A Blink

Somehow two days have passed by from when we were with Britta in Denver and she was dropping us off at the airport. And now I’m sitting on a pink chair at gate D8A at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, the departure gate for Paro, Bhutan. I’ve met a few other teachers with the Bhutan Canada Foundation – Julia, Chalie, Jean Daniel. Old and young. From when we left Denver and flew to Seattle to Tokyo and to Bangkok, I haven’t slept for more than an hour at a time. My mind is jittery, disjointed, fragmented.

Sometime before we landed in Bangkok, I had this regretful feeling. Maybe regretful isn’t the right word – maybe it was just a feeling of longing. It occurred to me an hour or so before landing in Southeast Asia that I had left America and wouldn’t be back there for a while. Usually this doesn’t bother me because usually I don’t even think about it, but this morning or last night or whenever it was, I cared. So yes, a feeling of longing, a sigh. Scott and I touched down in the states for a month, a mere 30 days and in a blink it was over. Of course, it never feels like a blink during it. But 30 days in two years isn’t a long time.

Because Scott does not yet have visa clearance to get into Bhutan, Scott and I left each other reluctantly – the first goodbye we’re had to do for a long, long time. This was after staying up all night at the Bangkok Airport. We killed the time by wandering around the airport, eating noodle soup, and playing cribbage. I’m grateful he stayed with me but obviously I’m sad he couldn’t come along, that we couldn’t begin our Bhutan adventure together.