There is so much to say about my first few days here. The following is what I typed up from my journal/scrapbook:

6-15
Happy Birthday, Jay!
I know Mom and Dad will laugh when they hear about this. Before even arriving in Trang, I lost somthing valuable. No, it wasn't my passport, although judging by the number of photocopies Mom made of it I know they are expecting me to lose it eventully. I lost my digital camera, the very same camera that just two days earlier, Mom and I outfitted with accessories at Ciruit City. I am almost as sad to lose the last picture that I took with the camera as I am to lose the camera itself.
I had always assumed that my flight would cross the US and then the Pacific on its way to Bangkok. When I boarded the plane, however, I learned two interesting pieces of information 1) This 17 hour flight is the longest commercial flight offered in the world, and 2) We were flying over the top of the world, the North Pole, and then down the coast of Asia to reach our destination. I lost my camera sometime after taking a picure of the vast, white nothingness that streched endlessly below the plane. Leaning over the Lord of the Rings-obsessed MIT geology student who occupied the window seat, I saw terrain so foreign and strange to the eye that I felt that I was on a different planet. The white of the clouds covering the frozen rivers and fields blended so well with the ground that at times there seemed to be no separation between land and cloud. This final photograph was taken as a symbol of the beginning of a voyage filled with challenges to my perception of the world and the system of values with which I have been raised. Although its gone, I have since bought a new camera, and have taken new pictures. Some of these pictures I am going to try to upload, although this website is now in Thai so I'm not sure how that will turn out.