Flashback: Cartagena

September, 2006.

These two men are enjoying dusk on the top of the fortress walls in Cartagena, Colombia.  The entire coastal area of Colombia is high on my priority list to revisit in the near future.  On this trip to Cartagena with my parents, we enjoyed Cartagena for a week but we didn’t venture outside of the city limits hardly at all.  So much to explore in this land I call home.

Flashback: Isla Holbox

November, 2008.

Isla Holbox, in the Yucatan peninsula was my kind of beach.  Which is saying a lot considering I don’t really love your average beach vacation.  Perhaps it was the company (my soon to be husband) or perhaps it was the low key atmosphere of the island or perhaps it was the route we took to get there.  I suspect it to be a mixture of the three.  For as much as I dislike Cancun/Cozumel, I sure do have fond memories of its next-door neighbor.

When all said and done….

I found myself right back where I started…in my home, curled up in my bed, lured to sleep by the sounds of my husband’s fingers dancing away at the keyboard until the wee hours of the morning.  Home sweet home.  Kinda.  I left Thailand two months ago and within a week was whipped up back into the life I’d left 8 months prior.  This was mostly good:  great to see friends & family, happy to have a job to come back to and a role that was easy to slip back into, enjoying the comforts of home, etc.  But the comforts have been the problem.  Whenever I return home from a less-developed country, it’s the comforts of home that I embrace at first, but then get uncomfortable with shortly after.  Life can be too comfortable here.  And talk about excess.  It makes me stress, and want to purge even more.  I always think we live fairly minimally, at least in comparison to most of our stateside friends, but then I return from abroad, where less really is more. And still I catch myself participating regularly in the cycle of consumption.  Sigh.

A visual:

This is the one and only cutting board to be found at NEED.  This little small to mid-sized cutting board was in constant use, but managed to feed 20+ hungry mouths, 3 times per day.  There was a LOT of chopping and cutting going on too, since nothing we ate came out of a box and was all mostly meat and produce.

This is the kitchen in my home and all of the cutting boards I have on display.  I have one similar white cutting board like the one they had at NEED, but in addition, I have another white one (but round, because, ya know, that’s so much cooler!), + a big bamboo one, + 4 bendy ones.  And, there are only 2 mouths being fed in our home. 

7 at home

Excess & Consumption, just a taste of the turmoil my spirit has been fighting to come to peace with in this complicated ”reintegration” back into regular ol’ life.

Flashback: Villa de Leyva

December 2003

Although this particular picture was taken during a holiday trip to Colombia several years ago, I’ve been to this exact spot numerous times.  El Duruelo Hotel offers magnificent views of the charming Colombian town of Villa de Leyva.  It’s pricey – we’ve never stayed there – but it’s a fabulous place for an afternoon visit, just for the gardens and views alone!  I can’t recall a single visit to Colombia without a weekend trip to this town my family and I love.  Last year I was able to go with my husband and he too fell in love.  Several times a month, we fantasize about settling down in Villa de Leyva for a while.  Sera posible?

Flashback: Venice

 

June, 2005.   Last week I watched The Tourist and as the plot whisked me back and forth across Venice I thought back to my brief visit to Venice nearly 6 years ago.  It was my first and only visit to Italy and our itinerary only had us in the magical city of Venice for 3 days.  Despite the hoards of visitors and the crowds found everywhere you turned, it was as enchanting as advertised - and will be a beautiful place to return to one day.

Saying Goodbye & Bad Timing

My bags were in the back of the truck and it was time to head to the bus terminal, but not before one last parting shot.

After my 3 week speed tour of Cambodia and Laos I returned to the farm to find it more or less just as I’d left it.  Except, I was no longer a part of it.  Life was carrying on without me and it was time to say goodbye.  I delayed the inevitable for as long as possible, waiting until the final night bus to take me back to Bangkok with a 12 hour window of time to spare to catch my international flight.  I figured I’d later regret the whirlwind 3 day journey home instead of heading to B a few days prior, but thought that I’d have bigger regrets for leaving the farm any earlier than necessary.  So, in my final three days, I stayed in the girl’s rooms and ended the experience much as it started 7 months earlier:  quietly observing the activity of the farm, enjoying the daily routine, and crawling onto my mat at night ready to sleep to the sounds of life in this wonderful place that had welcomed me with open arms for so long. 

I knew saying goodbye was going to be hard.  I tried to be tough and strong but tears welled up numerous times throughout the day.  I had to sneak into the bathroom multiple times to compose myself and get it together.  I was overwhelmed with emotion and in complete denial that in a matter of days I’d be back in the West.  In hindsight, taking the last bus of the day was probably not such a great idea because that meant the whole day people would say goodbye, only to run back into me later on in the day and have to repeat the goodbyes.  It was exhausting.  I was fretting on how to properly even say goodbye.  I’m a hugger but this temporary family and culture of mine was certainly not.  I wanted to tuck everyone into a tight hug but knew that wouldn’t be appropriate so I had to hold back and be satisfied with handshake after handshake.

What made the goodbye even more difficult was that I was leaving at the most inopportune time.  The day following my departure, the farm and village would be celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime ritual for 3 of the guys on the farm, 2 of whom were sons of my boss and all 3 of whom I’d grown close to and whom I considered friends.  I left at 10pm on a Monday night.  By 4 o’clock the following afternoon the entire village would be helping to celebrate as the 3 young men became novice monks, a ceremony of utmost importance in the Buddhist tradition for everyone involved.  It was a ceremony that my boss and his wife had been saving up for for years.  They were expecting 300+ people.  There would be a big party the day after I left with all sorts of traditional foods, followed by dancing.  The following morning would be the religious part of the ceremony, with the 3 men entering the monastery for 9 days.  I was so, incredibly sad to be missing the ceremony, and only by a few hours.  But, I had already paid a change fee once to change my return flight home by a week and couldn’t do it again.  So, in the midst of all the preparations I slipped away into the night, all the while making everyone who crossed my path promise to send me photos and videos of the ceremony I was about to miss.

What caught me most of guard of the whole farewell day was that my boss and 3 of the girls accompanied me to the bus station.  And there, on the platform as I was fighting back tears, my boss gave me a big hug and walked away without a word.  Coming from a culture where there is very limited physical contact, this spoke volumes to me and meant the world.  As the bus backed out of platform #12, I tried to hold on tight to the image in my mind of my boss and the 3 girls walking back to the truck turning to wave at me every so often, and I smiled, tears rolling down my cheeks.

In my final afternoon, the guys spent hours scraping buffalo hide for a traditional Arakanese dish for the celebration. I spent my final afternoon out there with them, chit chatting and enjoying a cool beer on a hot afternoon.

The monk ordination ceremony (that I missed) began with the shaving of their heads and eyebrows.

Alms ceremony! I'm so thankful these pictures were sent to me so that I could see what I missed.

The young men and resident monastery monks completing some part of the ceremony & rituals.

Flashback: Santa Fe

Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 2010

How could you not love Santa Fe?  The colors.  The art.  The food.  The feeling you get from walking through the streets where it’s impossible not to smile.