28 bicycles.

Today was a day to remember.

Arriving by motorbike at Nongkhaokowitpittayakom school this morning (the school's full, tongue twisting name), I chuckled as my eyes and mind together registered twenty-eight bicycles parked horizontally across the pavement. Some with baskets, bells, and seats that hovered over the rear tire for extra passengers; each one had a personality of its own. For a moment, I thought back to when I was thirteen years old and embarrassed to ride with my noisy family of six. Thankfully, things have changed, and now, this was pure bliss.

Today for an English camp field trip, we would tour Nongkhao village.

I laughed wholeheartedly as I joined the motorcade of 13 year old Thai teenagers, and I announced my presence with horribly rusted, squeaky brakes. Everyone laughed. I sounded them again, just to get a reaction.


Passing up invites to ride in the middle of the pack, I took up the rear with a supervisory role. "Okay, let's go!", Miss Yuparat said.

Sixty legs now began to pump up and down upon plastic pedals and a line of bicycles that must have stretched for 100 meters took to the streets. It was quite a spectacle.

Let me tell you, if anyone had harbored the slightest bit of doubt, or maybe plainly did not know, that there was a white man in their village, they surely knew now. Together with the students, we slowed down traffic, stopped a busy street, and garnered curious looks and many smiles. I laughed for much of our ride.

In Nongkhao, directly across the street from my home away from home, there is a bullhorn-styled loudspeaker that plays that Thai national song at eight in the morning, and airs the news by six at night. Tonight, an announcement about the English camp made its way across the village. In a summarized form, all of Nongkhao village was welcomed to join in the English learning opportunity tomorrow morning, the students were asked to bring food, and everyone was told about the new foreigner in town.

Its incredible that almost one month has passed since I first stood in front of 30 Thai students, and incredibly disappointing that on Thursday I must leave.

Due to my expiring visa, I will be leaving Thailand on the 14th, and making my way, via bus, to Nong Khai, where I will cross into Laos. I am disappointed that I must duck out of the English camp one day early, but I will cherish the memory of these beautiful Thai children and hope that somehow I have impacted them for a greater good -- for the future.

My time here has definitely not been all sunshine and clouds with silver linings. I have struggled. Its not easy to be lacking in communication -- to not have anyone to share the truth of my heart and my emotion. My journals have quickly filled with ink and notes in the margins. They are a survival tool of self-awareness. I struggle with infrequent occasion, but when depression hits in a culture of unfamiliarity, a single occasion can seem far reaching.

Even though my time here is short, I will remind myself to look forward to the blessing of tomorrow; the blessing of another morning to live, the blessing of another 28 bicycle tour, and the blessing of a beautiful people and their endearing personalities.