Living for the Other...

It began at Thanksgiving with a lopsided plastic Christmas tree pulled from depths unknown and a ziploc bag full of wooden ornaments and tinsel given to some Chinese colleagues who had asked to help do something. The resulting Christmas could never have been predicted from the subsequent tree which somehow managed to have only about three branches decorated though the entire bag of ornaments was used.

December 18th: A Christmas lesson, or two.

Wheezing up four flights of stairs on a bitterly cold morning I seriously questioned if I was going to be able to survive any lesson with my head throbbing due to a cold. But I had a story to tell, and gifts to give out, determined I walked into class. The students knew the story but only remembered bits of it and watch attentively as a magnetic Mary and Joseph made their way across the board to Bethlehem. Their lovely faces lit up in disbelief as I pulled Christmas tree ornaments for them to make, then cards from people in America, then small bags of pens and candy out of my bag to give them. We sang a Christmas song, made the ornaments, and I asked: why don't you eat your candy? Because I am saving mine for my mother...father... brother... sister.

A few hours break and then up the stairway to the clouds to do it again. This time my stomach was tight with too much medicine and not enough food and my nose was dripping down my face. But I had a story to tell, and more gifts to give out, and determined I walked into the second class. Only to be sprayed with silly string and shaving cream and greeted by way too excited students and more balloons hanging from the ceiling and taped to the wall than I dared to count. Then on the board this message: We wish you a happy forever. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Ms. Kelly. Nearly dumbfounded, I muttered: Today is not my birthday... a claim which garnered the quick response: We know! But we wanted to celebrate everything with you! A cake on my desk lit up with candles and that neon Chinese icing proved their point. Gathering my nerve, I begged them to be still and as students piled around I erased the back chalkboard and with cell phone videos rolling magnetic shepherds watched their flocks by night and three magnetic wise men came from the east to see the bright magnetic baby in a feeding trough. The birth of a king, notice the cattle.

The rest of class was the standard Tibetan party I've grown accustomed to: too many pictures, circle dancing, cake icing on every face, and when their gifts and ornaments and cards came out they were almost too excited to notice. But later in a tea house I hear this: Ms. Kelly, those gifts so special because they are from America, from you. Maybe we keep them forever.

December 21st: The stragglers.

A few students had not been in class the day that we did the Christmas lesson... when one boy finished his exams I walked over to his desk with his card and small bag of candy and pens. His expression was almost beyond written description: Shy eyes wide and mouth open with trembling fingers he took the gifts. In his face was written a thousand questions: Why are you giving this to me? I didn't come to class. Are you angry? Should I apologize? Make up some excuse? Questions washed off his face as I shrugged and said: Merry Christmas Lhalang.

December 24^th: A party and a phone call... the text messaging begins.

An entire day spent readying myself for a community Christmas party at another foreign teacher's house. No idea who will come or how it will turn out... all I can do is ask that He be honored. A seven o'clock start time and by well after eight everyone who we expected to come is there. Time filled with Christmas carols explained then sung, sugar cookies passed around, and then a Christmas story read in parts: You look like you could be a wise man! Chatter and laughing and a few awkward moments and a cat chasing after a laser beam. Then party's over and the guests file out. A phone beeping endlessly with what is the start of Merry Christmas messages from every student and friend who takes the time to remember. At a very exhausted midnight a phone call: Ms. Kelly, can you tell me the Christmas story... I want to teach it to my students tomorrow... and the alarming story of a little baby in a village stable is told again as the icy stars twinkle in a black sky over the highest mountains in the world.

December 25^th: Christmas day... an elf brings muffins to Lhasa then eats fish hot pot

A morning spent eating breakfast, drinking tea, exchanging gifts, and watching veggie tales with my teammate... the atmosphere being ripe for references to silicon sea of Galilee muffin tins to be uproariously funny. My own oven hot from the shuffle of muffin mixes sent from home and baked in order to give out later in the afternoon. Rest and company, time in Matthew and Luke being struck again and again at the strange beauty of the story which was told so many times this season. Then out of the house with plastic bags of muffins and little cards with translated notes inside.

Like an elf on the streets of Lhasa, I repeat over and over in my mind the Chinese (Sheng Dan Kuai Le) and Tibetan (Yeshu trungar tashi deleg) phrases for Merry Christmas... First stop: the copy man. His surprise and joy at my struggling Sheng Dan Kuai Le presented with a bag of muffins crinkles up his face in the biggest smile I've ever seen and floods his watery eyes... Then the illiterate girl who sells junk: She proudly holds the warm muffins in her hands and asks again and again in the only language she knows (a street mix of Chinese and Tibetan) You made these for me?...Then the lady who sells drinks: It takes her a minute to understand my badly mispronounced Chinese but when I thrust the bag of muffins in her hands she gets it and starts to giggle and nod and thank me in that particularly endearing Chinese way... Then the grocery store family, whose daughter in another city has already sent me my morning Merry Christmas message, they receive my gift in that semi expectant way of family and I get the same hug that I always get from the mother at the cash register... Then a walk up the street to the nunnery teahouse only to be greeted halfway there by my nun friend who speaks no English but who loves me anyway. She gets a card and a bag of muffins in total cluelessness: she has no idea what Merry Christmas means, even in Tibetan... Finally, a stop at the monastery teahouse where I dispense my last bag of muffins of the day to a monk friend who comments: This is the second Christmas I have seen you on.

I return to the apartment only to have been visited from leaders at my school while I was out bearing a bag of fruit and tomatoes which must have weighed five kilos. Oranges, grapes, lychee, tomatoes, and dried persimmons tumble out of the bulging bag. Then dinner with some colleagues. They drive us outside of the city to a little hot pot restaurant far from the beaten path where we stuff ourselves to maximum capacity on fish hot pot and then, in utter gluttony, chicken hot pot... laugher and chatting and songs and jokes are shared in perhaps the first dinner that I've ever been invited to with Chinese colleagues where English was actually spoken. In the car on the way back I half joking half sincerely comment: First we are together at Thanksgiving and now again at Christmas... I think you really are my family... and Liu Ying: you are my father... to the oddly amusing laugher of the strange man in the backseat.

December 27: the finale and my five year old Tibetan tutor

I get a phone call this morning as my stomach rolls and summersaults from the second round of hot pot (this time black chicken) from the night before. Kelly we will come to your school gate and pick you up at 5p then we will go to eat a Christmas dinner together with some friends. Are you free? In the crystal clear English of a Tibetan believer who is also the brother of a dear sister of mine. So I eat crackers and drink tea and nap in vain attempt to alleviate my stomach woes before 5p. Then its a dash out the door into the cold and across the nearly deserted campus and out into the street to await the bus which they are all riding together. To my delight, among the dinner guests that night is another sister's five year old half brother... a mischievous boy whom I had dug potatoes out of the ground next to and who had passed me dried yak dung on a visit to their village earlier in the year. We ride the bus to the center of town and getting off my hand is grabbed by the dirty pussy swollen hand of the five year old. We walk together to the restaurant: he oblivious to the amount of attention that a foreigner holding a Tibetan child's hand gets. The dinner is thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly Tibetan: salty butter tea, meat, potatoes, the old father mumbling about how tsampa is more delicious than all of it... However the food and other guests totally melt away and vanish as all my attention is on the five year old. He has spent the time waiting for the food to arrive teaching me all the words he knows: amjoo (ear) nagoo (nose) dja (hair) lhagba (arm and hand) ka (mouth) jeelee (tongue) trogo (stomach) and the particularly difficult one for me to remember, which he drills into my head by asking di kadre? (what's this?) numerous times beating his small fist on my over-sized thigh for every wrong answer: drogtze (table). He races me to finish his bowl of rice and asks for another... his favorite dish on the table being the same as mine: pickled radish fried with meat.. and begs me gela sunlapuh nga gohyu gela di ngla jecha (teacher I want pickled radish teacher give it to me) He tells me where he is ticklish, he is visibly proud when I let him press the send button on my cell phone, he seems content with my limited ability to remember random vocabulary. On the way out he lets me carry him like an airplane down the stairs to the shock and confusion of the entire dining area whom cannot seem to coincide a very foreign girl carrying a very Tibetan baby, complete with monastery ash smeared on his nose for luck. This baby became the embodiment of the baby in a manger to me: dirty, smelling of animals, hair sticking in every direction, grin like the world's joy. He knows for the few hours that we ate dinner he was my world and he nearly falls asleep on my lap despite the halting jerky sputter of the bus home.

A Christmas of parties, gifts, muffins, friends, strange food, too much fruit, songs, and a dirty child who I can still almost feel on my lap... and a dirty child who lay shivering in a feeding trough who grew into a man who died for love of you and me. Merry Christmas.

