Living for the Other...

Sometimes the things we battle hardest against are footsteps like lead, or steam from your breath on a frosty morning as you sit inside your house thinking warm thoughts, or the strain of a smile and the flash of the camera as you take your fourth set of visa pictures.

It's those things... the stumble up to the fourth floor personnel office, the meandering car rides to the police station, the night of vomiting horrors, the misinformation, the old woman on the bus who leans her surprisingly substantial body weight on you for no good reason, the endless layers of dust, the forlorn food left in the fridge, the empty bag of clothes detergent when you only have one load left to wash anyway, the bike tire that is nearly flat, the tedious conversation that ends with a jab at your weight, the advice to 'find a hobby', the stares, the poverty and pain that is all around you at every moment... those things that dim your eyes and put a curve in your shoulders.

And somehow all those little mundane weights attach themselves to your skin, to the very marrow of your bones, until even your thoughts begin to drag and the blessed moments of deep, astounding beauty come across lusterless...
The beggar children whom you recognize by name, knowing their whole family and having wiped their tears, cleaned their wounds, grabbed their shoes out of the creek, and bought countless meals for, appearing at a very random tea house in the city center where you sit slumped though in good company and who hug you and walk hand in hand with you as you leave and you are compelled to admit that they are your beggars, your children, to the delight of your friends.
The grocery shop lady with hands so red and swollen that they are bursting open in cuts and with puss, painful just on sight, who gladly accepts your extra tube of lotion sent from America and smiles at you in that way that doesn't need any language and gives you a hug that immediately assures you that you are in fact family.

Because when your eyes are too dry and your heart too distracted to see the beauty in those moments, such achingly clear beauty that you know they must have been knit by your Father's hand in some place that is gloriously other, it is perhaps the case that you have forgotten that all of His things are yours.

And all of your things... those useless piece of junk make you feel like you're a thousand years old worrisome uncomfortable lonely as a stone in a field of wheat makes you not want to wake up troubles... those things... they are His.

And in the most unfair exchange that was ever made you get joy for garbage.

All my things are yours.

I heaved against the warped, peeling gray door of the classroom, arms loaded with Christmas goodies sent from saints in America, prepared for the last class of the term, and nearly dropped everything.

The normally drab classroom was decorated with a few odd balloons and the bowed chalkboard was covered with pictures of Christmas trees and snowmen. The students were all wearing identical Santa hats, throwing confetti, and shouting Christmas greetings. A bewildered looking teddy bear the size of an eight year old child was perched on the teacher's desk next to some hand made cards. I blinked. Took a minute to catch my breath while the confetti settled to the floor. 

Could this really be the class that at the beginning of the term had confounded me to the point of dispair when their admittedly favorite things to do were sleep and drink beer?

Could these stary eyed, remarkably attentive students really be the same students who cleaned their friends ears during class and worked harder at looking bored than any other single activity? 

As I stood at the front of class and slipped an extra Santa hat that lay awaiting my arrival from the desk onto my head, the typical Christmas words, hope, joy, peace, flashed through my mind and quickly away. For perhaps the first Christmas ever another word came to mind and hovered stuck there, entering forever into my seasonal vocabulary:

Redemption. 


The Angels heralded it. The Shepherds came to see it. Herod killed because of it. The Wise Men followed a star to it. A baby in a feeding trough... and redemption became real. 

So we spent the next nearly two hours, talking about Christmas symbols, making Christmas ornaments, singing Christmas songs, acting out the nativity story, taking pictures and spraying fake snow everywhere. When I handed out their gifts, stockings filled with candies and cards written to them specifically, there was a pause... I realized from the looks of wonder and gratitude on their faces, not to mention the momentary silence, that most of them had never received Christmas gifts before.

When we ran out of things to do, I dismissed them. But not before I thanked them for celebrating with me. The chours' of 'we love you teacher' 'thank you teacher' that sounded uncannily like a heavenly host saying 'Glory to Him in the highest...'

A difficult semester, a history of failure and loss, a class that had given up, a people that had almost stopped waiting, a Christmas miracle, a baby in a feeding trough, a class full of merriement and attention, a night of wonder, a semester, a world, redeemed.

Merry Christmas.

The icy breeze blew through the open tea house door. We bent low to the peeling wobbly table to slurp the beefy noodles and let the steam warm our noses. The piercing sunlight of the door was darkened by a small boy.

His shaved head, raggedy clothes, and torn jacket didn't necessarily give him away. But the wadded handful of torn bits of small money did. A beggar, maybe the tenth we'd seen in that bowl of noodles alone.

I wiped the oil from my mouth. Sorry, we don't have any small money I patiently explained for the tenth time. The boy's eyes widened, he looked at my student next to me, is she Tibetan? he asked incredulously.

I laughed so hard noodles nearly came out of my nose. We beckoned the boy closer, learned his name and where he was from, gave him some not so small money and explained that I was a teacher from America.

Really? He asked, shaking his head as proof of his shock, She looks just like a Tibetan girl. At which point he turned to once again darken the door of the teahouse, but this time in wonder at the whitest pseudo Tibetan he'd ever seen.

For the record, I look nothing like a Tibetan girl... but that beggar made my day.

Short pig tails in disarray she squatted in the forlorn corner between the rusty dumpster and the stained concrete wall. Eyes big with water from the cold she glanced up from the grubbiest teddy bear the world has ever known and threw the box cutter blade she had in her tiny caked with grime hand into the gutter splashed with frozen what may have been leftovers what may have been vomit. Her grin was big enough to turn her eyes into slits and the liquid snot trails from her nose wound their way down her face and would hardly prevent her from later bursting into endless sing songs. At least she had on a jacket this time.

The bus was crowded but not suffocatingly so and in the, somehow still clean, orange plastic seat sat a grandmother, a matted dog, and a small girl. The grandmother muttered and juggled her cares on her lap while the dog squirmed throwing dust and curly black hairs like confetti all over. The small girl, so bundled up with clothes that only her dark eyes were visible, squirmed too, now playing with the dog, now to get the attention of the foreigner. The tiny pile of clothes with dark eyes drew the foreigner down to her height despite the crowded bus with a stare that may well have been a net and then declared through too many clothes You are beautiful. No, was the reply, not me, but YOU are beautiful. The pile of clothes coughed, and grabbed the foreigner for a hug that made even the dog still for a moment.

The soft serve ice cream with blueberry syrup on top experience of delight was hampered only by the imminent fear of splinters from the wooden spoon that appeared as if it were hewn from a piece of drift wood. Carefully being the only reasonable way to eat with it. A pane of smudged glass was all that separated the street from the booth. And all that separated the foreigner enjoying her splintery ice cream from the man with ragged dusty pants and fingernails thick with crust enjoying watching her. His thin jacket hung loosely on his thin frame and his disheveled hair was not long enough to cover raised eyebrows above eyes wide with wonder. On the street behind him nomads with butter slick boots and braids nudged past bags of frozen meat toted on the backs of scruffy boys and small bug eyed dogs trotted along to the sound of their bells. He stood and stared. The foreigner waved. His face cracked into a grin betraying tea stained teeth and he backed away from the window to make room for others who wanted a peek.

I was awakened to the jackhammer hum of helicopters circling in the air... but that's not what I mean at all.

I slid some dirty jeans on over my pajamas and dashed out into the frosty morning prompted by hunger into the staff cafeteria and I sniffed, I could smell again... but that's not what I mean either.

