So luxury...

Luxury: (noun) a material object, service, etc conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement. 

Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except you never know when luxury is going to stand up. 

-Orson Wells

 

Well, it stood up tonight. 

When I followed my former student whose face beamed and pockets burst with his recently paid first salary ever to 'enjoy the luxury life' straight into downtown Lhasa and ended up in the only western-esque fast food chain restaurant in the city, I was understandably confused.

I had never eaten at Dico's (if the Colonel had an Asian cousin, he would have been the spokes person for this little number) before. Nor had I any intention of ever doing so since something about overpriced junk food, the equivalent of which one might well avoid like the plague when actually in America, held little attraction for me.

But for my former student, it was the very thing he'd been saving up and waiting in anticipation for, the first meal of a first salary, a chicken sandwich and fries. Luxury.

When I taught him how to open the packets of ketchup and showed him the average American amount used he sighed and said "so luxury."

When our plastic lidded paper cups filled with slightly cool iceless soda arrived he slurped noisily through the straw and grinned "this is the luxury life."

When we glanced from our orange plastic booth into the darkening street below he could hardly contain himself as he sputtered "now I know what is luxury."

When our chicken sandwiches came, complete with some limp lettuce sprinkles, a slab of chicken, a pale pineapple ring, a thick blanket of mayonnaise all lined up in a bun and I showed him which side was the correct side up he shook his head "American food is so complex." 

When we had stuffed ourselves, used up every last bit of the three ketchup packets we had been graced with, drained the last of the paper cups, finished answering the random assortment of English questions, and left the brightly lit, neon colored restaurant, he stuck his hands in his pockets and asked "now I have a luxury life don't I?"

I nodded, knowing that in a single meal the word luxury, both in terms of grammatical use and definition, had been transformed for me.

a carrot's hometown

The other day I went to visit a friend and the feisty grandmother who lives in the room next to her brought some carrots over for lunch that looked like they could have been on display at the national natural history museum. I thought I was saying 'where are those carrots from?' because honestly I was a little nervous, but apparently I said ' where is that carrot's hometown?' The difference being riotously funny to the grandmother who had to pop a squat because she was laughing harder than she had in most of her adult life...

Never did figure out where those carrots' hometown was... and didn't get sick after eating them either.

That has nothing to do with what I'm about to tell you anyway.

The bus stop where I was waiting with my friend wasn't so much a bus stop as it was a mob of people just aching for the opportunity to crush each other into the doors and sides of rusty squealing buses that didn't dare to pull up to the stop but just tapped the breaks in the middle of the street to give people a chance to get on. The situation alone made me wish I had been wearing full body armor but my shy, timid friend with a long black pony tail and pink sweater didn't seem to notice. We too stepped squeezed onto the bus.

For the first little bit of our ride we were knocking heads with the people around us. The bus was slammed with the typical odd assortment of grandmothers spinning wheels to everyone's peril, teenage boys taking drags on cheap cigarettes and coughing spittle onto the people next to them, nomads with bags so large that their presence on the bus instantly reminded me of those glass bottles with ships inside. We rode the bus into the dangerous part of town known for thieves. We rode the bus past that part into the poor part pretty much unknown and inhabited by tumbleweeds. When we got to a deserted intersection on the very edge of town we got off.


This is where I work, she half laugh half whispered, and this is where I live.

We spent the next three and a half hours together. Just walking through the dusty temporary kitchen where she cooks for a construction crew, then across the street into the tiny first floor room which is only big enough for a pile of blankets, a stack of books, a bed, and a stove. She made some endearingly salty butter tea, we talked about the lyrics to English songs, her family, the other friends we have in common. We walked down the street populated with lonely pool tables and children with splitpants to buy vegetables in a dark shop.

When we entered the Chinese man squatting in the corner obviously recognized my friend and immediately gave us two lollipops as he chattered away. My friend brought the small cabbage, zucchini, and potatoes over to the scale. The man threw some green onions in free of charge. We stepped out of the darkness into the blazing though slowly dimming edge of Lhasa sun. She wrapped her arm in mine and said his wife is a c, I go with her to study and then with eyes sparkling I think Lhasa has so many c's.

When we got back to her room we immediately dumped out the now cool cups of butter tea, refilled them, and went to work washing and chopping the vegetables we had just bought. Then we went to work making noodles from a big block of dough she had made earlier that day. As we cut and stretched and rolled the noodles, dropping them into the boiling water and occasionally the floor, she told me...

