It's the final count down!!!!
It seems like it has been ages since I wrote. Its hard sometimes to find time to do simple things, because well it is easy to do other things instead, like play card games or watch a movie, or a whole season of Dowton Abbey in one day. Which I would highly recommend doing as long as you have good people to watch it with! This place is like Hotel California sometimes, like time speeds by but not, or it feels like it drags and then you realize you only have 2 months left. In the past few weeks there have been a few TIA moments. Last weekend for a friend on the ship who is getting married soon we went and spent time at a pool to hang out. Well there may have been a music video being filmed at the time. So of course we were in it. At first we where just annoyingly in the background dancing and being a little annoying, but then they asked us to be in it. It was one of those moments that you just feel like never actually happen, that this is not a real situation and of course this is a joke, but nope it is not.
Latter that night a bunch of us were going to dinner and we needed 4 taxies, well myself and some friends where the last four standing after 3 other taxies had come and gone. I did keep sticking my leg out like in the movies but it does not really work. We finally had a car pull over, note a car not a taxi but again TIA. So we tell him where we want to go and say how much we will pay and he seems completely fine with it. We get in and this is a nice car. There are leather seats, air conditioning, and a cd player. A friend was worried that since he was not a taxi he might take us to his house, but I asked her what would stop a taxi from doing that also. Well we made it to the restaurant and he would not accept our money. He said because we are with Mercy Ships and are here helping his country that he wanted to help us and would not accept our money. We were all a little stunned and just kept saying but you have to, he did not he just wished us a good night and to enjoy our meal. There are so many times here when you feel taken advantage of, and to be honest it is dollar to us, but a huge difference to them so I don’t fight it that hard. But it was great to feel that this man felt it necessary to bless us in a small way of refusing $4 for a ride across town.
Amy one of my friends on board and fellow teacher’s parents have come to visit. It is so fun to have them here and show them around. I know that to many this life feels to strange and adventurous but to us it is just life and it is fun to show that to people that we do normal things, like hang out and eat, a lot. Friday night we had a dance party on board celebrating one of the girls 30th birthday. We all dressed up as her. It was tons of fun. We where also able to go out to dinner with Amy and her parents, as well as attend a church service with them on Sunday. I do have to say in my nearly two years here I had not been to an African church service. I few reasons, it is hot, it lasts 3 hours, you cant understand them most of the time and did I mention its hot, really hot. Well a few friends said it was unacceptable to have been here this long and never to have gone to a service so I went, and I did not hate it. They sang songs that we sing here on the ship they danced and clapped and there was a breeze coming off the ocean.
The church is in a small fishing village and has been supported by a family from the ship who was in Togo when the ship came through about 10 years ago. It is in the heart of the village, has open windows and lets in a nice breeze. The best part, the little baby girl who came and sat beside me and played clapping games with and fell asleep in my lap. Her little smile with her big brown eyes, made it worth it. It made sacrificing my lazy Sunday morning at coffee and getting sweaty and dirty worth it. I did not hate it, I cant say if I will go back as I did not understand anything that pastor said but it was way better then I thought and something I am glad I did.
My time here is quickly ending, I still have two months but considering that I have already been here 19, it seems a short time. I am beginning to know that I am ready to go home, or that I will be ready. I was lucky enough to stay in a family cabin for a little over a month and it definitely showed me that I want my own place and that I am ready for it. Part of looking at going home has been thinking about where I am going to live, thank you Zillow because you help my imagination run wild. And thinking about jobs, I want to teach. I want to teach in Portland. But it is not the best time to look for a teaching job, but I have applied for one and need to keep my eyes peeled for more to try for.
When I first started looking at going home I was panicked. What am I going to do? Where will I live? Who do I still have at home? What’s the point? But I have been calmed lately; my fears have been pushed back. Not because I have found a house or a job or have been comforted that there are plenty of people still in the area, but because I have faith that things will work out. I am a planner but I know that this is a time in my life when I am not meant to have a plan, I will be home June 1st, after that some trips and weddings but then who knows. And I am ok with it.
I have started reading “Through Painted Deserts”, it is by the same author as Blue like Jazz, he is from Portland and I like having the little reminders of home. This book is about him and a buddy driving from TX to OR to move. I have only began but love it, it makes me want to travel more, which is hard to balance with the sense that I am meant to be home and be stationary for a bit. I feel as if I am having a huge internal struggle right now, with settling down which I want and also what I feel is expected. I have been out of school for 4 years now, I feel like the time for volunteering and not knowing what I am doing should be behind me, but does it ever leave?Here are a few quotes that I love and are kind of helping me figure out what I am thinking.
“ We are shaped by our experiences. Our perception of joy, fear, pain and beauty are sharpened or dulled by the way we rub against them.”
At the moment I have one more page in my passport, I need to go to the embassy here and have more pages added. I told my mom this and I think she said “ Just wait till you get home, you have enough to get home and you are not going anywhere after that.” I know she meant right away but it freaked me out. Will I never leave the country again? I know for many they will never have the chance to leave the country but this thought terrified me. The thought of not having my passport ready to go when I am scares me, I know that probably sounds ridiculous but it is how I feel. What if I find cheap tickets to Easter Island? What would I do if my passport was away. First world pains, I know, sorry but this is what goes through my head. I think it stems from this thinking,
“ I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.”
What if I get home and I am bored? What if people are not able to see past themselves to think about how fortunate they are because they have never traveled past where it is comfortable to see how others live.
I love the song, Long Way Around by the Dixie Chicks it talks about how the journey can be better then the destination. It makes me feel better about the fight raging in my head, one side saying I should make my a home and things will fall into place and the other that says to spend time wandering, taking time to try things that are different. I know that as I get closer to going home this battle in my head will intensify, I just have to have faith that it will sort itself out and that I will end up where I am meant to be when I am meant to be there.
Last year I challenged myself to write my bucket list, or a list of things I want to do before I die. I did. And these past few months I have taken the list and re-written them in a journal, I have been able to add to my list and am working on ticking some of them off. I know that I have a deep-seated desire to travel and explore and do different things, but that’s not a bad thing? I can have a desire to travel and wander and have a home base to come back to.
I know that when I go home in two months and it is not for a visit that it will be hard, that I will be faced with the changes that have happened there as well as in me that have happened in the past two years. I know that I am a different person, how could I not be? “ It’s interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal.”
As much as I know it can be hard or strange to go back to a home that is different from the one you left, you have to. How else do we grow? How do we become the people we were created to be? I know that these next months will be hard, the last two here and the first few back at home. But there is not a moment that goes by that I doubt if it was the right thing for me to come here. And for that I am grateful. I hope that you all are doing well and have some huge adventure in the works.
Ang
Taxi Races, we won BTW!
Academy Representing at the Dance Party! Teachers and students, but which is which???
Rubes and I with the lady of honor, Luara Z!
April, 1st 2012