I didn't know what had changed until I went out to the school gate to meet some students for lunch later that frigid afternoon. Right next to the school gate was what appeared to be a newly posted bus route map. Not that I believe anything posted or have the ability to read what's posted anyway. So I turned my attention to the street where a row of huge blue buses was lined up and packed like human sardine cans on wheels... my jaw dropped... the days of chatting with bus drivers on tiny little puttering affairs while I temporarily became the bus cashier were over. I shrugged, I have lived that dream probably more frequently than any white girl ever would.

The cities promise/threat to buy new one yuan buses and change the number and routes was fulfilled this day. Mark it on your calendars, gone are the leisurely, stop anywhere you want on the unmarked route, carry your half a frozen yak with you days. A new era of public transportation in Lhasa has dawned... and let me tell you, it looks remarkably like chaos.

According to the signs all of the buses go to the same places. Hmmm. So I took my chances with the first one that stopped at our school gate. Already packed even at our lonely end of the route was a bad sign. I squeezed on. The buses were so new they still had plastic on the ceilings and doors and so crowded the harassed bus cashier was hoarse from yelling the stops and pushed her way to a window to lean out of it exhausted. I grabbed a shiny plastic handrail next to an old man whose milky eyes glinted in the sun and who couldn't stop giggling at the madness of it all. He was probably lost. I nearly fell into his lap when I was shoved from behind by some extra friendly passangers. Every time the air brakes hissed my eyes widened as more people somehow managed to get on... when the woman with a baby stroller holding what looked like an eight year old child nudged her way to the door I nearly swooned. Grandmothers gave me helpless looks of agony, nomads swore as their fingers got crushed in the new doors, small children gasped for breath like fish out of water, and I, recently on the up and up from a ferocious cold, shuddered every time someone coughed...the bus could barely handle the weight of way too many passengers so when a reckless pedicab dared to cut in front of it I was touched by at least a dozen people with long fingernails... I closed my eyes lest I notice how dirty the fingernails were.

Getting off the bus was a little like winning a marathon, or bursting triumphantly from a nasty bubble in the bitter cold. I took a second to get my balance and breathe in the sweetest air Lhasa had to offer near the Trumpsicon aka run down kmart esque shopping center complete with rancid butter, raw yak strips, and crunchy cheese.

At the tea house where I slurpped butter tea with one of my dearest friends the man next to us made quite a spectacle of pulling a long black hair out of his noodles. My friend nearly gagged. I nearly laughed myself out of all four layers of clothing I had on.

The bus stop I returned to was less of a stop and more of a wad of people milling about in the street. When the same bus I had arrived on screeched to a stop I was comforted only by the fact that I was at least marginally less clueless than nearly everyone else as people fought tooth and nail to get on the bus then, realizing that it didn't go where they wanted to, fought tooth and nail to get off.  I managed to avoid a black eye as I ducked behind a slightly taller man and lept on as the doors nearly caught the hood of my jacket.

The magic was gone by the return trip. Frazzled Chinese mothers began cussing at anyone who would catch their eye as they pushed their bug eyed children suffocatingly close to everyone else, touchy teens literally shoved the storming crowds off the bus at every available chance, three men who surrounded me discussed if they could get away with touching my hair, the weary bus cashier wished aloud for another job, and a middle school girl with watery eyes stared up at me and mouthed it's nice to meet you. I responded with a smile knowing that she was perhaps the only person on the bus who maintained her humanity... everyone else had become biting eels by all other appearances. I gulped and tried to avoid holding hands with the grinning nomad man who was trying desperately to hold hands with me. By the time it stopped at the Teacher's College I nearly wept for joy.

I ran to the school gate and grabbed the gate grandfather's hand and told him I'm scared. He laughed through gapped teeth and said where did you go? obviously not understanding that it was the how did I go that scared me, though the hairy noodles may return to haunt me.

Back at school the three chapped and filthy beggar children I have befriended were silding across the frozen lawn. After a few turns of their matted jump rope we filed over to a shop to buy some snacks. The time that they took to deliberate over what to buy was reminescent of a UN meeting for its seriousness and length. Two packs of chicken and a milk tea later we parted but not before the eldest boy confessed I saw you and said hello hello but you didn't see me I think your ears are bad. And we four burst out laughing in the quickly dimming evening light.

The buses may have changed, but little else has.

And to beat that change, I've enlisted a student to ride every single one with me tomorrow to see where they go. Take that Lhasa and your scary new buses. You will be tamed.

I sat silently at a stained plastic table in the corner of my latest favorite Chinese restaurant and eyed the discolored jars of floating vegetable matter hoping that I would never make the mistake of ordering something that would require the waitresses to go fishing in them. I stomped my feet to keep the chill away found myself looking straight into the face of a befuddled Chinese man in raggedy clothes. He shook his fist of wadded money at me and asked impatiently for change... I raised my eyebrows... he immediately realized that I wasn't the cashier or even the same ethnicity as the cashier and mumbled an apology as he backed away the same way I would if I was presented with a plate of the jar innards.

In the taxi cab we reclined, so full of a hastily eaten meal that all three of us wished out loud for stretchier pants. Having taken the initiative to order the food, despite my childish grasp of Chinese, I was of course blamed for the overindulgence. As the cab careened in and out of the sludgy traffic and useless lights, my friend leaned across the backseat, patted my thigh, and asked me something. When I just stared blankly at her she burst into giggles and declared oh I forgot you were lao wai (foreign). It was my turn to burst into laugher so raucous she immediately defended herself you just fit here, this isn't my wrong...

I marched my icy self into the trashy cramped copy shop I always go to and nudged past the throng of people who all seemed to have no urgent business but only needed to push each other for the warmth. The copy shop man immediately paused whatever he was doing to accept my usb and print out what I needed. As I instructed him on what to print and how many copies to make the beehiveesque activity came to a standstill and one man asked who is she? To which the copy shop man, not missing a beat, explained she is an English teacher and our friend. I nodded in affirmation, pressed the warm copies to my body, and paid the heavily discounted price before squeezing back out the door to the filthy frozen street outside.

The bus doors slammed squeaked open and I jumped up and was greeted by a driver who I had met earlier that day. He ushered me into the front seat reserved for friends of the driver and we began chatting about where I was going and why Tibetan people have good English pronunciation and ten reasons why tsampa was the most delicious food on earth. An elderly woman piped in every now though she faced the back of the bus and never looked at us. Eventually we rolled up to her stop and she turned to pay her bus fare and gasped but she sounds just like a Tibetan girl! The driver grinned like a proud father and said oh but she is an American girl. The woman stumbled off the bus in disbelief and the driver promised to bring me some tsampa the next day.

And these were just a few happenings from this past week... you can only imagine a semester's, or two and a half years, worth of the like...  total mayhem.

My face betrays me. If I weren't so white I'd be invisible.

When I was in fifth grade I came home with a progress report which was straight A's except for the B marking in the behavior column next to which my harried teacher had scrawled: "She won't stop talking." My mother, ever the endless wit, signed the report, gave me a stern lesson on respect for teachers, and attached a sweet little note saying, "Don't worry, we have discussed our daughter's verbal diarrhea." The teacher, appreciative of my mother's creative support, decided to remind me of my illness every time I piped up just a tad too much... embarrassing.

Little to our knowledge at the time verbal diarrhea is more of a genetic disorder than an illness.

So occasionally, the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, allows me to contract some viral strain of nasty that directly attacks my vocal abilities. A divine dose of verbal pepto.

