The timeline...

7 am: I awoke to what sounded like a bulldozer driving in circles around my bed and realized groggily that it was just a fly roughly the size of a quarter. My ears still tingled from the English-song-competition-followed-by-KTV-with-the-leaders evening of magic. My head throbbed with anger at so loud an uninvited guest at so early an hour and I wondered why flies weren't created to be silent. But the morning sky was cool.

9 am: I walked into a classroom and was shocked by more than half the students in attendance. I looked at one boy who I hadn't seen anywhere near class for over nine months, blinked hard, and he was still there.

10.37 am: I finished class three minutes early and walked outside to the quickly warming day and saw a former class of my students sitting in the shade some distance away. "God bless you Ms. Kelly" one boy yelled to my surprise and delight. Even sleep deprived, I know He has.

10.46 am: I made a cup of tea and poured it into a jar I could carry with me. I knew there was no way I would make it through the rest of the day without a cup of tea.

11 am: I sat waiting for a colleague to go oven shopping with me on a bench near our main office. A student, who has recently changed his style to looking something like Jon Travolta in Grease, came to sit on the bench with me. Normally sullen and distant he openly confesed his frustration with the job he'd been given, and his desire to take a tour guide exam, though he never removed his MP3 earbuds.

Noon: We, finally, found an oven. But we didn't buy it. Go figure.

12.45 pm: I sat around a tiny table with two Chinese colleagues eating what amounted to a Chinese rendition of what in America might have been a chicken salad. They had so wanted ranch sauce, demanded I make it for them, and so we dipped bits of vegetable and chicken into it with chopsticks to eat.

2.15 pm: Another bulldozer invaded my room and my sleep, and met with the same crushing result as the first one. I don't know how they got in without opening the door, and I can't remember the last time I was so angry.

3 pm: I tried to rub the sleep off my face as I blundered down the hall to my neighbors house to ask for help to send my last two boxes back to America. He sat drinking tea with another neighbor and the two of them laughed at my sleepy half awake condition. I leaned back into the pumpkin shaped pillow and enjoyed their company.

3:45 pm: I watched a man seal my boxes with shocking dexterity and thought: here is the only efficient man in all of China. Nearly 600 yuan later my over twenty kilos worth of things that at the moment were important to me were on their way to America.

4 pm: I leaned against a bus stop and pondered the shattering blows to my own heart as I listened to my neighbor speak of everything broken in his life and the world. It has been a long time since I have so clearly seen the result of the Fall. I wanted to weep, but paid for our bus tickets instead.

4.15 pm: I became the amusement of the bus when I surprised two middle school girls by telling them in crystal clear Tibetan that really I wasn't 'SO' beautiful.

4.55 pm: I glanced at my watch and felt sad that I had to dash out of my neighbor's house where he had been pouring me tea and continuing to chat as if we had never left that exact position hours earlier. Promising to have a few last events together before I left in surprise at how the Father can change an odd, grumpy man into a dear and helpful friend.

5.40 pm: Three Americans and a Korean left a Tibetan restaurant because they weren't serving any meat during this holy month of Sacadawa.

7.30 pm: I had to forcibly restrain what threatened to be a flood of tears as I commanded our Korean brother over a table littered with dinner remains to not forget his first call and the brokenness of these people. They were words that I myself needed to hear.

8.45 pm: I refused to say good-bye to the man who would tomorrow return to Korea with his family and chose instead to say see you later because it was my wish and their's that that be more accurate.

9.10 pm: My student saw me return home in the dusk and stopped me in the street to chat. Eerily close to her was a small, eager looking Chinese boy. We had the following conversation:
I: Who is this boy?
My student: He? I don't know... hehehe
Boy: FRIEND
My student: haha. No.
I: See you in class tomorrow.

9.17 pm: I searched through layers of dust thick enough to make my skin crawl for my friend;s house key she'd hidden above her door. I needed to get into her house to pick up the oven we didn't buy earlier that day. Apparently, the oven buying process is beyond my understanding of shopping.

10 pm: A phone call from a dear dear Lhasa friend like water to my soul. Refreshing, encouraging, so much light.

Midnight: now.

Sleep comes slowly when there is too much to process in a day and only 18 days remaining anyway... tears come quicker.