{"id":405,"date":"2018-09-19T13:27:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T13:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeyvia.com\/?p=405"},"modified":"2018-09-19T13:27:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T13:27:43","slug":"panamerican-interlude-a-letter-to-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/?p=405","title":{"rendered":"PanAmerican – Interlude – A Letter to Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

In order to get Amp’s Canadian visa, we had to compile an ungodly amount of information about our bank accounts, recent travels, our relationship (we basically printed the entire Facebook Friendship page with our shared pictures and trips), and had to write a letter formally requesting she be allowed to pass through Canada on the motorcycle trip. That letter was pretty damn dry — I included the phrases “vouch for her character”, “financial solvency”, and “earnestly hopeful”. I somehow doubted that the Canadian embassy staff member would be kind after reading something that boring, so I also wrote the following…<\/em><\/p>\n

Appendix B<\/h1>\n

The Much More Interesting Story of How Christian and Amp Met<\/h1>\n

The attached letter is, necessarily, almost criminally boring. I hope you\u2019ll find this more entertaining.<\/p>\n

When Amp and I met, we were both working for Wall Street English, an English school targeting university students and young professionals. Amp was the trainer for the front desk service staff, the \u201cService Officers\u201d (officers? Really?), while I was a teacher in the Ladphrao center. I was interested in becoming a service manager and as part of the candidate training all of us who were qualified had to go through training for service officers \u2013 led by Amp.<\/p>\n

Sparks flew quickly between us, but definitely the wrong kind. I was too American, she says, though I think she just didn\u2019t appreciate my eagerness and ability to recall vast amounts of information \u2013 it didn\u2019t fit with the Socratic way she tried to teach when I had read the answers from the manual they gave us. For me, I dismissed her after I tried to start up a friendly conversation as we all went to lunch and she issued a curt \u201cit\u2019s none of your business\u201d to me. Granted, I probably shouldn\u2019t have asked my trainer why she had chosen to remain a virgin till 25, but I was young and curious. And, honestly, a bit blind and na\u00efve. (And she says obnoxious, but really? Let\u2019s stick to young and curious. It\u2019s kinder. For the kidner.)<\/p>\n

If it weren\u2019t for us going through a training together a few weeks later, I doubt we would have ever said more than a few words to each other at a time. We both went in for management training, and the cool animosity continued. But Amp, if you ever meet her, has a certain amount of gravity about her, a confidence that I found really attractive, even if annoying \u2013 the boss asked us each to come up with an \u2018icebreaker\u2019 game, and Amp flat out refused to join the one I\u2019d developed. She wasn\u2019t a joiner, but somehow she wasn\u2019t bothered by not joining teams. She seemed to have no need of others\u2019 approval. I couldn\u2019t relate, but I did envy that.<\/p>\n

Mid-week I found out she really, really liked brownies from a nearby restaurant, so I bought a pan for the whole class, knowing that there were too many and I could give her extra. The ice broke just a bit. Just barely. At the end of the week we all went for dinner. She and I ended up seated across from one another, and talked throughout the evening. It turned out she was really interesting, a kind of Bangkok hipster, but with less pretention. She liked indie movies and knew cool spots to hang out in the city. It also turned out that she absolutely refused to eat anything green (no vegetables!) and wouldn\u2019t drink any alcohol. But I got her to try a little of each before we all parted ways.<\/p>\n

Because I was trying to show leadership, I set up a dinner with the other trainees about a week after that, and that\u2019s when I found out more about Amp\u2019s heart condition. She\u2019d been born with a congenital hole in her heart, only discovering it because of a smart x-ray tech when she got her physical for her Australian visa. But more intriguing, she had me feel her heartbeat, which was pumping out 120 beats per minute while resting, and we had an oddly intimate moment with my hand on her breastbone, trying my best to be conservative in my placement. She swears it was unintentional.<\/p>\n

