You Have a Plan

A prayer:

Father,

Today, I tried to sound brave and intelligent when I was talking with my friends about what I'm going to do now that I'm home. Thank you for reminding me tonight that whether I'm brave or not-brave; whether I go confidently or not-so-confidently--you have a plan.

Home

There are no geckos here. No tokays. In fact, there seem to be no cicadas either. My sister's house is so quiet. Last night I laid awake for awhile marveling about how quiet it is here. I didn't sleep very much--jet lag messes with your mind a little. I was up by 4 am ready to eat supper since it was 6 pm in Thailand.

The quietness is just one of the small adjustments I'm making to being here. Last night as we left San Francisco and as I watched the lights of the city fade behind me, I felt this sadness/fear in the pit of my stomach. I wondered, "Can I really pull this off?" No, I'm not having second thoughts about my decision to come home, but I just feel far away from my home. I mean that on both levels: far from my Thai home and far emotionally from my American home.

I know the good things will start coming soon. Already this weekend I'm getting together with two friends. I reminded myself this morning that I felt this way last year and that by the end of the summer I was sad to leave the states. Also, I told myself, "God is still leading. He was with you in Thailand and he'll be with you as you shape your new life in California."

Taipei Airport

I just heard an announcement for a flight to Bangkok. I momentarily felt like I should get up--shouldn't my flight depart for Bangkok?

I'm sitting on the carpeted floor of the Taipei airport--leaning against the wall with my bare feet in front of me. For the longest time sitting here, I thought I heard the sound of water. I wondered where the fountain was and then it hit me that the sound of water was the air con vents above me. So much for poetry!

But there are other kinds of poetry here. There is the flute music playing from a shop near by and the wall in front of me lined with Chinese calligraphy wall hangings. It's a pleasant layover.

Music and the Internet makes this stopover go quickly. I have eleven more hours and then a two hour drive and then a bed. I know somewhere in those eleven hours I will look at the ceiling of the plane and simply long for a bed--something flat and stretch-outable on.

They are still calling for the Bangkok flight. "Please proceed immediately to Gate B5." My gate is C3 (the Hello Kitty Gate, yes the Gate is Decorated in Pink). B5 or C3; my compass is not set right.

Bedbugs

I brought back a gift from Vietnam. Bedbugs. Or more like it--bedbug bites. These are no ordinary bites. My arms and legs are covered in red welts. I look like an illustration out of medical textbook.

So here is my life: I've had lice, worms, and now bedbugs! (I hope I haven't grossed anyone out.)The lice and worms were gifts of a childhood lived outdoors (running barefoot outside and chillin with my little gang of friends who happened to have lice problems--hey, we used to pick each other's lice for fun!)

Now, to give myself a positive spin on my current state of itchiness, I tell myself that these bedbugs are just a gift of my adulthood--travel!!

So if you see me around, be careful, though I'm not contagious, I have the ability to inspire itchiness.

A Rainbow

All the colors seem sharper at MC since I came back from my brief trip to Vietnam. The greens are greener; the blues, bluer. I've just been walking around the campus admiring how beautiful it is here. I usually get this feeling when I return to MC. I suppose if you spend too many days here then campus's beauty becomes muted.

On my ride back to MC from Bangkok, I saw an incredible rainbow (if you could call it that since it was in the shape of a circle). It was formed in a small break in the clouds where the sun was shining through. It was as if God took a bucket of colors and spilled them all over the clouds. The colors spread out in every direction: bright yellows, blues, and reds. I gazed at it from the van window and actually wondered if I was seeing a vision. "Is this real?" I asked myself. It looked so much like the pictures we Adventist make of the second coming. I had several texts come to my mind from the Bible. "The Lord himself shall descend with the trump with the voice of an archangel and the dead in Christ shall rise first." "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth...behold the old was gone." And I thought of the martyr Stephen looking into the heavens and seeing God.

It was strange. I was having an ordinary trip back from Bangkok--somewhat bored and uncomfortable in the van--and then out of no where this rainbow comes. It was a small gift. "The rainbow is a promise."

Kindness

I spent most of the day (once again) happily unaware of the time. In the morning I wandered around Ho Chi Minh City centre with Vy's younger sister. Then in the afternoon I went shopping and wandering (there was probably too much wandering!)

