T Minus 15 and Counting

I have 15 days left before I step onto Korean Air.  I received my passport back from the Thai Consulate in Houston with my single-entry Non-Immigrant B visa.  What that means is that I can enter the country and stay at least 3 months before I have to step out again for a "visa run."  During that time we plan to visit with Nee's family, travel to Rayong in the east, take a 12 hour train ride to Chiang Mai, and maybe even spend a night at a b&b at an organic farm a one hour bus ride north of CM.  I also did one more thing.  I turned down the chance for a job in Irvine.  It would have been a long, drawn-out process to get the job, with one evaluation after another, a flight to Irvine and then a zero expense pay move to southern Cal.  If I took it, Nee would still want to go home and I would be, once again, a long distance from all my loved ones.  Thus, I decided to continue with my plan and move to Thailand.

My brother, Jon, flew up from the bay area today to say good-bye.  We picked him up at SeaTac airport and then drove to Chinatown for a great dimsum lunch.  After we walked around Pike's Market and took pictures of all the fish.  I seem to like fish.  He is spending the night at a hotel and tomorrow I will pick him up to make him breakfast and take him to the glass museum in Tacoma.  Basically, we are doing all the tourist things we never took time to do during our short stay here. 

I will miss Washington State.  The weather today was cool and sunny with no rain.  A beautiful day for January in the northwest.  Last year we were having snow.  I never liked snow.  I don't mind driving up to the mountains to play in it for a few hours, maybe do some cross-country skiing, but I always like leaving it for the warmer low lands.  That hasn't been possible since I moved out of California three years ago. I have missed being warm.

Thailand is never cold.  Winters are warm and summers are hot and wet.  California has very moderat weather which I always considered to be normal until I lived in Colorado.  There I discovered a whole new world of cold; with temperatures dropping to to minus 20 in the winter and crashing thunderstorms in the summer.  Nee tells me that Thailand has such storms though I have not seem them yet. 

Going there I will have to learn a new language, make new friends, and learn to live in a different lifestyle.  My Indian friend said he bought his family coffee grinders whenever he went to visit them but had to also include power converters, doubling the price.  Being the penny-wise person that I am, I bought a seed mill yesterday that says I can grind coffee as well as corn and wheat.  It is a pretty basic thing, but so am I.  My life has gotten too complicated.  Perhaps Thailand will change all that.

Thus, I have 15 days until I begin a new life.