Home is where the cheese is

A few days ago, the organism-rich landscape of my digestive tract developed its own Richter scale and began spasming with such force that it brought tears to my eyes and, well, scared me. I wrapped my pashmina tightly around me, took off my storm trooper hat, made a teary phone call to Jasmine (my boss), and hopped in a cab bound for Samitivej Hospital. By the time I got there I was delirious with pain and fever, and my face had taken on the same dark gray hue as the abalone shell bracelet that Jasmine had given me two days earlier--minus the pretty, rainbow-y shimmer. Inside Samitivej there is marble everwhere, and women in crisp, powder blue uniforms, and even a soothing fountain. There are leather sofas and current magazines and high ceilings and streak-free windows. I went straight to the ER where they laid me down on a soft bed, covered me up, and got to the business of Making Me Better. My doctor was a little nervous and jumpy and sorta giggled as he asked me questions and delivered my diagnosis. His attempt at a mustache made him appear as though he had only recently stepped out of the blue jeans of adolescence and into a pair of scrubs. Still, he was knowledgeable and efficient. Behind him stood a whole team of people who had concern in their eyes and who helped me to my feet and out to the lobby lest I get dizzy and faint. The nervous doctor hooked me up with a whole delicious cocktail of drugs, as well as a follow-up appointment. Everyone smiled kindly at me, and as I was leaving they called me a taxi. After it arrived, a man walked next to me holding an umbrella so that I would be spared the hot sun for those few steps. The whole thing could only have been more surprisingly pleasant if everyone had broken into song and a well-choreographed musical number complete with twirling crutches, a wheelchair can-can line, and nurses spinning me on a gurney as the camera catches a bird's eye view of my smiling face while everyone circles around me and holds that final, perfect note. Or something like that.

Conversely, this weekend I had my first Bangkok Au Bon Pain experience, which did not come with any singing amputees. To say that Au Bon Pain was important to me during grad school is a vast and hideous understatement. I ate so much broccoli cheddar soup that year that it began running through my veins instead of blood. Au Bon Pain was always there for me during those wee hours when I needed a sugar-free vanilla latte to get me through those last five grueling pages of a paper. It was the setting of many delicious conversations with friends, and where Peter and I would go for breakfast dates that lasted well past lunchtime. I'm not gonna lie--the fact that Bangkok had Au Bon Pain and Bogota didn't was another factor that caused me to choose the former over the latter as my post of overseas employment. While on the surface the Au Bon Pain in Bangkok looks similar to the ones that you find every few feet in Cambridge, MA--they both rock that happy shade of yellow, that adorable, chubby little font with the unassuming lowercase letters, and they both have that black and white photograph of the boy with the bony knees running with a baguette--the differences are a little unsettling to me. First and foremost, my beloved broccoli cheddar soup has been transformed into "cream of broccoli." Cheese is not a part of the regular diet here. It is just not on the radar. Therefore, a soup with cheese in it may not sound terribly appetizing to anyone other than, um, ME. The portions are smaller (which is certainly not a bad thing...I could rarely finish my entire order in Cambridge. What IS annoying is that the price is exactly the same), and Au Bon Pain in Bangkok attracts a very fashionable, very posh crowd--a stark contrast to the homeless chess players and sweatshirt-clad students in Cambridge--whose conversations are as impossibly hip as their sunglasses.

I wish I could say that this was one of those moments where I savor the delicious differences and take an opportunity to appreciate how things are done over here (well, okay, I STILL did that....), but really, this is one of those moments that makes me homesick. I miss my broccoli cheddar soup. I miss talking to Peter over a gigantic cup of coffee. I think most of the time over here I feel like things are BETTER than they are in the U.S. This is, in part, due to the novelty of the whole situation--the exposure to new things makes them inevitably more exciting and much more easily romanticized. At the same time, though, I do think that the taxis are better. The hospitals are better. The food is cheaper and tastier. The shopping is better and cheaper and more fun. Au Bon Pain is a gigantic exception. My life here is wonderful and amazing, but home is where the cheese is. It's where my friends are, and where bread-and-butter conversation is, and where Peter is. And it's nice to be reminded of that.