The last two months brought with them all the trappings and emotions associated with starting a new phase in life. They were filled with the hassle of moving six years worth of possessions accumulated while living and studying in the UK. They involved meeting doctors, banks and insurance agents as well as acquiring scraps of a new language, Burmese. And for all my excitement there was also the occasional shortness of breath that reminded me that this transition was maybe a little more daunting than I had been admitting to myself.

All of this because, with four years at Cambridge behind me (as well as the thrill of two care-free holidays to mark the end of that particular era), I am now spending three months working in Myanmar.

Why Myanmar? Judging from the reactions I came across among friends and acquaintances, the country is maybe best known for its (former) military regime and the heroic struggle of democracy icon and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Travel aficionados might also know of a country supposedly locked in time, a country of monks and farmers flocking around golden pagodas.

The reality that attracted me to come here is even more interesting (and exotic?) than the stereotype. For Myanmar is doubtlessly at a turning point. It is only recently emerging from decades of isolation under a military regime that turned an incredibly cosmopolitan society (Yangon was the world’s busiest port back in the 1920s) into a backwater ridden by ethnic conflict.

Being here for nearly two weeks now feels like reaching a frontier, a place in transition where change is rapid and palpable. Since my first visit in 2012, ATMs have cropped up throughout Yangon. No longer do foreigners like myself have to carry bundles of US dollars into the country. Construction sites wherever you look mark a surge in foreign investment that has made Myanmar one of the fastest-growing economies in the world (how far this has trickled through to the country’s poor is quite another question). Before 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was referred to, in hushed tones, just as ‘the Lady’. Now her image dangles from the mirrors of taxis and is plastered all over political rallies that feel more like joyous street festivals than solemn political assemblies.

And yet this transition is uncertain. Everything still hangs in the balance. How will the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar military) react if the Lady’s National League for Democracy wins by a landslide in the November elections? Will the country succeed in bringing prosperity to the countryside where most Burmese live? The countryside whose abject poverty continues to place Myanmar rock-bottom when rated for most human development indicators? These are open questions. Asking them elicits guarded hopefulness from most of the Burmese I have talked to, not unbridled optimism.

But for now, I am more interested how these big, political questions translate into the buzz of everyday life among an incredibly welcoming and entrepreneurial people. These are the impressions I am hoping to record with this blog. I am thinking of the young Burmese who was circulating feedback forms alongside bags of peanuts to impromptu focus groups in a Chinatown bar so that he could refine his recipe and make a business out of it. I am also thinking of the Buddhist monk who roped me into a spontaneous conversation class with 30 Burmese university students (all of whom, after three years studying supposedly English-language courses, had to start learning the language from scratch at a private school). And of course, I am thinking of the wonderful friends I have made here, many of them working at local NGOs that represent a real flowering of civil society.

To me, this jumble of impressions sums up why I am excited to be in Myanmar. Check back here for regular updates and photos!