Dashing in front of cars gearing up their engines as the light turns from red to green, my student's sister, Tibetan writing tutor, and friend waits shyly for me at the corner holding some small thin plastic bags of vegetables: our lunch.

She is small, made smaller by her mannerisms: eyes quick to turn downwards, tongue peeking from apologetic lips, the posture of one who is sure she's going to be beat from above. You would never know that she trained inland to be a dancer for three years. Her dirty hair pulled back in a bun, obviously exhausted, carrying a heart heavy with grief. Her mother died five weeks ago of a brain annuerism... she is the oldest of at least eight children... according to Tibetan Buddhism her mother's soul is wandering now, and will continue to do that for another two weeks. She is sad, lonesome even in her joyful moments, her mind wandering with her mother's spirit.

Today is the first time I've ever been invited to her house.

We walk down streets that smell like urine and turn a corner down a narrow lane empty except for a few garbage collectors sitting on the side walk having tea. We duck into an alley just wide enough for two people to walk side by side and nearly climb up the wall as a motorcycle comes roaring through. Houses built on top of houses, alleys that dead end in trash heaps, and courtyards that never see the sun. Through a rusty red door up some concrete stairs and to the right is her house. A room.

A room slammed with all the necessities of life: a stove, broken mirror, two hard Tibetan style beds, a small table, cabinet for books, clothes, and anything else, some plastic bowls and a few thermos' of hot water is the entire world. A cup materializes out of no where and I find myself set to the task of drinking an entire thermos of some ginger and pear concoction. Her sister who is my student is there, and another sister with a one year old baby also stays with her. My student is perpetually busy, never sits down but wanders in and out cleaning anything she can, boiling more water, fetching things for the baby. The other sister throws the little one on her back, rubs his recently shaved head, and continuously licks his pacifier. The baby chortles, makes delightfully wise and curious expressions, and does the one trick he knows: lifts his hands in the Tibetan sign for 'drink some more', and my friend sets about explaining the Tibetan farmer's almanac to me.

Time passes.

We go about the business of cooking lunch. Fried vegetables and rice requiring more dishes that have materialized from the same unseen place as my cup. Oil made from their hometown and poured from dusty stained containers heated just so becomes the base for every dish. The process takes time because the dishes must be cleaned in order to be used for the next thing. As the third dish of fried egg and tomatoes gets set on the table the first becomes stone cold. The sisters and I sit down on beds and a rope stool to eat. The baby gets fussy but his mom hasn't eaten. I mutter a half hearted 'di-sho' (come!) knowing that the typical response that I get from children is blood curdling screams and to my surprise he toddles over and begs to get in my lap where I sit rocking and humming over him until his mother takes him back.

Time passes.

Lunch is over but not the day. I offer to clean dishes; an offer that is met by scornful looks from all three of the sisters, including the one who doesn't speak English. So instead I make my way up the grated metal stairs to the roof. Two sisters stay behind to clean and the third with the baby also heads up. The view is strange. Like standing in a rooftop soup with the rim of the bowl some dusty mountain ridges. All is sun baked gray tan color. So I shift my perspective and in surprise notice all of the other people on rooftops: grandmothers sleeping on crocheted afghan covered cushions, young men playing guitar, women hanging laundry, children darting playfully through tangles of wires, and an old man with butter tea cup in hand and jaw dropped at the sight of a foreigner... Lhasa lives on a rooftop.

The baby entertains as sisters below clean madly. I walk with him in circles around the dusty wire strewn roof until his chubby legs give out and he sleeps with his mother on some cardboard in one corner. Making my retreat to the cold dark room below, the two sisters prepare to make sweet milk tea, and I warm my feet near the blessed heat lamp. In a moment with just the two of us my friend whispers: this would be a so happy day for me if my mother were... without her I have no.

Time passes.

Hot water comes and goes, thermos' are emptied and their contents transferred from one to the next, my cup is emptied and filled in one never ending cycle and the sleeping baby and third sister come down to join us as the wind has picked up outside blowing cold dust and grit over the rooftops. They chat, we pass miniature oranges around, the sisters begin to tell tales of their childhood together, mock each other, and make jokes, and things get really silly when my student mixes up the thermoses and we get drinks of absurd combinations. We laugh in that violent silent way so as not to wake the baby. So he wakes up to spite our attempts at quiet and is given a bowl of roasted barley flour to dip his pacifier in, they offer me some mud rolled into pill shape and blessed by a monk, it is declined but the baby reaches for the extra helping. Then we sing. We sing the only song that all four of us know: the Tibetan alphabet song... we sing it until it is lines the ridges of my brain, the sweet milk tea runs dry, and the sun creeps totally out of sight... all to the uncontrolled mirth of the baby.

Time passes.

And my student and I get up to go back to the school and my friend also comes so that she can meet another friend for dinner leaving the cold room for the third sister and the baby. We make plans for the following week, and my last in Lhasa before the break, we make plans for next term, make plans for the summer. She says: Kelly teacher, my house is also yours... And I sense that this is the most that she can give me and means to do just that.

Time has passed: bus number 502 squeals to an exhaust fumed stop and we part.

But, for six hours I was a sister.

Sitting in my living room, vaguely reminiscent of a refrigerator which someone has decorated with a blinking multi colored Christmas tree, with a furry Tibetan apron tied around my waist for warmth, I touch my icy hands to my tender and chapped nose and think about yesterday.

Yesterday, a day heralded by the sure signs of yet another cold at hand, I battled the dizziness induced by twenty speaking exams and the slow progression of my cold, dragged myself shivering from the sunbeam where I had napped, donned two coats, grabbed an extra pack of sand paper-esque tissues, and went to my weekly Tibetan speaking practice time with my dear friend.

A decision which would change the course of my language learning forever.

She was in a strange mood, a story that I didn't catch all of but which might have included something which blew up at the cafe she managed. I was tired. We walked to a small tea house nestled in a corner of some alley not too far off the main road and I ordered tea while she went down the street to use the public restroom. Shortly upon her return, another friend joined us, the tea and bowls of soupy noodles also arrived...

Perhaps it was the warmth of the tea and noodles sloshing around in my empty stomach, or the riotously poor pronunciation of her friend, or the endless line of beggars singing and playing songs for us (one whom I recognized from an embarrassing experience a few weeks earlier), or the new Tibetan proverb I had recently learned: tzeekba gapbe pungoo the donkey wears leopard clothes... my exhaustion had reached the far more amusing stage of just plain silly.

Just plain silly: the unique moment when the elements align so as to produce unwarranted boldness and a gracious audience.

Things in Tibetan were just coming out of my mouth: what color is this? What color is my hair? Yellow? Yellow no way! My hair is the same color as the table or the earth or the tea. Why do you tell lies? I don't believe you. Everyday I work, everyday I teach. Because I need money. I always don't work I will become beggar. No money. I always eat so many noodles and drink so much tea I will become pig. Pig wears girl clothes... The man sitting at the neighboring table merrily munched his spicy potatoes and chuckled endlessly, the two ladies in one corner peered around my friend's back and made no effort to hide their amusement, the young girls wearing stained blue aprons giggled brightly, and at the beggar comment I think I saw some tea come out of a grandmother's nose as she burst out laughing.

So this is how you speak Tibetan.

I had to catch a bus in time for another meeting back at my school, bidding the tea house farewell I dashed off to catch a bus numbered 503. There were two at the corner and I wheezily caught up to the first one only to step off again as it was standing room only. A quick turn around and I hopped on the second one, to the amusement of the bus cashier to whom I muttered, also in Tibetan, that one has too many people. At the next stop a Tibetan teacher from our school took the seat behind me and our conversation progressed in halting English and Tibetan. A small primary school girl named Nawang tsomo also joined into the fun. After comparing textbooks with Nawang tsomo, we both sharing the same level book to my shame and her joy, in a flash of inspiration I exclaim in Tibetan: English language is so easy but Tibetan language...ahmo! It's so difficult! A comment which was greeted with grins and laugher bus wide and which garnered the reply: You are an American girl so English is easy and Tibetan is difficult. We are Tibetan so Tibetan is easy and English is difficult. My rdje rdje of affirmation almost cost a nearby cyclist his life owning to the driver's mirthful distraction. The bus atmosphere was familial as the conversation turned to how long I had been in Lhasa, what I was doing here, and oh wait this is my stop.

So this is what it means to communicate in Tibetan.

I disembarked from the bus and shook my head in disbelief. Wasn't only a year ago when the only words I knew were teacher, candy, and dangerous? Or even less than that? And now here I am with enough language ability to make people laugh with, and no longer at, me...

It's not enough, but it's a start, and motivation to continue.

Total weariness pervades everything, it curls up on the lap of my mind drawing me inward unable to process these past few days. The tiny miracles which display the Father and the wild events which display the gaping holes in His heart for the utter lostness of this people collide and scatter like a box of puzzle pieces dumped on a table or thrown over the edge of a tall building.