This past week I have had barely a croak and a whisper for a voice. When some students came to drop off their assignments at my house I thanked them with the breezy whisper I had and they, though perfectly capable of speaking normally, whispered back that I should take care of my body. When I picked up the phone and rasped a few answers to my colleague she complained about the phone static and then, understanding that it was my voice making those noises, she gasped and declared how bad it sounded. When I came across some other students out in the street as I was buying oranges in a desperate attempt to vitamin the cold away I smiled broadly hoping that they wouldn't prompt me to speak, but they did and I tried and they leaned in close and told me to drink more hot water. Bus drivers have given me double glances at the scratchy mess issuing out of my mouth, the grocery family expressed what I'm sure was real concern had I been able to understand Chinese, the tiny little five year old guest I often have literally stepped back away from my door in what appeared to be fear when I tried to answer her. 

Divine verbal pepto. Don't need to be talking with those reactions... anything I need to communicate can just be mouthed. Or texted... text me. (as a side note, the least encouraging text message I've ever gotten while being sick in my entire life: go to the doctor, staying at home is useless.)

But when you can't say much, you'd be stunned at what all you hear... ahhh the blessing (curse?) of ears.

My voice is returning, but I think in the future I'm just going to take days where I'll just mouth things... or just whisper... or just say nothing at all... and in so doing, I'm going to learn a great deal more.

My mother and fifth grade teacher would be proud.

I rubbed my chilled hands together in vain before I stuffed them between my legs and the soiled bus cushion. The only seat remaining on the bus when I hopped on that frigid morning was the one where you must sit back to the windshield, face to everyone else on the crowded bus. The two middle school students wrestling in the seat and stretching their oft worn uniforms to the limit. The chain smoker who paused only to hack a thick wad of discolored spit onto the bus floor. The butter-smelling nomad grandmother with long braids tied at the back of her head whose wrinkled hands gripped the seat in front of her like the bus was a terrifying roller coaster. The teen girl next to her plugged in to her mp3 player and tuned out to the rest of the world. The grandfather with lopsided hat and one likely loose tooth sitting directly opposite me at the back of the bus and grinning as though he had been waiting all this time to catch my eye... his eyes sparkled, and I nearly burst out laughing.

I arrived at my student's room only to find her in a drowsy haze due to too much medicine and a ferocious cold. In the bitter chill that was her room I, at her request and against my better sense, decided to stay and peeled and chopped potatoes with the cheerful neighbor grandmother who had offered to whip up a bowl of cabbage and dried yak soup for lunch. While my student rested and puttered around I chatted with the grandmother, not a small feat for someone who is only familiar with the Lhasa dialect of Tibetan. At one point she said "ketsahla ribe?" (_______ isn't it?) knowing only that she had asked a question I replied "ketsah nga ngo shinkimendu" (ketsah I don't know) at which she nearly fell off the tiny wooden stool laughing... turns out "ketsah" means "strange" in Tibetan... which was funny because I know exactly what strange is, being so strange myself. The grandmother was so delighted at what she was sure was a joke she stuffed my pockets full of walnuts when I headed out the door.

Later I stood at another crowded bus stop cautiously eying the old man wheezing some mucusy substance into his glove and hoping that he wouldn't be on my same bus. Just then I was greeted by a Tibetan girl that I recognized but couldn't place, we chattered on in Tibetan a while and discovered that we were waiting for the same bus. Relieved to have company while riding on a human sardine can I offered her some walnuts which she received from my pockets as though it were the most natural thing in the world to walk around with lumpy pockets full of walnuts.

When I arrived at the dusty edge of town to visit my friend I felt that chill that creeps into your feet when Lhasa winter sets in. Soon forgotten, as we spent the next few hours in her tiny room, making noodles, singing Tibetan and English Christmas songs, trying on her clothes to both of our wild amusement. When I slipped into her Tibetan coat that smelled exactly like the sheep it was made out of I couldn't help but burst into giggles which we both shared until the walls themselves were practically shaking. Come more she said as we parted.

At home the, now becoming quite familiar, tap tap at the door signaled my tiny five year old neighbor had dropped by for a visit. I let her in to my house and noted immediately that she carried with her a tiny plastic bag of all the drawings she had ever made at my house which was considerable as she unfolded each of them to remind me, coughing in my face all the while. I let her draw some more and we watched 'The Emperor's New Groove' together, a movie which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if you can't understand what they're saying. She made the movie funnier than ever in her endless imitations of the characters' expressions and continued to cough so hard that her tiny body shook and I wondered about her health and the movie went off and I took her back to her house.

The classroom the next day felt more like a meat freezer to me than a classroom where nearly fifty live human being sat waiting to be taught. I walked into it anyway and was greeted by a sniffle and cough from my co-teacher who handed me the lesson for the day. I made the wise decision to keep my jacket on and buttoned up which made writing notes on the board a little awkward to say the least. Needing more room on the board, I reached for the eraser which promptly fell apart in my hands. Escaping from my mouth was a Tibetan phrase 'kadre chenson?' (what happened?) which caused riotous laugher from the students and one plucky boy piped up and said You know it's made in China Ms. Kelly. I almost had to cancel class I was laughing so hard.

So this week I've had an abundance of merriment, I've also come down with a cold you wouldn't wish on your worst enemies... it's just contagious.

The bus whined as it jolted down the street and I sat with a Chinese volunteer teacher rubbing my cold hands together and wishing that it would just hurry up and get there so we could hurry up and leave. Perhaps it was his gossipy way of chatting at me, or the exclamations of totally hyperbolic awe at the Tibet University campus, or his giggles when the other foreign teacher we were with was accosted by his female students, or the general atmosphere of just something different and at least slightly amusing, or the massive old leaf-less trees, or the sun warm on my back... at any rate by the end of the afternoon the two of us were practically skipping back through our school gate.
I glanced at the pile of student work in disarray on table in front of me, then around at my perpetually dusty, and for some reason particularly lonesome, little room and sighed. I fidgeted a little, hoping in vain that a change of posture would have an effect on my mood. Then a knock at the door. I started. Maybe I had imagined it. But then again, a clear little knock. I bounded towards the door and opened it right into neighbor's five year old daughter. Ecstatic for the company I welcomed the tiny little Tibetan girl in, stuffed her pockets with m&m's, bid her wipe her nose thick with snot, and proceeded to spend the next forty minutes or so being entertained by her stories and expressions which I could hardly understand but which were amusing nonetheless. When the hour got late, I realized, sadly, that it was time to return her to her family.   

The weather here has finally started to have that bite to it that means the worst is yet to come and as I stared out the chilled windows onto the bleak scene outside I realized I hadn't had much of an appetite for the past two weeks. My stomach gurgled with what might have been nausea and what might have been hunger...the only certain thing was emptiness. My phone bleeped underneath scattered belongings. Within moments I was on a bus, headed to a steak house to eat what easily counts as the best meal in weeks with a monk friend I haven't seen in longer. When we were so stuffed we could barely move he shuffled over to pay the bill... then insisted we go to see a 4-D short film about dinosaurs, which I didn't believe existed until I was being sprayed with fake snow while a pterodactyl from the screen leapt out at me. As I waved goodbye to my friend from the bus I slid down into the lumpy seat, full.