As I was walking down the side walk, I accidently stubbed my toe on a part of the sidewalk where the brick of the side walk had been broken up a little. This all happened near a group of people sitting around a little table on the side walk. "You have to be careful of the side walks," one of the men yelled at me. Then as I walked a little closer to him he looked at my toe and announced, "It's bleeding!" His friends then all started to swarm me. One grabbed the stool she was sitting on and insisted I sit down. Another jumped up and ran into a store to grab some bandaids (he rushed like I was bleeding to death). They all asked if I was okay and looked at my toe. I'd never received so much attention for a bleeding toe.The man with band aids returned from the store and the one who had originally warned me of the dangers of sidewalks gently put the band aid on my toe. He then said, "I'm a cyclo driver. I'll take you back to your motel for free." I declined. I sat there with them for just a couple of minutes. There was a cyclo driver, a young policeman (he was the one who rushed for the bandaids), a seller of photocopied books, and a man without an arm. They are generally the kind of people I try not to make eye contact with. Generally, because I don't want to be asked a number of times if I want to buy photocopied book or if I would like to take a cyclo ride. But after I left them I felt like smiling especially at all the cyclo drivers. Kindness!

Rainy Evening

I've been walking in the rain--I attempt to walk on the sidewalks--which like many places in Asia really aren't sidewalks (they are motorcycle parks, food vendor territory, and places for people to sit and socialize). I just came back from a coffee shop. I found a nice chair there near a window to read. It's a good life.

Yet the day was not without its troubles. Actually the trouble was somewhat amusing if not tragic. The trouble was my tour guide. (I went on a tour of a place where the Viet Cong used to hide in tunnels.) The tour guide was this man who was a peculiar mix of anger, bravado, and brokenness. His tour consisted of a recounting of the history of wars in Vietnam (starting with the French in the 1800s) and his own life story (a playboy father who abandoned him, years spent in reeducation camps because he fought with the Americans, famous people he hob-knobbed with.) He knew so many famous people and he had been at so many famous moments in Vietnamese recent history that his story had a Forest Gumpian fictional feel to it. He also hated everyone and everything. He hated the Americans for coming and he hated them for leaving. He hated his life. And he hated tourists. (Yes, he told us two times--maybe three--that the Communists ruined his life because they wouldn't let him do any job but be a tour guide and that he hated tourists because they were arrogant and cheap.)

Despite his hatred for us he really liked to talk and talk. At times he could be interesting and he had a natural flair for teaching as well as occasional humor that showed through all his anger.
But overall I had the impression that he would be the kind of man that would go to a bar, drink all night, and corner anyone to hear his story. Sometimes I simply couldn't bear listening to him anymore and I would simply look out the bus window and observe the green green fields that we were driving past. I felt much pity for him and wished there was something I could do for him, some kindness that I could show him, but I could think of nothing. After the tour was over I tried to shake off the sadness that soaked into my skin from it. (It's hard to explain but I often feel unprotected from other people's emotions.)

The bright part of my day came from two Singaporeans befriended me on the tour. They bought me a Coke, took pictures with me, and even worried out loud if I was surviving under our tour guides hail of anti-American comments. I laughed and said, "Well, what was I to expect?"

Vietnam, Day 2

I'm sitting in an Internet cafe listening to the man beside me describe his travels in Asia. Today was a long but good day--and it's not over yet (I have shopping yet to do!!) :)


I took a city tour of Ho Chi Minh City with nine other women (funny how no men took the tour--maybe they're more comfortable going on their own.)


We did the usual shopping (yeah, I'm spending millions of dong!) but we also went to a museum for war crimes (US war crimes). The musuem was pretty painful. I almost cried a couple of times. It's hard to see pictures of Americans torturing Vietnamese. I want to think/dream/hope that my countrymen would be above that. The choking up though was for the Americans and the Vietnamese.


One intriguing part of the museum was a section dedicated to war photographers killed in the conflict. For each photographer who died, there was a collection of the last photographs he took. It's sobering to look at the last photographs a person took.

Vietnam II, A Less Serious Post

So tourists are generally dangers to themselves the first couple hours in a new city. The major dangers are traffic and money.

There were many things I observed when I stepped out of the airport, the cool breeze blowing, the ease at which I found my hotel pick up man (even if he was holding a sign that said Julte Cook), but I failed to notice that traffic ran on the right side of the road. I might have failed to notice this detail since traffic seemed to come from many directions. So tonight I was expecting traffic to come from a different direction so imagine my surprise when it didn't! Once I figured that detail out I also realized that I need to brush up on my city-street walking skills (something I was more adept at when I lived in Taipei and Bangkok). Traffic doesn't really stop here. I need to overcome my fear of having motorbikes swirl around me.