A conversation about the wandering period of souls after death before rebirth back into the wheel of life leaves no room for English translation, or an English teacher's understanding. An evening of crowds bordering on mass hysteria gathered together in a plaza for an event of long forgotten significance, in the tug and heat of the mob a glimpse of two students a moment to link arms with them, draw them close, and beg them to be safe. Babies carried on shoulders sporting toboggans reading: HAPPY so that they won't be crushed in the dark semi drunk crowds. An orphanage nestled in a nearby valley and the small ice cold hands of children eating balls of roasted barley flour and butter for breakfast then grabbing the foreigner's hand to lead her to their bed rooms. A tiny boy, far too small for his clothes, pouring water for his fellow orphans, zipping up jackets, then going to fetch a mop for some additional act of service. A trip to a tea house and upon entering being greeted by a nun, climbing the stairs to sit on the carpet that serves as her bed as the sweet tea flows and hugs and smiles abound... she refuses to let go of my hand. A lunch at a new Chinese restaurant only to be totally loved up in a language that I can't understand by the old Chinese grandmother in charge. Another tea, another conversation, another lifetime... words are explained that have no English meaning, butter tea greases the insides and a trio of girls laugh at the brother's prolonged and nearly totally fluent English descriptions of angry ghosts. A totally mundane and oblivious walk down the street only to be suddenly rushed at and hugged by the girl who used to sell junk outside of the school gate my joy at seeing her falteringly expressed by few Tibetan phrases that my surprise would allow.

Days where there are too many interesting things, too much evidence that the Father is indeed at work, too many reasons to be excited and thankful and expectant... totally crushed under the heavy weight of fatigue, blocked out by the pounding headache induced by the neighbors obnoxious pounding on the wall.

Like puzzle pieces thrown over the side of a tall building, dripping through the air like rain, scattering on the pavement far beneath like memories. And so tired that it looks like it's happening in slow motion.

It is recorded that one day the crowds were pushing in on Him to such a degree that his disciples thought the question “who touched me?” was totally absurd. Who touched you? Everyone did.
It is recorded that on that day one woman touched Him and was healed. Only one. Who touched you? Oh. She did.

Shaking misplaced teasing dreams of a beach out of my head, I woke to the chilled remains of what had been a massive comedic Thanksgiving dinner for a random assortment of school staff. Dusty footprints in the carpet, Christmas tree slightly leaning with its haphazard array of ornaments, piles of sweet potato casserole encrusted dishes stacked in the sink. Saturday morning.

A student from a class that I no longer teach waits in the frigid morning air. She is unusually tall, typically shy, with long black hair tied neatly in a bun and tucked under a cap which reads 'rocking'. We make our way to a nearby teahouse, carefully choosing the sunniest patches of sidewalk. Bursts of nervous giggles and stuttered English tell tales of her recent practice teaching experience. The small students have lovely face but are so naughty. Sometimes be a teacher is so hard work. I am nervous my first time. We enter a large teahouse and order the largest thermos of sweet milk tea that only two people have a chance of consuming. Instinctively, we pull our jackets and scarves tighter around us to ward off the lingering night cold that the sun has not been able to penetrate. A glance at the grimy crumbling windows leaves little hope that it ever will.

Stories, memories, questions, jokes... an entire semester that she's been away practice teaching. Pilgrims file in and out, bowls of noodles at nearby tables appear, are doused with spice, and vanish, grungy dogs root around under tables for even the most fossilized scrap of food. And then this: remember you give some pictures about Christmas? I also use. I teach Christmas lesson. Christmas lesson! That's great, I'm happy you can use the things from our class. This is the Christmas story you give us. Wait, you taught about baby baby Yeshu, yes, first I make into Chinese, then teach. Ms Kelly, these small students never hear this story before. They have so many questions. Questions! For example? They want to know is it true story, I say I not sure. Yes, it is true story, but very old. It happened in the past. Oh yes, I remember. Also, they all want to know if I have seen this baby. I told them my teacher sees.

Last year I taught that Christmas lesson to one hundred and sixty students. At the time, they had only studied English for one semester.

The crowds were pushing in, one woman, in desperation, dared to touch just the hem of His robe. Knowing that power had gone out of Him, He turned and asked, “who touched me?” There, across the narrow warped table, over orange transparent cups of rapidly cooling sweet milk tea, in the cold bustling tea house, in Lhasa, came the answer. Let it be recorded that all of my students were present when that lesson was taught last year. Who heard that Christmas story? They all did.
It is now recorded that throughout the year only one student has ever mentioned, much more, taught it to other students whom I, nor any other foreigner, are likely to ever have contact with. Only one. Who heard that Christmas story? Oh. She did.

And power went out.

The bus of blue peeling paint stopped right in front of me and a man with a feathered hat and fingernails only a shade browner than his skin displayed a yellow toothed grin as he pulled on the greasy stained rope which opened the door. I hopped on and gingerly took the closest available, nearly threadbare, once patterned, seat cushion. As the bus rumble stuttered down the street, I placed the bag of shelled walnuts I had just bought in my lap and stared through the grimy, fingerprinted window into the cool glare of the afternoon which washed the bustling street in a slightly ephemeral glow.

One icy dry hand rummaged in my pocket, which had recently turned into a used Kleenex graveyard of vast proportions. It fished out two badly mangled, stained, one kuai notes. The bus fare. Held in my pale, painfully splitting fingers, these notes held nothing of fascination, being exact replicas of the many hundreds of one kuai notes that I've spent this semester... but the date caught my eye. Printed in 1999. Exactly ten years ago.

In 1999 I was 14 years old. I knew nothing, but I didn't know that at the time. Baptized the year before, the farthest I had ever traveled from my family's Chatham County, North Carolina home was to our nation's capital, roughly four hours drive away. In 1999 my tiny world was falling apart through a series of adolescent friendship reshufflings, I had no dreams, a pet sheep named Billy Bob, and somehow couldn't manage to see past the end of my clarinet. Insecure and uncomfortable in my own skin, I moved through middle school classes hardly daring to imagine a world bigger than those pastel painted, locker lined halls.

The bus jerks and sputters and the door slams open to usher in nothing other than a gust of brisk air. It's 2009. I know nothing, but this time I know it. Years into a relationship with my Savior and countless miles and hours from Chatham County, suddenly this errand run strikes me with the full force of it's absolute strangeness. Who would have ever dreamed that 1999 me would be 2009 me? Who would have guessed at me being on this bus surrounded by people who look, act, and speak totally differently than I do? Who would have looked at these chapped fingers and guessed that 10 years before they were clumsily pressing clarinet keys in total oblivion to their future? Who writes stories like this one?

The tea houses and noodle shops turn to a blur outside the gritty bus windows, further obscured by the puffs of smoke from a wild eyed man's cigarette a few seats up. A song plays in minor keys belting out a range of language I am not able to understand. I crease and recrease the one kuai notes, dizzy from the pace of change remembered by looking at a printing date. Out of the chaos, a stillness:

All of my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.

So what will tomorrow look like Father?

A breakfast of meat dumplings: juicy dumplings stuck together in a sliver bowl on a wobbly table barely a foot wide along the edge of a dank room, the expanse of which one hardly needs to turn one's head to see. Push back the grimy curtain blocking this room from the bustling city street and hobble towards an empty spot on the singular long bench: an old man. His clothes all the same shade of dusty green brown out from which thrust two nearly black, wrinkled hands delicately gripping cheap warped wooden chopsticks. He bends over his tiny sliver bowl of dumplings raising first one then another to his face which despite the wrinkles and due perhaps to the hairlessness gives one the impression that you are looking at someone much younger. His cowboy style hat nonchalantly resting on his head is the exact color of all the rest of his clothes, indeed all the rest of the city street. Upon hearing my Tibetan declaration that “these dumplings are so delicious”, he chances to look up from his own rapidly disappearing dumplings and give me a wide, gummy grin accompanied by a slightly slobbery, “so good.”

Wandering down alleys so narrow it strikes one as miraculous that ladies selling hot pancakes can actually set up tables in them, two tiny old women catch the eye. The larger of the two is also obviously younger and gently leading her companion by the arm as they both step and misstep on surely stunted feet. The older, a crippled figment of a lady in a long wool dress, gray hair neatly braided and tucked under the most absurdly out of place sun hat, is also sporting a gray book bag, half unzipped. To all appearances a small sheep leaped into her bag head first: if that small sheep had in fact been a corpse without wool or skin and frozen stiff into a leaping pose as though its front half had either lost itself in the depths of the bag or the back of the lady. The shaded frosty air of the alley provides silent witness to the fact that grandmothers bring home the bacon.

