Email 0001:
Subject: Oh you.

This email is about you. You who sent me such lovely letters relaying beautifully mundane details of yourselves. You who make for two of the most wonderful hours of my trip while I sat reading your thoughts and holiday wishes straight upon receiving my kind mother's package (I swear that I am getting more immoderate every day). I seriously contemplated replying to every one of you by hand, but then I picked up my all too empty book bag and realized that I should start chipping away at my busywork list and after that I got slightly distracted by a whole weekend of cooking and firecrackers and general merrymaking and by now I've come to my senses enough to realize that in-kind reflections are out of the question. Content yourselves to know that I am writing this to you in my typical Luddite fashion, away from the computer, to be copied into an email later.

Here begins my slightly personalized alternative mass response. Feel free to ignore as much of it as you like. To all of you who felt too insignificant to write but were coerced into doing so anyway, thank you. Your musings were in no way inadequate for I don't know what girl studying in Thailand wouldn't want to hear about her father putting up the Christmas lights or about the kids chasing turkeys at Tamarack nature center. To those who sent pictures and drawings, my eyes thank you. I am currently looking for a non-intrusive way to plaster them to my bedroom wall. To the girl who inadvertently sent me one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, your letter was a delicious validation of an identity that I have been rather successful at forgetting lately. Alex dear, you are a charmingly strange brother. Aunt Doreen I hope that your garage situation clears itself up soon, but in the meantime enjoy your fortunate opportunity to experience a life free from materialism. Colleen I demand a seat next to you at the next Bauer dinner. Girls who are going to Sweden please wait for me because I want to bake bread and go WOOFFing with you. Theresa Dirksen don't think that I don't know who you are. Self-depreciating comments will not excuse your attitude toward global warming. Everyone please write to Theresa and tell her that impatients are not the only biota that will have to adapt to this crazy fast pace of human induced climate change. And yes people in China still have not mastered the concepts of lines, which is how I got closed in the subway doors in Shanghai. Congrats to Tim Richter on graduating and Katie on your marriage (will someone please tell me ahead of time next time one of my cousins decides to get married?!). Grandpa will you cook me up some of that stew that Grandma wrote about when I return? Roxann Vistocci you bad ass landing yourself that Ozarks job. I'm coming to visit at some point and if that doesn't happen I expect regular updates on Missouri amphibian populations. Which reminds me, that I'm taking vertebrate biology next semester for anyone who cares! I'm afraid I may have dropped your name to Gene Bakko Allison dear. Ellen the Neighbor, do continue giving our yuppie dog ear scratches for me. Much thanks to everyone for the Christmas and birthday cards and for your time and love.
see you in two all-too-terribly-short months,
k.

Email 0002:
Subject: sans topic paragraph

I will try not to rub it in that while all of you are stressing yourselves out over finals and holiday antics, I am sitting on a beach on the Gulf of Thailand. Don't worry, my stress will come tomorrow when I discover that I need to write a paper using the incredibly outdated Chiang Mai library collection (think Dewey decimal) and databases in Thai (which in case no one noticed uses a completely non-Roman alphabet).

Last night the tide went out and I walked along the sand to take stalk of all of the crabby little crabs that were coming out to feed. Later my friends and I discovered firsthand the joys of bio luminescence. Wiki that one if you don't know it. Also please will everyone do me a favor and watch a Bill Nye or two so that you don't find yourself like my poor classmates with no knowledge of the moon and gravity?

Now for a bit of mulling. You will remember perhaps a certain email I sent that was a touch upset with all of the apathetic people of the world. No one is off the hook yet. Just yesterday I read an article in the Bangkok Post about the new UN secretary general's visit to Thailand before he heads to Bali for can anyone tell me what? It profiled his thoughts on the need for democracy in Burma but said nothing of the millions that Thailand is funnelling to the Burmese regime in the form of payments for hydroelectricity from Burma's new terribly irresponsible (both socially and environmentally) dams.

But it's ok because everything in Thailand is either sanuk or arroy: fun or delicious. This of course makes it initially easy to integrate into a Thai family setting. We're either watching cartoons or eating fresh fruit. And I have yet to actually figure out what makes Thailand tick, but I'm working on it folks and I'll let you know as soon as I find out. I have a few hypotheses.

One of these has to do with what another foreigner said about Thailand being a biologically abundant place. In November I got urge for going when all the rice was turning brown and headed north to a small village near the town of Phrao. My new friends there took me on a tour in the back of a small pickup truck and everywhere we stopped there was something growing. Often you could eat it. At one farm that we visited, I thought that the owner was clearing away some shrubbery in order to get to the cabbage patch but no, she broke off a few shoots and declared that she wanted me to take some sugar cane home.

And you have to think that when food literally grows on trees and sugar appears by the meter-- this sort of world might breed these sorts of people. It's the sort of world where people don't wear short sleeves unless the temperature gets above 80 degrees Fahrenheit and where they ride their motorcycles to their friends' house two blocks away.

And it only makes sense that someone who comes from the sort of world where people work like mad (or at least they did before the days of Monsanto) during the only three months of the year which are warm enough to grow a small handful of crops and where we placate this crazy work ethic by skiing uphill in the off months-- it only makes sense that a girl from this kind of world would feel a little out of place when she transfers to a world of daily naps and mangoes a few steps outside every door.

your favorite nomad,