With going home being somewhere between four days, and two months, still not sure, I've thought a lot about what life will be like back there. Something I just realized is that in Thailand, the exchange students whom I have befriended this year live much closer to me than they will when we return to the U.S., or Germany, but I feel as though the freedom I have to see them will be increased, and even possibly the amount of times I will see them in a given period may increase. Thailand is small and travel here is amazing when it happens, but I don't often get out of the house/school.
March 2nd 2016, I went to Bangkok for a super Tuesday meeting in which we saw the real-time votes being tallied for a number of U.S. states choosing which candidates to move to the next level. It was a very educational and culturally shocking place to be, because on one hand I'm still in Thailand speaking Thai to find my way to this place, and on the other I'm now thrown back into American culture and it's so strange. After that some friends and I went for a quick trip to the Siriraj medical museum at the Siriraj hospital, and put shortly, it was beautifully morbid. It was such an experience like no other, especially when looking directly into the shriveled up, leathery, toothless face of Si Quey, a Chinese immigrant who suffocated five or six Thai children before eating their hearts. This day was one of the most enriching of my entire exchange, especially since it was spent with people from the U.S.A., Finland, Thailand, the Netherlands and Portugal, so it was so filled with different cultures from around the world, and seeing the ways they all reacted to the presidential selection of the United States, and to jars filled with dead babies, was quite the day. However, all this time I was getting messages from my adviser, who had "reported me to AFS" for "disrespecting her." The whole time, however, she knew where I was and what I was doing, and she personally had not given me permission, but she told me she did not have that power and I must talk to higher up people. Therefore I did, and they said that if I go for multiple days, it is considered independent travel and must be done with a family member or teacher. However, I went for only a matter of hours, and was back before my family had gone to sleep.
