Airport

This place should feel foreign, yet it is so familiar. I suppose I drifted back gently. I eased my way back into civilization. I went from Armenia to Hungary to Amsterdam, to this Seattle Airport and I will soon be home. Each location became more westernized than the last, I saw things in each that I had not seen in the last months… home I am told should be a culture shock in itself, the grocery store will be eye glazing and things will seem strange. I just don’t think that will happen.

Home is where the heart is , my heart has been home. I play over in my mind every day the appearance of everything I love. I know the sound of my friends voices, well I have videos to watch as well. I know what my house looks like, despite the few changes that have taken place, I know, images are imprinted in my mind. I could still give someone directions anywhere in the city of Salem without them needing to take the freeway and I could get to those few places I have only been once. I know the price of food and gas (give or take) and unless a nuclear bomb destroyed civilization, it will still be there waiting for me though slightly altered.

Something in my soul is jumping, I laughed out loud with excitement when I saw all the green trees we flew over as we landed in Seattle. I wanted to hug my customs officer who welcomed me back to the states. I know the laws here! I know that they speak English and I have rights and nothing strange will happen, except for the fact that they took my tulip bulbs.

I look at pictures of my last six months, a part of my life that is starting to seem surreal. I know while I was gone I never once forgot home… but now that I am home will I forget the things of when I was gone? I pray not, I will re-read all my journals 5 times if I have to, but I don’t want to forget. I want to move on, yes, but to learn from the past, let it help shape my future.

There is a worker dancing out on the tarmac visible from the window in which I sit. Rain is gently dripping against the glass pane, oh my beloved Oregon rain. The clouds are grey, it is as if they are waiting just for me! I am using an American outlet and just drank good water from the drinking fountain. In the bathroom, there were toilet seat covers! I admit to not always using them in the past, but I was so excited to see them. Oh, someone just walked by with Wendy’s! Now I want a frosty. People wearing Columbia and North face and fleece jackets. News papers with current events that actually mean something to me.

All this and I am just in the airport! What more is to come? Will I notice it all? I hope so. My plane is about to board… just an hour and I am home. Home. Down the final countdown, the last leg of my trip. After almost six months of counting, an hour is like mashed potatoes to my lips. To get home it took me two days, three airplanes, two buses, two trains, and three shuttles. And I did it, all by myself.

Chain Bridge

I crossed the river eying the chain bridge at night for the last time a few hours ago. I thought back to my first viewing of that magnificent sight - it is still just as beautiful, just as breath taking. There are some things that hold beauty in a way that it can never be nullified, it can never be taken away, never lose its value. I remember crossing that Danube for the first time, I was jetlagged and culture shocked, I was alone and scared and full of adventure. Tonight, I prepare to be jetlagged and reverse culture shocked, I will be alone for two days, I am still full of adventure… but tonight I am not scared. I know that what is ahead is not to be feared because my Lord is walking before me making my path straight. I do fear my Lord, but with a fear of reverence and respect, not a cowering timidity.
How could this city, this foreign nation captivated me so much? A city with a name that few can pronounce correctly and where the culture is so rich, a place that I never knew I wanted to come to. What will I miss about this place? All of it, the things I have done, the way I have grown, the places I have walked, yet for some reason that bridge, that lit chain bridge sums up this whole experience.

I suppose I am walking on a bridge. I have lived in the Lord, fully in him but I needed more, this was the bridge I needed to carry me to the fulfillment of it all. Budapest is one city, but two separate parts, you can live in Pest and be fully in Budapest, but until you cross the bridge and visit both sides of the river, you wont fully experience it. And the light? Well Christ is obviously that light, but he shines through me as well. It is a dark world in which I live and when darkness overwhelms, light becomes gorgeously amazing. I hope to take a lesson from this bridge. It may be the mark of the city and be on all the post cards, but it has good reason to be, it connects two things to make them whole. Just as this DTS connected two parts of my life.

So goodbye chain bridge, goodbye Danube river. Goodbye Budapest, and thank you.

Living without because you have it all

For the short existence of my life, I have taken many things for granted, things I didn’t know I had excess of until not having enough of them. When I think of home, suddenly luxuries appear in my mind, I almost don’t miss them because I have learned to live without. And they are luxuries. I believe many of us feel it is our right, our countries duty to provide the things we think we can not live without. Things like toilets that flush paper and showers with pressure above a dribble. Constant hot water, drinkable tap water and pipes that don’t freeze. Heat and electricity that always work. Having machines that drop sand so our roads aren’t covered in ice and cars that don’t emit too much exhaust. Things like personal space and personal cars. Health codes, building codes and all other codes. Internet in any from outside of dial up and fast food restaurants with drive up. Food that is safe to eat and stores that are safe to buy from.

