Origins

Sunday night—Monday morning, to be accurate—via a Skype interview I got the job I had applied for a week previously. Teaching Music and English to primary school students in Nakhon Si Thammarat, thirteen time zones away in southern Thailand. I was to start as soon as I could get there, which won't be until after the holiday weekend.

It has happened that I will be returning to academia and music, albeit under rather novel circumstances: teaching grades 1-6 music (especially keyboard) and language skills while overlooking the small school library. It will mean leaving the Ritz and Marriott Corp, bennies and time-clock-fixation, and dropping off most maps to rake in almost a thousand bucks a month. The catch?

The little, off-the-beaten place is just across the isthmus from Krabi and Phuket. In Thailand.
And no, before a week ago, I didn't know Thailand had and isthmus. Since, I've learned not only to spot Thailand on a map but that Thai people are miraculously able to divine a superior and greet that person with an appropriate wai, that if you know what you're doing you can say, "wai wai wai wai wai" with the proper inflection and it means, "fresh firewood doesn't burn well, does it?" that most places use a pit and bucket instead of toilet and paper, that the King is the longest ruling monarch in the world (since 1946) and a respectable jazz composer by any standards, that no language program worth its salt carries a Thai edition, and that no matter the glossary, there is no standard English spelling of Thai words.

I still have a bramble of red tape to cross for a new passport and visa. There are the matters of student loans, auto issues, selling the condo in Moscow, and then the logistics of getting there (15 hours south of Bangkok), getting settled, learning to walk to work, to teach, to find a place and live, all while carrying a tuba (doesn't a tuba on a tuk-tuk sound fun?), but it's of little consequence. First I have to get there and back legally.
As is, my passport is due to expire in September and the new one is still a month out, so Thailand would be legitimately reluctant to let me in, and a visa is out of the question. And no, there is no visa hopping for me.
Bangkok jail. Showering in a Bangkok jail. Showering and then returning to a cell in a Bangkok jail--I'll pass.
Once I am within seven days of departing, I can renew my passport at a Passport Agency. Once I have a new passport, I can apply for a Non-Immigrant B visa. To get a passport will take a full day and must be completed in LA, San Fran, or Seattle. A Non-Immigrant B Visa takes two days in either Vancouver or LA.
I also love my current place of employment. After leaving messages with the Executive Director, my Boss boss, the Restaurant Manager, my boss, and my supervisors, at 8:00, 12:00, and 4:00, I caught up with a supervisor to say, "Here's notice. How do I make it mutually-agreeable?"
"Come to the meeting tomorrow. And write an official letter. Listen, I gotta go talk to this server for a minute, so I'll catch up with you tomorrow...."
At things didn't make a radical change of course toward the end.
Now, once I get a concrete final shift--will it be Thursday the 1st, the last on my schedule, or Monday the 12th, the last day of my two weeks?--I'll be able to book an airline ticket for eight days away and fly that day to LA to spend three days getting a passport and visa, provided I can scan in my passport and get a visa packet emailed back from Thailand overnight.
And what was that about packing and moving halfway around the world?
Lesson planning?
TESOL?
Thai? People speak Thai? Exclusively? No English or Spanish or German or Italian?
Um, hi, I'd like a roll of toilet paper?
HA! Try again, farang, no toilet paper in Thailand.

So here we go. To Thailand.

Incidentally, as the probability increased, I realized that I could deploy to Antarctica tomorrow, but I am woefully under-equipped for tropics: I have one pair of comfortable shorts, trunks from high school, and a dress wardrobe consisting of double-knit silk and wool. But, on the exhale, I realized that in Thailand, I could buy an entire Gucki wardrobe for the cost of one half of one pair of merino underwear. And the advantage of surviving this winter is that my stature is diminutive even by Thai standards; not only will I fit into skeletal-size clothes, I might not receive the pummeling from a hot and humid climate.
Even better, if I regain some of the 35 pounds the doc says I need, I'll be able to finance a new wardrobe through exports--anyone for some Kalb Incline?

Anyway, I guess this means I'll see you next October, unless I extend the contract. And how cool would it be to find an excuse to keep living and working in paradise?