Salt please

Two days ago I was at a restaurant and got up to the counter to get some salt.
"Salt?" I asked.
"Tomato?" the waitress said.
"No, salt."
"Tomato?"
She walked away and fumbled with some drawers, and as soon as her back was turned the guy next to me in line said, "Do you want salt or sauce?"

Tippy-Toes

I love kids, mostly because everything has a different meaning with them. It's like reading a cheep novel: nothing's too complicated, everything ends up happy.

Our friend's daughter, Laura, walked around on her tippy-toes all day yesterday and I couldn't figure out for the life of me why. She's only about three years old and I didn't even notice she was standing on her tippy-toes at first, just that she seemed abnormally tall since we last saw her. Then I saw her later standing by a chair with her heels in the air and her face saying, “nothing abnormal about this!” Why was she doing that? Did her mom get a new pair of high-heels or something?

The next day it hit me when her mom pulled out a filmed production of The Nutcracker and, as the movie began, Laura began spinning around the room with her arms in the air.

“She wants to be a ballerina when she grows up,” her sister informed me.

“It's the eighth time we've watched this movie in two weeks,” added her Dad.

'Tis the season to become a ballerina.

Pick Up Sticks

My last day of teaching was on Wednesday. Yes, I had a difficult time giving it up but I knew I had to—after all, right now my time is already sucked out of me with teaching for three hours and studying for the rest of the day, and next semester I'm taking up two more classes. I'm sad in one way but relieved in another. It's my last semester before I graduate and I'd like to have more time bonding with my brother and my friends, but I'll miss that little school on the street corner. I'll miss my huge fifth grade class of eager and excited learners, and I'll miss my eighth grade class of five kids—four boys and a girl—that keep me busy despite their size. I've gotten plenty of experience and learned important lessons, but now I'll have to leave the work to the more qualified while I study on how to do it myself.

Anyways, on the last day of class I decided to just play games with them. With my eighth graders we did a cool game I learned two years ago, where the teacher writes a sentence and hands it off to the student. The student has to draw a picture of the sentence, while keeping both his picture and the sentence a secret; once he's finish he passes off the picture to the next student who writes a sentence of the picture, and on and on until each student has a chance. The goal is for the last sentence to be similar to the first sentence. Somehow the game didn't hit it off with them, partially because their English was poor and I had to be the middle man, and partially because of the dull moments between drawing and writing. When I asked if they wanted to play again, my question was answered with a resounding “No Miss.” So I told each student to pull out every pen they had (lucky one student had a pack of markers) and I taught them pick up sticks. They loved it!

I came back at break and the room was packed with students from all classes watching a group of six students playing the game. The girls stank at it curiously but the boys were pretty good. Amazing what you can do with a pack of pens.

We have our Visas!

Finally. We have our visas.

            Things seemed pretty certain for the last few weeks, but we knew from past experience that what seems certain isn’t necessarily certain. For our first visa we got a call telling us the letter was written and ready to be sent; somehow they failed to tell us the letter denied our visa. I didn’t want to repeat the emotional roller-coaster of waiting for a visa for a year, feeling certain you have it, and then losing it. From a lack of faith I decided not to get my hopes up until I saw the visa in the passport; sounds a little like my brother, doesn't it? Well, it’s a curious thing, holding an answer to prayer literally in your hands.

            Dad bought some mitthai (sweets) and took them to the visa man for their last conversation. Don’t worry. He wasn't bribing, but was giving a normal gesture in this culture. When Mom got pulled over for driving a man car (don’t ask) the policeman asked if he could come over to our house and have chai. Since friendship is more important than tasks Dad definitely did the right thing when he brought mitthai and later, when we had the visas, he bought the man a shirt for his services. Well, that was the plan. But at the store the man casually observed that he needed a pair of thick pants—after all, he planned to take his kid to the mountains so that they could see snow in person. Dad asked the man if he needed some long underwear as well. So in the end Dad bought the man his long johns, and his pants, and his shirt, and went home with our four passports in his pocket.

            So many blessings are packed in this one little piece of paper that I can hardly verbalize it all. The most immediate one is that we can all unwind a little; after all, not being certain where you’ll live in the next month—fairly certain, but not completely certain—can drive a man crazy. The next most immediate blessing is that we all get to go to T-land so Mom and Dad can get to enjoy a well deserved holiday (my bro and I get to enjoy it too, but we don’t deserve it as much as they do). Mom’s excited that she can get on an airplane for the first time in three months, and I’m not sure whether I should be excited about the trip or disturbed that three months without travelling is an unbearably long time. Going to T-land won’t prevent us from enjoying Christmas here, however. Dad’s already invited some of his friends to come over this week and celebrate a premature holiday; next week we get to celebrate with our friends in K-city. Then we'll flight out on Christmas day and spend three fat lazy weeks in T-land.

