Leavin' on a midnight train to Georgia

My friend Emily likes "airport world" where everyone is in transition, no one is really a local, and all cultures are mixed up in one big pot of high perfume prices and strong gas smells. On a recent trip from Seoul, I realized my reflective refuge is the train station.

While boarding or departing and walking along the platform I always catch a glimpse of myself in the long dark windows of the train. My reflection triggers a realization of who I am, who I am wanting to be, and how I'm always moving, always changing. I look, see myself, see myself moving along each window, either getting closer to my car or closer to the exit. Maybe I'm on my way to an adventure or to see friends. Sometimes it's not clear where I'm going, but I'm always moving. Wherever I'm going, I always grin at my reflection.

I don't mind traveling alone. It gives me just the right amount of time to prepare for what is to come, or reflect on what just happened. Most of my time alone is silent, with the exception of the Korean man who sits next to me and speaks all of the English he can remember. Without that involuntary quiet time, which could easily seem lonely, I wouldn't fully appreciate my journey or my destination.

Train stations give me quick results; I don't have to wait around for hours to get where I want. This is maybe a reflection on my personality, but I'm ok with that. I can wait for the next train if this one is full. I can be patient. I can even take the bus if I need to. I won't buy any dried squid on the food cart racing down the aisle. I can wait. But I prefer to be moving, on my way to somewhere.

Pretty soon I'll be home in the states, but only for a few months. I wonder why I was made with such a strong desire to be in constant transition. Maybe He knew that only when I am moving places, changing scenery, am I forced to be quiet. In that stillness, He is there, moving me, changing me and I am grateful.

Grace, Patience, and Coffee (and a picture of a cute Korean Kid)

Min Jong, the barista, is my newest favorite person in Korea. I might even call her my newest friend. She is my favorite because every time I walk up to the open window of her coffee shop, she smiles and exclaims, “Macchiato!” I nod. Then she says, “Mocha?” I nod again. She knows what I want and what I’m ordering for Emily. She gets really confused when I only order one thing. She often gives me extra stamps on my coffee point card.

There is no greater feeling than to walk up to the counter, crowded with Korean college students waiting for their coffee and have Min Jong look over them and recognize me. It’s like we’re friends that haven’t seen one another for a long time. I don’t know much about her except that she is 25 in Korean age (23 in the rest of the world’s age system) and that she has never been rude, short, or unfriendly with me. In fact, she seems to be genuinely nice to everyone. In all of the places I’ve been to, people like her are not a majority.

The first time I encountered Min Jong, it was clearly her first week at the shop, possibly even her first day. I ordered 4 different coffees for my friends who were teaching and in desperate need of a caffeine spike. It took Min Jong around 15 minutes (and this is a generously short estimate) to prepare these. It wasn’t because she didn’t understand what I wanted; the language barrier is pretty small with things like “Moh-Ka. Lah-tay.” She was just slow. SUPER slow. The previous barista was super fast and the drinks were always delicious. This was not off to a good start. When I finally got my coffee, it was lukewarm (again, generous estimate) and I’m pretty sure I was overcharged. Usually in this situation, I’d start to feel a little ripped off and mad that this lady had wasted 20 minutes of my time and stole my money. Surprisingly though, I smiled and walked away with my 4 semi-warm, overpriced coffees. I’m not sure why I decided to go back, but the next time, Min Jong had sped things up a bit and the coffee was a bit warmer. Within a week, she was a pro.

What if I had given up on Min Jong the first time? What if I wouldn’t have been able to see past my own small inconvenience? And where did this grace and patience come from? I’m so impatient I burn marshmallows on purpose just so I can get to the s’more quicker. I rarely have grace for students who want extensions and even less grace for people who have hurt me.

