While the PCVs of Group 133 and 134 volunteers are soon to bid adieu to this great country that has given as much or more than it has received from us, the Group 135 members also have reason to send letters of love as we close this month of Valentine’s Day, of love for all things. Here are some Sticky Rice writers sharing what is in their hearts and minds during the month of love!
Emily Hoffmeister, 135 YinD
Bright green canopy
fertile land, budding life grows
a grain to a feast
Bianca Palese, 134 TESS
Dear Thailand,
When I think of you, I think of a setting sun over miles of endless rice fields to the score of Asian koel birds singing their farewells to the day. The sun hangs on the horizon like a neon orange sticker God delicately placed against the purple-pink backdrop. Never again will I be in my early twenties watching the sky fade to black from the backseat of my host family’s rumbling pickup truck. Thank you for the privilege you’ve given me; to yearn for my own memories.
In two weeks from now, I will be a returned Peace Corps Volunteer. I’ll tell everyone about you in New York, I promise. I’ll tell them about the dusty road I walked to and from school on, some nights with my third-grade student Fluke, and how we’d go back and forth quizzing each other on how to spell various words. I’ll tell them about the stars I sat under with my host sisters while listening to P’Gee sing karaoke enchantingly and drinking beer funded P’Oi’s ridiculous lottery luck. I’ll describe the painstaking heat of the summers that drove the teachers and me to play cards all day in the singular air-conditioned room at our school. I don’t think people will believe me when I tell them about the foods I’ve tried here; the ant eggs, iguana, blood soup, and more. Most of all I’m sure I’ll talk about my counterparts Jang and Mild. I love Thailand because I love them. Every ounce of joy I’ve felt in this country is thanks to their generosity, understanding, and empathetic support. The last two years haven’t been easy for me but it would have been impossible if the universe hadn’t placed us together.
Peace Corps service is marketed as “the toughest job you’ll ever love” and that statement is as true as the earth is round. Thank you Thailand for changing my life and enriching my existence. I love you.
Kiera Hurley, 135 YinD
Dear Thailand,
My love for you is new but nonetheless deep. It has not been an immediate head over heels obsession but rather a slow burn. I love you for your beauty, your kindness, and your humor. You make life feel simple and remind me to appreciate the little things.
Thailand, you have shown me a new way of loving. A wholesome love where I pick fruit from my neighbors trees, I lounge for hours with my family and our seven cats, and I savor the sounds of birds chirping in the morning. A kind, generous love that gives with no expectation of return. A joyous love that smiles as I bike past, waves at the market, and hugs in embrace.
You have some rough edges and have challenged me in different ways, making me question my love at times. But as so often is the case, it is through the dark times that make the good times that much brighter. I have learned to love every part of you in some way and will carry this love with me for the rest of my life. Thailand, you are amazing, thank you for allowing me to love and be loved by you. Xoxoxoxo
K.D. Norris, 135 TESS
As I round the halfway point in my journey of discovery, both of the country of Thailand and of myself, I ponder what I will remember when TJ and I return to our old world and old ways of living.
Will I remember the beaches of Ao Nang and Phuket, the skyscrapers and rooftop views of Bangkok, the indelible tastes of real Thai food that will forever have American Thai restaurants but a hint of the past?
I think not. I think I will remember the people I shared these years with. First my lovely wife and life-long traveling companion, and also the other volunteers I have established relationships with that I only hope will endure. But, I hope, I will always remember the people I leave behind: the Bangkok staff, smiling professionals one and all, and my language teachers – most indelabily our remote language tutor, ajahn Nopparat, whose “that’s not right” face on the computer screen will haunt/delight my future dreams.
Mostly, though, I will remember the people at our site in The South. The kruu I worked with at my school, the community members who welcomed the strangers in a strange land, and – of course – the students, especially the dĕk lĕk
who hugged me and teased me and challenged me and showed me why every hardship paled in comparison to the joys of teaching in Thailand.
Kayla Kawalec, 134 YinD
This is going to sound corny as all get out, but the thing I love the most about Thailand is how much they love. Earnestly, unapologetically, whole-heartedly, they love. They love without the weight of political correctness, or “doing it wrong”, or expectation of reciprocity. But that kind of love makes you want to reciprocate it even more.
