With my suitcase of home-sewn dresses, summer clothes from the market, and the precious store-bought red and white checked skirt I was saving for the first day of school, I climbed on the night bus for Bangkok.  I would proceed north from the humid capital to Chiang Mai, where I was to start my first term at boarding school.  It was fall 1982, and I was eight years old. I wasn’t alone–my older brother was coming with me. I imagine my parents and younger siblings came along, too, at least as far as Bangkok.

In Chiang Mai, we entered a soi, or side street, and turned down a driveway of an expansive property with a two-story building to one side. The house was white on the first floor, with dark wood on the second.  My brother and I were part of the first cohort of dorm kids to live here, which included several other sibling pairs along with the German dorm parents and their four children.  The first floor was mostly one open room, with a cool concrete floor, long kitchen, dining tables, living area with straw rugs, and red-patterned curtains. I heard stories from Papi, the dorm dad, about how the first iteration of the building had been so sloppy that they’d had it torn down and rebuilt. The yard was still a mess, he said, and needed lots more work.

I would be rooming with two sisters, “Katie” and “Karinne” that I played with every year at a conference by the beach in Pattaya.  The dorm parents’ six-year-old daughter would be occupying one of the bottom bunks. Our room was just at the top of a dark wooden staircase, before the long hallway with honey-colored woven bamboo walls.  The sisters and I were due for something of a reunion, since their family had just gotten back from a visit to the States, but I’m sure as I entered the room and took stock of the bunks and my roommates’ belongings, our first hellos were casual, in the way of young kids. I even managed to work in a biting comment, about how Katie wasn’t “as nice as I remember from before.” Katie responded that my statement had been hurtful, and life resumed from there.

I remember Katie and Karinne’s belongings better than I do my own. Katie’s dark green stuffed dragon and little monkey that could suck its thumb, Karinne’s gingham Sunday dress, the baskets the girls used for under-bed storage. We unpacked and settled in. On the back of the door, I found chore schedules. Unused to deciphering such things, I studied it for a while. I saw that we were on ten, eleven, and twelve-week semesters. In between those, we’d get to go home. Meanwhile, we’d be taking turns cleaning bathrooms, washing dishes, helping with dinner, and more. I would soon find out that we had daily “work detail” for an hour after school to deal with that yard that was sticking in Papi’s craw and to help Aunt Inga with upkeep indoors. Saturday morning, we’d deep clean in our rooms and do our week’s assigned chore with extra gusto. I would obviously be learning much more than academics here.

The whirring fan was the backdrop for our activities in that hot room. There were the Saturday morning cleanings, where the baskets came out the pink shag rug was lifted, and the sweeping and mopping commenced.  Katie and Karinne took the lead here. They seemed to know their way around with a broom and mop and were aware of things like bedding that could be stripped and washed.  We almost always went swimming at a hotel pool after lunch on those days–all the kids piling into the yellow air-conditioned VW van in our bathing suits, clutching our towels and probably arguing about some trivial matter.

When we weren’t at school or work detail, Karinne was often sitting on her rug doing something interesting.  The room next to us, to the right of the stairs, stored books–it was chaotic with book piles. So I’d often enter our room to see Karinne absorbed in a hard-backed Nancy Drew. I took cues from her and dug up The Clue in the Whistling Bagpipes while I waited for her to finish Password to Larkspur Lane. Next, she read The Tanglewoods Secret. Ready to be unimpressed, Tanglewoods, about a hideout in the woods, was a pleasant surprise. Karinne’s mother had sent her with a sewing kit, too, and she often sewed. I sewed with her, but being a tad more inclined to play outdoors than she, I gave her my little tin of scraps.

The sisters owned cassette tapes with stories and music that we listened to over and over. “Uncle Charlie” featured small children singing Christian songs and taking part in dramatized narratives with morals. The boys borrowed a tape with a story about a car crash, and you could often hear, blaring from their room, the solemn description of the wreckage. Amongst the girls’ Uncle Charlie and Music Machine, however, was a tape of pop song renditions by a children’s choir. That’s how I became acquainted with such tunes as “Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini,” “Swing on a Star,” and “Catch a Falling Star.”

We were delighted to discover the record button on the tape player, and that turned into a days-long recording session with our own singing and talking that we sent to Katie and Karinne’s parents at the village where they worked farther north. They sent the tape to my mom and dad, and both sets of parents responded with recordings of their own. I still own a disk with our original recordings.  There’s the fan in the background, and Karinne and I saying silly things and singing, “Sewing, sewing, sewing . . .”  I can’t distinguish one piping voice from another. If it had been the Internet age, I’m not so sure our parents would have been as thrilled to receive our tape.

Although a couple of grades ahead of me, Katie had appealing talents in the stuffed animal field. Specifically, she’d give them voices and personalities. Her responsible green dragon, Honza, and flighty little monkey, Gigi, were hilarious together.  Katie, I decided, was nice enough after all, despite not catering better to my whims, and Karinne and I got along okay, although in my heart I knew that my Sunday dress was prettier than hers. It’s a good thing we liked each other enough because, with all the rich happenings in our room, we were still together for most of the boarding school life that took place beyond its dark wooden double doors.

This is me in our room, probably on move-in day. I found this ghostly image thanks to Facebook, where my connections shared multiple albums of photographs that confirmed many details I already remembered and also brought up fresh memories.

The dorm property in its early stages, being worked on by diligent little contractors.

Me in my red-checked skirt very interested in whatever Karinne is doing.