My whole life has been filled with people who have shown grace and patience to me. It might finally be rubbing off. When I was learning how to drive a stick shift, my mom let me mess up over and over again until I got it right. She never once yelled or became impatient – she actually laughed until she cried. PATIENCE. Even when I stalled in the middle of a busy intersection and dropped the f-bomb, she calmly told me what to do and helped me start it up again. GRACE. I know these qualities are not from us. We are commanded to be patient and have grace, but we can only know what that looks like when it is given to us.

If I would’ve given up on Min Jong, I probably would have found another coffee shop and bought some great coffee at a reasonable price. But now, I have all of that AND a friend who lights up my day with a smile, broken English, and extra stamps.

Fill me up, Beulah Home Buttercups

Its been almost a month since I last blogged. I've been processing how to write about a number of things. I've found that words are often limiting when used to express feelings and experiences, so I'll look to some pictures instead and hopefully you can get your own feelings out of them!

This is Beulah Home in Bangalore, India. Every morning I walked down the stairs to be greeted by three rows of children ranging from ages 3-17. Each one of them would say, "Good morning, Auntie!" It was my favorite part of the day.

My group was the middle group. I'm guessing they were from grades 3 - 5. These kids are from a different part of India and are unable to speak the local language so they can't go to the local school. They're waiting for us to give them English lessons. Their speaking skills are ok, but their writing skills are limited. The materials they have for school are pretty slim, and they use everything they have until its all gone.

I was nervous teaching this age group because they're a mystery! I had no idea if their English was good enough to understand me, if the "essential questions" would get answered, or the 'objectives' of the lesson. At one point, I'm pretty sure God was laughing so hard that He barely got out between chuckles, "Ms. Bird, relax. Just go love them."

On the last day, the young boy on the left wrote a story that was 3 pages long, (small font) front and back in 30 minutes. He is a really creative and bright kid. I wonder what he could do at a school like TCIS.



Every evening before dinner, all of the kids would sit and wait for us to come back from our afternoon tea. We would descend the stairs, only to be greeted again with, "Hello, Auntie!" The rest of the kids had returned from school. There were probably 100 kids total. They can sit and wait like I've never seen before. Only the smaller 3 year olds would get antsy and run around every now and then.

This is our praise songs and bible stories time. I was in charge of the music, but really, the kids already knew a million praise songs. Camp counselors would lose to any of these kids in 'name that tune.' I was really nervous to teach them songs because 1. I didn't know the songs that well and 2. Its just a little frightening to be in front of 100 kids who want you to teach them something cool. As it turns out, they just looooove to sing. Period. They sing with so much joy. I cried the first time I heard them sing because it was the most beautiful music my heart had ever felt.

The second day there, I was on the roof waiting to go back down for some lessons, and I heard "Blessed be your name" coming from the wash up area. It was the song I taught them! So maybe my science approach to teaching music works after all! My favorite line is "When I'm found in the desert place, when I walk through the wilderness, blessed be your name." These kids are going to have to walk through a lot of deserts and wilderness in their life. I hope they remember this song.

Stickers and balloons. I've never seen anyone have so much fun with these simple party items. They had the excitement this science nerd would have if you put me in a room full of new science lab equipment. They went nuts. One night I set my camera down on a table. 20 minutes later, it was covered in stickers. Every time I look at the hearts and stars on my camera, I remember the little fingers that placed them there.
My other favorite part of the day was the end before bedtime. Each day included English and Physics lessons (yes, my nerd information sharing quota was met, even at a children's home in India!), crafts, games, songs, stories, and dancing, so everyone needed rest. As a single person, I don't get a lot of physical contact. This is hard for me, since one of my Love Languages is physical touch. At the end of every night, I was hugged more than I had been hugged all of 2007 combined.

I now know about real love. Beulah Home is about love. Pslam 23:5-6 My cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.

My cup is still overflowing.

Korean spring makes people do crazy things....

