per your requests . . . :-P

OH LOOK. It's a picture of my AWESOME hair. :-P Whew. This isn't the lady who actually did it, but she was one of the ladies who I hosted at dinner that night. They have been hair braiders for 15+ years, working in a little pavilion where all the tourists can walk right by and see them. I ended up being really glad I had gotten it done . . . I had a headache for two solid days, but it was fun getting to hang out with Margaret on her turf instead of mine, asking her questions about her family, seeing how the women interacted, and so forth. When I got there, she introduced me to several people as "her friend from the ship" . . . many of the women there had made friends on the ship - as the crewmembers' hair could attest to. :-P Let's just say that it looked better on some than on others . . . I had at least six different people look at me and then just burst into hysterical laughter. I liked that the most, because I felt like it was genuine (because it was exactly how I felt about it). Anyway. Enough jabbering about a silly hair style. :-D

And there was light . . .

So, the Bahamas were wonderful . . . the people were super friendly and I loved getting a taste of the city as it really is, not just through the eyes of a typical tourist. I had one awesome day of exploration and several awesome conversations with people who came on the boat. Often I was quite confident that I got way more out of it than they did. Which just makes me wonder again, "God, why did you really send me here?" :-)

Tonight is our second night sailing. Since we obviously don't have work in the book fair, tomorrow I will be working as an Angel (cleaning staff), which means I have to get up SUPER early and I don't have much time, but I wanted to tell this first. :-)

For some reason I went outside tonight - I don't remember making that decision, but somehow I ended up outside by myself. All the big lights were off, so the only light was what was shining on the water from the ship's windows. The stars were fabulous, and I saw this one that was so bright and twinkly that it appeared to be changing all different colors. I stood there for a while, musing about how neat it is that the only lights for miles around were us and the stars . . . when suddenly I looked down at the waves we were churning up and . . . are they sparkling? What? Is that light in the water? Am I seeing things?

I ran inside looking for someone to enjoy it with me and the first person I saw was my Korean friend Woo Young. I said, "Woo Young! Come see!!!" and he said, "What, glowing plankton?"

GLOWING PLANKTON. I think I might have heard of such a thing sometime in the past, but that's totally different from the feeling you get when you suddenly realize that the waves are producing their own light. The flying fish are fun. The huge sea turtle I saw last time was exciting (and I hope we didn't run over it and kill it). :-P But glowing plankton? Now that's just AWESOME.

Bahamas!

I think on Wednesday I am going to go get my hair braided. Braided. In those tiny cornrows that look so silly on most white people that generally only tourists get them done.

Here's why though.

Today I hosted some local people for supper . . . I was somewhat skeptical about it because it was my first time to do that, and because they kind of invited themselves (slash, very pointedly asked me for an invitation). It ended up being a really nice time and I enjoyed it very much. They told me they had been braiding hair in a booth outside the cruise line terminal for seventeen years, and they told me that I really needed to come and let me braid their hair - as a gift, as a favor, for no charge - as many ways as they could think of to say it. :-) My first reaction was to just laugh it off and not take them up on it - I think it would look ridiculous on me and make me look like a total tourist, plus it hurts!! But eventually (after they had mentioned it multiple times) I decided to go for it.

Bahamas culture is really unusual in that it is such a tourism culture. Every single day, thousands of people arrive in the morning and are gone by the evening. Thousands of others come spend their vacations at all-inclusive resorts, which they never have to leave unless they really want to. Odd as it may be, Bahamian culture is kind of "imported," and this is the way they are accustomed to interacting with people like me.

I think afterward I will feel enthusiastically amused . . . and I'll probably have one heck of a headache. :-)

One Art

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.



Is there a word for "the opposite of a paradox"? A paradox sounds impossible but is really true; this sounds (at first) sincere and is actually false. I'm tempted to really analyze it because it has so many facets, but I think I'll keep it in my mind for now and let you do your own thinking if it interests you. And if you do your own thinking, you should share it with me.

Of mineral baths and humanity . . .

This afternoon, I finally got off the ship again. There is a mineral bath nearby - the only thing nearby to where we are - and I walked there with Tanya and Micha. We were the only Caucasians in the whole place (which was nowhere near as uncomfortable for me as it would have been two months ago). It was wonderful - the sun was so nice and the water felt fantastic - and while I was just hanging out in the pool, I had such a neat slice-of-life moment. I heard a commotion on one side of the pool and looked over to see a Jamaican woman teaching her daughter how to float on her back. She was supporting her underneath and trying to convince her to do it. "It's okay, I've got you, I've got you." Exactly how my parents did with me. Exactly how I've done with other (American) children.

It all just seemed so normal to me . . . going to a Jamaican hangout spot with a Russian couple. And there are many things I don't really "get" about Jamaicans and Jamaican culture, but I "get" what it's like to learn how to float on your back. I know exactly what that's all about. SO many things are different, but at the same time . . . we're all humans and some things are just the same. Not profound, I know. But it was a neat experience.

