Unexpected Thailand

Dear all,
I thought, after Cyprus, that this year would be spent at home working hard to replenish my money supply and decide where and when I would next take off. Instead I've been busy driving round the country at the peak of gas prices with my family and taking it easy in Tucson.
Now plans have changed in a major way! Instead of sitting around at home and making money the old fashioned way my older sister, Erika, and I have decided to take nine months of our lives and go to Thailand where we'll be teaching English as a second language in a Christian school in the north!
This whole idea is still mind blowing and beyond comprehension for me, the very fact that I think I can be a teacher of anything is hard to believe and the fact that I'll be in Thailand has yet to sink in. It'll be absolutely amazing! Erika and I will sharing a house the school is providing and while Erika is teaching the unruly teenagers of high school I'll be working with much younger children who will have time to overcome anything I confuse them with.
Before most trips I have an idea of what it will be like. My overactive imagination takes over and forms a perfect picture of what I'll be doing and where I'll be doing it, most often my imagination is one hundred percent wrong but it's an enjoyable delusion and I like the peace of mind it brings. I have been unable to imagine this setting or situation at all!
I think that is what scares me the most, the very fact that it is completely unknown to me! And yet that is what I claim to love about travel so much; the fear and dread of the unknown and the sudden and overwhelming knowledge of it when you finely touch down and live what you have come to live.
Erika says I do this before every major trip and I believe she is right as I begin to see the pattern. I get excited and let my imagination run wild, then it comes to making actual decisions and setting our plan in stone and I panic and cry and go crazy for days before settling down and doing it, and then it's done and there's nothing I can do about it and I spend our last days here panicking about being there and wishing I wasn't so insane and headstrong and then I go and the entire time I second guess my decisions and my reasoning and then I get home and wish I was there again.
It's really not a good system and I should do something to remedy it. In the meantime I'm excited, getting ready for the actual decisions and panic.
Kristen Rose

Still here... still hot... still humid...

Dear All,

I'm still here in hot and humid Tucson and though I don't enjoy the weather or the leaking roof I am enjoying myself. Tucson is a funny place. Somehow, though it's a rather ghetto, crazy hippy place to spend your time, it's a town that grows on you. Fourth Avenue is one of my favorite places and I could be amused for hours just going through the used clothing stores not to mention the book shops or tea and coffee houses. Another haunt is the Vineyard Christian Community where I go to church the Sunday's that I'm in town, they have strong friendships and are welcoming to everyone let alone a daughter of some of the founding members.In fact there's only one place I avoid in Tucson, a small section on Speedway Blvd. and that's only because of personal issues.

I love that I'm starting to find myself around the city and recognise street names and the like. They say that Tucson is an easy city because it's based almost entirely on a grid. It's the almost part that gets to me, we seem to live at the one intersection that messes that entire theory up and I seem to drive on the only streets in town that change names fourteen times or curve around to become something new.

I would say I know Grampy more than my other grandparents but being able to spend this time, just the two of us, has been really great. We take walks every night and have interesting conversations about his navy or army days or the time he and my grandmother spent out on the Tohono O'otham Indian reservation here near Tucson where they translated the Bible and the Ledgends of the people. What really made me laugh was talking about his days as a dancer before he met my grandmother!

Family has always been one of the most important things in my life, one of the reasons when I travel I always end up with one or more of them around. My sisters and I went with me on my first trip to Europe, my brother went with me to Mexico for the day, my mother joined me in Cyprus and Greece and now I'm with my Grampy in Arizona. I'm glad that my family loves and appreciates the same things I do and that we can travel and roam about together. Otherwise they might get bored on all the trips I plan for us.

Kristen Rose

Hot and Humid...

Dear All,
I've put off writing an update because I don't know what words to use to describe to trip and adventure I've been on. I've been traveling all over the country visiting friends and family and meeting new people and now I've been left behind in Arizona.
Our whole family including extended members was here for a couple of weeks getting my grandfather ready to move and getting his house ready to be sold. It's a tiring and stressful job as the house is an antique with antiques filling it to the gills surrounded by... how shall I say it? Junk! So now most of the junk is gone and we're weeding out the important things and making decisions and everyone else had to return to where they came.
I, on the other hand, had no reason to go home and there was a lot still to do here so I was left behind to spend some quality time with my grandfather and see how things go.
Fortunately I've been here often enough and know enough people to get around alright and get out of the house most evenings so I don't go crazy in this over large, junk filled, house of stress. Actually I think it's sort of sad when you have more friends in a town you haven't lived in for eighteen years than the town you've been living in for the last nine years, but that's pretty much how my life goes.
So now I have to go sort through a shoe box full of odd addresses that has been gathering for years to see if any of them are current and which ones are important enough for Grampy to have with him.
Hope you are all doing well, Kristen Rose