Living for the Other...

Today I walked down the hill to attend what I gathered was Lhasa's food festival. It was the equivalent of a North Carolina county fair sans rides, hogs, and corn dogs (plenty of mullets though!). I found out about it because another girl on the team here takes tae kwon do in the city and her class was performing at the opening ceremony... the opening ceremony which was due to start at 11a and which didn't even come close to starting until 12p.

So like the dutiful westerner that I am, I arrived at 11a. Perfectly on time even though my watch died the day after I arrived.

So I make my way around the isles of strange smelling and stranger looking delicacies (bought some peanut brittle-esque sweets later... steered clear of the things on sticks, ought to give my stomach a fighting chance to adjust before chowing down) towards the back where a stage was set up. On the stage, behind which hung a huge banner which I obviously couldn't read, there were tables and chairs set up and then in front of the stage there were dozens of children, some dressed like yaks, others in very colorful costumes just waiting. In front of them were dozens and dozens of the locals in all manner of clothing, most holding umbrellas, and most sitting on tiny plastic stools smoking cigarettes and chattering.

I, being the only foreigner in sight, took up a position behind the people sitting on stools. I decided that I would just stand there, slyly observe my surroundings, and try to get a feel for what was really going on... which was a legitimate thing to do because I really had no clue.

It was not five minutes before the woman sitting in front of me turns around and smiles, tapping me on the leg. Her and the men sitting next to her had an extra plastic stool in their midst and she motioned inviting me to join. Can anyone really refuse such an offer? It's not like I had anything better do, and little did I know that it would be forty-five more minutes before the thing even started! So picture this: me perched on a tiny plastic stool, squeezed between half a dozen Tibetan strangers. I'm sure it looked hilarious.

Well even though it was nice of them to share their extra stool with me, I really couldn't see the stage due to all of the umbrellas piled up in front of me. The man sitting next to me, a very friendly older gentlemen in the traditional Tibetan garb holding an umbrella himself realizes my dilema and procures another stool and a better view for me, next to his even older and more friendly friend who proceeds to pull at my arm hair, touch my bracelet, and make some interesting comment about my feet (or shoes). After a few laughs and a bunch more smiles and both of them going on in Tibetan, I felt that we were all very close.

This feeling was confirmed when the man who had found me the better seat offered to share his umbrella with me, (just to clarify, it was not raining, it rarely does that here, the sun is just very brutal and so most people walk around with umbrellas to keep from getting burnt!) and then let me hold it while he got up to go get some snacks and take a break from all the sitting and waiting. So for a few minutes, it was me, this dudes umbrella, and dozens of Tibetan strangers. When he came back I decided that it was time for me to take a break from sitting and so I thanked him and left and couldn't find him again upon my return. Guess he had gotten fed up with the waiting.

I know this whole story borders on the ridiculous. I can't speak a word of Tibetan and the Chinese I know is shaky and slim at best. But for some reason this man and his friends showed me kindness upon kindness, and he even trusted me with his possessions.

I am confident that the One who knows what's really going on can use that. I am hopeful for many more such interactions.

Today I found the Tibetan equivalent of a K-Mart and bought a lamp, and the lady at the bank told me that my smile spoke in any language, and I also learned the Chinese character for "noodle".

I feel like a rock star!

But first, a story:

We were in Beijing for less than 18 hours and somehow I managed to convince myself that I was still in America because I ate some pizza for dinner and washed it down with the cheapest Starbucks I've ever bought... I was so exhausted I don't even think I was really human, more like a zombie, which makes the rest of this story all the more incredible. So I sleep the whole night, get in a taxi at 7am and head back to the airport to catch my "direct" flight to Lhasa (there's a good reason direct is in quotation marks). Only to find out about 5 minutes into the taxi ride that I didn't receive the right travel documentation... so it's a race back to the hotel with a somewhat crabby taxi driver and a wait until the lady with the documents showed up... then it's a race back to the airport (through Beijing morning traffic) in order to make my flight on time, add to the list of impossibilities the fact that I have two suitcases (we're only allowed one free of charge) and one of them is overweight. Get this: there was no line at the check-in and the lady didn't charge me a single kuai, and I made it past security and to the gate 5 minutes before they started boarding. His timing is everything...

Now for the "direct" flight. "Direct" in Chinese really means "you will stop in Chendu get on a bus, go the terminal, wait one hour, get back on the same bus, drive back to the same plane, and continue to Lhasa" Seriously.