A chubby lady blocking the entrance to a shop with items piling, spilling, tipping into and over nearly every ounce of available space. Her thin gray braids peek from beneath a knitted hat as she turns to reveal eyes milky with age and chapped lips covering less teeth than can be counted on all one's fingers combined. She teeters nearly topples in an effort to turn around and remove herself from the entrance. Her clawed fingers search for but cannot grasp her small plastic bag, cane, face mask, and spare yuan all at once. To the rescue, extra hands, even foreign hands do what hers failed to. As she in her frail near helplessness does all she can to remain erect, we stuff her recently purchased items into her stained, zipperless bag, we place the extra yuan in the warm, dirty, butter smelling folds between her dress and her shirt, we reach for her cane and assure her that her face mask is secure, we send her shuffling slowly down the street, a pebble in the midst of a raging torrent of motion and activity.

Some wear their age as armor, fiercely defying social conventions as they navigate a life that is no longer theirs. Some carry it on their shoulders, nearly crushed by the passage of time. Some adorn themselves with it, wrinkles like jewels, hair like silver. Others are blinded, deafened by the years as their glazed eyes and shriveled ears testify. They live; they live slowly, hobbling where others dash; they live quietly, groaning where others shout; they live.

They are the keepers of that which once was and is no longer. Their crippled bodies, cracked skin, and crumbling pace tell stories that will never be heard. Old people, like ghosts and mirrors, populate this city: a reminder of what is forgotten, a vision of ourselves.

Yesterday was a threshold day for me.

It's the difference between telling a story to the class and having them giggle as wildly as the old Tibetan man in the story did and living in such a way that one has no stories to tell.

It's the difference between having a sweet shy girl tell you that she's homesick and begin to explain why her hometown is so special and wondering if you will ever even achieve eye contact with her.

It's the difference between being able to explain to the Chinese lady why she should give me a better price on that scarf and having to make the decision to pay the high price or walk away in frustration.

It's the difference between meeting a friend for lunch and taking her to a delicious, though nondescript, noodle hole in the wall and her having to take you.

It's the difference between being recognized and joyfully welcomed in some of these tiny three walled eating establishments and simply passing them by.

It's the difference between sitting down for a cup of tea in the back corner of a pink wallpapered tea house, watching in surprise as three local friends walk in, paying for their meal and shuddering in fear at the mere prospect of going into a tea house with the certainty that all are strangers inside.

It's the difference between consistently having local friends surprise you from behind every time you go to the post office and having to give yourself a pep talk before attempting to claim your boxes.

It's the difference between receiving free fruit, hugs, laughs, and dinner plans from the friendly, though totally unintelligible to the native English speaker, vegetable sellers across the street and wondering if you're getting ripped off.

It's the threshold between looking at the animal parts wagons in disgust and holding your breath as you bike by to keep the sickly smell of random boiled meat as far from your lungs as possible and actually sliding back the small plastic window, reaching past the boiled hearts and intestines, to ask the lady to slice up a pig ear and coat it with oil and spice as a snack for you and your friend.

It's the day where so much sense of familiarity and acceptance creeps in that you become dizzy contemplating if it's the city that's changed or you.

A pig ear kind of acceptance.

Once upon a time there was a girl. She woke from a restless sleep just
in time to see the first bright slice of sun peek over the rims of the
highest mountains in the world. Everything, except the minimal dusty
traffic on the street outside her window, was still. Such stillness, she
knew, was a dream.

Blue plastic benches in the half light of morning. Four steaming bowls
on a table: black rice porridge, fresh soy milk, mushroom stuffed buns,
la jiao, and tea boiled eggs filling the space between her and a Chinese
colleague in a feast fit for Chinese kings... or ate least Chinese
construction workers. The gaps in conversation filled by slowly moving
the food from the cracked plastic table to bellies beneath. The morning
soon disappears under the shadow of such a breakfast and the glare of
winter sun.

A phone call, two students waiting at the school gate, and what could
have been a totally different day began. The girl dodged bicycles, women
with babies, men with walking sticks, three wheeled garbage trucks, and
baskets of vegetables with people buried somewhere underneath as she
followed the two adventuresome, or perhaps simply normal, boys to a bus
stop. Two buses, many laughs, a climb into the back of a dump truck and
frighteningly slow and bumpy ride up the mountain later the odd
threesome arrived. Drepung Monastery, the largest in Tibet.

She is ushered into a monk's cell and in a blink of the eye cups of
butter tea and a bowl of slowly going stale cookies appear before her.
Nibbling on the obligatory cookie and blowing the foam off the butter
tea she absorbs the formerly harsh sunlight falling softly on a room
decked out in maroon and gold everything. The Tibetan chatter swirls
around the room in the soft whispers of the monk and the shy laughter of
her students and suddenly a stranger's heavily accented English cuts the
atmosphere like a knife: please give me your passport.

The bare bench in the sun more uncomfortable and intense than any
interrogation room. The man with three ID cards talking quickly into the
phone and a teacher flanked by her two bashful and shamed students. The
man growls threats and admonitions as he records identity information,
the teacher shields her eyes in the sun and shrugs, the students ask:
can we at least go to see the temples? Or are you going to make us go
back to the school? A silence. Of course go see the temples, only next
time don't sneak into a monk's house with a foreigner. And for the
second time with no ticket purchased the three enter in...

The day and story is far from over.

Wandering around with these two students is a stunner for the girl. They
patiently describe the reason for placing food and water beneath random
statues of gods, even duplicates: of course they don't eat that food,
they are statues after all, they smell it. They carefully point out
pictures leaning in some forgotten corner of clouds that look like a
face, or a bear, or a cloud... so as not to miss an opportunity to
worship something. Here a door locked for what appears to have been
eternity covered in butter and small money offerings, of course none
other than their most famous lama's bathroom, which only he has ever
used and that over fifty years ago. Offerings to perhaps the cleanest
bathroom in the city. There a thousand identical statues, don't worry
Ms. Kelly they forgive you for not believing in them. Now another room,
now another sickly buttery smell, now another visitor desperate to
practice English: where are you from? Oh America! American English is so
delicious. Everywhere the incessant clicking and sliding of the boys'
prayer beads as they mumble through the day.

A lunch of sweet milk tea and meat dumplings then a quick stumble slide
down the mountain, past the man sitting in his hole muttering
meaningless chants all day, through the village, a lap around another
temple back out into the pot holed what's left of the city street
beneath. Two buses later and three exhausted and dusty travelers arrive
at their currently reconstructed school gate only to wish that their
beds were 100 yards closer.

The girl awakes for a second time that day to rub the grit from her eyes
as the sun begins to cast long shadows and her friend sends a message
declaring her arrival at the school gate. Hungry and happy to be with
someone fairly predictable they chat their way across the city and stuff
themselves with potato noodles, pumpkin, and tofu skins boiled in a
spicy soup and dipped in sesame oil and vinegar. The meal finishes with
a desire for Popsicles as the heat from the spice sloshes around in
their stomachs.

The stars liter the sky and the girl who awoke to one day and lived
perhaps three or more climbs out of her dirt and oil encrusted clothes
and into the same bed from which she awoke to the first bright slice of
sun peeking over the rims of the mountains. A text message: I have yak
milk for you please hurry I am afraid it will die. The girl drifts into
a restless sleep knowing one should never cry over dead milk.

Once upon a time there was a girl. She trusted her Father, she awoke
with Him peering over the mountains at her, she squeezed next to Him in
blue plastic benches, she followed Him around the city and in and out of
places where He was not welcomed, she wore Him as her armor and carried
Him as her shield, she rested in Him, she awoke once more to Him laying
the earth down to sleep, she glimpsed the twinkle in His eyes as He
called the stars out by name. He woke her up and He put her to sleep.
And that was that.

Pieces of a few yesterdays scattered on the table of life with no chance of connection...

Students stuttering, whispering, thinking in a line through their speaking exams.
The pleasure disgust at a first haircut for former nun and the subsequent phone call of gratitude for “always being there for my firsts”.
The total lack of surprise from the postal workers when I arrive to collect another box from the states.
A bowl of rice in the hands of a monk, the same hands which showed up to tea with copies of the Book, and which causally flip the edge of his maroon robe over his head to block the glaring sun.
The most laborious potato soup imaginable tasting every ounce of its delicious effort.
Crumbling classrooms full of primary school students chanting new English vocabulary “paws paws p-a-w-s paws paws” give way to a concrete courtyard and the throb of crowds of small ones pushing in to get a close up of the foreigner in their midst.
A tiny, virtually unrecognizable girl in a purple coat scolded by her peers but unable to tear herself from the presence of the strange one.
A yellowing leaf trembles and drops from a tree into unsuspecting hair beneath.
Plowing into the heart of Lhasa and through swarms of vegetable sellers to eat cold noodles in a tiny hole of a restaurant to the amusement of the noodle chefs.
Discovery of the junk seller's name and hometown and that despite our limited means of communication she is a friend as well.
A DVD of a Chinese wedding complete with hearts nonchalantly floating across the television and more ceremony that can't be explained, an hours worth of reason to be thankful that I am not an unbelieving Chinese couple.
A language being formed out of symbols, cups of sweet milk tea, and giggles; understanding hiding just out of sight.
Free butter tea at a frequented restaurant and free vegetables at a frequented market.
A sunset in poignant shades of pink orange disappearing over the crest of the mountains.
Hands so dry and cold that the fingertips can't seem to hold themselves together.

