This time a year ago, I would be slowly working my way through dinner in the Proctor booth room at Middlebury. Wednesdays were hard days, so I'd treat myself to long dinners that started at 4:30 and ended somewhere around 7, meals that wound through as many people and conversations as I could get my hands on. These days were filled with some of the last English courses I would take to fulfill my major: Shakespeare's Comedies & Romances, a James Joyce seminar and a less-than-favorite elective called Multi-Ethnic British Literature. I'd finish dinner, throwback two cups of coffee and head off into the crisp purple night. I'd be wearing a cardigan and a scarf and would complain about how it was too early for it to be this cold. Once I got home, I'd read until my eyes were blurry and polish off an episode or two of some trashy TLC show with my suite mates before settling into my little 95 sq. ft. slice of dorm-room heaven for sleep. Then the spilling of sunlight into the room come morning and the bittersweet repetition of an academic life.
It's hard to believe that this isn't my life anymore, that tomorrow I will be embarking on a journey that was nothing more than a seedling in my mind a year ago. I will be swapping cool Vermont weather for Thailand's wet season, stomping my way through flash floods instead of piles of brightly-stained leaves. If you'd asked me a year ago what I thought I'd be doing come next September, I would've predicted a lot of things, but certainly not anything as wild as this. Yet, here I am, on the brink of my new, unpredictable life. It's scary and, even though I know I should be excited, I can't help but feel more anxious than anything else. I am lucky to have this opportunity, but it's difficult to be joyous about something when the sting of what you have lost is still so fresh on your mind.
But, ready or not, here I come. Stumbling, maybe, but forward-moving, certainly. I shove off tomorrow from Dallas at 12:45 PM. I'll be taking a 13 hour flight from here to Tokyo and then a 6 hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. When all is said and done (with shifting time zones), I'll land in Bangkok ~11:00 PM Friday evening.
The whirlwind of a lifetime is fast approaching. I pray for steady hands and an open heart and of course a quick dash or two of luck. I won't say goodbye because it isn't really goodbye, since most of you won't physically see me before I leave. I'll continue to exist here, through email, facebook, and a handy dandy free app called Viber that allows people to call/text for free via a WiFi connection. It syncs with your phone contact list and allows you to do everything you'd normally do with a phone. Get it. I'll be lonely and will need the company.
The next time I write a blogpost, I'll be sitting pretty in The Mansion, a hotel in Bangkok that, by the pictures, looks slightly worse than a Best Western, but definitely better than a Motel 6, so I'd say that for the next month, I'll be rolling in a slightly shaky lap of luxury.
Thank you all for reading and for all of the wonderful support/words of encouragement I've been receiving. I appreciate all the little messages and youtube videos and funny articles that make you think of me. It's amazing to see a community continue to exist even when its members are separated by miles and countries and even an ocean.
Until Thailand,
Cody
It's hard to believe that this isn't my life anymore, that tomorrow I will be embarking on a journey that was nothing more than a seedling in my mind a year ago. I will be swapping cool Vermont weather for Thailand's wet season, stomping my way through flash floods instead of piles of brightly-stained leaves. If you'd asked me a year ago what I thought I'd be doing come next September, I would've predicted a lot of things, but certainly not anything as wild as this. Yet, here I am, on the brink of my new, unpredictable life. It's scary and, even though I know I should be excited, I can't help but feel more anxious than anything else. I am lucky to have this opportunity, but it's difficult to be joyous about something when the sting of what you have lost is still so fresh on your mind.
But, ready or not, here I come. Stumbling, maybe, but forward-moving, certainly. I shove off tomorrow from Dallas at 12:45 PM. I'll be taking a 13 hour flight from here to Tokyo and then a 6 hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. When all is said and done (with shifting time zones), I'll land in Bangkok ~11:00 PM Friday evening.
The whirlwind of a lifetime is fast approaching. I pray for steady hands and an open heart and of course a quick dash or two of luck. I won't say goodbye because it isn't really goodbye, since most of you won't physically see me before I leave. I'll continue to exist here, through email, facebook, and a handy dandy free app called Viber that allows people to call/text for free via a WiFi connection. It syncs with your phone contact list and allows you to do everything you'd normally do with a phone. Get it. I'll be lonely and will need the company.
The next time I write a blogpost, I'll be sitting pretty in The Mansion, a hotel in Bangkok that, by the pictures, looks slightly worse than a Best Western, but definitely better than a Motel 6, so I'd say that for the next month, I'll be rolling in a slightly shaky lap of luxury.
Thank you all for reading and for all of the wonderful support/words of encouragement I've been receiving. I appreciate all the little messages and youtube videos and funny articles that make you think of me. It's amazing to see a community continue to exist even when its members are separated by miles and countries and even an ocean.
Until Thailand,
Cody
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