I stomped my feet on the hard ground to warm them as I marched over to the mail office where the lady takes an obscene pleasure in telling me that there isn't any mail for me. I slid the door open without my characteristic expectancy, took a short breath before forcing myself inside. No less than five package slips lay in the otherwise empty desk drawer, all with my name. With glee I signed off on them all and later opened the boxes to reveal a truly exciting amount of Christmas gifts to give to students, staff, and friends, generosity which reached across the world... not to mention a wealth of things for myself. I baked a box of pumpkin bread and wished only to be closer to the delicious scent... or closer to the home from which it all came.

Feeling like my insides had been scraped out with a rusty spoon I walked out to the school gate to pay a phone bill that was as bare as old mother hubbard's cupboard. There at the gate four filthy beggar children who had been conspicuously absent of late wrestled, giggled, went about the seemingly carefree task of creating dirt. When they saw me they immediately jumped to their feet, stood in order by height, and asked as politely as beggars can if I would go shopping with them today. So we filed over to a nearby vendor and I laughed as they deliberated amongst themselves over which item they should ask to buy, the process looked as serious as a United Nations meeting. A piece of chicken, bowl of jello, pack of fruit roll ups, and box of cakes later and we parted ways. I grinned at the baffled shopkeeper and marveled at how much can come out of nothing.
Class can become not only frustrating but tedious quickly when the students spend more effort on looking bored than on whatever task has been placed before them. I trudged away letting the door swing wildly behind me as I left the empty room. One student waited for me in the dimming sun. He rushed to my side and sputtered I have a secret, did you get my letter? I sent you a letter, it is I went to English corner and we wrote thank you letters on thanksgiving and we could only write one and I wrote it to you so many things and I read it to all the English corner because you are my so good teacher, I want it to be a so big surprise but now I told you but it doesn't matter... I stopped, transformed by the news, it was my turn to be grateful.

I knew a girl.

She was gentle with a contagious laugh. She would sit on the street corner selling junk off a blanket. She called me nearly everyday last term. She never seemed upset though her fingers were always swollen and red from hard work. She stressed my Tibetan langauge ability to the breaking point consistenly enough for it to have been her job. She liked sweet tea. Her name was Purbu.

I haven't heard from her in over six months.

Today I walked slowly, nearly drowsy, back from a quickly slurrped bowl of noodles. The sun beat down with its totally uncharacteristic for the season heat. The old woman who possess the keys for nearly every room in our school ran out from the small gate house calling my name. In quick Tibetan she urgently relayed some information to me which I caught none of, all the while grasping my hand the way one would if that hand was their last hope. She paused, sighed, dropped my hand in frustration, surely noting my total lack of comprehension, and slowly walked back to the small house.

I followed her.

She just stared at me. Then she caught the sight of a man a good ways in the distance and started yelling and waving at him to hurry. He arrived at our gathering speaking a quick and breathless Tibetan which I could also not understand. But I could tell by the man's frantic eyes that something was terribly terribly wrong. Finally, in near desperation he reached into his soiled jacket pocket and took out a crinkled picture and forced himself to say slowly: Have you seen Purbu? Where is Purbu? I am her brother, I know you are her friend.

The picture brought tears to my eyes because it had been such a long time since I had seen her and though obviously taken ages ago it was still her, her same chubby smiling face, her same non-imposing posture, Purbu.

I explained that I hadn't seen her for six months, I explained that she didn't have a phone and hadn't called me, I explained where her room was just up the street. Her brother nodded. I know I know he muttered but she is lost. 

Lost.


If she calls you, you must call me he demanded before he rattled off a his phone number so quick in Chinese I was shocked to have gotten even half of the number right before he corrected it, shaky fingers and all.

He then dashed away in search of his little sister leaving me in the blistering sun, open mouthed, damp eyed, and shivering, to take it all in.

I have come to seek and save the Lost... I heard a whisper say...

Purbu is Lost.
But one day, may she be Found.

Enter Thanksgiving stage right.

The curtains open on this scene: gimpy Christmas tree decorated with an ornament assortment hailing from the 1980's leaned in a corner, apple cider candle lit, tiny kitchen stuffed with thanksgivingesque foods bubbling on the stove and baking in the toaster oven, one white girl with flour handprints on her pants is fussing around the tiny room.

(Tapping at the door) Enter five year old Tibetan neighbor child, stage center.

The white girl's visage is a mixture of surprise, amusement, and mild relief for the company. The Tibetan child stuffs her pockets with m&m's and plants herself in a chair in the sun to flip through the stack of children's books she can't read. The white girl disappears into the kitchen hole. When she returns the Tibetan child has taken all the ornaments off the tree and lined them up on the table, with the exception of two she has chosen to hang on her ears.

Scene over, with the addition of a few more m&m's, exit Tibetan child stage left. Close curtains.

They swish open again to behold a scene with a table covered in quickly cooling dishes, and ornaments back on the tree. The center stage door is left cracked and through it file Chinese and Tibetan coworkers bearing gifts... Apples, grapes (washed and quickly added to the table), a can of tea leaves, a years worth of apple juice... The staff take their seats around the table, filling up the small room and the feast begins.

(Phone ringing) On the line is the tinny voice of Mr. Wu calling from Australia: I miss your thanksgiving.

The friends at the table deliberate much on which dish is the most delicious, decide unanimously, with one exception who is always the exception, that the sweet potato casserole goes home with the gold. Jokes are told, dishes are scrapped clean, stomachs bulge. End scene with the entire party exiting stage center together. The curtains close on dirty dishes left on the ruined table.

They slide open again to reveal another set entirely: another teacher's apartment, long wooden table low to the floor, piles of books and paintings, tiny tea cups, and six friends squatting on cushions on the floor sipping tea and listening to a smoker play chinese pop songs on guitar. Dishes waiting paitiently upstairs force a sleepy white girl to exit stage right. Scene over. Curtains close.

Exit Thanksgiving.

I am thanks to my Father who fixes it so that I never really have to exit thanksgiving...

We live in this world but we are not of it. 
Our bodies play in this world but our souls do battle in the other...

I dashed off the bus in what is becoming my characteristic dash and straight towards the new auditorium where the Personnel department singing team was lined up waiting for me. After slipping the team's matching Tibetan style dress on over my clothes we filed out to take our seats. The singing match between all the departments in our school began with a swish of the deep red curtains and the crackling of loudspeakers. The song which we were all singing: the school's alma mater, in Chinese, which I only knew how to pronounce maybe one percent of the words to. When it became our team of nine's turn to take a crack at it I smiled broadly as the curtains swished open and did my best to make appropriate mouth motions. Out of fourteen teams, we came in second. So you can imagine how fierce the competition was.



Sometimes taxi drivers are just chatty. This evening the driver with a broad face was content to talk mostly to himself as I struggled to catch a word or two from the Chinese. It never fails to amaze me how much I can understand and really understand nothing. Somehow I managed to answer his questions, though few and far between, correctly and so he continued. At one point, he slowed the taxi to a crawl, took out his fake iphone and started to show me pictures of his hometown and family. Turns out he was a proud Chinese minority from the neighboring province. I flipped through the pictures throwing out my dozen or so solid Chinese words as we neared my school gate. By the time we arrived I knew I had been given a unique opportunity to see into a life. It was as if the Creator himself had said to me: Look at how special I made him. I wished the dear driver a goodnight and the stars twinkled overhead.

When I followed my former student whose face beamed and pockets burst with his recently paid first salary ever to 'enjoy the luxury life' straight into downtown Lhasa and ended up in the only western-esque fast food chain restaurant in the city, I was understandably confused.