I came to Lhasa 10 years. I first time here I live with another family. They have a cow. Everyday I get cows milk and then I sell it. This work for four years. When I was a child I never went to school. Only boys go to school in my family. I then met Korean teacher. We study the Book. I believe J. Now I love to study. I want to study more. But job is so hard to find. Room also. What can I do when this job finish? Must find a new one. Maybe can work in some shop. 

The noodles were finished, she flicked on the second burner and began to make a concoction of bits of fried yak and the vegetables we had bought that smelled so good I had to wipe drool from the edge of my mouth.


When I first came here I cry every day. So lonely. But now not bad. My brother lives in Lhasa too. He makes this one.

She reached in the cupboard and pulled out a stick of incense. I smelled it knowing already that it smelled like a temple. Her brother is a monk.

She dumped the noodles into the pan of fried vegetables and then spooned some out into bowls. Upon first taste I immediately wished I hadn't eaten anything else that day because they were so good. We ate until we could hardly move, then finished off the butter tea, then she stood up to walk me to the bus stop before we missed the last bus of the evening.

So we walked through the barren lot of fine dirt to the edge of the street, my arm over her shoulder her arm around my waste and I glanced around me at the garbage, rubble, and bits of discarded cardboard and said: 'I know our Father is good. I know He is good because you are a Tibetan girl who never went to school and came here to sell milk when you were young and I am an American girl who all I ever did was go to school and I came here to teach English and we are here together and we are the same. He loves us the same. So I know He's very good.'

And she said: I know He's a very good Father. 

And I gave her a hug and promised her that I would come back to see her because now I knew where it was and so easy to get there and the rusty bus shuddered to a brief stop and I jumped on and waved at her through the mucky window.

And as I sat on that bus that drove into the setting sun and into the city that has beaten me and blessed me... I knew... I just knew as sure as I've ever known anything in all my life, that my Father was going to provide for me. He was going to do it right that moment, and He is going to do it next year when I go back to America, and He's going to continue to do it as long as I live and then on into eternity. And I knew that though I know nothing else I would trust Him. And the security of the knowledge filled me with such a peace that I nearly fell asleep... man beside me hacking a thick wad of spit out the window and all.

Lessons: how to get schooled in Lhasa

I'm still learning things.

When I walk simply, open my eyes and ears to those around me, and let myself be humbled it's shocking what all I can be taught in a day, an hour, a minute...  

Here is an inexhaustive list of everything that I learned today, just your average, ordinary day...

• Dinosaur egg instant oatmeal from America is still the best flavor on earth... no rivals.
• Students are way more creative when it comes to sneaking a cell phone out of class to a friend in the hall than they are in regards to any assignment you could possibly give them. 
• The best tool for assessing English improvement in students is when they start laughing at your jokes. 
• It is possible for even a cold to be evidence of a Savior's mercy. 
• When they say "let's have lunch" what they really mean is "let me order more dumplings than you've ever seen in your life along with two huge vegetable dishes."
• If they don't throw the book of random advice at you when you're sick, they don't love you. 
• It's totally okay to order food in one restaurant, walk next door, order food in the next restaurant, and then have them deliver to the first one. The only one who feels uncomfortable is you, everyone else in the first restaurant thinks it's brilliant.
• Colds give you a super human capacity for dumplings. 
• Someone, somewhere thinks you're beautiful. If you're in Lhasa: everyone, everywhere does. 
• College grad work, even in the best of all possible circumstances, will not ever write itself. Making patience the least enviable virtue in this situation.
• A bag of pineapple fruit snacks is only one yuan. Why not get two?
• Few things are more culturally shocking than babysitting korean kids in Lhasa, and few things more rewarding. 
• Some songs transfer to any language. 
• The best dinner conversations consist of maybe three words: juice, soup, good. That's just about everything you could ever want to say. 
• Goodnight kisses and hug jumps from behind are two of the most endearing characteristics of children, and surely at least part of what He meant when He instructed us to become like them. 
• Being one of three white residents on the bus route never fails to be awesome. 
• The only thing better than giving random grandfathers lotion is giving them lollipops... and don't you forget it.

How to get schooled in Lhasa? Live.

In the Way

Find me in the Way, oh just find me in the Way.