Pieces overlapping, sliding off the table, being shuffled by careful though invisible hands... anything but connecting.

Emotions like pieces lying broken, irreconcilable, conflicting, on the vague sense that the gates of hell are trembling, these mountains are preparing to bow, and the evil one is throwing punches desperately, like he knows he's going down.

And he is.

And though I can't see the connection because the more I see the less I know: but I know... one thing... I love You. You the maker of pieces and the one who puts them together.

Bellies full of fried potatoes and rice, I lean back on the wooden bench and study the face of my student as she asks me across the narrow chili spotted tea house table, “this year, Miss Kelly, on Thanksgiving we can eat together?”

“Of course!” a response clueless as to what depths such a request might have come from...

“Do you remember? Last year I give you Happy Thanksgiving message, you told me you do not have Thanksgiving in Lhasa, and you said that next year we together would have Thanksgiving... so we celebrate together?”

“Of course!” a response dumbfounded by the memory of a girl who has been holding on to that brief text message exchange for an entire year, a year crowded with many thousands of other events... a response gleeful over the prospect of sharing a holiday with her as my own family... a response stunned into submission by the mighty Spirit going before me in all things and barely holding back a chuckle at my surprise...

“Of course... but there's no turkey in Lhasa, we will have to eat chicken...”

A sparse room decorated with peeling posters of food and celebrities. A green lock on the door the quintessence of flimsy. A half filled thermos of slowly going lukewarm butter tea and a mat covered with a blanket serving as a bed. A story, in broken in English, on the lips spilling from the overflow of a girl's broken heart. “My family is against me... I hid for three months but they found me... they will not let me go to study the book or work at a place with free time on Sundays. They make me go to temples with them. I am the youngest daughter, my family has three monks and my elder brother makes idols for the temples... I am bad... I do not study with other believers...” What would your family do if they found out you were doing that? “They would forget me.”

I have made you and I will carry you; I will bear and save you.

A gray classroom on a gray morning. Thirty-eight distracted students and thirty-eight reasons for distraction. A lesson revealing lack of understanding and changing a weeks worth of lesson plans. A kind, cheerful, hard-working, attentive student in the front row, face buried in arms on the desk and long black ponytail in disarray over her unmoving shoulders. A quiet sob turned to an open mouthed cry. A lesson forfeited, a girl overcome, dragged wailing from the classroom by no less than ten classmates. A teacher helpless, worthless, and chalk covered: holding back her own tears sprung into being from the witness of such seemingly random agony and the total and complete inability to comprehend or heal.

Therefore my people will know my name; therefore they will know on that day that I am He who says: Here I am.

A reality.

A battle rages in the land of the dark. Lifeless creations longing for life fighting alone against that which they have never chosen. Glimpses of truth, bright lights of belief burning as fragile as kites in a hurricane, as candles in a thunderstorm, as a dream in the morning. This is the air breathed, it is the dust covering shoes, it is existence in this horrifying land of shadow.

A reminder.

May I never forget, though the days dark and I woefully inadequate to dispel such gloom, that I serve the one who proclaims in absolute truth:

It was my hand that stretched out the heavens.

And a hand which does that surely is not to short to save.

When you walk out the school gate to make some copies and are greeted by one student suddenly joined by others insisting that you have tea with them now...

When you walk across the street only to run into a colleague feasting on rice in a restaurant which you frequent but have never seen him in until now...

When you sit down with nothing to do only to have your phone ring and a dear friend whom you haven't seen since you went to America asks, “are you free now?”...

When you teach a class and with a suddenness like an earthquake you realize that all of the students genuinely like you, even as you grill them on verb tenses, yes, even now...

When you are stopped in the hall by a student who has never before spoken to you inviting you to their home and asking you to give them your phone number now...

When you think you can relax for the night only to hear a knock at the door only to find a colleague ask you, with rackets in hand, "you didn't answer your phone so I came to your house, are you free to play bad minton now?"...

When the man on the bus decides that the perfect time to take a foreign girl's phone in order to get her phone number is right about now...

When your much delayed trip to the post office places you there at the exact time as another local friend who needs help filling out a package form in English now...

When you arrange to spend the day with a close friend only to end up on a bus outside the city to visit her aunt, cousin, sister in law, and newest baby relative for the rest of the day, what better time to learn Tibetan, drink butter tea, and relax in the afternoon sun than now?...

When girls who are far more committed than you to helping you learn Tibetan laugh uncontrollably with you, spilling sweet milk tea, and deciding that an exam is in order now...

When you enter a crowded tea house only to understand the entire conversation that is going on around you, because it's about you, and are visited by a monk friend who just wanted to say hello but can't stay because he's on duty now...

When text messages are frequent and typically: teacher what are you doing now?

When students rush to squeeze you into a classroom hot with too many people to listen to a student rock band doing covers of random loud songs and then march you promptly to a tea house to eat noodles before wishing, “teacher have good dreams now”...

When you can't see all the pieces fitting together but you can definitely see the hand which moves all things around and you begin to move and work and dream and laugh and cry with the ever present and more intensely burning question: Father, what now?

They're piling up here people so I thought I would share....

Sometimes I am wrong. Do you know? -Pubuciren

I miss your dimples. -Tinlehyangki

Many people say that his tongue is so good. -Suoguo

Handsome is as handsome does. -Tanxin

When I am talking with you my face is smiling too much. -Dolker

All ladies have lovely qualities. -Mr. Wu

Maybe they are like me: lazy men. -Liuying

Teacher, this is my phone number. -Denzengsezhen

They did not listen, so I beat them.
(me) I don't believe it.
Do you know who I am? -Qinxuemei

Teacher have some tea... one cup, four mintues. -Pubuciren

Thank you for your sugar. -Chenxiaofeng

*in Chinese* (me) are you busy?
Not busy. This is QQ game. -Copy shop guy

From the deep cool of shade a stripe of bright slants through the
slightly opaque windows of my visibly dilapidating apartment on a Lhasa
afternoon.
Edging closer, creeping languidly, drawing surprising warmth to the
slight plush of my bed.
Its dusty bright making the pillows beckon audibly: the persuasive
invitation of a bed desperate for company, a body desperate for rest.
I lay in the sunny warmth as under a heavenly blanket, the only covering
I need.
From the soul outward instantly paralyzed by comfort.
Oh two-thirty pm sunbeam! I stir no more!

Until my Tibetan lesson at three. Pangahlah! (It's a pity!)
Sunbeam, will we meet again?

People lined like so many ants around a dropped crumb

Chattering, crying, complaining, consoling...

A death stiffened corpse sitting upright with covered visage

Decaying, disrupting, deceiving, discouraging...

Buses rerouted, students sneak out, hours in the viewing line pass like
glaciers on an icy sea.

Delight for buzzards, disaster for pilgrims: a burial

Finishing, frustrating, forgetting, foreboding...

Chalked streets fade and mournful crowds disperse

Ruining, remaining, relaxing, returning...

The Lama died... evidence? a little red dog trots down a little red street.

There are some weeks when remembering the reason for the hope that I
have is a little like searching for some item of necessity in the junk
stores overflowing with rubbish. Some weeks when I hear the strain in
Paul's voice as he constantly repeated, "rejoice always, I will say it
again, rejoice!" There are weeks which make me dizzy and nauseous, weeks
where I find myself calling out in a desperate plea to the carousel
operator, "stop the ride now, here is where I get off."

But He does not forget me. The problem is that I forget Him. And the
ways that He reminds me that He is in my very midst, that He seeks me
out in my own filth, that He carries me and covers me with His presence
and the power of His love... well those are really remarkable.

Maybe it was the voices of students from yesterday's class calling out
to me in the hallway "Do you feel better today Ms. Kelly?" or maybe it
was His. Perhaps my teammate wrapped a bag of crackers that actually
taste good, an anomaly in this city, to my door handle, or maybe His
Spirit did it. Maybe that box from some dear friends back home complete
with Autumn Wreath scented candles was delayed by the haphazard Chinese
postal service or maybe it was directed by His hand to arrive at the
perfect time.

And stranger things have happened.