"How does it feel when things are going your way, you pick a lucky number every day..." Spring has arrived in Korea and people are going crazy. They're jumping all over the place, Johnny is trying to break into the Canadian Embassy to get home, old men are hula hooping on top of Bomansan mountain, and girls are trying to do yoga outside. I love it. I love the quiet roar of children playing in the grass outside of school, the excited chatter of teenagers slowly strolling along the sidewalks, and the sunshine that breaks through the yellow dust and smog to reach me at my desk.

I also love the countdown...only 82 days until I am sipping an iced soy mint mocha at a Dunn Brothers or Caribou Coffee house with my friends from home. "Another airplane, another sunny place, I'm lucky I know, but I wanna come home. And I'm surrounded by a million people, I feel so alone, I miss you..." from the song Home by Michael Buble. While you're reading this, friends and family, I miss you right now. And now. And now. And I love you now. And now, and now too! Its so cool how love doesn't have physical limitations or laws like gravity and friction.

The countdown also means I only have 82 days left with a few people I have grown to love here since they won't return in August. I guess God never promises us a given amount of time with those we love. I wonder how cheated Jesus' best friends felt after they found out he was leaving. It probably didn't take them too long to realize that their lives were better because he had been in it. So even though it feels like it's too soon or like I haven't had enough time, I'm thankful for my friends here and how they have blessed and bettered me.

In 2 days I leave on a mission trip to an orphanage in India. Our length of stay is short, but I hope that our depth and length of love can be infinite, like His love for us (which again, has no boundaries...so cool!) and our hearts will open up to pour out His love for the whole week. There is no conservation of God's love, like conservation of matter or momentum. His love can be created but not destroyed. Love isn't like the world's energy source; it's not something I have to worry about running out, because with God, love is like a bottomless cup of hot, chocolaty, soy mint mocha goodness.

Let's just fill our time with joy...

Last night with our German boys

Hottuck is looking good...

Fancy pantsy meal, fit for the the Queen

Hottuck is not looking so good....

There are only 3 months until school is out. 101 days until my flight back home. I know this because my friend Kara is counting down. Most of our online chats end with something like, "I can wait to seeeeeeeeeeeee yoooooooooooooou! I miss you soooooooooooo much!!! Only x number of days!! eeeeeeee!" I have a feeling there will be a lot of squealing when she picks me up from the airport.

I have mixed feelings about going back home. Tonight I was 10 seconds away from a panic attack from a wave of feelings of homesickness and fear of returning to something that is completely different that when you left. Luckily, my stomach was so famished it grew a brain and decided an omlette was the solution to the problem. Who argues with their stomach? While comforting my panic with an omlette and an episode of Friends, I was thinking about my friends and my old life back home. It seems very far away and forgotten. I don't exist there anymore - people have taken my place in so many different areas. I have been replaced. I am replaceable.

No one ever wants to think that they are replaceable, but really, we are pretty replaceable in most aspects of our lives. People will take over our jobs, apartments, relationships, whatever it is we leave behind. This is nothing to get really worked up over; if the world wasn't able to replace us, then it would stop running after awhile. Who wants that?! Not me! Replace me! Hurry up!

My German friends left for Germany last week. They were the first of my friends here to leave. I'm excited to have friends all over the world, but unfortunately, that means that I must be somewhere they are not. This is the 'nature of the job' I'm told, but it doesn't make it easy to accept. What I can accept and believe is that God provides us with replacements and often, refreshments, when needed. He has a way of sending us the right people at the right time. After my attack, my friend Emily called out of the blue to say hi. While talking to her, my friend Phil called. See? Refreshments!! If I can only hang on long enough to wait for them.

The bright side of being replaced is that YOU get to replace someone else and in that process, you learn a lot. Lately, I've been embracing my new culture by learning how to cook! Some of it's good, some of it would not be placed in the good category. Hopefully, by the time I go visit my old life, only to be faced with a massive amount of unexpected and unwelcomed change, I will be able to calm everyone's panic attack with some tasty Korean food. If God is as funny as I think He is, I'll even get a chance to feed my replacements. How refreshing.