Bangkok was flooding, and none of us knew one day to the next whether we would be working. It was unsettling, but kind of cool. All the trainees went to a party at one trainee\u2019s apartment, and we had to clamber over a four-foot sandbag barrier to get into the parking lot. Amp doesn\u2019t drink, but the party atmosphere had us all more relaxed. She had this habit of pulling her shoulders up (stress from knowing about the heart surgery, I think) and I wanted to see if I could relax the muscles there, so for two hours during the party we sat on the living room floor, me just behind her, and I massaged her neck and shoulders. At the end of the night we decided to meet up for a movie the next day, since neither of us was working with the floods around our areas. (Now, again, I should note here that Amp swears that I actually invited myself along to a movie she was already going to see. That doesn\u2019t fit with what I remember, so we\u2019ve agreed to disagree.)<\/p>\n

I arrived early the next day at CentralWorld for our semi-date-like-thing, and chilled at a Starbucks behind a bookshop to write a letter home. It turns out she loved the idea of me loving coffee, books and handwritten letters, but I wouldn\u2019t know that for months. She was a bit recalcitrant when she arrived, a bit closed off. We had coffee and sat on a fantastic leather couch (we later decided we would need one for our house someday, but again, that wasn\u2019t till much, much later), chatted a bit, went up to look at movie times. The next one we both wanted to see was Melancholia in a few hours, so we wandered the mall and chatted. I don\u2019t remember much about what we said, but I remember visiting a few furniture shops and comparing favorites, playing with Lego at the Toys\u2019R\u2019Us, and me pretending I was going to toss her over the railing from a few floors up, which caused her to grab me really tight. (Again, a little difference here \u2013 I think this was playful and fun, but she now claims that she didn\u2019t enjoy it, even though I think she really did enjoy somebody breaking through her shell and not being thrown off by her often-cool exterior. Agree to disagree.) In the movie she started crying heavily. I didn\u2019t know what to do, so I put my arm around her. (Not like a first-date let-me-see-if-I-can-do-this type move, but more of a what-the-hell-do-I-do-with-this-crying-woman gesture. It turns out that she cries during nearly every movie she ever watches. Really, even the comedies. Every movie.) Anyway, we had dinner after, and stayed till the mall closed around us. I offered my arm \u2013 she took it, and said, \u201cI can see why people like this.\u201d So\u00a0 small, but I felt like a million bucks.<\/p>\n

(I should put in a little side note, here. Amp was a virgin, but more than that, on our first date she told me that she had never even kissed one of her boyfriends (or girlfriends- she\u2019s bi), or held hands, and, furthermore, that if we dated, I shouldn\u2019t expect to see her more than about once a week. I said we\u2019d see how it went. She was okay with that.)<\/p>\n

Our next date was two days later, another movie, this time at her favorite theater, a little tiny complex in RCA. Not working for a few days was great \u2013 we showed up early and spent the day. We talked at Starbucks, we talked at the little caf\u00e9 in the cinema lobby over ice cream, and when we sat down for the movie I put my arm around her and she curled right up to me. \u201cThis feels really natural.\u201d It did. Afterward we started talking about places open late, and went to a British pub, The Black Swan. I put my arm around her again, and once, when her eyes were closed for a story I was telling, I kissed her. Then we kissed again. And again. The pub shut down at midnight, so we went to an all-night breakfast restaurant, and kissed some more. We were both exhausted, but we wanted to stay. At 3 a.m., after I\u2019d started to nod off during our conversations, we decided to go. When I put her in the cab and said goodbye, she kissed me one more time, saying \u201c17!\u201d, which was apparently how many times we\u2019d kissed. And how many times she had ever been kissed, in her whole life.<\/p>\n

Again, two more days and we were out at the movies. This time was after work \u2013 the company couldn\u2019t figure out where the floods were going to be, so they opened and closed school centers pretty much at random \u2013 so we met up at a mainstream Cineplex in my area. We sat on a couch in the back of the theater and kissed through the whole movie (no waste, the movie was \u201cIn Time\u201d with Justin Timberlake), and kept exploring. She was incredibly passionate. At the end of the movie, though, it was too late to go anywhere. I wanted her to come home with me, she wasn\u2019t sure if she should. She did, but only once I promised we wouldn\u2019t do anything new. That was tough, but fun, that night. Less fun, she left at four a.m.<\/p>\n

