On The Road Again

Well the time has come once again to say goodbye and get a move on. We have had an amazing three months here in this little pleasant corner of Thailand and it has afforded us some great opportunities. Who knows if our time here will have had much impact on our students or the others that we have come into contact with but it has impacted us for certain.

As I have said before it always seems that you get a hell of a lot more out of volunteering abroad than you are able to give back. Funny how that works. It makes me often think that I am a bit selfish for living life this way: enjoying this way of seeing the world but often disregarding family and friends and connections back home and realizing that I am not having as much impact as I could say working on issues back in the US. But I realize that this way of life makes me happy and it suits me well. So I will continue. Sure you do not make much money, but who needs money anyway?

It is sometimes hard to leave a place that you have come to know as home, even if only for a month or two. A place that tugs on your heartstrings a bit and fills you with delight. A place such as our little corner of Thailand where we had the opportunity to learn a little bit about what life in Burma is like. A place that offered us some peace and calm and offered a chance for serious contemplation and reflection after months of constant traveling. But perhaps we have gotten too used to our nomadic lifestyle for we are both itching to move onto our next adventure.

Or perhaps it is because of our anticipation of new adventures ahead. A chance to continue our journey and learn more but this time inside Burma. The people that we met along the border helped us gain a little glimpse of what life is like but we thirst to know more. So after a bit of contemplation on whether or not to take the plunge and visit, we decided to go ahead. Some may condemn us for this decision as we are 'supporting' the regime by giving a few of our dollars to them but this is a trip for us about learning a bit more about this land. We will try our best to keep our money out of the hands of the government and do our best to take the time to meet the people of Burma. We will tell others about our experiences and what we see and discover in this forgotten place. Our bags are packed and we are ready to go.

Unfortunately we will be unable to post our experiences in Burma on this blog for fear that things may be linked between our time along the border and our time in Burma. We would not want anyone we meet in Burma to be put at risk. We have tried to be as vague as possible with people, places, etc... along the border in case that any of our students should choose to want to go back to Burma at some point. We are perhaps taking extraordinary precautions and the chances of any link being made are small with the chance that anyone from the regime reading our blog also being small but being safer is for the best in this case we think.

So look for future installments on a different blog which will be revealed to friends and family through email. Sorry about this inconvenience. We will still be traveling a bit in Thailand before heading to Burma so look for future posts on this blog. Also we will resume blogging on this site when we enter Cambodia for another volunteer stint in August. So stay tuned and good night.