WESTWARD HO!

In THREE days I'll be Westward bound!

What I'm looking forward to in America:

Family, friends, and my CITC family

Sonic - cheese tots and a cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper!

Dr. Pepper

Driving Texas highways (above pictured Hwy 6 between Houston & College Station)

Going for a walk without being stared at

Tex-Mex

Teeth cleaning and medical check-ups

Public library

Physical activity options OTHER than workout videos (ULTIMATE FRISBEE!?)

Grocery shopping - so many choices (including healthy whole wheat bread!)

Goodbye for now, Kurdistan!

Top ten things I will miss while I'm gone:

1.   Kurdish friends and the friendly Kurdish people

2.   Luprak Butter

3.   Kak Naan ("Mr. Bread-Man") and his awesome bread

4.   Mountains

5.   Seeing people dressed in traditional Kurdish clothes

6.   Kurdish tea 

7.   Fresh vine-ripe tomatoes sold by the kilo at every little store on every corner

8.   Holland Bazaar

9.  Kurdish food like Iprax and Biriani

10. Cold cokes available at every store for less than fifty cents

Kurdish Mountains

Love

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Been thinking about love a lot lately. A song based on this scripture by Ginny Owens called "I am Nothing" has also been going through my head. Especially this verse:

I could live a flawless life
Never cheat or steal or lie,
And always speak so kindly, smile so warmly, and go about doing good.
I could dedicate myself to do what everyone else wants me to -
Listen to them, compliment them, say the things I should.
I could show up every Sunday, lead the choir and Bible study
And they all might come to know me as a leader and a friend.
Or I could achieve success on earth, but success cannot define my worth
And all these actions, all these words would not matter in the end.

Chorus:
Songs will fade to silence,
Stories, they will cease.
The dust will settle covering all my selfless deeds.
So as I strive to serve you,
Won't You make it clear to me,
That if I do not love, I am nothing.

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."  1 Corinthians 13:13

Leaving the 99

On the last day of English camp Ms. Karen’s was teaching her class how to spell the word “apple.” One girl kept trying to get it right. She came to Ms. Karen at least ten times with every possible configuration of spelling possible.
 

Each time Ms. Karen encouraged her to try again until finally she got it right. She was overjoyed when she heard Ms. Karen say “YOU DID IT!” Her persistence awarded her the good student of the day award.  

After the award ceremony that day this little girl raced down the hallway and jumped into Ms. Karen’s arms and just said “THANK YOU!” For Karen, that was the moment she knew her trip here was worth it. For just that one little girl to be encouraged.

Project 365 Day 16: Cultural Values

Russian Customs Form

Look at item 3.4 in the customs form. Not sure what the Russians were getting at. Maybe that people visiting their country must leave their cultural values at the border? LOL. Not a bad description of what it's like to make one's home in a foreign culture.

According to Wikipedia, "Values are an integral part of every culture. Along with worldview and personality, they generate behavior. Being part of a culture that shares a common core set of values creates expectations and predictability without which a culture would disintegrate and its members would lose their personal identity and sense of worth. Values tell people what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive...etc. They answer the question of why people do what they do. Values help people solve common human problems for survival. Over time, they become the roots of traditions that groups of people find important in their day-to-day lives."

Living in a foreign culture exposes cultural values. Mysterious behaviors, unpredictability, and conflicting expectations abound. It's good for me to examine my cultural values, to ask why I do what I do, and to put myself in the shoes of someone different than me to examine why he acts the way he does. It's a strange and wonderful journey.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

1) I walk, down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost…I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in…it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

Copyright Portia Nelson, 1980

Ludicrous Speed Revisited...

Progress toward moving is moving....well....slowly.... But that's ok. Even though the process has been MUCH different than I expected ("delayed" - for lack of a better word - by an emotional time with my mom a couple of weeks ago, a computer crash now resolved, and a family vacation during which I had no phone or internet), I'm confident that it will all come to pass at just the right time. KEY WORDS: just the right time. What is the "right" time? Not sure. But based on how things have been going it seems that the Sept 18 deadline for departing the country may not be the right time. After I'm done with training in early September I will shoot for leaving sometime in October.

Ludicrous Speed

So it’s no secret that for quite some time I’ve wanted to work overseas in healthcare, but the timing and place has been nebulous. I’ve searched for this opportunity for at least 5 years now. And always time couldn’t seem to move fast enough. But in the span of only 2 months things changed very quickly, doors opened, and a new opportunity I can’t resist became available to me. Now I'm searching for the emergency brake, which would be incredibly dangerous at the ludicrous speed I'm traveling at these days (see video below). So bittersweet! My last day at work was June 19 and I'm now in the midst of packing up my stuff to move. The plan is to finish packing, do training in August, say one last round of goodbyes, and leave the country for my new home on September 18. LUDICROUS SPEED: GO!

Trip Stats & Lessons Learned

**18 days **8 flights **3 countries **7 cities **4 travel buddies with me **14 taxis (at least) **Lots of walking **Countless cups of tea Lessons Learned **When in Egypt, walk like an Egyptian. There are only two types of pedestrians in Cairo: the quick and the dead. **Kurds are not Turks, Arabs, or Persians and they'll let you know it! One must remember this when traveling in the land of the Kurds. **How to pack lighter: doing laundry in the sink and giving stuff away. **When deciding where to move, pick the last place you ever thought it would be and that's where you'll end up.

Finish Well!

“You don’t have to finish first to finish well,” says John, our teacher on the subject of language learning. “Can that really be true?” I thought as I looked doubtfully up at him, cranky and tired after four days of information overload in session after session during C School. The rest of the class stirred restlessly. Undeterred, John went on, becoming very animated – “The two keys to finishing well are to start well and DON’T STOP!” I’ve never seen a teacher so on fire for his subject. Of course, his is one of the sessions I remember the most from those 2 weeks. So what will it be like to finish well? Seared in my memory is his illustration about finishing well. He showed a video of his daughter crossing the finish line of the Bataan Memorial Death March. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s a race honoring a special group of World War II heroes in which a team of five “crazy” people with forty pound backpacks on their backs run 26.2 miles over mountainous terrain in the New Mexican desert. During this grueling march, the team must help each other out, supporting one another both physically and emotionally. Isn’t this a perfect picture of the race of life? I’m so grateful for the “running partners” in my life. Without the team, finishing well (if at all) would be impossible. Though team is important, John’s video showed me one thing that is even more important. And that’s the presence of the Father Himself. As John’s daughter crossed the finish line full steam ahead, arm in arm with her teammates, the camera literally shook as John ran the last few yards alongside them, shouting, “Go Falisa! Yay Falisa! Go!” This was the clencher for me. I was moved to tears as I realized that this is exactly what He does for me and all His children. He’s watching, waiting, cheering, loving and delighting in us. He wants us to finish well. And He will be the One to reward us when we’re done. If that doesn’t compel us to finish well, I don’t know what will!

And the journey begins...

First of all THANK YOU for reading this! I’m excited to share this journey with you guys. The role you play is VITAL in this process. Please check back often as I will be trying to update frequently.

Though I can't see very far ahead at this point, the plan is to go ahead as far as I can see for now and hope that I will know what choices to make at each big milestone.