It took some time before she would spend the night. We weren\u2019t going to sleep together (though eventually she relaxed on that \u2013 thank goodness!), but even so, I wanted to spend the whole night together. Every second day we met up for a couple weeks, playing favorite YouTube clips for each other (she likes \u201cHappy Tree Friends\u201d, which I still find a bit odd) and sharing stories and, of course, making out.<\/p>\n

A couple weeks later she went to the hospital for exploratory surgery. I bought flowers after work and showed up, but she wouldn\u2019t let me in. I stood outside with the flowers and, just for just a couple of minutes, let myself cry. I was worried, and didn\u2019t feel like I could do anything. Yes, it was too soon in our relationship, but I really needed to be with her, to know she was okay. Instead I got our friends to write her get-well postcards, and dropped off a stack with flowers at her apartment after she got out.<\/p>\n

We went away a couple weeks later by bus, when Bangkok was officially shutdown for the floods and all of our friends were fleeing for the beaches. On the way south we talked about dating other people, talked about not dating other people, talked about being past that. On the way south we made out furiously, and it was a lot of fun, even though we had to be really discrete so our friends in the next bench couldn\u2019t see. We were exhausted when we arrived.<\/p>\n

We stayed together, finally, really slept together in Krabi. But beyond the usual first-bloom romance, there was an edge \u2013 Amp told me how serious her heart condition really was, that elevating her heartrate could cause a heart attack, that the doctor gave her six months to live without surgery. I remember feeling the shock of it, and putting aside any of my questions about the relationship, and deciding my job right then was just to make sure she made it through her surgery okay, no matter what.<\/p>\n

The rest of the story, in overview\u2026<\/h2>\n

In January I was spending my days as a new manager and my nights on the couch in her surgery room. She\u2019d come through well, but I couldn\u2019t shake the image of her coming out of surgery so tiny and frail, the feeling of absolute impotence while she was being operated on. I wanted to protect her, but there was nothing to be done, so I came and stayed while she slept. Something small, all I could do.<\/p>\n

She got out quickly, was soon able to walk around again like normal, and travel again. We spent the next months working furiously at our jobs \u2013 turns out I wasn\u2019t very good at being a manager \u2013 and taking whatever time we could to travel around Bangkok. We spent a weekend at Amphawa, a beautiful example of older Thai culture with canals instead of streets, we spent a weekend at a six-star resort because of an amazing voucher, we spent a weekend away at Ayuthaya, the ancient town, and a weekend at Lopburi, the monkey town\u2026 you get the idea.<\/p>\n

It was far from perfect. I cooked dinner on Valentine\u2019s Day, a pasta cream sauce with shrimp (Amp\u2019s favourite) and onions (minced super, super finely) only to have her spend 45 minutes picking out all the little onions (it was not only green, but all vegetables, that she refused to eat). She was upset when I had lunch with a female coworker, when I was flirtatious with women in general. Some of that was a clash of cultures; most of it was me not really knowing proper boundaries. (Remember the bit about naivete at the beginning? We\u2019ll just go with that here again. It\u2019s kind.)<\/p>\n

And I was stressed. My job wasn\u2019t going well for the first few months, and when I started to learn how to do better, the center air conditioning broke and our students refused to study. I kept getting more and more behind, and my boss asked me to step down, to go back to being a teacher in another center and quit management. I couldn\u2019t do it, so I quit.<\/p>\n

