Signing.Off
August 14, 2010
I won’t leave you in lingering suspense- this is the last entry I leave on this weblog. Like a particularly plentiful mango season, the last two years have burgeoned with unreasonably surreal memories and experiences, many of which I’ve made the effort to convey to you as vividly as my abilities allowed. Many of you accompanied this one “young man’s journey through Thailand”, and for this I’m deeply grateful. The correspondence you shared with me was significant in carrying me through some of the bleaker spells of isolation and personal discontent I experienced.
Many of you know that I recently returned from a month-long journey through Europe, one that I had plotted in daydreams and exceptionally dull classes since I was in high school. It was in a word- fantastic. I began in Amsterdam and stayed with friends in Breda, Holland (home to the 2-day festival, Redheadday, no joke- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_head_day) Belgium and then to Paris, where I met up with an old friend to explore the famed city. I then traveled down to Nice in southern France, up to Switzerland where I stayed with a friend I’d met while teaching in Thailand, and then it was Italy: Venice, Florence, and Rome- all exceeding the standards I had set for them. From Rome, it was a 21-hour ferry (on the deck, mind you) to the coast of Greece, where I traveled to three different islands: Santorini, Paros, and Naxos. The flight home was bittersweet- a relief to no longer live outside of a rucksack but left with the gnawing thought that there was much, much more not seen than saw. (Images can be viewed @ http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011672&id=158500543&l=cd11628b30)
I am back now. Thailand has changed little but I myself have changed much, as has my employment. I no longer teach. Presently, I have chosen to withhold plans for grad school one year to serve as the Youth Pastor for the international church I’ve attended over the last two years www.cccthailand.org along with serving as an advisor for the local school’s (International School of Bangkok) newspaper, The International, and organizing an intramurals sports program. Suffice it to say, it’s going to be a very busy, yet fulfilling, year.
The purpose of this blog was to serve as a way in which to make sense of the nonsensical situation I was cast into two years ago and convey my experiences to you, my readers. It has carried this out surprisingly well, and with it’s task fulfilled, I now choose to end it- in the words of one tragic icon, “It’s better to burn out, then fade away.” Though this isn’t true with all things (life, for example) I believe it certainly to be true with journeys such as this. God Bless and God Speed towards the thing that which you most deeply desire.
Signing Off,
Chris
