Dear Heather,

Today is January 26, 2009. Welcome to Peace Corps! This is your first official day! Today is staging/training in San Francisco and you will arrive to Thailand on January 29. You have a big adventure ahead of you so get ready!

Here's a peak at exactly one year from today, January 26, 2010. While you drink your morning coffee you will hear loud music playing down the street, announcements from a moving pick-up truck, dogs barking, and the cows next door rustling through the grass as they head to the fields. On this particular day, you will hear your "best friend" in the village (Grandma Next Door) yelling at her grandsons to go to school. Soon you will realize that the boys are hiding behind your house and Grandma is literally chasing them around your house yelling in Laos. This will go on for about 30 minutes and you will continue to drink your coffee and peer out your windows as you watch the boys race by giggling and Grandma tagging behind, visibly annoyed. You will be amused, but surprisingly, not that confused. On some level, it's just another morning in the village.

In the afternoon, you will roll into the office around 1:30pm and leave before 3:30pm. You will share a bag of Jolly Ranchers from America with your co-workers. You already know that Thai people don't like Starbursts because they are too sour, but they enjoy Jolly Ranchers - except the watermelon ones because they are too sour as well! You will sit at your desk, coloring big bubble letters that spell "The Zoo" along with trees and zoo animals for pre-school the next day. You will actually spend a solid 30 minutes coloring a picture with a monkey and when you finish, there will be an odd sense of pride, thinking it's a fine looking monkey. When you finish your "work" you will just head on home at your leisure, greeting people as you pass.

And then you will take a late afternoon bike ride into the main town. You will dodge and weave around cows on the road like a pro. You will know the rules about how to pass a cow heading towards you versus coming up behind it. And as you bike along, rice farmers in the field will stop what they are doing and cry out and wave at you with a smile "Hello!" or "Kaimook!" (your Thai nickname - Pearl).

And when you get home, Grandma will be waiting for you. She will hoot and holler about the distance you biked and you will smile. You will say a few words in Laos that she taught you and she will hoot and holler some more.

So today, as you look forward to your upcoming first year in Thailand, take comfort that despite the many ups and downs you will encounter, exactly one year from today, you will be happy and content. You will have a sense of calm and strange confidence about you that is nearly indescribable except for the Thai phrase "Sabaii sabaii." There is no English equivalent except a combination of happy, content, comfortable, and chill. You will be sabaii sabaii.