When I think of my friends here, I think of their hands. They have cultivated capabilities in handicrafts in ways that before Thailand, I had not imagined, and throughout Thailand, have grown used to and fond of. A few weeks ago, it was Ban Phaeng’s turn for school evaluations. This involved setting out an enormous buffet of fruit – cranberries, pineapple, coconuts, bananas, papaya, durian, dragon fruit, rambuton – all handpicked from different students’ yards. When the festivities were finished, Mom Tuk and I removed every single remaining cranberry from its branch, filling a basin as the first step in making juice. We picked the bugs out of the cranberries and threw them to the ground; we picked the leaves out of the cranberries and threw them into our pot of soup. To rid ourselves of the dark red stains down our arms, she instructed me to scrub myself with the exposed half of a lime rind. I was struck by this action, and the fact that a few pieces of fruit alone could stain my skin and make it clean again. The Thai way of living has taught me that everything – and especially the things that I would otherwise waste – has a purpose, a place, and a time.

I have come to understand the seasons in Thailand by way of the fruits. In the States, I’ve had access to apples, kiwi, berries, and mango at any time of the year. In Thailand, this is not so.

The sickeningly sweet smell of jackfruit once overtook my school, and sweet tamarinds became my favorite snack. This was when I first arrived, so I suppose we are on the precipice of those fruits emerging once again, though I have not seen them since. Directly before the end of the first term, strawberries dominated office conversation and photos of this ripened fruit filled my newsfeed, their presence blossoming as winter dissipated but quickly fading with the heat of summer. Green mangoes came and went, as did their orange counterpart. Rainy season brought with it a durian mania: we ate durian with sticky rice and coconut milk, we layered birthday cakes with slices of durian, we consumed durian candies and durian crackers, steam buns filled with durian, or even just durian in the raw.

As the fruits come and go with the seasons that bare them, so with them comes the attitude of savoring the moment. Time is fleeting; ripe durian is fleeting. The moment must be enjoyed, and while durian is on its way off of the vending trucks, something equally delicious will fill its vacancy in Thai conversation and on Thai tongues.

Food is the focal point around which Thai people conduct their lives. The equivalent of asking someone how they are is gine kaow, literally translating to “eat rice,” but more loosely inquiring if you’ve yet had the appropriate meal for that time of day. In the beginning, I was asked so many times a day that it felt a bit intrusive – have you eaten yet? Now I see it as the most innate sign of love, a tending to our most basic needs. Are you fed? The question containing the implication, If not, I will feed you.

Meals are eaten many times throughout the day. I was once asked for the English word for the meal that comes between lunch and dinner – and she was not referring to “linner.” Sharing food equates to showing love, and it is this concept that propels nearly all meals to be family style. Nearly all utensils are family style, too. Each plate – fried eggs, pork, fried rice, boiled rice, curry – has a fork on it, and one can use that fork for a taste as one pleases. Every flavor is enjoyed, and so every dish is communal. There was an unusual day when a loaf of bread was in the office. It was Boom who first tore a corner from a piece of bread, and put the remainder back in the bag. I laughed at her, noting that leaving a shredded piece for the next person was typically considered rude. It wasn’t until the next day, when Wijit did the exact same thing, that I realized I was witnessing the Thai style of eating applied to a Western food.

It is moments like these that I will truly miss. Comical, broadening to my perspective, cross-cultural, and fun.

There are plenty of things about the States that I miss. I am looking forward to returning to the luxury of placing my plates in the dishwasher and not thinking of them again until the 60 minute cycle is over. I am looking forward to eating fish without first deboning it, and to having all food varieties at my hands. But, I will miss the simplicity of this pace of life. When you remove excessive convenience, you remove the urgency to complete more tasks, more quickly, with less devotion. You stop appreciating the process. I have found logic in the simultaneously self-sufficient and relaxed way of life here. If you want to eat fish, you place a fish on the grill, cut into its skin, take out its bones, and eat it. If you want cranberry juice, you remove each cranberry from its stem. Perhaps this will take all day, but sabai sabai, – just, “take it easy.”

