Living for the Other...

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.