Merry Christmas

When I was a kid, I was told that a Christmas gift that you make by yourself is much more valuable than anything that you can buy in a store. I hope that still holds true.

Over the last couple years, I've often thought of keeping a journal or starting a web log. I've read a number of blogs written by expats in Thailand and felt it was a great way of recording and sharing my experiences. However, I never found the motivation to actually sit down and start writing.

Inspiration doesn't necessarily come from one place or another. Quite often it comes from a number of places, seemingly, all at once. For me, I wanted to start a blog, but didn't have the motivation. I was also thinking about Christmas presents for my family, but gift certificates to Amazon.com 4 years in a row is a bit much. At the same time, Nuch and I are considering starting our own family. Somehow each of these factors came together to inspire Letters from Thailand.

My thoughts of starting a family, basically, revolved around the costs and sacrifices I would have to incur, along with questions as to what were the benefits? To start, I looked at my own life through the eyes of my parents who invested 18 years of baby sitting, 4 years of subsidized keg stands and frat parties, and then, at 22 I move to the other side of the world. All that for an Amazon gift card once a year????

Of course, there's much more to it than that, but... there is one thing that I would always hope to get from my kids - the opportunity to share in their lives and experiences. This happens to be the one thing that has been so hard for me to do while living here in Thailand.

So, with that thought in mind, inspiration came me, and I decided to create this blog with the chance to give my parents and family the one gift that I would want from my children - the opportunity to share their life.

Letters from Thailand is the story of my life in Thailand. Hopefully, it is not limited to life's major milestones (job, marriage, children, etc...). My true goal is to focus on the simple moments in life between these 'milestones'. These moments may seem mundane or routine, but they often provide some of life's greatest pleasures, as well as its subtlest joys, its little eurekas, and finally, its ever changing color and flavor - all adding value to life and all worth sharing.

I've worked the last month to create 50 posts, so you'll have an idea of what I have in mind. I plan to continue with at least one a week, but hopefully, I will add more as there's never a shortage of things to write about in Thailand.

I hope you will enjoy it, as much as I have enjoyed living it.

Merry Christmas