The getting of wisdom...

Just over a month ago, I dropped from the skies into Mascot, marching straight out to smell the beautiful Sydney air, gorging myself on bacon and banana smoothie and started settling back into life ‘in the hood’. Now having caught up with old friends, handed in assignments and joined Facebook (ugh ugh!) , I am generally enjoying a period of general ‘floating’, with lots of time to reflect back on my life in the big city...

Expecting it to be easy, I set off in November with romantic dreams of changing the world; with time left over to knit, cook like Nigella, read Anna Karenina, exercise and take artistic polaroid photos.

Realistically, as I soon found out, I was thoroughly unprepared for thwack of culture shock.
Confronted by an environment of people with radically different value sets, unique concepts of the world and a different language which I certainly did not speak (despite my efforts ;), I fell to comforting myself with banana pancakes and the company of fellow foreigners.

In the months following though, and thanks to the team I was lucky enough to learn alongside, I gradually aqquired a deep respect for the complexity and possibility of 'the land of Smiles'; agreeing with Paul Keating that leadership is more of a conversation than a determined course of action...

My crazy enthusiasm was tempered steadily, as I learnt at the coalface about the complexities of positive social impact. Chatting with aspirational students, Speaking to Ashoka representatives about the Thai entreprenuer, taking a 'sustainable boat tour' with school children up the Chao Praya soon humbled my arrogance to 'solve' and brought home to me how much more I have yet to learn...

And of course it wasn't all big life lessons and profundity :) I dearly miss dancing up a storm at Route 66, gin soaked conversations about settling into BKK, learning Thai produce with Weaw's Mum, the free wireless at Bug and Bee, THAT foamy night at Pattaya, belting out Tata Young on the way to Krue-pruek-sah, our house filled with Thai Tunisian/German, Kenyan, Dutch and half Swiss peeps... even those feral dogs! Khoop khun maak kha; Rina, Pui, Rob, Weaw, Tetu, Diana, Daniel, Rob, Xavier, Jesse, Miw, Golf, Knot and Alex.

I have an inkling I might be back soon, dee gua ;)

Love Lucy