Maybe, just maybe, the ancient, hunchbacked old Tibetan lady whom I've
never seen before wearing a dusty stained chuba and brightly colored
head scarf, who was slightly grinning as she half gummed half chewed a
salt boiled potato, blocking the entrance to my apartment building with
her crippled body and dented metal kettle filled with more boiled
potatoes, insisted that I take at least one. Maybe it was her wrinkled
and chapped hands that thrust the kettle towards me... but maybe they
were His. And maybe it was her eyes that glinted in the autumnal sun as
she disappeared around the corner, but maybe, just maybe, they were His.

Blessings in the voice of my students, a pack of crackers, scented
candles, and a kettle of boiled potatoes. He speaks, He provides, He
reminds, He offers. The moral of this story: always take whatever is
inside the kettle.

*This one is dedicated to my teammate Jenn, who had the blessing of
witnessing all of this with me*

I had to dodge carts of persimmons so ripe that their skins threatened
to burst like slimy orange pupae from fleshy eggs on my way to the
flower market that balmy October afternoon. The time was a ripe as those
persimmons for the purchase of my poinsettia. Truly a more auspicious
moment than mid October could never have been to usher in the Christmas
season with such foliage.

It was as if the deep reds and dark greens of the poinsettia adorning my
trailer-park-at-Christmas cabinet (hailed from another story) gave the
universe some covert signal, a wink of the celestial eye, to unleash all
the fury of hilarity into my life. Maybe that or the randomly, though
appropriately, muttered word "asinine" floating through the room to
reach my ears already trembling with giggles.

Whatever the cause, the universe had indeed aligned itself in such a way
that the sticky sweet of the pineapple popsicle poignantly highlighted
the glimmer of mischief in the ancient Tibetan eye of the nearby
grandmother as she hobbled closer to the unsuspecting posterior of my
friend. Eyes clouded with age sparkling beneath a braided mass of gray
she rested her time wrinkled hands on the shoulders of my friend who's
shock registered pricelessly on her American face as she turned slightly
to peer into the brown lines of the visage of the personal space
invader. From her lips escaped a two syllable "oh...kay...." less a
remark of assent than confusion. The grandmother, with no intention of
finding a new resting place for her hands, mimicked the okay and
breathed a sigh heavy enough to be her last, as though there were
nothing more to be uttered on that subject or any. The rest of the
universe, and every fiber of my being, was overtaken by waves of
laughter like a flock of birds suddenly alighting from a power line and
even the popsicle chanced a smirk.

In these days rifts in the time space continuum appear big enough for
the bus to lurch to a stop and make an allowance for the unsuspecting
student to leap on, into the the presence of both of her foreign
teachers. The majesty, or perhaps horror, of seeing both of us at this
moment, on this bus, on this street, in this city, is enough for her
entire body to register: eyes as big as the moon, mouth wide in a barely
prevented scream, arms in the air and body rigid. A few inches of
difference and this poor girl would surly have been backwards off the
bus and onto the unforgiving pavement. The split second of
quintessential surprise before the girl regained control of her bodily
functions was enough to make me double over with laughter and tremble
with amusement I could no longer distinguish from the shudders of the bus.

The profound conclusion to be reached is this: Life is funny people and
as long as we're living, with or without persimmons and poinsettias,
somebody is laughing.

We did a lesson on limericks, I challenged my students to write some of
their own... though I'm not sure how much of the lesson they understood,
the results were hilarious and here are some of my favorites:

There once was a girl from Tibet
All she ate every day was some yogurt
She want eat with a chicken
So we'll see her real soon
Because I have stolen his fruit.
-Qiangjiuzhouma

There once was a girl from Shannan
A boy from Shigatse she met
The boy took a flower
But the girl haven't received
He feel shy and went home.
-Cirendunzhu

There once was a boy from Shigatse
And he usually went to a tea house
But he one day drunk so many
Then prepared to pay money
Later he forgot take money and ran at once.
-Pubuciren

There once was a girl who you know
Everyday she at shamomo
She wanted some more
But the girl at the door
fell down so she felt shy immediately go
-Denzengqujia

There once a man who is a thief
He want have many knife in his life
One day he stole a knife
Look at very good
But got home he found is a wood!
-Baimadeji

There once was a man who you know
He want go to restaurant eating noodle
Although he are not money he had better enter eat
The landlord shout he pay the bill when he said take money forget
Landlord said you are leave here immediately now.
-Cirendeji

There once was a man named Tsering
And one day his teacher let me sing
But he stood up then cried
We didn't know what was reasoned
As result he lost one yuan this morning.
-Yuden

There once was an English student
Everyday to school went
He met a crazy driver
The man wants carry him
But he say "I have foot".
-Danzengqudeng

I awoke to the live television streaming of the largest military parade
in this history of modern China and subsequently had the Chinese
national anthem stuck like a broken record in my head for the rest of
the day.

It was all I could do after such a display to curb my impulses to march
like a nutcracker down the street as I trailed after my friend to some
fairly quiet park where we could study Tibetan writing. Highlights of
the lesson include a devastating amount of sub and superscripts as well
as the largest spider I have ever seen mistake my friend's trousers for
a bench as it sunbathed. He was a welcome distraction from the
absolutely humiliating prospect of learning such a complicated language.

That afternoon I wrote some letters home with four Tibetan sisters
pouring over every word written, leaning onto my arm and shoulder,
spilling onto my lap. I left for fear of turning into a couch or bowl
for humanity. As I made dinner I watched a recorded vision of the
Beijing Civilian parade complete with a float for everything that China
is proud of and one for each of the thirty some odd provinces
complimented by the unending soundtrack of the national anthem. The
environmental achievement float had long been dismissed by the time that
the thousands of red latex balloons were released into the atmosphere.

I washed the dinner dishes in a red plastic bowl of warm soapy water and
couldn't help but feel that something had been wasted, perhaps my whole
day.

Plans erased, delayed, vanished like a dream upon awakening. Plans like
a ball of yarn unraveled on the floor. Plans transient, ephemeral like a
mist. Phantom plans, dazed plans, lost and forgotten plans.

I went for a walk in frustration. I walked around our school's nearly
deserted track. I walked for an hour.

Every lap around, in spite of my frustration, I witnessed the clouds
change hue in the setting of the sun on this wasted day. White like
cotton, now pink like lemonade, now orange like a flame streaking across
the sky, now blue gray like the tears of a whale, now hardened into the
color of slate... now only a shadow on the moon.

And so the sun set on October first.... this morning I awoke to the play
of light dancing merrily across the tips of the mountains and the cool
breeze sneaking through my window and wondered at this world where one
day is wasted and we are so freely and generously just given another,
and another, and another until He returns.

I rushed back with news from the teachers office that this Sunday was
actually Wednesday and thus, in a way only made possible by the Chinese,
we would be having classes. With the sheer drizzle of the
uncharacteristically gray sky and my mind a swirl of confusion over the
days and recently learned Tibetan food items including "monk cake" I
nearly missed the shy student who I had in classes last year who was
waiting at my house fifteen minutes before our scheduled tea time.

I nearly missed her, but I had not forgotten her.

It was providence which had allowed such a time to be set up, it was a
random trip to buy three potatoes which allowed me to run into her, it
was a years worth of insistence that we have tea that accumulated to
this moment, it was her shy giggles and sweet notes and question asked
with lowered eyes "do you want to know my story?" which provoked such
insistence for a tea time. And now, it was happening.

In the damp cool of the morning we dodged the freshmen doing military
training in distracted clumps outside my building, we scampered out
through the school gate and started the hike over to Sera Monastery
because "tea houses near school have many students, I am shy." We
predictably decided on sweet tea and made our way over to some unsteady
benches under a tree heavy with wet. Our conversation, vaguely
reminiscent of a trip round the world, touched on many things: how she
was the first in her family to go to college, how her best friend
studies in inland China, how she often feels lonely, how I am so nice,
how she wonders if her decisions are correct or if she is a fool, how
potatoes are her favorite vegetable, how she thinks she is too young for
a boyfriend, how she is saddened by the pressure from other students to
have one, how Beijing is the capital of China and potatoes, bu shi, the
Potala is the capital of Lhasa, how it is her dream to talk to a
foreigner and now her dream has come true.

The salty spice of the potatoes washed down with the milky sweet of the
tea and the low clouds rolling overhead shaking drops of rain from the
overhanging tree. The staggering mountains and crumbling buildings seem
to converge and how many times did she say 'Teacher this is my difficult
to forget day'?

Why?

'Because teacher, today I am with you.'
How many difficult to forget days does one need before one recognizes
the One who never forgets? Will her next difficult to forget day have
the same sweet tea and potatoes that she eats everyday? When she meets
Him, because He is obviously very close to her, will she also find Him
difficult to forget? Once she has long forgotten me and all the English
she has ever learned will she find the Spirit which makes me so
memorable difficult to forget?

May He be impossible to forget.

