New Year Blessings and warm wishes from Auto (11), Tor, Morgan, and Kartoon (10). May your 2024 be filled with joyful days as abundant as sun-kissed Thai bananas.
All year long, bananas are everywhere in Thailand! You can't walk 1 minute down the road without seeing a half dozen banana trees. Bananas are woven deeply into Thai culture, they are an auspicious plant used in religious ceremonies, and can be eaten and enjoied a million different ways. I used the banana leaf imagery and metaphor in our New Year Card to wish you a year of prosperity, abundance, and joy!
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| My favorite banana snacks are banana chips. They come in a varity of flavors including BBQ and paprika! |
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| Many religious ceremonies invlove bananas. On the left is a picture from our house raising ceremony in November 2022. You can see the big green banana leaves rising from the rebar of our future home poles. On the right are bananas and other offerings at a shrine for King Taksin. |
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| Loy Krathong is my favorite Thai Holiday! In November 2023 Auto made his own Krathong to float down the river. The base is made from the trunk of a banana tree, and he decorated it with a variety of other plant leaves and flowers. |
Year in Review
Meditation on gratitude and gifts
In 2024 intend to practice gratitude, so to start the year I'll make a list of the gifts 2023 gave me. But what is a gift? Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer has shifted my worldview with her book "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants." She discusses gift giving as an act of reprocity and community building with nature and the people around you. Here are my favorite quotes on gift giving from her book;
Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery - as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.
Gifts from the earth or from eachother establisha particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate.
In a culture of gratitude, everyone knows theat gifts will follow the circle of reciprocity and flow back to you again. This time you give and next time you receive. Both the honor of giving and the humility of receiving are necessary halves of the equation. The grass in the ring is trodden down in a path from gratitude to reciprocity. We dance in a circle, not in a line.
Twelve gifts of 2023
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| Family Games |
We are a young family, still developing relationships and family rituals. Playing cards, particulary Uno, has been a powerful facilitator of family fun and bonding across generation, culture, and language. The kids love it, and ask to play every time we are together. It allowed my mom to connect with Auto and Kartoon without speaking the same language. We try to play every week, and recently Santa added two new games to our collection.
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| Auto's Smiles |
Auto is 11 years old, on the cusp of being a teenager, and confidently says "NO" to every invitation or activity he does not want to be a part of. So those rare smiles are precious, and I feel a sense of victory every time he grants us with one. Some of my favorite this year include editing a video of our waterfall excursion and showing it to my mom, enthusiastically taking on the challenge of hanging the New Year banner and posing proudly for a photo, and baking Christmas cookies with his dad and I. When I'm not bribing him to spend time with me, he prefers swimming in the river and buiding kites with his friends. He's quite the engineer! He's always testing new materials, binding techniques, and kite shapes.
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| A visit to Wisconsin |
A stressful visa renewal experience meant I needed to make a visa run and leave Thailand for a bit. This gift in disguise let me travel home for about 4 weeks in April and May. I cooked with mum, ate Papa's famous waffles, spent precious time with my sisters and dear friends, celebrated by best friend's birthday together for the first time in a decade, practiced yoga with mom and each sister, and went ATVing with papa. I got to participate in daily life with the people I love. It was treasured.
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| Bookclub |
Bookclub started in 2020 as tool for connection and fun in Covid isolation. It has gifted me a tool for connection and fun in long distance friendships. 2023 was the first year we met consistantly all year, and all year I was able to show up for my friends from across the globe. I treasure each meeting where we talk about the book for 10 minutes, and connect about life until Zoom decides time is up and kicks us out of the meeting. I am so blessed by this crew. We planned an impromptu bookclub retreat in Wisconsin Dells during my visit home, and I got to Maile for the first time in 4 years, meet Jane's baby, and sing silly songs with Dana's baby.
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| Mom's Vist to Thailand |
In a random phone conversation with Mom, she mentioned having two weeks of holiday time in October that didn't align with her yoga retreat dates. I suggested she just come to Thailand instead. So she bought a plane ticket! I am so behind sharing photos from this incredible trip. It was an honor to show her my favorite things about Chanthaburi, and such a gift to watch my family interact with her. Tor took incredible care to make sure that she had the best experience; he prepared fresh oysters, shrimp, and fish for her to eat that he raised or caught in the river, and he planned beautiful outings for us around his hometown in Chanthaburi Province. The kids took to her as well, calling her Auntie Kim or "Baa Kim." My favorite was Auto insisting that Auntie Kim join them in the water to play monkey in the middle. Mom, thanks for gifting us with your time and presence.
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| Cocktail Nights |
Cocktail nights grew out of a need to make the mundane a tad magical. The meal doesn't have to be be magical, but the cocktail is. We take turns crafting a cocktail for dinner and enjoying 20 minutes of conversation and connection before cleanup and nighttime routines.
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| New School |
In May 2023 I started working at Josephvithaya School. Its much closer to our new home and has an incredible community. This school has gifted me with another incredible mentor, see Teacher Mona in the halloween devil costume, and opportunites to participate in school culture. I learned Thai Ram and danced with my students at a parade. During sports week I coached blue team's boys and girls basketball teams. Girls won and boys got second place!
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| Time with Kartoon |
Every day with Kartoon is a gift. Just like Auto has lived with his paternal grandmother his whole life, Kartoon has lived with her maternal grandmother her whole life. This year we were gifted with her presence for new year's day at the start and end of the year, and for a few weeks during April school break and October school break. She is a sweet 10 year old who loves Tik Tok dances, slime, swimming, and badmintion. She is always lending a helping hand, looking for cuddles, or creatively finding ways to annoy her brother. We look forward to spending more time with her in 2024.
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| Libby Library App |
There are so few libraries in Thailand, and even fewer English books. Yearly I am gifted by the Libby Library App that connects me to digital libraries in the USA. I love the "Lucky Day" section where the app suggested two in-demand books that ended being in my top 5 best books; Braiding Sweetgrass and A Court of Thorns and Roses.
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| Peace Corps Training |
In 2023 Peace Corps Thailand welcomed its first volunteers since our evacuation in 2020. I still have some things to process from that event, but was able to process a bit when Peace Corps staff invited me to support training the newest group of volunteers! It was fun to reflect and share on my two years of service with the new group, who are doing great things.
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| Time with friends |
As much as I work to build new friendships in my new home, most of my friendships are long-distance. But that makes time with friends even more precious! I feel so blessed by the time I got to spend with each of you this year.
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| Growing and Changing with Tor |
This man. Continuously gifts me his heart. Takes me seriously when I'm on an emotional soapbox, but knows how to make me laugh so I'm not serious all the time. Indulges my whims for family bonding and food cravings. Takes care of me physically and emotionaly when I'm sick or accidently blanch my legs with pasta water. And is committed to communication as we discuss the logistics of building our home and building our lives.
Your turn!
What gifts did you receive in 2023? What gifts did you give? What are you grateful for? Please share in the comments!
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