Challenges Make Good Stories
I have a very optimistic personality. I always try to make things sound positive. I like to see challenges as not bad, but as a fun detail for my stories (but it will definitely be more fun to tell when I am not in the midst of them).
One such challenge my team is facing right now is illness in a remote village. Makes for a great story, but miserable in the moment. One teammate went to the hospital, another went with her to take care of her, but also ended up getting sick, so only three of us were left in the village to do ministry (our team leader went home to her sister’s wedding). Then another got sick, and I was also not doing great. Lets just say we jokingly renamed our team after the squatty potties we were stuck with out in the village. Not fun in the moment, but some day it will be a funny story to tell…
Another challenge for me is the food. I am getting used to it, but I miss American food. Every time I see something that seems familiar, I spring at the chance to have a taste of home… and in India, I am always disappointed. I think I already shared the jalapeño donut story in my last blog. We also got chicken soup one day. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but I had a picture in my mind of what chicken soup is, and this was not that. The only chunks were corn kernels, everything else was blended into mushiness. Also it was spicy.
One of the things I absolutely love about India is the tea. They make fresh chai tea every day for us (sometimes multiple times in a day). I love it so much, and have come to expect it. But one thing they told us before coming on the race is not to have expectations. I’m still learning. This last set of villages decided that Americans like coffee, so they figured we would want that instead. (For those that don’t know me, I don’t like coffee.) But they didn’t tell us that it was coffee when they served it to us, it looked exactly the same. I had to discover that disappointment myself. While our hosts sit and stare at us, waiting for our excitement.
Gotta love India.
