I Spy [Airport Edition]

Found:

• A long line to get through security


• Friends! [We found the Macdonalds waiting for their flight at the gate next to ours.]


• A one hour flight delay [We won't have as long a layover in Dallas... ]


• A cute, old lady with "Texas hair"


• A litte boy wearing a cowboy hat,  red cowboy boots, and... an "I *clover* NY" T-shirt?


• A man in bellbottoms carrying a red patent leather bag...


• A girl who's back must be sore, since she's been bent at a 45 degree angle, leaning on her boyfriend's arm for about 2 hours


• Another hour and a half flight delay [So much for our connecting flight in Dallas...]


• A girl in a neon yellow shirt and neon pink capris


• A cool brother


• Another half hour delay

Need to Find

• An airplane

I Like Bananas.

You may have already heard about my reconciliation with bananas; I’ve told lots of people just because it’s so exciting to me. In case you haven’t heard though, let me explain.

I’ve never liked bananas. When I was little, I tried very hard to like them. They’re a uniquely wonderful fruit—happily yellow and satisfyingly peel-covered. So intense was my dislike that up until last fall, I had only peeled a banana once to my memory.

At the Frisco debate tournament last November, Kathryn and I were talking about bananas and my sad lack of banana peeling experience. From that point on, she made my day by allowing me to peel all of her bananas. Kathryn is a very wonderful person.

In Singapore, one day. I tried a banana. I liked the banana. Ecstatic doesn’t quite cover this new discovery. Joyful, maybe? Peeling [and eating] bananas is now one of my new favorite hobbies.

I’ve changed a lot since I was little, and in some cases I didn’t even know I’ve changed. Eating was once a dangerous occupation fraught with untold dangers. After all, I detested:

• Cinnamon


• Mangos


• Bananas


• Potatoes


• Lettuce


• Fish (other than Salmon)


• Mayonnaise


• Spinach


• Jelly


• Peanut butter


• Wheat bread


• Beans


• Tomatoes


• Butter


• Cheese


• Corn


• Bananas


• Milk


• The list of foods I hated but now like (or am learning to like) goes on….

Sometimes I get very sick and tired of being myself. Certain weaknesses and personality traits make me want to just run until somehow or other, I leave myself behind. As much as I want to escape myself at times, losing my identity is my single greatest fear. And yet, I’m never really the same person for very long, my interests, passions, questions, and tastes in foods are constantly morphing. I guess what I’m trying to say is that because I change so often, as much as I’d like to, I can’t define myself. God doesn’t change, and so He’s the only one who can actually give me an identity. I thank God that I am His and He knows me  regardless of whether or not I like bananas.

"Adults are just obsolete children" ~Dr. Suess

             “Look at this!” A boy, about four years old with clear hazel eyes, a round nose, a broad face, and cropped sandy hair held a DVD case out for me to see.

                “Wow!” I answered in a whisper so as not to disturb the other library goers.

                I had been watching him climb up the book stand that held a huge open atlas at the top. Just as he had climbed high enough to identify the book lying on top of the stand, his “Mamaw” glanced over at him and told him to climb down.

He lowered his foot, reaching for the ground; he hesitated when his foot didn’t connect with anything. Then he jumped all six inches to the floor.

                With a sigh, he plunked down in the chair beside me. I looked up from pretending to study the chemical reactions governing intracellular respiration in my Advanced Biology text book. I smiled at him.

                He hopped up from his seat and retrieved his book and DVD from his mamaw. Taking his seat, he set the book down, jumped up again, and walked over to me.

               “Look at this!”

               “Wow! Have you seen it?”
                “No, but I have it now.”
                “Which one is your favorite character?”

                He pointed to the yellow boxy claymation character on the front of the case, and he proceeded to explain to me how that character got hit in the head by a snowball. Luckly though, one of the other characters was able to fix it. After he explained to me the intricate details of this TV show, he showed me his book. He had picked it out as a “present for Mamaw.”

                Being four is so much fun. You can talk to people whom you’ve never met before. Thoughts like, “What are they thinking about me?” don’t even begin to occur to you. You haven’t learned to laugh at fewer jokes because you don’t have a “sophisticated sense of humor.” Giving a gift doesn’t have a thing to do with whether or not the receiver keeps the gift.

                Of course, I’d never trade back a single year of my life, but maybe, even while gaining maturity and wisdom, I don’t want to “grow-up…” not in a conventional sense anyway.

The little boy’s Mamaw finished picking out her book and called for him to go.

“Bye!” he waved to me, “My name's Tristan.” He skipped out of the room.

Oh, Taxi!

Since we didn’t have a car in Singapore, we had to take a taxi, a rented van, the bus or the subway wherever we went. The taxi drivers were entertaining to say the least…

----------

Taxi Driver: Where are you from?

Us: The United States

Taxi: Oh! You know Christopher Columbus

Us: (smiling) yep.

Taxi: (emphatically) All the history books say Christopher Columbus a great man. He not great. He just lost his way. He lucky. He not a great man…. You know General MacArthur?

Us: (highly amused) yeah

Taxi: Two Americans say, “I’ll be back,” General MacArthur and the Terminator. [He extols the wonders of The Terminator and his other “best actors”]

Us: (laughing) uh-huh.

