Movin' In

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Settle in to the university--Check

Get a bank account--Check (although it has a 0 balance. I tried to deposit a check from the US and they said it would take up to 6 weeks to clear. Living on the ATM so far.

Get a local phone number--Check

Find a place to live--Check

Move In--Mission Accomplished. Check. Although I still have two boxes in Bangkok and a couple of other boxes at Dr. Kol's (University President) house from a previous trip last November, I'm starting to build something that is akin to home. Now this is something between ALF wilderness week accomodations and my loft in Houston but by local standards, I'm livin' pretty well. The pics don't totally do it justice because you haven't seen much to compare it with. In a month, I went from quietly protesting the 1 percent to being one of them! I'm just struck by how affluent we are in the U.S. We air condition entire houses, usually when someone isn't even home. Here, you have only an aircon in the bedrooms and you switch it off when you leave just as you would the lights. If you have aircon at all it probably puts you in the top 1 percent. In the US we heat an entire tank of water and keep it hot all the time. Here, you have a water heater at the source in the bathroom. It only heats what you need for a shower, then you turn it off. These are surprisingly small inconveniences and I have to believe they could be adopted in the US, the largest global consumer of energy with little disruption in our daily lives. I'm also struck by how little closet space there is in my house. As I think about it, closets are place you put things that you don't use. We have so much stuff we don't use we build garages and even rent storage units to store even more stuff we don't use. I brought only a few things from the US compared to what I had and my closet space is almost exhausted. I'm wondering how much this experience will change me when I come home. I did a pretty thorough purge of all the crap before I left so there isn't that much further to go. I actually feel fairly liberated. What matters, is life filled with relationships and purpose. If one has meaningful work and family/friends, you have everything. I might add a good massage every other day to the list of necessities. The other stuff is just..........well, stuff.

All in all, it's been a pretty fruitful week. Tomorrow I go with Susan to conquer the market! Hopefully will have more pics of that.

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