My attitude here has relaxed significantly. We’ve had school activities that have prevented me from seeing my Wednesday classes at all, and have made my Thursday and Friday classes a rarity. While I would like to see my students at their desks, engaging with my curriculum, I have come to love seeing my students in other capacities, evincing their passions and their individual skills. There was a Mother’s Day event, where the mothers in each class sat on stage, and their children knelt before them with flowers in hand. It was lovely. There was Science Day, where students set up experiments and presented their achievements.

Most recently, there was a province-wide competition in which my school was one of twenty competing. Students contended in categories ranging from aerobics to sociology presentations to Thai dance. In my own department, we worked with our students to prepare impromptu speeches, enact plays, and – most humorously, in my opinion – play Scrabble. This board game (for some reason, instead called “Crossword” here, but in all other ways, down to the alphabet used, the same as our version) is an enormous fad. Our students who competed have not needed to attend classes for the past few weeks, in preparation for the competition. For our Scrabble contestants, this has meant an 8am-4pm Scrabble scrimmage in my office, every day of the week, for several weeks. On days when my classes were cancelled, sometimes I played, too.

I have worked to keep my mindset positive in spite of confusing or uncomfortable roadblocks and cultural adjustments. In response, I am endearingly told the words pak wan on a regular basis. They translate to “sweet mouth” and are used to refer to someone who speaks in a friendly manner. It is the people here, though, who are the sweet ones. I am friendly because there is no other way I could behave to people with such generous hearts. In the span of one week, I told Mom Tuey I liked her broach and Pi Poo that I liked her earrings, and by the next day, I was given each respectively. I came in one morning complaining of a sunburn, and by the time I was seated, Wijit was at my side rubbing lotion into my arms. This morning, Mom Tuk presented me with shoes she ordered from Bangkok, because she thought they were my style.

When I leave Thailand, I won’t miss ants swarming a barely discernible crumb or the endless number of snails that have taken up residence in my bathroom. I am ready for consistent wifi and owning a coffee pot; for eating hummus and going to museums and movies; for going outside without instantly breaking a sweat. Right now, though, those things feel trivial.

I will miss my sweet students, who I inevitably see any time I leave my house, waiing to me and then adapting my style by waving to me, too. I will miss going for runs and the three-plus motorbikes that pull over to say Kun Kru, pai nai kha – “Miss Teacher, where are you going?” preparing to offer me a ride. I will miss the apprehensive stares of strangers as I pass by, which I have learned quickly turn to smiles if only I smile at them, first. I will miss the other teachers’ kids calling me “P Sammy” and the communal love that goes hand in hand with referring to everyone as a family member. I will miss the normalcy of holding hands with your friends. I will miss the sounds of frogs gulping for air before a storm and crickets singing of a clear night. I will miss waking up to roosters during winter time and humming water buffalo during the rainy season. I will miss the expanse of increasingly verdant foliage. I will miss the enormity of the sky.

I am not ready to leave the hugs that my friends give me, excited to share in this bit of my culture despite it having no place in theirs. I am not ready to part with hot pot dinner parties and laughter-filled office lunches. I am not ready to say goodbye to weekend hiking adventures with Boom, afternoons eating at Ole’s, or lunches with Teung on the days that her husband is out of town and she can fill that free time with my company.

I will never forget the time I said, hue mak! and Wijit and Duan anxiously responded, Nong sow hue mak! – “our little sister is hungry,” before urgently getting me food. I will never forget being tired at an assembly, and having Mom Teung pull a bag of hot sticky rice out of her purse for me to eat. I will never forget laughing with Jon and Noiz over the book title, Cooking with Poo or Noiz introducing me to all of his favorite Western restaurants so that I could have some comfort food. I will never forget hearing the other teachers say “awww” and then commenting on how they picked the noise up from me (from them, I acquired “oy!”). I will never forget P Tu arriving at my house every morning that it rains and insisting she drive me to school. I will never forget walking into any office at any given time, and knowing that someone will have a pestle and mortar in hand in the omnipresent process of making sum tum.  

I am desperately excited for all of the aspects of home, and for the people especially; yet so desperately despondent to leave all of the love that I have here. That, I am told, is called living in the present. With that in mind, I plan to spend the next two weeks acknowledging all of the good that has happened here with a gracious heart, preparing myself for all of the good that awaits me across the world, and enjoying this junction that is the moment of here and now.