Then there is the minor detail of getting money from the ATM. I was confronted with 500,000; 1, 000,000; 2,000,000; 3,000,000 etc. I simply panicked seeing such high numbers. I knew that it was 18,000 dong to 1 dollar but I couldn't do my math fast enough to figure out how much money I was actually taking out. I had this nightmare that I would accidently take out all of my checking out in one accidental swipe. I ended up taking out 220,000 dong. I figured out later I took out 12 bucks. I hope I didn't get charged 9 dollars (like I did once) for withdrawing money internationally! Argh!

Vietnam

I remember being seven years old and listening to my dad's coworker talk about how when he was in Vietnam they put a Christmas tree on top of all the body bags they had stacked on Christmas day. Vietnam has always been a time and not a place.

I was raised on Vietnam stories and movies. People I know were personally affected by Vietnam (whether through the loss of a loved one or the loss of innocence). (I remember a friend telling me, "Yes, my mother said my dad was never the same after Vietnam.") It was (and to still a degree) the largest wound that America has ever born. It is a word that still evokes much rancor: "We don't want another Vietnam." [or] "This is becoming another Vietnam."

So I'm writing this in Vietnam tonight. There is not much here yet that makes me think of an old war (is the war old now?). There's just motorbikes beyond imagination, houses painted a dozen different colors (purple, blue, yellow, green), people sitting on door stoops, and tourists drinking beer in outdoor cafes. It's just an ordinary day in an ordinary city.

I Never Would Have Known

I'm sorry guys; I'm getting sentimental. Here's today's daily dose of sentimentality.

If I'd never come to Thailand, I never would have
eaten mangosteen
or learned that avocados could be a dessert.
I never would have
admired a monarchy, shaken hands with a princess, or fallen in love with the Prince of Bhutan. (The Prince of Bhutan!)
I never would have had a monk ask me to marry him or seen an elephant in the wild.
I never would have learned the word invigilate.
I never would have come to love a dozen countries other than my own or be astounded at how diverse Asia is.
I would have never learned to drive on the left side of the road.
I would have never said, "I go first." "Can!" or "Same, Same."
I would have never ended a sentence with na, or ka, or la.
I would never have come to admire politeness or bargained for a t-shirt. (What you're giving me a five baht discount? Amazing!)
I never would have gotten a 5 dollar massage or grown tired of Thai food (Please just give me a burrito!)
I never would known the value of a wai or the amusement that comes when I get spotted by a little kid. "Forang, forang!" (Yes, that's me!)
I never would have come to know Bangkok better than any city in the US or come to love a country so much as Thailand.

A Small Game I Play

I have a secret and I'm almost scared to tell it. The secret is that sometimes I play a little game when I'm talking to people. I call it my right-here-right-now-Lord-help-me-focus game. (Yeah, it's kind of a long name.) Okay, really, I don't have a name for it; it's just something I do. You see I like to pray when I talk to people. My prayer usually runs along the following lines: "Please Lord, help me to listen well to this person, and help me to bless this person now."

It's kind of a fun game. Today I remembered to play it. I was at the cafe at 11:40 am to eat. I sat with some friends for awhile, but they had to go and then a coworker I don't know very well joined me. So the person-I-don't-know-very-well and I sat and chatted and I prayed. Was there any major revelations in the conversation? No. Did I change her life? I highly doubt it. Will this person and I become bosom buddies? Probably not. But for 15 minutes I had a chance to just ask God to bless my 11:40 am lunch partner.

I wasn't sure if I should share this game or not...now anytime you see me you might start feeling suspicious. "Oh, no she's praying again! Watch out!" But I want to invite you to join me. Pray for the people you talk with. We all live busy lives and sometimes it's hard to see the people that are right in front of us. Prayer gives us the gift of loving the very person sent to us in the very moment that God has given us to live.

Thankful

I'm surprised on some days to discover that I'm thankful that I don't have a job, and that I don't know where I'm going to be in the coming months. I'm thankful that God has given me the gift of the UNKNOWN.

We like to think of God's guidance as showing up when He opens doors for us. An opportunity presents itself and we say, "This must be God's leading." But recently God has opened no doors for me. He has only closed one door (staying in Thailand) and asked me to take one step and wait for further directions.

So this is it. I have my ticket bought. I know the day I'm leaving. I know that my parents will take me in until I find work (yeah for parents!), but beyond that I don't know much more.

It is this not-knowing-much-more which has increased my prayer life. It has made me purposely go to God every night and pray, "Please, help me. I need work!"

Dr. Kai recently gave a talk on change for chapel. He said that God uses change to work on us. So this is God working on me. Thank you Father for change.