is now official: we have secured funding for the next five years. That means I have a job and a salary and I can hire someone to come here and teach for me so very soon I will only have to do one job instead of two.

And the next morning, I was on a truck again for the hour and a half ride through the mountains to camp. It's rainy season and luckily it seems all the flooding happened when I was away, but our refugee camp in on a hill made of clay, so the whole place is one huge mud pit of fun. This will continue until October.

The moment I stepped foot in my classroom though, I knew, just as I knew the moment I got home to my family, that this whole saga of woe was worth it. My students were so happy to see me and filled me with such great energy that I left camp on Thursday night feeling optimistic and ready to keep on trucking. There are a million things to catch up on, I feel like I've been gone for a month, and so many exciting new developments and things to keep me on my toes and I am loving every second of it. That's good, because I am really not loving the mould or the cobwebs in my house or the place where the cat from next door was sick on my floor god knows how long ago.

But here I am and I still don’t have my bags and my passport and I've just been told the work visa I got in Calgary is invalid anyways, but it's the Queen's Birthday today, so I have a little bit of time to sleep in and rest and that makes the world all that much better. And biking through the vivid green, through the puddles of brown mud, past the buffalo and the rice paddies on my way to work this morning, I know that this is exactly where I want to be right now, evil travel agents and typhoons in Shanghai and all.