Hi Hubs! A few little updates for you all. I finally posted part one of my trip to Thailand his past and Bhutan this past week. elizabeth partially goaded me into this. One of the biggest challenges I've ran in to with writing up that post is wondering what my narrative is, what story am I trying to tell. So you went to Bhutan, so what? is what was running through my mind and I think I started to figure that out in the last couple of paragraphs. Part two should be fun and gets into the mountain race, drinking with the Prime Minister of Bhutan, and some other stories. It's a place I will go back to in the future and I still talk to a couple of people I met over there, which is wonderful. Mentioned this in chat, but I recently raised $1,401 for a local food bank and food security non-profit in my county. They're struggling both people and money wise to support the drastic increase in people needing support. I can tell you the customer base has increased by more than 132% but I don't know the exact number. Raising the money was...not that hard in this case. I simply ran 36 miles overnight, starting at 7pm and finishing at 3am. I was planning on running more miles but ran into three separate cop cars patrolling and one cop on foot and got spooked and called it a night. Turns out there was a break-in at a business about a mile away and I think they were looking for the suspects. Glad I trusted my intuition in this instance, probably was the safest decision. It was a race I was supposed to be running in-person up-north, and the race fees benefited a local Horse Ranch up that way. Great cause all around - the race director supported me using her race as a platform for this fundraising and even contributed herself! The way it worked was this: for every mile I ran, I would personally donate $1 to the food bank. I asked people to match this, and my community really rallied around this task. Something like 30 people ended up matching and now hopefully a lot more meals will be able to be provided. That was something which felt very, very fulfilling to me.We haven’t seen anything like this since the Recession of 2008 when our customer base increased by 132%.
Glad you posted the first part! I find Bhutan suck a fascinating country - in part because there is so much secrecy surrounding it. Somewhat unrelatedly, I find often times environmentalists really romanticize "simple" life. And it seems like the government of Bhutan in part made it a choice not to follow suit with industrialization and world open economies and all. I'm actually really curious on the people's perception from inside - do they feel oppressed, stunted at being "behind" ? Or does it align with their values and they enjoy it? Is there a big element of indoctrination? A friend that lived there for a year, said he had very mixed feelings about the place, and that it's definitely a unique environment.
My question is this: Aren't you glad now, that you did that trip then? It's hard to imagine doing any travelling in the near future. Do you think so?One of the biggest challenges I've ran in to with writing up that post is wondering what my narrative is, what story am I trying to tell.
I will read it tomorrow and I'll think about that question.