I have seen:

A Tibetan man as old as time with Aviator sunglasses

The freckles on an egg like stars in the sky

Herds of livestock like ants dotting lime green hills

Roads so high one drives through the clouds

Four ducks traverse a wilderness

A lake so blue and wide one mistakes it for the sky with the dizzying
feeling of walking upside down

Bread escape into the waves like a renegade lifeboat

A woman in a long wool coat standing before a frozen carcass in the low
light of dawn

As many shades of green as the human eye can process

Three filthy siblings who do not know where they are from but only that
they are hungry

Chinese people have entire conversations with bits of bread and cakes
barely clinging to the inside of their mouths

Stones and caves that appear to be rigid versions of a child's mound of
pockmarked play dough

Villages mistaken for postcards a blink and then gone

I must have seen a thousand yaks.

The thin pages of my notebook fluttered in the cool breeze and dipped
into some sweet milk tea mishaps on the concrete block which served as a
table. The long strokes of the fountain pen looked like a well made bed
on the paper and as I, with snail-like dexterity, penned the next letter
my unswervingly optimistic and dedicated friend patiently offered advice
and antidotes in soft belabored English as cool as the blue ink on the
page.

The sun filtering through the trees of the courtyard outside of Sera
Monastery left shifting dappled marks on my face and paper and as I
blinked in the glare an entire class of novice monks surrounded our study.

Having just finished their own Tibetan script lessons, nothing could
have amused them so much as such a foreigner learning at the rate of a
child half their age. They offer advice, repeating from the ridges of
forced memory the very phrases my friend had been teaching. They squat
and crowd the small table and paper in the shuffle knocking tea cups and
fingering old notebooks. They repeat letters slowly to me, they beg me
to hold the pen differently, they give me one of their own pens. Their
robes are too big for them and the smell as though never been washed.
Soon they will doff the public navy colored robes for some bright maroon
ones of their own, if they pass the test. They grin and laugh and
chatter and take turns practicing the letters themselves. They can't be
older than fifteen years and as I glance through the now shadow now
light at their faces I realize that they are as distinct as the letters
which I practice though can barely read.

Where have these boys come from? How long have they been here? What is
their future?

They are called away by an older monk, presumably their instructor. But
wait, a moment later one named Nawang returns sans robe to offer us some
of his own study materials. Out of a plastic notebook with Snow White
stickers on the inside he pulls page after page of practice sentences in
various different scripts which he begs to give me along with his pen.
As quickly as this surprise gift giving spree begins he disappears up
the crumbling steps away into a nearby tea house.

Learning this language has been one of the single greatest blessings of
my time here. What do I have that I did not receive?

The puffy white clouds sliding across a piercingly blue sky offer a
delicious contrast to the silken threads of the spider's web delicately
clinging to my window.

My stomach really hurts. I am pained but not surprised what with the
combination of corn pancakes topped with sprinkles, spicy fish and tofu
soup, fried noodles and vegetables, hairy chunks of yak meat, and MSG,
not to mention enough sweet tea, butter tea, salt tea, and milk tea to
flood a small valley, having been ingested in the past few days. So it's
only crackers and sprite for now... okay what's a little more tea?

My body's rejection of my dietary habits have given me a blessed chance
to pause.

I once read somewhere that the Creator of all things is not only that,
He is apt to create anything. These past few days I've become convinced
of that reality... I live in the crevice of blinding contrasts that defy
the rule that the opposite and equal cannot both be true in the same
space. They can, and they are.

The same school that does not provide student housing with running water
is undergoing a curriculum revamp that requires their Chinese teachers
to learn Western educational techniques. Teacher's who never speak
English can, in English, attempt to persuade you to go to Karaoke with
them. This same country which wears western fast food chains like cheap
jewelry cannot seem to make a chocolate bar. The same street that hums
and honks at all hours of the day and night with traffic is periodically
forced to a standstill by lazy cows batting their eyes in the glare of
the afternoon sun. There are temples dedicated to the gods of alcohol
surprising the unsuspecting cyclist on a less traveled street and cars
with DVD players installed in the dashboard. Streets are marked with
human feces and frequented by students wearing the latest shoe fashions.
The same city that designs to build an underground walkway through busy
intersections cannot seem to clothe or feed it's ragged children. The
landscape is staggeringly majestic and the homes are pitifully bare. The
women's fingers are raw and chapped but such brands cannot hide her
illiteracy. Workers come to call minutes before class begins only to
drill holes through the door and leave, scatterings of sawdust and the
lingering smell of cigarette smoke the only evidence that my TV might
one day be upgraded to digital. I usually have access to internet but
cheese is as scare as if I lived on the ocean floor. Students who are
too shy to look directly at you can recite with poignant clarity Maya
Angelou's poem "I know why the caged bird sings". Our school's football
field is adorned with replicas of space rockets and our classrooms boast
only cracked chalkboards. Visiting celebrities and wealthy tourists come
and go and the dust barely shudders.

In this small valley, this upward palm of the earth, everything exists.
Demons and angels battle it out in the streets alongside small children
with shreds for shoes playing jump rope and eating hot dogs on sticks.
Sweet popcorn is sold from splintered and stained wooden half shelters
next to incense and tiny buddha's to be worn around the neck as a charm.
I am just as likely to be asked if I have any spare change as where I
wash my body. Plans are constructed out of strings as thin as the
spider's and change like the clouds slip sliding across the sky.

And what a beautiful sky it is. What an alarming Creator He is. May He
mold me into someone as capable of understanding and surviving in and
loving such contrast as those who have been in its midst all their lives
and no longer recognize the incongruities. And may He fix my stomach
that way too.

I should have known that it was going to be different when the text
messages started at 11:30 the night before.

"Miss Kelly I think you are very careful and good teacher"
"I am always happy to be your student"
"Happy teachers day to you"

Today was Teacher's Day... but for everything that I understand about
the world it could have been Wacky Day.
Here is an inconclusive list of everything wacky I saw or experienced
today:
- a smoke filled apartment building due to some wok experimentation
- a co-worker enter a banquet with wads of tissue stuck up her nose
- a lady clipping her fingernails at the banquet table
- a man pour foam from his beer on the carpeted floor
- the vice president of our school massacre a popular chinese tune
- people just picking up random open bottles from nearby tables to take
a swig
- a teacher who I've never heard speak English try to persuade me to go
to KTV
- a fruit basket that required two students to carry it
- a mind numbing array of "banquet" attire: everything from sweatshirts
to chupas to suits to jeans
- a beggar woman point to my students wad of cash when he said "I've no
money"
- a 9:30p visitation from a group of students wishing to give me a gift
- etc

Teacher's Day: a chance to be blown away by the adoration and kindness
of your students and the rapidity with which your co-workers get trashed
at a banquet. Happy Wacky Day everyone!

In 2nd Samuel it is recorded that David had such a resounding victory
over the Philistine forces that they abandoned their idols. David, in
rapture of He who ordained such a flood-like success, named the place
Ba'al Perazim.

Ba'al Perazim: the literal Hebrew meaning is "Owner of Breakings Through".

An alternate translation is "The One Bursts Out".
And that's exactly what He does.

Last semester I taught four classes. It was alarming to see
relationships built on less than two dozen shared words, to watch as the
Spirit stretched across vast communicative gaps to meet students at
their aches and their joys. It was a blessing, it was an encouragement,
it was grace in action. It was three of the four classes.

Last semester I watched tortured and helpless as one of my classes went
into steady decline, which resulted in eight students failing and more
than a few awkwardly jagged relationships. I began this semester with
such a battle still on my hands. The past two classes with them was a
fight for their attention, motivation, and obedience. I left each period
with my insides in knots and mouthfuls of petitions. The forces that I
am up against in that class seem far more than I can understand or
possibly face.

But maybe I had simply forgotten Ba'al Perazim, the owner of breakings
through.

This morning I walked out of the school gate to do some errands for the
day, my mind certainly a scrolling list of things I needed to buy and
time I had in which to do it, when I found myself, much to my inner
trembling, walking right into a group of girls from that class. Within a
moment I had been handed a pop sickle and was being asked in Tibetan if
I had time to go drink tea. Now? Yes, now Ms. Kelly.

Ba'al Perazim: He bursts out.

And this coming from students who had deliberately not attended my class
for the bulk of last semester, students who had failed, who had been
caught cheating on their exams, students who were listless at best in
class. So in a hazy moment of decision I agree to go... and spend the
next hour and half looking at pictures on cell phones of family members,
drinking syrupy sweet milk tea, chatting about summer, about holidays,
about anything they can come up with, using a strange but not unusual
combination of Tibetan and English to express mundane things as well as
hint at the more important.

Then the thermos ran dry and we stood up to leave...

Ba'al Perazim: He bursts out.

