The new year brings not only looking back but looking forward to our Sticky Rice writers, and we all look forward in our own unique ways.
Kayla Kawalec, 134 YinD
Every year I pick a word to bring into the new year with me. This isn’t a resolution or a goal, necessarily, just a word that I want to, or think will, play an important part in my year. A friend introduced the practice to me a few years ago and whether it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, placebo effect, fate, or some combination of the three at play, it’s been pretty spot-on.
Last year, the word challenge was looming at the end of 2023 and it proved prescient for all the challenges, big and small, that I grew from last year. In the last few months of 2024, connection started to come up for me. So that’s what I’ll be bringing into 2025, appropriately at a time when I’ll be making many new connections in a new role and striving, as always, to strengthen the ones I am fortunate to have already. I kicked off 2025 by leaning into this mindset, spending time with friends who are like family from the US and with my first Thai host mom. She’s always been a mom to me, but now she’s taking on grandmother duties as well, watching over my cat Popcorn while I gear up for a cross-country move.
Samantha Stolworthy, 135 TESS RPCV
What’s next in 2025 … I’m ETing my service (early terminating). It needs to be spoken of more that there is no shame in doing this because ultimately it is what is best for me. The past year has been an amazing adventure in the Land of Smiles. I made many new friends and checked off so many items on my bucket list. So, what’s next for me? I’m saying a bittersweet goodbye to Thailand and will be heading to South Korea for my next amazing adventure. Peace out Thailand, find me in Korea.
Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
I’m really glad I spent New Year’s with my friend, Kyra. She talked me into making a bingo card for the new one. I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, and at first, I was scared the bingo card would turn into a to-do list for the year. So instead of putting down all the things I know have to happen as I finish out service and figure out what I’m doing next, I put down all the fun things I hope to do. It still took me forever to finish it out, but honestly, I’m very happy with it! It has all the things I hope the New Year brings, dreams and goals alike.
It was also fun thinking of ways to create goals that had something measurable I could see, to know when to mark it as done on my bingo board. I want to spend time with family this year, but I didn’t want to wait until the end of the year and count up all the hours and decide if it … counted. Or something. But if I push a sibling into the lake, it means we were there together, hanging out, and goofing off, and that should certainly count as spending time with family. (And if they don’t read this and know to expect it, then, well, that’s on them 😈)
Some goals, like learning macrame, are ones I’ve been interested in for a while, but never really made time for. I don’t know if I’ll have time for them in 2025, but if it’s the only thing keeping me from a bingo, hopefully I’ll at least be a little more motivated to start working towards them. So I’m definitely happy Kyra and I did this together. And if a little bit of happiness and a little bit of motivation are indicative of how the rest of the year is going to go … I think this next year has lots of good things in store!
Lilly Hromadka, 135 TESS
I gave up making my traditional New Year’s resolutions the first time I moved abroad in 2021. I used to be a “journal daily”, “go to the gym”, “eat healthier” type of girl. I never stuck to them, but every year I would stubbornly reassert these parameters for myself, believing the hype that narrowing the definition of “Healthy and Happy” to such tangible limits.
One of the most freeing realizations I made during my first months in Spain was that part of being healthy was accepting the change in every day, that you don’t need a Daily To-Do List, but instead to lean into the flow of things and find yourself where you are and where you’re happy.
Of course, some people thrive on these kinds of habits, and I would say don’t knock it until you try it. But for me, it was the opposite of healthy. I found myself stressing to make it work, to fit it all in, to hold myself to these standards that weren’t quite made for me. I didn’t recognize it until I woke up one late November morning in a small town in southern Spain, overlooking acres and acres of olive groves, the smell of fresh coffee brewing and the low murmur of my friends in the kitchen making breakfast, stressed out because I forgot to journal the night before. It took me several anxious breaths before I realized how ridiculous I was being.
That year, as I rang in 2022 with my friend Zoya and her closest friends in someone’s apartment, half buried in snow in the capital city of Estonia, I “resolved” to bring only Grace and Awe with me. In Paris the next year, with my childhood best friend and two new ones, I added Gratitude to the mix. 2023 became 2024 back home with my family, dancing to classic rock at a Cajun restaurant, where Balance left the party with me.
Now as I’m typing this, watching my 6th-grade students play soccer in the soft January sun, my resolution reflects a very important skill to have in rural Thailand. Patience joined me this year, after a quiet night drinking beer and eating Isaan food on the roadside with my host cousin and some of her teacher friends. I’ve found it a near-constant mantra in my time here so far and decided I needed to make it official. These little words are much more attainable goals, a mindset shift in all the smallest moments. They radiate to the core of who I am, and who I aim to become.
I don’t know what this year will bring, but I plan to enjoy it every step of the way. I’m in no rush.
K.D. Norris, 135 TESS
My wife and life partner, TJ, will tell you I am all about task lists: What to do today, what to do this week, what to do this year. Who’d guessed that? Uh?
Anyway, What the New Year Brings? For me, I have to admit, that it is starting to look at what might be next for the two of us; which road we will take when we come to the next “two roads diverged in a yellow wood”, as Frost wrote in his classic poem.
The thought of what will happen to us in early 2026, a year or so from now, starts in my mind ranging from simply returning to America and, there, trying to make it a better place for ALL Amerians, with my vote, with my voice, with my time and/or money. As one of my favorite bands, Jars of Clay, sings “Love is the protest!”
But then maybe we don’t move back to the U.S., at least not for a while. We’ve talked about that option. There are plenty of places to explore in this big, beautiful world. (Don’t tell TJ, but I’m thinking about Northern Europe – she’s thinking we are going to freeze our butts off for a while after Thailand?) Maybe the Azores – she’d love that; we visited it 15 years ago and fell in love with the place. Who knows?
Little early to be thinking about COS and 2026, I know. But not too early to think about the rest of our lives.
Sticky Rice 
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