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.