In and out of Asia

Favorite Days of Asian Fever

I'm in love with Asia, or at least I am when surrounded by people who make Asia come alive. My friend Don, for example, takes any phrase I'm learning in Korean, and tells me where it came from, where to use it, the literal translation, and 3 more phrases that have the same format (I never remember those). I recently learned how to say, "Die!" or "Don't die!" and "I want to die!" Don makes this come alive for me when he tells me that Koreans use this same form when they are out drinking and exclaim, "Let's drink til we die!" Oh, very useful Don, thank you.

Don is from California like my friend Sarah. Sarah puts a California twist on everything. She wears 4 pairs of leggings because she insists on wearing skirts to school during the cold Korean winter. You can see her "sledding" in a skirt above. I believe this was the first time either of my Cali friends had been on a frozen body of water. The Korean version of sledding is to sit on a piece of wood and push against the ice with long ice picks. They allow their children to do this alone, without safety goggles or helmets. Sarah's excitement of sledding on a frozen river made the Korean folk village experience one of my favorites.

Another one of my favorite days in Asia was in Tokyo with 6 of my friends (1 old, 4 semi-new, 1 brand-new). Derek, a friend from middle school (who sat behind me in band and next to me in French class) is now a pilot in the Air Force. I wonder if they would let him fly those helicopters if they knew how much he used to like to watch WWF professional throw-down wrestling. It was strange to feel so at home in a foreign place simply because I was with someone I grew up with. Derek made Tokyo feel like an old pair of running shoes - it was like we had been strolling around old sacred temples and shrines for years together, talking about who's dating who, expressing our excitement to finally graduate high school, and telling jokes about our friends. Of course, our actual conversation was closer to who's married to whom, recalling how many times we scared Asian children with our looks, and telling jokes about our high school friends. :) Tokyo felt closer to home than I anticipated. And Derek was taller and more man-ish than I anticipated.

"So, the cross is always ready and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it no matter where you run, for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are." —Thomas a Kempis, 1440

'Wherever you go, there you are.' Even when changing countries, cities, jobs, pant sizes, I still need friends to help me deal with myself. Where I ended up this time is pretty nice considering God gives me new friends everywhere I turn, even on an island for honeymooners! At a beach bonfire on Jeju Island, I met Dennis, Reinhard, and Martin, three Germans who also happened to be living in Taejon. Seeing Korea from a German perspective is just funny. Hearing Korean with a German accent is even funnier. One of my favorite days was a trip with the Germans to a folk village and a walled city. We topped off the night with some intense games of darts, table soccer, and Jenga.

Emily and Will are two friends who make Korea more fun just because they are Emily and Will. Will is from Utah and speaks fluent Korean. Emily is from Minnesota and wants to speak Korean. (sometimes she just walks around town saying whatever word she has mastered that week like, "Odie? Odie?" which means, 'Where? Where?' or "Norang tahmujee!" which means 'Yellow radish!') Will's hair is like mine. Emily's hair is crazier than mine. Will forgets his earphones are in and yells on trains. So does Emily. Both are fun people to travel with, as you never know what will happen.

Kirstin and Tim are also two people that make traveling fun, as you never quite know when they will make you laugh. Kirstin can take any phrase like, "Awwww come on you guys!" and use it in Japan where you'd never expect. She also loves exclaiming things in Spanish, while in Korea or Japan. Tim keeps the conversation alive at all times with facts like the water between Japan and Jeju is the brightest sea at night due to the vast number of shrimp boats. I am grateful for both of these friendships. Asia is just more fun with laughter.

There is still a lot to learn about the history, culture, language of Asia. I have found that my most enjoyable learning moments have been with my friends. Discovering Asia, myself, or God is always more meaningful and fulfilling when discovered in the company of good friends. Wherever We go, there We are.