{Normal} The usual, average, or typical state or condition; conforming to a standard, usual, typical, expected; serving to establish a standard; ordinary.
Saying yes to a year spent in Asia on the World Race, I knew I would have redefining moments in my life. I was positive of the fact that life would go through some sort of metamorphosis phase, where everything as it was currently would not remain untouched or unchanged.
However, I did not grasp the fullness of that transfiguration. Submitting yourself to a culture that is completely opposite of everything you have ever known makes every thought and ideology get turned upside down. What once was socially acceptable or “normal” has suddenly vanished and been replaced by a new “ordinary.”
This new ordinary looks like:
1) Packing, moving, unpacking, and settling every month. If I am not moving somewhere every thirty days and taking on a new culture, language, and food diet I feel discombobulated. What does it mean to stay in one place? How can that be done? I have forgotten.
2) Your purse or backup holds items you had never carried around before on the day to day. Items like emergency toilet paper (no restrooms in Asia have provided toilet paper – usually just a water hose to wash with), a passport (or at least a copy) because you never know when police will want to question you, two different kinds of currencies and all sorts of coins (US Dollar & local currency), a phone charger (because who knows when you will stumble on a trendy coffee shop that has wifi – when this does happen you will indeed suck the life out of your phone!), and maybe sometimes your raincoat because Asia weather is unpredictable! You mean I won’t need to carry these in America?
3) When greeting people you do a slight bow and usually put your hands in a praying position to show honor and respect. I can’t imagine what this one will appear to people in America to be!
4) Seven shirts and three pairs of pants are almost excessive! So many options, what to do?! Wait, I have a closet crammed with a ridiculous amount of clothes at home? Should I even open it?
5) Which brings up the new normal of, “oh wait you mean I don’t have to carry all my belongs on my back?! … Where else will they go? A rolling bag? A closet? I don’t understand what these things are.” I am supposed to be stuffing these into packing cubes, right?
6) Hand washing clothes to hang dry is the only option. There will an initial stare down with my washer and dryer in America with thoughts of, “What are you? How do you work?” The machine does it for me?!
7) Daily meals always feature rice, even breakfast! Hmmm, this meal isn’t complete, there is no rice!
8) Air Conditioning doesn’t exist unless you stay somewhere upscale and fans are a luxury, an open window is your most reliable and available option. What is this cold breeze in my room? Why are my toes frozen?
9) Lice, mosquito bites, scabies, blood infections, worms inside your body, they are all just part of life and they happen… a lot. I don’t have to ask if the mosquito’s have malaria here?
10) A schedule is non-existent, there is estimated, suggested times for events and planning but no one expects others to arrive at that exact time. I thought when you said 2:00 you meant 3:00, sorry!
This is just a small glimpse into the new normal I have taken on and the thoughts that will most likely be swarming through my head when I transition back to America. Thankfully I have fifteen more days to soak up this normal that I have grown to love. In fifteen days I will look around and that normal will have been like a rug pulled out from under me, gone.
Asia, you have been a treasure to search out and I will hold dear every gem you gave me throughout this past year. Forever in my heart will those gems be laid up, treasures to look back on and remember the love that we shared on this journey. The faces, ministries, languages, food, cultural norms, and the endless beauties that Asia holds will stay with me. But this normal, where will it go? I hope you it will continue to show itself throughout my American ways. Because here at the end of this journey I look inward and I see an American that has Asian in her heart.
So here’s to seeing if my old normal and new normal can become there own norm!
