It's been a while. Not just in time, either - a lot has changed since my last frenzied flurry of cold-weather baking.
I did keep baking on and off for the winter months, though it ran down as spring approached. There were a lot of reasons for that - it was warmer, we were busier.
We got laid off.
Then we moved to Thailand.
That was the beginning of May, and we'll be here until October. To say it's a transition is an understatement. I have a hard time ordering my thoughts past a flurry of impressions (which is on my Thailand blog, and will largely not be found here.)
I'm having an even harder time practicing, though, and that's both unexpected and unsettling. I knew going in that there wouldn't be a community (there's barely one in Rochester, NY, and I'm totally used to that!) and that the large portion of the country is Buddhist.
I wasn't expecting how much the landscape and weather would be disorienting, though. We're in central Thailand, Meuang Suphanburi. What that means is - flat, swampy, rice farming country. We're here for the rainy season - hot, humid, with torrential random storms on a weekly basis. And Meuang means 'capital', as in 'capital of Supanburi province'.
What I should have picked out of those descriptions initially, and did'nt, is: flat, cloudy, suburbs.
There are no hills, and that's setting off culture shock faster than anything else, oddly. I didn't even realize what I was missing until we went to an island (The islands are mountainous clumps of jungle ringed by beaches, dropped just off the coast.)
It's cloudy, all the time, even when it's not raining, and especially at night. I've completely lost track of the moon phases - I only see the moon once or twice a month, and it bothers me. I might install a phase-tracker on my computer, but it'd be like having an alarm to remind me about sunrise. It's not the same visceral feeling of being connected to a cycle.
And it's the suburbs - there's more than people everywhere, there's development everywhere. There's so much light pollution, along with the clouds, that I don't have any firm idea of how the stars have changed. The streams are gutted with trash, as are the roadsides, and it's hard - really, really hard - to get any kind of feel for the land.
Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, or I'm doing it wrong. Maybe I'm too used to feeling rooted in upstate NY (which is going to to make our move to Texas after we go back really, really suck.) Or maybe I'm just having my first culture shock meltdown, a month into being here. Right now, all I want to do is plug into my computer and avoid looking outside, but I'm pretty sure that's not actually the solution.
On a brighter note, the food here pretty much makes it all worth it. I'm not kidding, I haven't eaten this well ever in my life.
Blessed Be,
Pennanti