In every fleeting moment on every obscure day. 

Keep me at Your rugged cross, firm throughout the fray. 

Bind me there, hold me close, and then let come what may.

It began with a cup of tea. Which is at once the most ridiculous way to begin anything and the same way I start nearly every morning. The steam rising from the cup made my nose run even harder and faster than it had been all night. I drained the cup, wiped my nose, went to class.

Class ended with an earthquake drill. Planned down to the minute complete with a two step process of at the first sound of trouble get under the desks at the second sound run outside. Trouble being the music department beating the mess out of some tin drums in the square near our building. I walked lazily through the chaos back to the apartment.

Tea began with two cups and a student ever bursting at the seams to speak and yet somehow unable to say all he wants. He handed me an eleven page essay on his experiences practice teaching. He beamed. What all I want to say is you can find in this one teacher. I flipped through the pages covered with hand writing.

Tea was put on hold when the beggar children crossed the busy street to the tea house where we sat. Like familiar guests they squeezed onto the bench, put their ripped plastic bags down, and made a show of everything that was in their pockets: a stick of gum, a coin, a broken USB, the days treasures. One girl, with pain in her black eyes, reached her hand up to display a palm that was sliced open and oozing with puss and blood. She picked up a wrong bottle. We took her to the kitchen to wash out the wound.

Dumpling making at the nunnery teahouse began with a quick rinse of my hands in warm water poured by my nun friend. She took off her apron and sleeve guards and I put them on. Back in the corner, a dim grimy hole barely large enough for the three of us, we rolled out the flour, stuffed them, pinched them shut, stacked them in rows in the steamer, chatted, drank tea, amused customers, until the meat and all of my language ability ran out. 

Visiting ended with a kilo of sunflower seeds in hand and a quick hug good-bye to my dear sweet nun friend who never fails to share her life, her work, her language, her apron, her friends, all her things with me. Humbled already I trudged back down the street.

The evening was punctuated by a text message: You are my teacher. If you are ill, we won't have your class. Classmates like to listen to your class. From a shy, bumbling student in a rowdy, obnoxious class at a moment when I least expected it, having not told them that I was sick, nor made any mention of canceling class... nor ever dreamed that any of them cared one way or the other. Confusion born of a show of love so closely resembling a command to get healthy.

It ended with a cup of tea, mint something warm, before an already dozy girl drifted off to sleep. Dreams of a Way where the lame can leap, the crippled are healed, the rough places made smooth, the earth doesn't quake and noses don't run, beggars are cared for, students are encouraged, nuns are acknowledged, messages are received, and endless cups of tea are drunk...

Find me in the Way, oh just find me in the Way.

In every fleeting moment on every obscure day. 

Keep me at Your rugged cross, firm throughout the fray. 

Bind me there, hold me close, and then let come what may.

spin me round

"Excuse me bola, is this the path we should take?"

The two chummy grandfathers decked out in their finest merit making gear implored us to wait for a minute in the late afternoon sun while they used a nearby public restroom.

"We will walk the path together," they said.

My friend shrugged. We waited. To the amusement of the two public restroom janitors lounging in bright orange coveralls on small stools nearby.

A courageous crinkled leaf let go of the nearly bare branch and spun in a loop to the ground. The whole city spins clockwise.

We met our new found friends exactly halfway around the city on one of the best marked and most frequented circles, the Lingkor. The whole place is circles though, just rings upon rings intersecting with rings. The whole mentality of these people is circles too, endless loops upon loops though which they cycle but rarely understand. So became obvious as the grandfathers took it upon themselves to explain the rotten tons of prayer flags littering the mountain, the gaudily peeling painted buddhas all over the rocks, the garbage and graffiti everywhere, the rows of nearly dissolved paper cups of water. That is, if the word explain can be used to describe the what was quite like the effect of a handful stones thrown into a still pond. Circles.

As we wound our way to the top of a small mountain and around the city in a loop that resembled something much more like a strand of yarn tossed to the floor than a ring, my mind too began to spin...

Lazy thoughts looped around as the record of this past week rolled through: 

A friend here today and gone tomorrow with only a missing day as proof that she had been and was indeed gone again. 

A joyful reunion at a bus stop I almost never stop at with a friend who I could have sworn I might never see again. 

Classrooms where my students were teachers and their students were studying the letter 'p' in a wild reminder of the true meaning of back to basics. 