Valentine’s Day is a great example of the Thai way of loving. I don’t know when or why or how Thailand adopted Valentine’s Day. Personally, I take a very Western, cynical view that Valentine’s Day originated under the auspices of the capitalist consumer calendar, but in Thailand, those words mean utterly nothing. All my students care about is that Valentine’s Day is the day of love and hearts and candy and stickers. Lots of stickers. I’ve spent four Valentine’s Days in Thailand now and can confirm that there’s no love like the love of a Thai child on Valentine’s Day. They fill my shirt with stickers, race to put little candies in my hand, one girl took a bracelet off her own wrist to put onto mine. I always have stickers of my own to distribute, candy some years, but receiving is more of an after-thought for my students. They can’t get enough of the giving and it’s contagious.
Cloé Fortier-King, 134 YinD
A love letter to community in Thailand:
Community is the driving force of the world. Lines are drawn in the sand, alliances are formed, and wars are waged in the name of discerning “us” from “them”. Questions of Who belongs? Who understands? Who has a say? underpin all our social interactions, from middle school lunch table politics to presidential debates. In turn, the desire to belong to a community is a driving force of individuals. We never grow out of needing community, and this need drives us to join book clubs, sports teams, Facebook groups, and, yes, even the Peace Corps.
A week after my 21st birthday, I packed up my life and moved across the world to serve in Peace Corps Thailand as part of the first cohort returning to service following the COVID-19 pandemic. This drastic change reset each and every one of my habits and uprooted my prior understanding of myself. I began to collaborate with and grow alongside people from across the US, each independently qualified in a variety of fields, each having followed a distinct path to the Peace Corps, and each arriving in Thailand ready to share their passions and energy while absorbing the rich cultural buffet offered in the Land of Smiles. The companionship I’ve found in my fellow volunteers defies description. I owe so much of my success during service to the brilliant, loving, charismatic, and energetic people serving alongside me. And speaking of people serving alongside me, I owe immense thanks to my work counterparts and the interconnected network of Thai people at my site. But this is a love letter to the community – in all its forms. I want to dig deeper; to give you a glimpse into a community I never anticipated finding, one that has little to do with my work as a volunteer.
My site is located in Northern Thailand, relatively close to Chiang Mai, and as I began to explore beyond the borders of my site, I had the good fortune to stumble upon the Chiang Mai queer community. This blend of local and international people, travelers and ex-pats alike, ranging in age and identity, gather to hear local DJs, watch movies, listen to vinyl, read slam poetry, perform drag, sing karaoke, hike, garden, and more with an open-heartedness I’ve rarely witnessed elsewhere. A favorite gathering palace is Sapphic Riot, a local queer bar with cozy warm lighting, walls lined with empowering phrases, and craft cocktails made with Thai spirits. Even living outside the city, I’ve met countless new people here, attended events scattered in and around the city, and been present to the extent that I consider myself part of the community, too. It has been an indescribable gift.
Membership in the queer community has been more and more important to me as I age. I spent much of my life feeling disconnected from my heterosexual peers, from media stereotypes of queer people, and from my own authenticity. I feared being known. I thought that doing so would mean I had to trade the normative community with another, unknown one. What I failed to understand was the blending of communities, the Venn diagram overlap between myself and every other person on Earth. To be queer is not to belong to a separate group, it is to belong more fully to my own humanity.
These last two years in Thailand have shown me the intersection of queerness and global citizenship. I’ve had the privilege of making conversation and connections with people from all over the world in a cozy corner of Chiang Mai, attending Bangkok Pride alongside 200,000 other souls, and watching Thailand become the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. Each of these experiences have helped me find my place in the global queer community and have increased my ability to show up and let myself be authentically known in my own corner of the world. I’ve realized it is rarely queerness itself that drives disconnection, but fear. To me, being queer is about creating new ways of existing and loving beyond fear, refusing to let that fear disguise our common humanity. It is my hope that, in my imminent return to the U.S. and in my future pursuits, I can carry this lesson as I continue to grow into the many communities I call home.
Sticky Rice 
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