So let me describe the flight: breath-taking... literally. The mountains are so high that they stick through the clouds and even though you're 30000 ft in the air the mountains seem close. Landing was like something out of a movie: you curve in through the mountains and land in what appears to be a vast river bed which only at last minute turns into a run-way. Surreal.

And so now I'm here... I have unpacked and begun settling into the apartment. I have probably drank about 40 gallons of water in one day, have experimented with various positions in order to most effectively use the squatty potty, have eaten at a noodle shop across the street, have toured the campus, have eaten yak on the roof of a restaurant, have walked up to the Potala palace, have seen animals in all stages of being sold for food, have done a lap around the Jokhang Temple, have met the rest of the team here, have ridden in a mini bus and another ornery taxi, have been blown away at the beauty of this place, have been spell bound by the way that it seems to come from another time, have been heart broken for the people in need here. Talk about stimulus overload.

And so now I'm here?

I can hardly believe that this amazingly beautiful, alarmingly strange place is my home.

In 12 hours I will board a bus which will take me to an airport which will house the plane which I will board which will take me halfway around the world which is where I will live for the next year... how can I describe this?

It feels like:

Taking a blind step off of a cliff onto a bridge that is real and everyone tells you is sturdy but it just seems so puny compared to the unknown abyss beneath it...

Waiting hungrily for some food that someone else ordered to arrive, confident that it will be tasty but looking for any possible clue to figure out what it really is...

Staring at all of the wrapped up boxes under the Christmas tree knowing that a few of those are for you and you're so close to opening them but you have to wait just a little longer...

Walking down the street and having the eerie feeling that someone is going to jump out of that bush behind you and you want to run but you don't because you're a reasonable adult and no one actually jumps out from bushes...

Standing at the cross-roads of life and feeling the breezes and buffets of change swirl around you and just taking a deep breath because it's not often that you find yourself at the very verge of your life...

You're going to be a little nauseous... but you want to do a cartwheel anyway...

So with a grand total of sixteen days in a hotel in the middle of the American Southwestern desert, despite the truly fabulous all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, I have only one descriptive: stir crazy

stir-cra·zy /ˈstɜrˌkreɪzi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[stur-krey-zee] adjective Slang.
1. restless or frantic as a result of confinement.
2. mentally ill because of long imprisonment.

Yes.

In an effort to dispel any visible negative effects, or thwart any yet unreceived ones, I'm going to remind myself of all the things that I love and am grateful for about this hotel:

1. the truly fabulous all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet: for real the omelet guy deserves a nobel peace prize or something.
2. the opportunity of random observation of road runners: yes they actually do run down the road, but I have yet to see any anvils falling from the sky...
3. automatic soap dispensers: cause I'm guessing they might be a rarity on the other side of the Pacific...
   
4. our training courses: lesson plans and unit outlines are all coming back to me, and oh what a relief it is... I think I might have actually been suffering from withdrawal of those things, I LOVE them! Why can't life be as organized as a lesson plan?
   
5. free Cherry sodas from 5p-7.30p: I love cherries and Jose loves to hook me up. Tonight I arrived to receive my cherry soda and he blessed me with 10 maraschino cherries... 10... awesome.
   
6. real soft beds, I think they define the word "plush".
   
7. the scenery is really beautiful and you can't really get tired of admiring it.
   

I guess, things aren't that bad after all. In fact things are really great... and besides only ten more days to go... that's the same number of cherries I had tonight.

Coincidence? I think not.

One week ago I was desperately packing and saying goodbye to everything familiar.

One week ago, in a state of near exhaustion, I boarded a bus with sixty strangers and my two fifty pound suitcases and rode out to the middle of the desert to begin training that I will use for the next few years.

One week ago I had never had the pleasure of hearing the song "Xiao Fang" or taken up residency in a hotel for a month, had never known anything about China, had never had a napkin placed in my lap by the waiters, had never walked the streets of La Quinta, had never seen anyone eat so much bacon, had no clue how much like an oven this place is during the day, had never heard the stories or seen the faces of my fellow teachers, and had never been so overwhelmed by the amount of work that is going on and still needed in China.

Precisely one week ago, I woke up surrounded by the brown rocky mountains unique to the southwestern American desert and was utterly stunned... it was pouring down rain. Thunder, wind, and sheets of rain.

And I was instantly reminded and comforted by the words of Isaiah: "I will make streams in the desert and rivers in the wasteland..."

Isn't that what's happening here?