A house full of meat dumplings and mountain climbing trophies and a room full of idols watching to make sure the stacks of noodles dried properly. 

A walk down an alley only to have the disquieting experience of introducing my blind friend to a deaf girl I happened to recognize. 

Endless bags in tidy rows filled with all manner of dried what in another universe might be considered cheese. 

A kilo of fresh yak butter given by a generous student to a slightly horrified teacher then given to an excited monk and a teacher turned relieved. 

Text messages coming at haphazard moments declaring love from Sisters who can honestly share it. 

A tea with a student during which the afternoon sun was just a bit too comfortable and sleep treacherously close.

A monk who's really just a silly boy yelling my name across the busy street then playing a frightening version of human frogger just to get across and shake my hand. 

Local friends homesick in Beijing begging to send me something from the city.

An honest conversation about hard questions and elusive answers with a Brother who's favorite parable features a shepherd just crazy, or just devoted, enough to leave ninety-nine sheep in search of only one. 

Lessons... and teas... and noodles...

Another week, round and round.

"You will sleep so good tonight," my friend said as we downed the last dribbles of sweet milk tea and got up from the well placed tea house to finish our circle, by now sans grandfathers, around the city.

We parted at the intersection where I flagged down the first bus I saw and realized immediately that I was perhaps the last person that they could phsically stuff on... only to be astounded when about a dozen people got on after me. Leaned over a grubby yellow seat and a woman with a man sized bag in her lap my face rested on the cool window and I steadied myself against the erratic shudderings of the bus and was warmed by the people pressed next to me.

When the bus looped near my school I squeezed burst from the dingy exhausted doors and gasped for breath that wasn't being recycled immediately by others next to me.

Circles, rings, loops, coils, wheels spinning round and round and round. Dizzy.

I stood on the dusty darkening street as the remarkably crowded bus sputtered away and acknowledged that, though I can make no sense of the whirlpools of motion and thought that erode and define this city and people, they exist, and I too am caught in their inertia.

Nevermind... to move linearly in this place would be nothing short of fatal, anyway.

So here we go, round again...

Tune in.

Sometimes I don't want to hear anything. I want to hear nothing at all, not one sound, save for the voice of my Father. 

The air was crisp, the sun warm, the fallen leaves yellow when I stuffed my ipod headphones further into my ear and turned up a song of praise just loud enough to make everything I saw walking down the street appear as if it were in a music video... on purpose.

I needed an escape.  The noise of this world was a snare to me.

There went a bus I didn't even hear. Some people squabling in Chinese I also couldn't hear. Sellers hawking their wares, bicycles clanging, students giggling, billard balls clacking, cows lowing, leaves crunching, noodles being slurped... and I... couldn't hear any of it. To my delight.

Sometimes even your ears are weary.

So when I crossed the street and began my walk of escape down a baren dirt road next to the ditch near our school I wished with all my might I had taken a different turn. Because even though I could only see it, couldn't hear it, I did hear it... somewhere deep down the sound rustled the tatters of my ragged soul. It was one of the tiny beggar children I have come to befriend, standing in the ditch, clothes torn and sodden, shoes off, and face bathed in tears, wailing.

I took out my headphones. And the torrential rush of life flooded my ears and nearly made my eyes water. I had wanted to block it all out.

When she saw me turn, cross the ditch, and come pick her up out of the lethargically moving water, she stopped crying. Her brother and even younger sister stood a little ways off near where her missing shoes were, splashing in the filthy muck. I buttoned the only button left remaining on her grimy shirt and turned in time to catch her older brother as he jumped up to hug me. Something about spinning a child around in the air makes the rest of the world stand still. I explained that I was sorry I hadn't brought any money out and so instead we squatted and played a guessing game drawing numbers in the gravely sand and wrestled a bit and then laughed as a single rubber boot floated by in the ditch and the older brother splashed dove to get it and stuffed both of his feet in. I asked them if they were okay now, invited them to go on my walk with me, and at their refusal I wished them farewell after helping them put their busted too small shoes back on.

I reached in my pocket to again mute the world.

But I pulled my hand out empty and instead, before I even realized I had done it, grabbed two of the bulging plastic bags held by the panting grocery market lady who I love who also just happened to be struggling down the street right next to me. She, so thrilled for the extra set of hands, chattered at me in Chinese that was far too quick to be comprehensible and while I was being mesmerized by the endless stream of what I may never be able to understand I followed her right into the army base. As much to my surprise as theirs.

