It's not a bad thing, but feel like my life is falling apart. All the things I own are broken, dying, disintegrating and/or smelly and filthy. I realize that in a very short time I won't have the people around who have shared this year and know what I am going through. The familiarity of home has been replaced with a familiarity with traveling, foreign culture and constant change. The securities of friendship, being told what to do and where to go and constantly being pointed towards the Lord are soon going to be taken away from me. While I thought this trip would show me what I want to do with my life, now I have way less of an idea than I did before I left. I
cannot wait to be home, but I'm terrified as well.
Maybe one day I will have a computer with a screen that doesn't go all fuzzy and seizure inducing every few minutes. Maybe one day I will have a camera that wasn't dropped in the squatty potty and thus smells and won't turn on. Maybe one day I will have an ipod that hasn't been handed down through several other racers to take the place of the last three that have gotten stolen, lost and broken. Maybe one day I will have a pair of headphones in which both earbuds work properly.
Soon I will have my own bed. Soon I'll have a hot shower, one that isn't shared with ridiculous amounts of people and that isn't a faucet head next to a toilet. Soon I'll have more than the 7 (more with some creativity) outfits that consist of my wardrobe for the past year. Soon I'll be able to go into a room and be all by myself or even –gasp– into the outside world unaccompanied. Soon I'll have wifi that's fast enough to load a youtube video in less than an hour, that I don't have to pay for and never goes away. Soon I'll have electricity and running water that never go away. Soon, instead of rice at least once a day, I'll have every type of food I could want and a kitchen to cook it in.
Awkward.
Because I know the end is in sight, for 36 more days I am content to deal with my faulty electronics, take cold showers, hand wash and wear the same never truly clean clothes I've been wearing all year, drag and be dragged around by 5-35 other people and eat whatever combination of carbohydrates are put in front of me. I know that in 36 more days I will no longer be able to drink morning chai made with milk from the cow outside, while gazing at the mountains or the lovely sleepy faces of my teammates. I will no longer be able to achieve the certain feeling satisfaction that comes from hiking two hours to the top of a mountain, or bargaining a vendor down to paying next to nothing, or having a successful conversation where neither party shares a common language apart from a few words and copious amounts of gestures. For a little while I will stop doing things to add to my repertoire of exciting items to use when I next play two truths and a lie. Things like volcano surfing, sleeping under a waterfall, riding elephants, hanging out with street children and prostitutes and hiking around in the Himalayan foothills.
Right now we are done with ministry for the month, so my teammate Helena and I are staying at a hostel in Kathmandu, enjoying our last few days in Nepal. We spent the month in some little village in the north that I don't even know the name of. We hiked up mountains to visit with and encourage believers or to attend house churches. It was beautiful and amazing and hard and inspiring and I loved it. On the 31st we fly to Hyderabad, India for our final month of the race! Our team hasn't got information on what we will be doing yet, so we might be in Hyderabad or we could be traveling elsewhere. After ministry we will all meet back up for our final debrief and head for home on December 3rd.
JFK – 12/3/2012 1:50 PM: AMERICA!