I had never eaten at Dico's (if the Colonel had an Asian cousin, he would have been the spokes person for this little number) before. Nor had I any intention of ever doing so since something about overpriced junk food, the equivalent of which one might well avoid like the plague when actually in America, held little attraction for me.

But for my former student, it was the very thing he'd been saving up and waiting in anticipation for, the first meal of a first salary, a chicken sandwich and fries. Luxury.

When I taught him how to open the packets of ketchup and showed him the average American amount used he sighed and said "so luxury."

When our plastic lidded paper cups filled with slightly cool iceless soda arrived he slurped noisily through the straw and grinned "this is the luxury life."

When we glanced from our orange plastic booth into the darkening street below he could hardly contain himself as he sputtered "now I know what is luxury."

When our chicken sandwiches came, complete with some limp lettuce sprinkles, a slab of chicken, a pale pineapple ring, a thick blanket of mayonnaise all lined up in a bun and I showed him which side was the correct side up he shook his head "American food is so complex." 

When we had stuffed ourselves, used up every last bit of the three ketchup packets we had been graced with, drained the last of the paper cups, finished answering the random assortment of English questions, and left the brightly lit, neon colored restaurant, he stuck his hands in his pockets and asked "now I have a luxury life don't I?"

I nodded, knowing that in a single meal the word luxury, both in terms of grammatical use and definition, had been transformed for me.

The other day I went to visit a friend and the feisty grandmother who lives in the room next to her brought some carrots over for lunch that looked like they could have been on display at the national natural history museum. I thought I was saying 'where are those carrots from?' because honestly I was a little nervous, but apparently I said ' where is that carrot's hometown?' The difference being riotously funny to the grandmother who had to pop a squat because she was laughing harder than she had in most of her adult life...

Never did figure out where those carrots' hometown was... and didn't get sick after eating them either.

That has nothing to do with what I'm about to tell you anyway.

The bus stop where I was waiting with my friend wasn't so much a bus stop as it was a mob of people just aching for the opportunity to crush each other into the doors and sides of rusty squealing buses that didn't dare to pull up to the stop but just tapped the breaks in the middle of the street to give people a chance to get on. The situation alone made me wish I had been wearing full body armor but my shy, timid friend with a long black pony tail and pink sweater didn't seem to notice. We too stepped squeezed onto the bus.

For the first little bit of our ride we were knocking heads with the people around us. The bus was slammed with the typical odd assortment of grandmothers spinning wheels to everyone's peril, teenage boys taking drags on cheap cigarettes and coughing spittle onto the people next to them, nomads with bags so large that their presence on the bus instantly reminded me of those glass bottles with ships inside. We rode the bus into the dangerous part of town known for thieves. We rode the bus past that part into the poor part pretty much unknown and inhabited by tumbleweeds. When we got to a deserted intersection on the very edge of town we got off.


This is where I work, she half laugh half whispered, and this is where I live.

We spent the next three and a half hours together. Just walking through the dusty temporary kitchen where she cooks for a construction crew, then across the street into the tiny first floor room which is only big enough for a pile of blankets, a stack of books, a bed, and a stove. She made some endearingly salty butter tea, we talked about the lyrics to English songs, her family, the other friends we have in common. We walked down the street populated with lonely pool tables and children with splitpants to buy vegetables in a dark shop.

When we entered the Chinese man squatting in the corner obviously recognized my friend and immediately gave us two lollipops as he chattered away. My friend brought the small cabbage, zucchini, and potatoes over to the scale. The man threw some green onions in free of charge. We stepped out of the darkness into the blazing though slowly dimming edge of Lhasa sun. She wrapped her arm in mine and said his wife is a c, I go with her to study and then with eyes sparkling I think Lhasa has so many c's.

When we got back to her room we immediately dumped out the now cool cups of butter tea, refilled them, and went to work washing and chopping the vegetables we had just bought. Then we went to work making noodles from a big block of dough she had made earlier that day. As we cut and stretched and rolled the noodles, dropping them into the boiling water and occasionally the floor, she told me...

I came to Lhasa 10 years. I first time here I live with another family. They have a cow. Everyday I get cows milk and then I sell it. This work for four years. When I was a child I never went to school. Only boys go to school in my family. I then met Korean teacher. We study the Book. I believe J. Now I love to study. I want to study more. But job is so hard to find. Room also. What can I do when this job finish? Must find a new one. Maybe can work in some shop. 

The noodles were finished, she flicked on the second burner and began to make a concoction of bits of fried yak and the vegetables we had bought that smelled so good I had to wipe drool from the edge of my mouth.


When I first came here I cry every day. So lonely. But now not bad. My brother lives in Lhasa too. He makes this one.

She reached in the cupboard and pulled out a stick of incense. I smelled it knowing already that it smelled like a temple. Her brother is a monk.

She dumped the noodles into the pan of fried vegetables and then spooned some out into bowls. Upon first taste I immediately wished I hadn't eaten anything else that day because they were so good. We ate until we could hardly move, then finished off the butter tea, then she stood up to walk me to the bus stop before we missed the last bus of the evening.

So we walked through the barren lot of fine dirt to the edge of the street, my arm over her shoulder her arm around my waste and I glanced around me at the garbage, rubble, and bits of discarded cardboard and said: 'I know our Father is good. I know He is good because you are a Tibetan girl who never went to school and came here to sell milk when you were young and I am an American girl who all I ever did was go to school and I came here to teach English and we are here together and we are the same. He loves us the same. So I know He's very good.'

And she said: I know He's a very good Father. 

And I gave her a hug and promised her that I would come back to see her because now I knew where it was and so easy to get there and the rusty bus shuddered to a brief stop and I jumped on and waved at her through the mucky window.

And as I sat on that bus that drove into the setting sun and into the city that has beaten me and blessed me... I knew... I just knew as sure as I've ever known anything in all my life, that my Father was going to provide for me. He was going to do it right that moment, and He is going to do it next year when I go back to America, and He's going to continue to do it as long as I live and then on into eternity. And I knew that though I know nothing else I would trust Him. And the security of the knowledge filled me with such a peace that I nearly fell asleep... man beside me hacking a thick wad of spit out the window and all.

I'm still learning things.

When I walk simply, open my eyes and ears to those around me, and let myself be humbled it's shocking what all I can be taught in a day, an hour, a minute...  

Here is an inexhaustive list of everything that I learned today, just your average, ordinary day...

• Dinosaur egg instant oatmeal from America is still the best flavor on earth... no rivals.
• Students are way more creative when it comes to sneaking a cell phone out of class to a friend in the hall than they are in regards to any assignment you could possibly give them. 
• The best tool for assessing English improvement in students is when they start laughing at your jokes. 
• It is possible for even a cold to be evidence of a Savior's mercy. 
• When they say "let's have lunch" what they really mean is "let me order more dumplings than you've ever seen in your life along with two huge vegetable dishes."
• If they don't throw the book of random advice at you when you're sick, they don't love you. 
• It's totally okay to order food in one restaurant, walk next door, order food in the next restaurant, and then have them deliver to the first one. The only one who feels uncomfortable is you, everyone else in the first restaurant thinks it's brilliant.
• Colds give you a super human capacity for dumplings. 
• Someone, somewhere thinks you're beautiful. If you're in Lhasa: everyone, everywhere does. 
• College grad work, even in the best of all possible circumstances, will not ever write itself. Making patience the least enviable virtue in this situation.
• A bag of pineapple fruit snacks is only one yuan. Why not get two?
• Few things are more culturally shocking than babysitting korean kids in Lhasa, and few things more rewarding. 
• Some songs transfer to any language. 
• The best dinner conversations consist of maybe three words: juice, soup, good. That's just about everything you could ever want to say. 
• Goodnight kisses and hug jumps from behind are two of the most endearing characteristics of children, and surely at least part of what He meant when He instructed us to become like them. 
• Being one of three white residents on the bus route never fails to be awesome. 
• The only thing better than giving random grandfathers lotion is giving them lollipops... and don't you forget it.