Knowledge that prices are set in stone and that inflation will not appear just because you look like a foreigner. We think we cant live without our pantry of instant foods and our microwave that produces instantaneous gratification. We want to live with the world at our finger tips and complain when we have to park at the back of the parking lot. You don’t like that walk? Try walking to the store and carry all the groceries back, no car! We don’t want to try, we don’t want to do more than we have to because we think it is our right to have what we want, when we want it.

I wonder, what made us like this? When the majority of the world lives without so many of the things we think we can not live without - who are we to complain? We can live without them, most people do. Here, people have three outfits tops, not because they are desolate, but because… do we really need more than that? Have just enough to wear one, have one being washed and have a back up… doesn’t that sound practical? What if it didn’t matter if you wore the same shirt two… maybe three days in a row. If everyone was doing it, then you would too… right? I remember when if you wore the same shirt twice in a weeks time people would comment. What is that? Its not that our things are bad… but do we really need all we have? Are our things necessary to survival? I think not. I have lived with and learned to love people who have so much less and are so much happier. I have eaten from the tables of old people who live and sleep in their only clothes and played with orphans who wear donated clothes - they had so much joy to give me. They live practically because they can.

Coming home, I am excited. I am excited to have a shower so hot that I can just stand there and let it run all over my body without fear that it will turn to icicles before I rinse the shampoo out. I am excited to have shampoo in a language I understand and toilets that are not freezing cold and where I can flush my toilet paper. I am excited to find the clothes in my closet that I left behind and eat in restaurants where I can trust the food. But in a small way, I will miss this style of living. I will miss no one caring if I wear the same sweater 5 out of 7 days per week. I will miss sitting close to strangers on public transit and trying to communicate with my hands and smile - but I will enjoy being able to eavesdrop on conversations and read billboards again. I hope to never take for granted what I have been given and to never forget the life I have lived and the viewing of other peoples lives. The lessons I learned from spending time with nuns who gave all they had to serve their King. Not because they were looking for something better or more money, no, they gave up their possessions, their life, so that they could love on little children who had no one to love them. I hope to never live complexly, but to keep things simple. To not demand luxuries, but to live without because it is my choice.

I suppose a reverse culture shock awaits me. A culture where hospitality is not embraced and most tables are not open to strangers. Where we are so scared to touch each other that we leave whole seats open on buses and benches. A place where we get angry when others don’t speak our language and never bother to try to communicate outside of saying something vain in English. I am returning to a place where discrimination takes place and people are judged. Home is a place of expensive coffee and gas hogging cars. We go fast and we do a lot - this is who we are. It is not all bad. This is just our culture, a place that would be as much shock to a Bulgarian or Armenian as their countries were to me. The one major thing I have learned from coming overseas “It may be different, but different is not wrong and different is not bad.” Home is the culture I know, the one that knows me, the one that brought me up and that shaped me into who I am. Home is the place I want to be and it is the culture that helps define me - but I hope to let other cultures impact me too.

So as my mind is spinning with cultures and traditions and languages I think about the one thing that is true, the only constant - Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. No matter where I go or what decisions I make, he will be there. He created me and placed me into cultures so that I might learn. But he is the ultimate culture, his culture is greater and stronger than any other in the world. His culture is the Kingdom of Heaven and he desires that it be spread to all peoples, nations and cultures.

Hallajuah, Coke, Amen

Every location my travels take me I find a new language with new sounds, letters and voice inflections. Some languages sound similar to words I know, some languages are strictly foreign - but there are those languages and alphabets which mean nothing to me, which sound literally like baby gibberish and give me no hope of learning even the smallest jot or tiddle.

It is during these circumstances that I find myself out on the edge a little more than usual because I cant rely on my usual communication skills to get me by. I cant get lost and ask for directions or ask for help if I need it. I can sit in a public place and listen in on other conversations or read billboards or labels when I get bored. I cant even complete the simplest action of saying “thank you” or “I would like that please” or “stop here”. I cant utter anything that means something to the people in which I long to communicate with. At the grocery story I long to see lables which I recgonize, brands that look famaliar. I cant order anything at a resturarant except for one drink - Coca Cola. No matter where I have travled Coke is the universal drink. I drink it simply because I can ask for it. I can speak to a person in another language without needing assistance of a translator, that alone is worth drinking it for.

But there is a language louder than words, more universal and understandable by all. It is the language of love. They may not understand a sound that comes forth from my lips, but they see the smile they produce. I may not be able to verbalize my need for an item, but I can put my years of charades into practice. I cant say “sorry” for bumping into people or explain to the homeless person that I am not ignoring them by not wanting to give them money, but I don’t know what they are saying and I cant use words to tell them I dont have money.

When we go to churches though… there is a slightly brighter atmosphere. I can usually depict the word for Jesus be-it Jesit or Jesu or something along those lines. In every song I can pick out the one word that I know, the one word that sounds familiar to me and has meaning in my mind. The word I can speak and have the party in front of me understand. I can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in the room, but suddenly, when the word is spoken I feel connected to the other people as well. Together we can shout in loud voices “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah Amen!”