We dragged the bags squirming with fish and loaded with cabbages back to the kitchen area, caused a bit of a scene when I, immediately realizing that I shouldn't have been where I was, decided to quickly leave and was commanded to just wait a moment by the dear woman. When she had been paid by some astounded looking men in uniform, she clasped my shaky hands in her cool, swollen, chapped ones and we walked back through the main gate, her chattering all the while and I blushing, where we parted.

Two steps later I had silenced the world with my music once again.

Only to feel my phone rining in my pocket. Nearly tempted to curse my other senses which had been betraying me, I turned off the music and answered the call.

It was my student who was away in her hometown doing her practice teaching. Her class was studying animals and her only request was could I please please just one time sing the animal song I had taught them? So there I stood on the street, next to babies squatting with spilt pants to pee, women in bright orange overalls sweeping the endless barage of garbage, a man with a bicycle cart full of miniature cacti, and the typical odd menagerie of life, singing softly into my phone so as not to attract any additional attention, 'Old Macdonald had a farm... e-i-e-i-o'. An enthusiastic 'Thank you teacher!' ended the phone call.

When the dump truck horn blared past belching soot a moment later I didn't even hear it.

And so the veiny, green turning yellow leaves cascaded to the ground, clipped from their branches by the brittle wind, and the sprinklers danced around creating misty showers, the dimming sun light beamed across the damp lawn of the park, and the grandmothers hobbled, young men on bicycles glided, taxis sped past. I sat on the haphazardly painted white metal bench and watched it all happen according to a beat that only I could hear. And it was all I could hear.

And as I sat and gulped in the peace and beauty of the moment I was in like one who had just escaped drowning I realized that even when I had my music turned off, somehow slicing through the noise noise noise, I had heard His voice: play with beggars, carry people's bags, sing to your students...

May it always be all I can hear.

Free is in my budget

All for free: sunshine, rain, wind that blows, crunchy yellow leaves, dust... all for free.

All for free: the occasional bus ride, apple, meal, pen, photocopy, thermos of tea... all for free. 

All for free: grace. All of it. Free. 

The sparse street lights left modest pools of dim yellow light on the nearly blackened closing down for the night street. A blue and white cab pulled up to the curb where I was standing and I got in the front seat.

The nearly bald somewhat elderly driver with a round face and orange jacket stumbled over my school's name several times before, with slurred speech and eyes glinting with mirth from the light of the dashboard, he maneuvered the taxi across the dim street in the correct direction.

Pedestrians moved like shadows on shadow as the taxi rolled drowsily  through the streets. He was chatty and as the outlines of buildings slid past in the darkness we had the following conversation in my painfully stark Chinese:

He: You're beautiful
I: Nope
He: Where are you from?
I: America
He: Are you a teacher?
I: Yes, English
He: English is so good
I: Yes
He: Do you have a boyfriend?
I: Yes
He: Is he Chinese?
I: No
He: How old are you?
I: I don't know
He: Do you drink beer?
I: No
He: I will tell you my phone number and you can call me then we can be friends is it okay?
I: Sure

I: I don't speak Chinese. 
He: hehehehe

He mystified me as he actually obeyed traffic rules, drove a reasonable speed, and stopped at the lights. I saved his number in my phone as "crazy taxi" an adjective describing the overall night rather than the driving. He, in no rush to actually get me to my destination, pulled up next to another cab, rolled down my window and proceeded to gleefully declare our friendship as I sunk lower in the seat and covered my face with my hand.

The Potala loomed darker than ever in our rearview mirror and the stars twinkled bright overhead.

I couldn't help but giggle behind my hand as he continued to chatter away at me, chuckling to himself, and at one point reaching over to turn up what could have been a theme song for the 1970's on the car stereo. By the time we arrived at my nearly deserted school gate, in the alternate universe I currently live in, we probably had become friends.

So he nearly drove right by then stopped at my school gate. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the crumpled ten yuan note to pay the fare. He refused to take it, I left it on the dashboard, he grabbed it and stuffed it back into my hand...

He: WE ARE FRIENDS. You don't pay.
I: Really?

First, and possibly last, free taxi ride of my life. Awesome.

Free... that's definitely in my budget.