How to get schooled in Lhasa? Live.

It began with a cup of tea. Which is at once the most ridiculous way to begin anything and the same way I start nearly every morning. The steam rising from the cup made my nose run even harder and faster than it had been all night. I drained the cup, wiped my nose, went to class.

Class ended with an earthquake drill. Planned down to the minute complete with a two step process of at the first sound of trouble get under the desks at the second sound run outside. Trouble being the music department beating the mess out of some tin drums in the square near our building. I walked lazily through the chaos back to the apartment.

Tea began with two cups and a student ever bursting at the seams to speak and yet somehow unable to say all he wants. He handed me an eleven page essay on his experiences practice teaching. He beamed. What all I want to say is you can find in this one teacher. I flipped through the pages covered with hand writing.

Tea was put on hold when the beggar children crossed the busy street to the tea house where we sat. Like familiar guests they squeezed onto the bench, put their ripped plastic bags down, and made a show of everything that was in their pockets: a stick of gum, a coin, a broken USB, the days treasures. One girl, with pain in her black eyes, reached her hand up to display a palm that was sliced open and oozing with puss and blood. She picked up a wrong bottle. We took her to the kitchen to wash out the wound.

Dumpling making at the nunnery teahouse began with a quick rinse of my hands in warm water poured by my nun friend. She took off her apron and sleeve guards and I put them on. Back in the corner, a dim grimy hole barely large enough for the three of us, we rolled out the flour, stuffed them, pinched them shut, stacked them in rows in the steamer, chatted, drank tea, amused customers, until the meat and all of my language ability ran out. 

Visiting ended with a kilo of sunflower seeds in hand and a quick hug good-bye to my dear sweet nun friend who never fails to share her life, her work, her language, her apron, her friends, all her things with me. Humbled already I trudged back down the street.

The evening was punctuated by a text message: You are my teacher. If you are ill, we won't have your class. Classmates like to listen to your class. From a shy, bumbling student in a rowdy, obnoxious class at a moment when I least expected it, having not told them that I was sick, nor made any mention of canceling class... nor ever dreamed that any of them cared one way or the other. Confusion born of a show of love so closely resembling a command to get healthy.

It ended with a cup of tea, mint something warm, before an already dozy girl drifted off to sleep. Dreams of a Way where the lame can leap, the crippled are healed, the rough places made smooth, the earth doesn't quake and noses don't run, beggars are cared for, students are encouraged, nuns are acknowledged, messages are received, and endless cups of tea are drunk...

"Excuse me bola, is this the path we should take?"

The two chummy grandfathers decked out in their finest merit making gear implored us to wait for a minute in the late afternoon sun while they used a nearby public restroom.

"We will walk the path together," they said.

My friend shrugged. We waited. To the amusement of the two public restroom janitors lounging in bright orange coveralls on small stools nearby.

A courageous crinkled leaf let go of the nearly bare branch and spun in a loop to the ground. The whole city spins clockwise.

We met our new found friends exactly halfway around the city on one of the best marked and most frequented circles, the Lingkor. The whole place is circles though, just rings upon rings intersecting with rings. The whole mentality of these people is circles too, endless loops upon loops though which they cycle but rarely understand. So became obvious as the grandfathers took it upon themselves to explain the rotten tons of prayer flags littering the mountain, the gaudily peeling painted buddhas all over the rocks, the garbage and graffiti everywhere, the rows of nearly dissolved paper cups of water. That is, if the word explain can be used to describe the what was quite like the effect of a handful stones thrown into a still pond. Circles.

As we wound our way to the top of a small mountain and around the city in a loop that resembled something much more like a strand of yarn tossed to the floor than a ring, my mind too began to spin...

Another week, round and round.

"You will sleep so good tonight," my friend said as we downed the last dribbles of sweet milk tea and got up from the well placed tea house to finish our circle, by now sans grandfathers, around the city.

We parted at the intersection where I flagged down the first bus I saw and realized immediately that I was perhaps the last person that they could phsically stuff on... only to be astounded when about a dozen people got on after me. Leaned over a grubby yellow seat and a woman with a man sized bag in her lap my face rested on the cool window and I steadied myself against the erratic shudderings of the bus and was warmed by the people pressed next to me.

When the bus looped near my school I squeezed burst from the dingy exhausted doors and gasped for breath that wasn't being recycled immediately by others next to me.

Circles, rings, loops, coils, wheels spinning round and round and round. Dizzy.

I stood on the dusty darkening street as the remarkably crowded bus sputtered away and acknowledged that, though I can make no sense of the whirlpools of motion and thought that erode and define this city and people, they exist, and I too am caught in their inertia.

Nevermind... to move linearly in this place would be nothing short of fatal, anyway.

So here we go, round again...

Sometimes I don't want to hear anything. I want to hear nothing at all, not one sound, save for the voice of my Father. 

The air was crisp, the sun warm, the fallen leaves yellow when I stuffed my ipod headphones further into my ear and turned up a song of praise just loud enough to make everything I saw walking down the street appear as if it were in a music video... on purpose.

I needed an escape.  The noise of this world was a snare to me.

There went a bus I didn't even hear. Some people squabling in Chinese I also couldn't hear. Sellers hawking their wares, bicycles clanging, students giggling, billard balls clacking, cows lowing, leaves crunching, noodles being slurped... and I... couldn't hear any of it. To my delight.

Sometimes even your ears are weary.

So when I crossed the street and began my walk of escape down a baren dirt road next to the ditch near our school I wished with all my might I had taken a different turn. Because even though I could only see it, couldn't hear it, I did hear it... somewhere deep down the sound rustled the tatters of my ragged soul. It was one of the tiny beggar children I have come to befriend, standing in the ditch, clothes torn and sodden, shoes off, and face bathed in tears, wailing.

I took out my headphones. And the torrential rush of life flooded my ears and nearly made my eyes water. I had wanted to block it all out.

When she saw me turn, cross the ditch, and come pick her up out of the lethargically moving water, she stopped crying. Her brother and even younger sister stood a little ways off near where her missing shoes were, splashing in the filthy muck. I buttoned the only button left remaining on her grimy shirt and turned in time to catch her older brother as he jumped up to hug me. Something about spinning a child around in the air makes the rest of the world stand still. I explained that I was sorry I hadn't brought any money out and so instead we squatted and played a guessing game drawing numbers in the gravely sand and wrestled a bit and then laughed as a single rubber boot floated by in the ditch and the older brother splashed dove to get it and stuffed both of his feet in. I asked them if they were okay now, invited them to go on my walk with me, and at their refusal I wished them farewell after helping them put their busted too small shoes back on.

I reached in my pocket to again mute the world.

But I pulled my hand out empty and instead, before I even realized I had done it, grabbed two of the bulging plastic bags held by the panting grocery market lady who I love who also just happened to be struggling down the street right next to me. She, so thrilled for the extra set of hands, chattered at me in Chinese that was far too quick to be comprehensible and while I was being mesmerized by the endless stream of what I may never be able to understand I followed her right into the army base. As much to my surprise as theirs.

