as most of you know, we are home! and have been for quite some time.. i guess ill just update a little bit of our last week in Thailand since the last blog was only up until the end of april. we spent our last week living in Kris and silk's house with them. most of the week was preparing to come home. we taught at the psychiatric hospital and compassion international for the last time. both programs had mini goodbye parties for us.
On Sunday the 5th of May we left our beloved little town of Ubon, and headed to the Giant city of Bangkok where we spent our last 2 days. Kris and silk came along with us and we spent one last afternoon with our REACH team friends and the rest of our time hanging out with kris and silk. one of the nights we went to Silk's parents house and had dinner with them. it was nice to be able to say our final goodbyes to the friends we made in Bangkok when we first arrived to Thailand. On Tuesday, May 7 at around 11:55 pm we began our journey home. our first flight was about 11 hours long and i slept through most of it surprisingly! Karla was awake for most of it i think. when Vicky gave us our itinerary, i read it wrong and thought that we had a 16 hour layover in Germany! both of us were dreading it, and just wanted to be home. i looked at our boarding passes in Germany and it ended up that we only have 5 hours to waste, not 16! that alone was a huge blessing to us. our second flight seemed super long to me. i was just ready to be home! finally on may 8th sometime in the afternoon, we arrived to Philly and were reunited with our families.
we were home for about 4 weeks before debrief, because we were waiting for the spain team to come home. i would say those weeks were somewhat of an emotional roller coaster full of being excited to be home and see old friends and family, to being extremely sad about being home and missing thailand and our new families there. some days were better than others. i think the best way i can describe it is saying that i feel like i haven't been in "reality" for the past 8(ish) months and now I'm back in reality and don't know how to be sometimes. since we have been home, i think i can speak for both of us in saying that were now learning about the new "me" because were not the same Bekah and Karla we were when we left.
on June 9 we reunited with the rest of the step teams for debrief. it was a relaxing and helpful week to be able to decompress everything we were feeling together and also learn how the others were handling their time at home (at least the colombia team) and try to help prepare the spain team for some things they would be experiencing when they got home. Over all the week was great.
Now we are both doing our best to find our place at home and continue to readjust. thank you all so much for all of your prayers and support and reading every week. sorry again for the slacking! this is the last blog post for this trip. thanks again :)
God bless you all