As we step stumble out the door into the blazing sunlight these
students, students who I had only in my wildest dreams ever had positive
contact with, the apex of relationship being a brief verbal exchange,
begin to urge insistently... next time Ms. Kelly, if you have free time
Ms. Kelly, Ms. Kelly please have tea with us again.

Amazing. I'm thinking about renaming the street.

May He continue to be honored as the owner of all breakings through and
have the opportunity to burst out in such a way that these girls, like
the Philistines of David's time, abandon their idols.

In the highly unusual drizzle of a Lhasa afternoon I greet my friend in
a frenzy of tangled umbrellas and lowered self esteem when the first
comments out of her mouth are, "oh you look so /healthy/, maybe you eat
too much American food".

Students, friends, random passersby, all of Asia... I did not gain
weight this summer. Jenda, O-nea ribe, really. If I'm fat now, I was fat
before.

Never mind... on through the crowds the slick slippery of stone that
rarely sees rain, the damp push of clockwise motion. Gingerly step past
the beggars stooped on the stairs and push aside a curtain to a highly
recommended tea house, the best chow mein in Lhasa... though I beg to
differ. Nothing remarkable about this small room. In fact, everything
smacked of normalcy (the current definition of which may be more
illuminating than intended) with the multi-patterned benches, small boy
swinging singing in and out of the door, containers of chili paste
scattered on sticky tables, a Jackie Chan comedy blaring away on a TV
wedged in the corner, strangers sitting as close as relatives waiting
for bowls of noodles to come one by one out of the greasy kitchen.

Believe it or not, normalcy reigned.

Until the curtain door flapped open and a young Tibetan man took a
nearby seat. At a glance I knew that I knew this boy, so familiar his
face, but nothing in me could remember where I might have known him
from. As I politely avoided his stares and focused on the pictures my
friend was showing me my mind searched through ever crevice of memory,
every English Corner meeting attended, every student's relative's house
visited, every awkward conversation avoided or messily engaged in... all
the searching, sweeping away of memories cobwebs... nothing. A massive,
unsettling blank.

Finally, in an effort to put to rest what normal people simply ignore, I
lean over the table to the young man and said in slow precise English,
"Excuse me, do I know you?"

A quick "Ting bu dong" (Chinese for: I don't understand) and I was
baffled. My friend thought this was hilarious and I beg her to ask the
man where I know him from in a language that he can understand. She
obliges from amusement and hear this story, which unfolded in Chinese,
Tibetan, and English:

He did know me. We had been on the same bus one morning to Gaynden
monastery. He remembered that I was with Tibetan girls. And then the
storm of that day came back to me like a hurricane... that was the day
when my students got sick on the bus ride up there, the day that they
had bowed before everything that shone, the day that we had been
harassed by a loud group of men in a tea house desperate to take a
picture with me, the day that we had stopped at some nondescript temple
for more prostrating opportunity... and sure enough in the midst of all
of that, this boy had in fact been there... his face floating in and out
of all of my memories of that day.

His name is Jia Tso, he graduated from Tibet Medical College last year,
he is from a Tibetan area of Sichuan province, he thinks I am too young
to be a teacher, he wonders why most foreigners are so ugly but I am so
beautiful. For all I know he is still sitting in the tea house where we
left him drinking coke through a straw shortly after the conversation
took that turn.

The drizzle had cleared and in the cool damp I couldn't help but marvel
at a city where in a forgotten alley tea house one can run into a man
from a very random bus trip to a monastery. AND BE REMEMBERED. A face
so familiar. Am I becoming part of this city? Or am I memorable only
because I am so strange? Is strange what it means to be here?

Speaking of strange: less than ten minutes after the forgotten memory
encounter, I chanced to find a five kuai note laying on the ground. Do
not fear friends, it was promptly spent on a thermos of tea as I enjoyed
the rest of the afternoon with a different friend who has selflessly
made it her mission to teach me Tibetan. Again, normalcy, as loaded as
that word is, reigned.

Back in Lhasa, my first 24 hours:

The man with cotton shorts pulled up over his belly with t-shirt tucked
in. The bus driver who passes everyone in the turn lane by driving into
oncoming traffic. The way entire streets shut down for some runners to
go through. The bag of mixed fruit forced on me by the grocery store
family. A heaping plate of noodles. The self resentment at still not
being able to speak Chinese or Tibetan with any fluency. The long low
damp clouds of the morning. The schedule of only 80 students rather than
my expected 160. The relief in a dear friends voice whom I get to see
for the first time in a month. The smiles around the office as I make my
first entry of the year. The long yellowed fingernails of the bus
cashier. The labored breaths of my first restless night. The dizziness
induced from a mere two story climb up some stairs. The lurking feeling
that something has changed and the inability to describe what that is.
The slip stumble out of bed to the cold realization that I am indeed
back. Loneliness. That smell that I spent all summer trying to forget.

24 hours of another life like a tidal wave upon the shores of my summer.

Yet in the high tide of foreignness I am blessed by the recognition of
the familiar. I have seen those laugh lines before. I know that this
ride costs two kuai. I can bargain for that new kettle with dexterity. I
have blinked hard in this sunlight more than once. That it all is still
strange to me is indeed true, that it is unexpected... not true any more.

The slow soft lapping of the familiar granting peace and rest on shores
of the totally unknown. The sands have shifted, but the ebb and flow
remains.

I have been here before...

Ten.
Arrival complete with culture shocks like ripples through my soul. Everything familiar embroidered with confusion, the cobwebs of foreignness cling to the corners of everything that was my world for twenty-three years. Is that an entire isle of different breakfast cereals? Yes friend, this is America.

Nine.
The jitters of over-stimulation: too many things to listen to, hear, read, watch, understand, evidenced in the tell-tale sign of shaky hands.

Eight.
Tensions unwinding like so many balls of yarn on the floor and the massage of time with friends willing to get their hands into my stringy mess though I am only unraveling.

Seven.
Long forgotten acceptance found over tables in public spaces with heads bowed. Joy spills from lips which have ached to share His work from the past year. His smile, His warmth, His pride, His understanding, His provision found in the faces and company of dear friends.

Six.
Fellowship in the fullness of the depth it was intended. Courage in a note, a hug, a tear. The cross standing in the gap of the past year's brokenness and pain: a splintered reminder of what lay behind... and what lies before.

Five.
A tearing. The happy world of return fades imperceptibly into the mad scramble of depart. The lists begin and the frenzy of purchasing items in anticipation of the long year ahead is underway.

Four.
Insomnia reigns supreme. The fog of sleepless nights interrupted only by this dream of Lhasa: me in Tibetan dress pulling back all manner of curtains, tying them up, ripping them off, a mad attempt to let light in.

Three.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, butter beans, yorkshire puds, cranberry sauce, broccoli and cheese, sprouts, cabbage, corn on the cob, stuffing, and a pecan pie. A pseudo thanksgiving? No. This is the real deal, the one they celebrate in November will be the imposter due to my absence.

Two.
The strain of zippers on overstuffed bags, the heartache in invitations declined, the anxious double checking of flight details...

One.
I'm not ready. But I wasn't ready the last time either.

My only request, my most desperate plea: may He be glorified in me.

America is unique worldwide: it is amazingly diverse in terms of people, landscape, and food, it is wretchedly over airconditioned, it is the height of convinence and accessibility, it boasts an enormity of television programs as well as near constant entertainment in a myriad of forms, and even though most citizens don't realize it, wealth and luxery is the air we breathe. North Carolina is unique amongst states: it is every imaginable shade and texture of green, sweet tea flows like rivers from every restaurant and home, and the local accents are like a massage for the China accustomed ears.

So I'm back.

How do I describe the delight of sinking my teeth into anything with refried beans? To what can I compare the freedom of driving over near deserted roads winding through pastures and forests? Is there anything more liberating than the realization that the clothes in the stores might actually fit you? What about the thrill of options you can read at the grocery store?

But I'm forth.

Somewhere in the midst of the glee of being immersed back into a culture that swallows me up like a wave of jelloesque familiarity there are the inner rumblings of the all too understood and disected storm clouds of foreignness. I fit here but I'm differet. It's easy for me but I'm haunted by idleness. I have lived a life based on the reliability of the spiritual due to the unfaithful material yet find myself in the pulsating deception that the material seems convincingly stable. I have changed through a year long refinement process but to all appearances, nothing here has.

Back... and forth...
Comfort... and discomfort...

Back, and forth.
Backandforth.

In a few short weeks it will be back to China so maybe I'll just soak America, the parts that have been redeemed, in while I can. Is it even possible to overdose on the company of dear friends and burritos?

I'm back and I'm forth.

Ode to Seoul Rain:
It is
absolutely flooding.
Am I swimming or
walking down the street?
Great sheets of
water.
This city must be located under a
heavenly faucet which someone has just left on all day.
Where is the ark?
Forging
great rivers equipped only with an umbrella.
Rainy day in Seoul.