Well, I just watched the movie trailer for “Akeelah and the Bee” on iTunes and started crying. T minus six days…

http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/akeelahandthebee/large.html

Unreality has set in, and it is difficult that in one week my perspective on life will change drastically. It is worse knowing that this is going to happen ahead of time – were it only that my trip to Thailand was to be along the same lines as a natural disaster. The unreality of it is that I still think I will go to my family cabin this summer and swim in the lake, dine on fish tacos and beer with my boyfriend on hot summer nights, and spend time on a blanket at the beach baking contentedly in the sun with English speaking people around me blasting their radios and flirting with each other.

The reality is that I will only be gone for six months and that’s not such a long time.

Money relativity has also taken hold. Suddenly I do not want to pay $10 for a t-shirt on sale at a boutique, because I know that in a scummy, miscellaneous market in Bangkok the same shirt is being sold, probably by the person who sewed it together, for $1.50. It kills me to buy lunch for people, because the best panang curry at Lai Thai in Kirkland for $8.95 can’t hold a candle to the cheapest panang curry at a stall somewhere on the side of the road in Thailand, purchased for fifty cents. There is that whole bacterial diarrhea thing that comes with Thai curry in Thailand though. I suppose that money can’t buy the world’s best curry but it certainly can purchase some decent peace of mind…