The Transition Part 2: Saying Goodbye
I biked home as fast as my legs could take me to tell my host family the site I had been given. My phone was blowing up with texts from them: "Do you know where you are going yet?!" "Tell us where you are going!!" "When are you coming home?!"
When I finally got there, Bua raced up to greet me as she always did. I jumped off my bike to give her a hug, and ran into the house. I called out "Hellloooo! I'm home!" No one answered.
I quickly realized the only one home was Paw. He and I were probably the least close out of everyone in the family, but I still could not wait to tell him. I went to the back yard to greet him as he watered the plants. I said "Di chan ja bpai tii Hua Hin!" (I am going to Hua Hin!). The often stoic man smiled, something that only happened now and then, and exclaimed in English: "Ah! The beach!"
Soon after that, the rest of the family came home from the market. Meeh (Mom) danced around the kitchen singing "Hua Hin, talee, ahaan talee" (the beach, seafood). Ying and Ming kept saying "that is so good! You will love it there! And we can come to visit you! Where are Caitlin and Nick going?"
We spent the rest of the night looking at pictures of Hua Hin, as well as my other friends' sites. We ate endless amounts of snacks at the dinner table and laughed well into the night. It was a celebration.
When I went to bed that night, the last thought I had before I drifted off was How am I going to say goodbye to these people?
The next few days went by as usual. Dinners were long and wonderful, food was endless, and every now and then someone would just randomly exclaim "Hua Hin!!" But when it got closer for me to leave them, things felt notably different. Meeh was sitting with me at the breakfast table longer, and she would give my arm a little squeeze before I would leave for training.
The night before moving out, dinner was wolfed down. Meeh had my all of my favorites as a way to say goodbye. She was chatting up a storm as she always did. Ying turned to me and said "You want to give her the present now?" I said "Yes!" and jumped up to get it. I came back from my room with a framed picture of all of us. As soon as she saw it, she stopped talking. She held it in her hands without saying anything for a while. I started to worry that she didn't like it. Then suddenly, she got up, walked around the table, and grabbed my face and planted a GIANT kiss on my forehead. She was saying "Meeh rak Emily." Mom loves Emily.
On moving out day, they helped me fold my clothes and put them in my bag. They drove me to the mall by the hotel to take me out for pizza because they knew I missed it, even though Meeh doesn't even like pizza.
We got to the hotel, and they stayed in my room for a long time. I could tell they did not want to leave. Finally, the time came for families to say goodbye. I walked them to the car, and looked at all four of them. These were people who gave me nothing but love from the very first moment they saw me. They gave me a roof to sleep under, food to eat, and endless amounts of laughs. I never imagined I would have a family that could let me be entirely myself in a matter of weeks. I am nothing but blessed to have a host dad who fixed my flat tires and waved to me when we passed each other in town, a sister who would stay up with me into long hours of the night to talk about human connections and problems in the world to be solved, another sister who showed me different foods to cook and teach me words in Thai, and a mother who told me over and over again "You will always be my child, I have four children now, you can always call me if you need me."
I am embarrassed to admit I hugged them quickly and sprinted back into the hotel, where I promptly burst into tears. It's hard even now to write this, because they have left a permanent mark on my heart. I am literally counting the days where I get to hug them again.
I went back up to my room, cried for a bit, and thought, Nothing will compare to them. But I have to keep moving.
And three days later, I did.
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