Us: Were you born in Singapore?

Taxi: I made in Singapore.

Us: Okay, so you were born in Singapore

Taxi: No, I made in Singapore; I manufactured in Singapore. Designed in Singapore. Produced in Singapore. Have a stamp on my left buttock say “Made in Singapore.”

John David: (Indicating with his hands about the size of a baseball) This big?

Taxi: No. This big. That big, counterfeit. If on the right buttock, imported. China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia. Imported. If you want to know where someone from, roll down their pants and look at stamp. Left, Singapore; Right, imported.

[Taxi Driver begins laughing manically, speeds up, starts vocalizing a car’s screeching noises, and saying as though he were putting words in our mouths:]

Too fast, Uncle! Too fast [fake screeching noises] Welcome to the crazy taxi driver; I the fastest taxi driver in  Singapore. See no traffic jam [He dodges out of our lane to cut in front of the cars ahead of us].

What are you doing in Singapore?

Us: (Slightly perturbed, but amused) We’re teaching.

Taxi: You? Teaching? I teach too.

Us: Oh. What do you teach?

Taxi: I teach my children. I teach them to be naughty. You want to know how to be naughty? Tonight you go to Zooks. Not Zoo, Zooks. Lots of charming girls and charming boys.

[He turns down the small neighborhood road that leads to the school, and he gets distracted by the taxi ahead of us.]

He not know how to drive a taxi. He not a real taxi driver.

[He starts tailgating the other taxi.]

He slow.

--------

We got to the school and got to of our cab laughing, thankful to be alive, and wondering what the  drive was high on… an especially interesting question since in Singapore, people caught trafficking drugs are executed. Almost without exception.

In This City

I meant to post a facebook note while I was in Singapore, so I wrote this early in the trip. I never got a chance to post it though, so a month later, here it is:

While I stirred the gumbo a little bit ago, I glanced out the open window at the canopy of trees in the Singaporean park across the street from the Vosburg’s condo. Who would have guessed that I would be in Singapore the first time I made gumbo? Sure, Louisiana and Singapore are somewhat antithetical, and yet, in some way, it doesn’t seem entirely uncharacteristic of Singapore to mix the two together. It seems like a city that absorbs any culture that makes its home here. People tell our team we should visit China Town and Arab Street, and we’ve already visited Little India.

For the first couple of days, we were ridiculously busy teaching and getting ready to teach. The part of the city I’d seen appeared remarkably Western. As for the students, teaching them felt about the same as teaching American students. The fruits are fantastic and exotic, but other than that, I could easily forget that I wasn’t in America.



Me and one of my 6th gra- ders, Nat- alie  <3

Left: Pomello- one of many new fruits I tried. It's like a less flavorful grapefruit




Last night, George, our Singaporean van driver drove us downtown to witness kavadi in Little India, the Indian section of Singapore. At first we just saw streams of people flowing down the sidewalk to the right of our car, but then we noticed a feathery pavilion sticking up above the mass of people. When the feathery pavilion passed us, we could see the whole contraption. A man inside carried the heavy, intricately decorated, metal cage. Hundreds of needles protruding from his skin connected him to the cage, and he walked. George told us that the man had been fasting for one month, eating only one vegetarian meal every day, so his friends and family walked around him to help him if he fainted. His goal was to reach the temple, when he reached the temple, his sins, he believed, would be absolved—for one year. We watched a dozen men pass by us in these cages, and additional men with rods stuck through their mouths or walking on shoes of nails also made their way to the temple.






At one point, one of the bystanders was beating a drum, so one of the men with the needle cages danced and spun. As he spun, some of the metal protrusions came loose, so his friends buried it into his skin again for him. My heart breaks that all of these displays are useless. Christ died once for all, and I am unbelievably thankful that I know Christ as my savior. I ache for those whose metal rods pierce their back, their sides, and their stomachs, to understand, that the nails that pierced Jesus paid their way, not for a year, but for eternity.

After that sobering scene, George found a place for us to park and get out in the masses of the Little India. If at any point I had felt I was in America, last night certainly alerted me that I am in another country. I’ve never been in such a huge crowd. It felt like I was swimming in a river of people. With an almost exclusively Indian demographic, I was feeling pretty conspicuous. The sights, the sounds, the smells, and the tastes were simply exhilarating.

We got to eat in an authentic Indian restaurant. I love spicy foods, but our team members who don’t like them didn’t fare quite so well, unfortunately. George recommended that we stop and buy coconuts from a street vendor (don’t worry, the Vosburgs said it was safe). They were absolutely delicious. The vendor lopped the tops off and put straws in the coconut, then after we drank the coconut milk, he used a huge butcher knife to slice the coconut in half, so we could eat the meat out of the inside.

.

I’m excited to see what God is going to continue to do this week. The Bluetree song, “God of This City” keeps floating around in my head. The chorus goes something like:



You’re the God of this city.

You’re the King of these people

You’re the Lord of this nation.

You are,

And there is no one like our God.

For greater things are yet to come,

And greater things are still to be done

In this city.

The students we’ve been talking to have begun to seem as though they are catching a vision of what it means to communicate with their culture effectively for Christ. For greater things have yet to come in this melting pot of a city. In the mean time, the gumbo in the kitchen is starting to smell really delicious.