We dragged the bags squirming with fish and loaded with cabbages back to the kitchen area, caused a bit of a scene when I, immediately realizing that I shouldn't have been where I was, decided to quickly leave and was commanded to just wait a moment by the dear woman. When she had been paid by some astounded looking men in uniform, she clasped my shaky hands in her cool, swollen, chapped ones and we walked back through the main gate, her chattering all the while and I blushing, where we parted.

Two steps later I had silenced the world with my music once again.

Only to feel my phone rining in my pocket. Nearly tempted to curse my other senses which had been betraying me, I turned off the music and answered the call.

It was my student who was away in her hometown doing her practice teaching. Her class was studying animals and her only request was could I please please just one time sing the animal song I had taught them? So there I stood on the street, next to babies squatting with spilt pants to pee, women in bright orange overalls sweeping the endless barage of garbage, a man with a bicycle cart full of miniature cacti, and the typical odd menagerie of life, singing softly into my phone so as not to attract any additional attention, 'Old Macdonald had a farm... e-i-e-i-o'. An enthusiastic 'Thank you teacher!' ended the phone call.

When the dump truck horn blared past belching soot a moment later I didn't even hear it.

And so the veiny, green turning yellow leaves cascaded to the ground, clipped from their branches by the brittle wind, and the sprinklers danced around creating misty showers, the dimming sun light beamed across the damp lawn of the park, and the grandmothers hobbled, young men on bicycles glided, taxis sped past. I sat on the haphazardly painted white metal bench and watched it all happen according to a beat that only I could hear. And it was all I could hear.

And as I sat and gulped in the peace and beauty of the moment I was in like one who had just escaped drowning I realized that even when I had my music turned off, somehow slicing through the noise noise noise, I had heard His voice: play with beggars, carry people's bags, sing to your students...

May it always be all I can hear.

The sparse street lights left modest pools of dim yellow light on the nearly blackened closing down for the night street. A blue and white cab pulled up to the curb where I was standing and I got in the front seat.

The nearly bald somewhat elderly driver with a round face and orange jacket stumbled over my school's name several times before, with slurred speech and eyes glinting with mirth from the light of the dashboard, he maneuvered the taxi across the dim street in the correct direction.

Pedestrians moved like shadows on shadow as the taxi rolled drowsily  through the streets. He was chatty and as the outlines of buildings slid past in the darkness we had the following conversation in my painfully stark Chinese:

He: You're beautiful
I: Nope
He: Where are you from?
I: America
He: Are you a teacher?
I: Yes, English
He: English is so good
I: Yes
He: Do you have a boyfriend?
I: Yes
He: Is he Chinese?
I: No
He: How old are you?
I: I don't know
He: Do you drink beer?
I: No
He: I will tell you my phone number and you can call me then we can be friends is it okay?
I: Sure

I: I don't speak Chinese. 
He: hehehehe

He mystified me as he actually obeyed traffic rules, drove a reasonable speed, and stopped at the lights. I saved his number in my phone as "crazy taxi" an adjective describing the overall night rather than the driving. He, in no rush to actually get me to my destination, pulled up next to another cab, rolled down my window and proceeded to gleefully declare our friendship as I sunk lower in the seat and covered my face with my hand.

The Potala loomed darker than ever in our rearview mirror and the stars twinkled bright overhead.

I couldn't help but giggle behind my hand as he continued to chatter away at me, chuckling to himself, and at one point reaching over to turn up what could have been a theme song for the 1970's on the car stereo. By the time we arrived at my nearly deserted school gate, in the alternate universe I currently live in, we probably had become friends.

So he nearly drove right by then stopped at my school gate. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the crumpled ten yuan note to pay the fare. He refused to take it, I left it on the dashboard, he grabbed it and stuffed it back into my hand...

He: WE ARE FRIENDS. You don't pay.
I: Really?

First, and possibly last, free taxi ride of my life. Awesome.

Free... that's definitely in my budget.

Shambala. Shangrila. Paradise. Heaven.

He knows that he doesn't know where it is.
He doesn't know that he doesn't know Who it is.

Shambala. Shangrila. Paradise. Heaven.


His response had made me burst out laughing in class, had made me translate the Tibetan word and then the Chinese word for the English ones, had made me smile and ask them all whimsically, "Maybe you don't know where it is, but can you find it?"

However, as the rest of the day unraveled into bowls of steaming dumplings, around cups of thick sweet milk tea, through conversations with students past and present, over a dinner of oily vegetables and curious students, and ended up in a pile on the dingy carpet of my apartment... his response wrapped like a thorny vine pricking my soul till it now bleeds. He wanted to go there, but couldn't... couldn't because he didn't know where it was... Who it was.

But I knew. I know.

And if I could rewind any day of my life, return to any previous moment, sit down in a time machine and end up at any point in the past, it would have been that one... and it would have gone like this:


But I can't go back in time. Only forward.

Forward holding the hand of Him who is outside of time and through some divine joke has chosen the clumsiest of vessels to transport the most precious of messages to the most painfully captive of prisoners.

Shambala. Shangrila. Paradise. Heaven.

Let there be a room waiting for Tashi there.

And so my day ended.

I laid down knowing that I would awake to snow like someone careless with powdered sugar on the mountaintops.

Just then, a slobbery gust of wind and rain blew the curtains away from the teahouse door immediately signifying that the brief visit had come to an end. We declared our joy at getting to see each other, our promises of later visits, and dashed out and then off into the sheets of rain our separate ways.

The cold and nearly empty thermos of sweet tea was content to take up room on the small table as she whispered to me about her family. Her aging parents still doing all the farm work, her monk brothers who were professional idol and incense makers, her sister's five children, her younger head strong brother, all know whom she has believed and all in her tender though loaded words: disagree. She brushed a slightly greasy strand of hair away from her symmetrically almond shaped eyes and nervously twisted a ring on her finger... it's difficult she only just mouthed. I squeezed her hand. There was nothing else I could think to do.

She had sent a message saying she was across the street, I had sent a message begging for any other time to see her, then immediately changed my mind, laid my work aside, slid back into my well worn shoes, and out the door once again but this time on an invaluable mission to visit a dear sister who I hadn't seen since last term. And the joy to which I was met with upon entering the teahouse where she waited for me made even putting the dirty socks on again worth it. So we went about the business of chatting over tea.

Finally, a moment, after a long, nearly continuously interrupted day to just breathe and finish the odd scraps of lesson planning that needed to happen for next week. But it was only a moment... the phone is going to go on strike after what it's been through today.

Even my weariness couldn't quell my urge to stop. Secretly I had always wanted to have the opportunity that lay before me on the uneven sidewalk in the dimming light as the cool breeze sliced my fingers and swirled the crowds of dirt lined against the curb. There was another student perched on a stool playing a serious game of Chinese chess with two grizzled and even more serious old men. A chance of a lifetime for a foreign teacher who walks by serious games of chess like it's her job with a longing to stop and watch or play but possessed only of a debilitating ignorance. Which promptly fled in sight of my student. He promised, between serious moves that involved a lot of grunting from the old men, to teach me how to play... leaving the doors swinging open on their hinges for future sidewalk games. Pleased and quite finished, I went back to the apartment.