            For me this visa provides an extra blessing. When I'm in college I get to go to my parent's house two times a year and never have apply for an additional visa. And if I feel like it, I still have a year after college that I can spend in South Asia. Of course that's still quite a while away, but because of God's perfect timing it's definitely possible.

Christmas in South Asia

Christmas, on the negative side, can be a very difficult time overseas. I want to step outside my gate and see Santa Clauses standing on the street corner ringing a bell; I want to go to the store and find cards and gifts and tinsel and Christmas songs playing. I want to see the lights of Christmas trees glittering in the windows of everyone's house.

            Instead, it seems like the middle of September. Slightly cold, but never cold enough for snow. If I mention Christmas to a friend they blink at me a moment and then say, "Oh December 25^th, correct?" No decorations. No songs. Even the Christian community, although they celebrate it, do not make as big a deal of as we do in the West. Now, more than any other time of year, our family wishes we were back in America. My Nana makes Christmas the most special day of the year by putting her entire heart, soul, and mind into it. It's hard to be a Grinch about Christmas at Nana's house. It's easy to be a Grinch about everything in South Asia in December.

            That's on the negative side. On the positive side, Christmas in South Asia has a novelty that makes it even more special than it is in the West. Have you ever explained Christmas to somebody? Every day I can tell one of my students, friends, or the other teachers at my school about what Christmas means and it never gets tiresome. Candy-canes, Christmas trees, customs, stories, gifts, colors—all of them carry a new meaning. It also helps me to question why we do the things we do. Why, for instance, do we have an evergreen tree? Why does Santa Clause live at the North Pole? How fun it is to teach Christmas songs to believers, and enjoy their appreciation of what we long ago discarded as cliché and over-rated. I went shopping with my friend Isabel a few days for Christmas and she loved it more than I did. Getting to share the excitement of Christmas with my friends give a whole new meaning to the holiday.

            My parents also make Christmas very special. On the first day of December we pulled out the suit-cases filled with decorations that we’ve carted around for the last three years and propped them up all around the house. Thomas likes to put the nativity scenes in a circle around baby Jesus, and although it annoys me, Mom loves it and he definitely has the idea down. We went to a plant store to buy a live tree like we do every year, and the variety of trees tempted us to try something different this year. Why get an evergreen when you can get a purple tree or a palm tree or something more eccentric? I voted on a big round cactus, but nobody seemed to see my point of view. In the end we got a small, somewhat pathetic evergreen and decorated it when we got home. Evergreens are never “ever green” with us. Both me and Mom have the opposite of a green thumb and have succeeded in killing almost every plant we’ve ever had, including several trees and cactuses. Outside we have three dying plants, what’s left of a once flourishing garden. We blame the cats.

            Right now Christmas music plays and I can see two nativity scenes from where I sit. I’m reminded that Christmas is not really the celebration behind it; Jesus’s birth is special in and of itself, and if our hearts are in the right place Christmas can be special no matter where we are in life.

A Voice Said Cry

"What do you want to name your blog?" my Dad asked.
"Can't you just name it for me?" I didn't really expect him to, but from experience I knew that naming things was my weak point. My cat is named Cousy (French; pronounced Coosy), an aristocrat we studied last year in school. Mom says it's a girl's name, and she's probably right. My guitar's name is Merry--sort of just stuck, though I thought about naming it Therilian. I've done worse. In a story I wrote, I came up with an amazing character who's a nervous wreak, an extreme clean freak, and terrified of the outside world. I named him Danny. Nothing wrong with the name Danny of course, but for literary purposes I could have done better. Either that or I'll come up with great names and throw them away on unimportant objects. So, what should I name my blog?
As I thought about it some more that night, my conversation with my Dad reminded me of one of my favorite passages in Scripture, where Isaiah found himself in a similar dilemma.

     A voice said, "Cry."
     And I said, "What shall I cry?"

What was the answer to Isaiah's question?

     All flesh is grass,
     And all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
     The grass withers, the flower fades
     When the breath of the Lord blows on it;
     Surely the people are grass.
     The grass withers, the flower fades,
     But the word of our God will stand forever.

What's the purpose of blogging, or writing, or public-speaking or preaching or painting or acting or any form of art? Twofold: one, to remind mankind that we're not as important as we think we are. In fact, compared to God we're just like flowers that live for a day and pass away when God calls us to. The other purpose of art is to remind us that God and His Word are eternal.
Every culture, American culture, South Asian culture, Kiwi culture, isn't going to last forever. But God will. And even the dying flower can remind us how great our God is.