Amp and I already had a trip planned to Chongqing, China, and we went anyway \u2013 at least this way I didn\u2019t need to take paid time off. It was a great trip, and I was even more excited because I\u2019d decided to work in Beijing for the next year. Amp was going to take advantage of her Australian visa then come join me.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Rather, she did, but not permanently. After a couple of difficult months apart, she flew from Sydney to Beijing for Christmas, and we spent an amazing month together. We fought, as we always have, but we traveled and had fun and it was great coming back to the apartment and coming home to her. But then she left, and we hoped she could come out in a few months and find work in Beijing so we could be together. Without a native English-speaker\u2019s passport, though, teaching was essentially off the table. Other jobs would be even tougher to get. We fought often over the next few months, fighting for what we both wanted, but always making it through. In June she came out again, and again it was a great month. July and August were tougher, and when we decided that we couldn\u2019t be together in Beijing, we decided to move back to Thailand together at the end of my contract.<\/p>\n

Meeting up again in October was amazing, knowing we actually had a chance to be together long term. We were both starting to learn more about the relationship and heal from some of the rough patches of the previous months. I\u2019d read a book by the Friels on relationships, and we started to apply some of the principles. I began to understand where I\u2019d overstepped the boundaries of a respectful relationship with my female friendships, and we began to move past some of our arguments. It\u2019s been a slow process, but it began that fall.<\/p>\n

Our early days in Chiang Mai have a sort of Polaroid gloss. We spent the first week looking for an apartment, riding around with the two of us on a little rented scooter stopping methodically into search and every apartment building we saw. When we finally saw our current apartment, we were exhausted at the end of a long day, and the apartment was catching the last rays of sun setting behind Doi Suthep with a gigantic picture window. We\u2019d found our home.<\/p>\n

Every day I worked trying to develop online income and Amp applied for local jobs, but every night we explored the city. We went to markets, karaoke, bowling and cheap restaurants. By December we both had work, though it wasn\u2019t too lucrative, and we were making it. I felt like we were in a movie about the early days of success for some company founders. (Sometimes I still feel that way.)<\/p>\n

In January I flew my parents out for a Thailand vacation, something Amp and I had been planning for months with money I pulled from my old retirement account. It was their first time to meet, but they knew a lot about each other. We traveled to southern Thailand, back to Amphawa, up to northern Thailand and over to Cambodia. My parents were in awe of everything, and quickly adopted Amp as a daughter.<\/p>\n

I bought a motorcycle at the end of our vacation, when we were in Bangkok. The engine froze while we were in traffic, and Amp decided she never wanted to ride together again. I was devastated. But over the next few months she was a little more open to short rides, and we travelled slowly and carefully to a few new places, driving on top of Doi Suthep and to the forests near Chiang Dao. She began to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

The next few months we worked hard. In May I went on a motorcycle trip with two good friends, Lee Baker and Johan Pellsater, and when I came back I wanted to ride more. Amp and I spent every weekend of June on a motorcycle visiting resorts around the north. In July I had to return to Colorado for a funeral and a wedding, but in August we started up the traveling again. And we kept it up in September and October \u2013 every week when we were in Chiang Mai, we tried to go visit a new place. Sometimes our friends came with us, sometimes it was just the two of us, sometimes it was one night and sometimes it was four; it was always what we needed. We continued to get closer, to build memories.<\/p>\n

In November we flew to the US to spend Thanksgiving and the rest of the holidays with my family. It was the first time I\u2019d ever introduced a girlfriend to my extended family, but it went well; aunts, uncles and cousins universally agreed she was a keeper. Since we\u2019ve returned home I think she keeps in closer touch with my family than I do, which to be honest is great, since my communication gaps always led to vague fears that I\u2019d experienced some catastrophe.<\/p>\n

We keep up our frequent travels now, and want to continue. This summer is the final countdown to the motorcycle trip we\u2019ve been planning, and we\u2019re both really excited about the days of riding through forests and mountains and the nights spent in our tent. We\u2019re excited about making even more memories that we\u2019ll keep together forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In order to get Amp’s Canadian visa, we had to compile an ungodly amount of information about our bank accounts, recent travels, our relationship (we basically printed the entire Facebook Friendship page with our shared pictures and trips), and had to write a letter formally requesting she be allowed to pass through Canada on the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “PanAmerican – Interlude – A Letter to Canada”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406,"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyvia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}