So I found myself racing to the school gate only four and a half minutes late for a dinner meeting that had been arranged on the fly. I have always been able to distinguish this tiny student of mine from all the others at a distance simply by the way she wraps her long black hair behind her head in a bun. We walked through the cool breeze to a hole of a Chinese restaurant as she told me about her teaching job, about how she misses Lhasa, some questions of English letter writing, her family... a conversation continued over too much food and bursts of laughter more genuine than anything coming out of the blaring television set in the corner. Afterwards, I saw her to her bus then turned once again to head back to that place I had woken up in what seemed now like nearly a century ago.

We walked back together to where I could catch a bus and the idiotic phone rang and meetings were canceled and new ones were made and flies buzzed over a heap of trash nearby. She looked at me: teacher, then we go back to my house together? And I couldn't do anything but smile and hug fiercely this girl who after spending nearly five straight hours with me would so so gently request more. So gently in fact that it took every ounce of restraint left in me not to just agree and spend the rest of my life in that small room in the intestinal alleys of Lhasa. But it wasn't to be, and there wasn't a moment to lose before meeting another student for dinner.

On the roof the sun was warm nearly blistering and it was obvious by the fact that she had brought her dictionary with her that she had many things on her mind. So she looped around and around, words like birds dipping through the air, as we squatted on the dusty rooftop. She arranged her fears and doubts in circles around us and I dutifully followed the swirls; picking the fears up and presenting opportunities, dusting the doubts off and displaying strengths. We were interrupted by wild giggles in the alley below and we couldn't resist peering over the wall to watch as a group of children turned some plastic baskets into race cars. Race cars that we dodged a few moments later as I left to find the remainder of the day.

Past a pile of pink and purple plastic pails I turned left into an alley and left again into a house that had begun to feel more like a home to me after my countless visits over the last year. Delighted to find my ever cheery, slightly freckled student at the top of the stairs we began what would be just another day together. She slid her glasses up on her nose with her middle finger and flipped her tidy black braid over her shoulder and together we set about the work of washing, cutting, peeling, frying, boiling our lunch of vegetables over rice and sweet milk tea. The cracked mirror hanging on one wall reflected back the chatter of the next door neighbor grandmother as she stared and commented on how big my body was, reflected back the foggy Tibetan lessons, reflected back dozens of text messages and phone calls from what felt a little like everyone in the city, reflected back the stacks of bottles and books and clutter that filled the tiny room. The mirror had seen enough. My sweet student and I headed up to the roof.

The clouds hung like a thousand gossamer veils over the mountains. Cold. I racked my brain for any excuse I could think of that would be valid enough to keep me in bed the rest of the rainy morning... but instead of a reason I got a text message and my day began....

No, today doesn't really make any more sense in reverse.

In my two years here I had never undertaken so random a mission using so haphazard a method with so diverse a menagerie. As step one of our method chugged along I found myself sandwiched between the profoundly Tibetan and the quintessentially Chinese and felt a little claustrophobic as both stared me in the face. What had I done?

It wasn't until we were squatting on the curbside before my anxiety over the potential disaster that I had orchestrated subsided. There's something alarmingly equalizing about squatting, not to mention squatting side by side on some stained pavement slurping tapioca balls through wide straws as flecks of garbage trundle past in the breeze. Though I tried not to show it, it struck me continuously how the three of us represent all of the conflict and beauty that this city suffers under. We chatted in English, I clarified in Tibetan, they exchanged in Chinese, and the world became three dimensional as the layers of language swirled around creating a conversation that was nearly impossible to follow due to the fact that perhaps only two thirds of us were understanding any given exclaimation. Everything repeated three times with the only variation the order. It's delicious! Shimbodu! Hao chi! Slurp slurp slurp. Di johkma ribe? Is that an ant? zhege mayi ma? Slurp slurp slurp. Wo hen shui jiao. Nga galeh cahgbodu. I'm sleepy. Slurp slurp slurp. On and on and on... round and round and round.

But not everything can be translated.

When the paper cups were dry, the breeze icy at our backs, the wide straws useless, the ground more disgusting than we could bear, and the lady returned for her second order of hot dogs... we stood up to leave. Mission completed, we retraced our method back to the school.

After a threefold declaration of pleasure in our outing and a good bye, zai jian, chu-oh to the girls, I crunched through yellow piles of leaves with my mind reeling from our triangular conversation and proximity to the complexity that I always knew was here but had never sat between on a bus, had never wandered amidst down the street, had never partaken of tea among.

I have a lot to learn... and there's no one and no way to translate it.

An empty tea house save for a handful of drowsy flies and a teacher and a student. Two bowls of noodles licked nearly clean bridging the minute expanse of the wobbly wooden table between us. A glum looking child squeezing the breath out of a matted kitten in the corner. She reached in her bag and hands me back a precious Book, that I had had no intention of getting back. Knowing she couldn't have completed it in only a few short weeks I asked what she thought, why she was giving it back.
I showed it to my uncle she said. It was the only response I needed knowing that her uncle was a long established monk who she honors as the wisest person in all the world. I fingered the paper cup of cooled soggy tea leaves and suddenly realized that this girl's journey was far longer and more crowded with family members than I had previously understood.


I opened the overly organized email inbox only to be greeted by a lengthy email from a colleague I only worked with my first semester ever in Lhasa. Back before I could discern which shops were grocery stores and which ones were restaurants. Back before butter tea was a reality. Before I stopped being shocked at where I was when I woke up every morning. Surprised at the seemingly rapid updates in his life I was more shocked to read this: What you have done in Lhasa explains what love is. Love is sacrifice to other people. Like the lion in the movie The Chronicles of Narnia. The large black font swam before my eyes and I read the lines over and over again knowing that this man believed 'only in nature' and yet that he had access to greater truth than he could ever have known.

I had hardly knocked at the door to my colleagues apartment on the floor below me before it opened and we sat down to chat and drink a translucent red tea. The talk began of his holiday trip and wound its way to his planned retirement, looped through a few questions of history, and meandered towards a Book he'd been given from a teacher ages ago, pulled down from a nearby shelf, obviously nearly untouched but left on the table for the time being. His halting speech filled the room as he claimed that the belief of this city was so selfish, only for one people group, at least mine was open for anyone, indeed everyone. Even for you I affirmed as his oddly contagious laughter sloshed the tea in his tiny glass.

My computer had never been in more rustic conditions as I proped it up on a wooden board which also balanced cups of sweet milk tea and I listened and watched as a long time monk friend scrolled through pictures of his holiday travels. Pictures of rainbows, and snow, and lakes, and mountains, and monasteries, and flags, and broken statue remains draped in katas flashed on the screen. When the faucet of picture stories had run dry we remained at the shady table and chatted while we finished the last of the tea. In response to something I remain unable to pinpoint he stared across the rickety board at me and scolded me for not thinking of myself enough and began to use my name as an adjective. You are too Kelly, always your mind is on Him, should you think of your own self this is best. And I laughed and reminded him of all the times he had called me selfish because I refused to participate in the detachment theories of his belief. He shook his head: You are too Kelly.

That evening I had walked slowly back through the beautiful weather past children scream giggling on playground equipment, past students with covered faces sleeping in the grass, past men urinating on the nearby fence... and nearly right into a hobbled Tibetan woman walking the opposite direction. Her face was a shadow to me as mine was a flash of bright to her and as we passed I heard her call out in a voice that sounded like ancient waters and could have called stones from their slumber: Oh---kay. My hand instinctively covered my grinning mouth as I thought: she's right, it is okay.