In other news . . . I've heard that things change ALL the time here on the ship, but it's interesting when you start to experience it. I've been working - what, three and a half weeks? - and I've already had a job change. Slash addition. Three days ago I had training to be a head cashier, and last night was my first night. When they asked me, I wasn't sure what to say, but I am SO GLAD I agreed - I really enjoyed it. I don't think I could do it by myself yet, but it'll come, right? It's actually a lot like waitressing, where it's just a matter of crazy multi-tasking and trying to keep everything working smoothly. Except it can get scary because you work with money instead of just food. :-) When they did all the paperwork at the end of the night, the guy who was helping train me tried to convince me that if there were any errors (which there always are) they were going to take it out of my pocket money . . . thats not actually the case, but it's still a little nervewracking to be responsible for money.

Anyway. I feel like this is a boring post, but it's better than nothing, eh?

A Meta-Post . . .

I kind of thought I would be more frequent about posting on here. But as I keep intending to write posts and my good intentions keep failing, I have concluded that there is a problem - and I think I have figured out what the problem is. One thing is that I am still very much in the adjustment phase - I'm still just trying to get a grip on my new life - which is certainly a privilege but which is also quite hard and quite different. What this means is that I don't really have much of anything interesting to say. Any thoughts I have regarding my new life are expressed in the form of questions. Generally you pose questions to a particular audience, with the goal of getting some sort of an answer - you don't necessarily just write them out for the heck of it. However, I suppose it is possible that someone may be interested enough to read and respond to a question, so I'm willing to take a gamble on it, even though that wasn't my original purpose for this blog.

So here goes.

The big question is this: What is the bare minimum for salvation?

The question that relates more to my life is this: Is it possible that a Rastafarian is saved? Rastafarianism is basically a modification of Christianity. Many things have been added or twisted, but at some level they follow the Bible and believe in the same God we do. They believe in Jesus and everything he taught. They have an additional leader, Haile Selassie, but they don't place him above Jesus - they actually believe that he is the reincarnation of Jesus. They sin and violate the commandments we are given. So do I. They use faulty reasoning to justify their mistakes and their flawed ways of life. So do I. Their beliefs about God are not entirely accurate. Neither are mine.

There it is. Consider this an open invitation to join the discussion. :-D

Sometimes I have mini-personality crises, where I just don't understand myself and it confuses me a little. When I watched "Sense and Sensibility" in college, I was perplexed for a while about whether I was more like Elinor or Marianne. Romantic or pragmatic? Idealistic or realistic? This post is . . . the result of my idealism getting a stiff dose of reality thrown in with it.

For this trip, I came up with a lot of great ideas about the things I hoped to experience and learn, and I thought (still think) they were great things. The caveat, however, is that many of them are lessons which are learned through pain. Which I generally tend to HATE.

One of the things I was excited about learning was how to love and let go. My preferred relationship format is like this: I take my time getting to know a person and building a relationship with them, and then we stay friends forever. Which is nice, and y'know, sometimes you just don't have that luxury.

When I worked at summer camp two years ago, I had a hard time with the girls in my cabin, because each week, I felt like I had just learned to love them when they would up and leave and I knew I'd never see them again. What was worse was that, while I was still struggling with saying goodbye to those girls, a whole new group of girls for me to love would turn up at my doorstep, and I would think, "This isn't possible. The girls I love are gone, and I don't know or care about these girls." And then by the end of the week the story would be the same - the cycle just kept going.

While this was going on, the person who had the greatest impact on me, who invested in me more than anybody else, was a missionary kid who was working as the photographer. She was fun and gracious and she was willing to share herself with people, and it meant a lot to me. In my mind, I made a connection between her behavior and her upbringing, I expect because she said something about it, although I don't remember specifically.

Missionaries have so many goodbyes. When you give up one life to create a new life, you can lose your sense of home. You are rarely coming and often leaving. You have to love people you'll probably never see again.

And here's the truth: it really stinks.

It stinks that one of the people I've spent the most time with since coming here is leaving in three weeks. It stinks how many people I've met and left already who I will never see again. It stinks that I miss people back home so much. It stinks that I'm going to have a load of hard goodbyes every six months, culminating in one huge goodbye in two years. Most of those goodbyes would not be hard for me now, but it's very clear to me that by the time they take place, they will be incredibly difficult.

So here's the crux of the matter: Is it worth it? Is the reward worth the sacrifice? Is it worth it to learn to love people, knowing the hardship that it brings? (The goodbyes are only one section of the hardship, by the way.)

I choose to believe that it is. It doesn't always feel like it - sometimes it feels like the best and safest thing to do would just be to insulate yourself and avoid the vulnerability and pain. But that's not life - that is staleness and suffocation.

It has to be worth it - it has to be worth it.