Returning to a home country is very hard once you live in another country for a couple of years. I had the opportunity to go back home and experience that. Coming from Thailand back to America is a different change.

The first thing I noticed when I left the airport was that the whole place was cooler than the tropics. I just felt a cool breeze sweep through the parking lot and once I felt that I knew I was home in Minnesota. The weather is the nice part about coming back home, but coming back home isn’t always super easy to adjust to.

For one thing, when I get in the car, the driver’s seat is on the other side and you drive on the other side of the road. It takes a couple of minutes to realize that the roads are less crazy and there are not any motorbikes driving around like in Thailand. Another thing that I noticed is that I didn’t see any accidents happen when I was back in America. In Thailand I would see cars flipped in the ditch and motorbikes getting smashed by drunk drivers. I have seen a couple motorbike crashes that are very scary and bloody with people down in canals or between intersections.

The cars in Thailand are all simple automobiles that will get a Thai family from one place to another. They are not nice and not fancy but just simple cars. In America everyone wants to have super nice cars with a cool looking paint job and to have loud music bursting through the open windows. One of the biggest changes is that there are not any driving rules in Thailand. The speed limits are more just like guidelines and I don’t see them that often around on the big streets.

Everything in America is big. For instance, the food servings, the cars, the people, and the houses are all so much bigger than in Thailand. In Thailand, the large of anything is usually a small or medium in America.

When we were driving through the neighborhood, I noticed that none of the houses had a wall and a gate around them. They just had a driveway with a sidewalk going up to the house and a garage. In Thailand we have a wall around our house and a gate that you open to pull your car into or to get in. The thing about the cars is that we don’t have a garage to put them in so we just leave them in the street. I walked up to the house that I was going to be staying in and it was massive. The house was two or three stories with a basement. In Thailand they don’t have basements and are not three stories.

I think one of the main differences between Thailand and my home is that there is a lot more poverty in Thailand than in the states. You walk around to markets at night and you see many beggars on the streets begging for money. In America, most people want the highest jobs and want to get a lot of money and be rich and everything is about them and money. Well in Thailand there aren’t many jobs like that. Most jobs are manual laborers who work from sun up to sun down every day just building what their companies tell them to make. They build up little tin shacks to stay in while they are making a huge house for some rich people. I will ride by these types of houses on the way to school and not realize that a whole family is in a tiny tin shack and probably really cold during the night, while I have a ton of warm blankets and sleeping in a nice soft bed. I also have food every day for three meals a day.

Recently we had a few girls from a school up by the border of Burma come and stay with us. The way they live compared to us Americans is unbelievable. They only get two meals a day and those two meals consist of rice and fish paste. When we go to America most people just go to fast food restaurants and eat a burger with fries and a soda. The girls were around the age of 15-17 and they worked for the whole day on Saturday. Most 15-17 year olds in America are out partying and messing around and making money.

My point is that some people, including me, sometimes forget those who are not as fortunate as us. We get so stuck up about what is new and how much money we get. America is all about having what is new and what looks the best, but Thailand is about helping others out. They help each other out and they are always happy. I have lived here for 6 years and when I need help Thai people will always be very happy to help. That is the biggest difference between Thailand and America. I challenge you to try and see which side you are on, selfish or selfless.