simple delights

If anyone tries to tell you that spending two months in a foreign country is a piece of cake, run away from said person because they are either lying or insane.

Like my dad always says, "Like my dad always said: Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining!"
[Thanks for that gem, Grandpa.]

So I'm going to give it to you straight: it's not always easy and it's not always fun. And if you happen to spend these two months in a foreign country directly following your graduation from college, without a job or home secured for your return, be prepared for a full-on identity crisis. Lots of questions, plenty left unanswered, and more tears than I care to admit to.

You'll probably be tempted to hop back on a plane and return to the life of comfort you left behind, just to realize that you moved all of your things out of your home and they are currently being stored in your best friend's barn and you have enough money in your bank account for maybe a month or two of being unemployed and you didn't get the job you applied for, the one you thought you were perfect for. Cue panic attack and melodramatic theatrics on being homeless and jobless.

But don't stop there. Because if you stay and you shove those anxious thoughts of "life after this" to a tiny compartment in the back of your mind and you pray morning, noon, and night for strength for this day, and you treat yourself with the kindness you usually only allot your friends, you might just discover simple delights.

Delights like hearing how God has been speaking to the women of byTavi, or having your hair braided and being called beautiful in Khmer ("say-naht") by those same women. Or delights like practicing English with the neighborhood kids and hearing them clamour, all at once, "Sarah, Sarah," as they wave their page of painstakingly written A, B, C's in your face, eagerness emanating off them them like heat off the asphalt. Or delights like shopping in a crowded market place with your host sister, fully drenched in sweat, and feeling like any moment you might pass out, but oohhh-ing and ahhh-ing at all the tiny children's shoes you see, because they strike both of you as ridiculously adorable.

You probably will begin to enjoy all the more the simple things that once struck you as mundane. Like an afternoon spent by yourself in a coffee shop, where you can write, read, and think with nothing but the chatter of the people around you to distract you, a sound you realize you have missed like an old friend because this environment is the perfect place for your ADD mind to relax and focus. Or the delight of buying  new book on your Kindle by an author you find fascinating and confusing and thought-provoking [Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child, I Read Books]. Or the delight of being understood and of understanding.

I have twenty four days left in this country. Twenty four more days of sweating, of bucket showers with frogs, of new mosquito bites every morning, of handwashing clothes, of "nam-buy?" [eat rice?], of ice cold Cokes, of roosters and dogs and pagoda music blaring every night, of political parades, of tuk-tuk rides, of miscommunications, of stares, of 4,000 reel to $1, of "okkun" and "shanks shyou," of naked toddlers everywhere, of passing that one salon on your way to work each morning with the picture of JFK on its sign, of a french loaf of bread to eat every night. And though it strikes you sometimes as an eternity, another, smaller portion of your brain tells you no, the time here is fleeting, and will be gone all too soon.

So let go. Sail away from the safe harbor, and into waters untraveled, adventures unknown.

Who knows? You just might discover some simple delights along the way.