It's hard to believe that 48 hours from now, I'll be flying to the Bahamas, on my way to Asia! (Actually, I'll be sitting in the Miami airport for like 5 hours, bored out of my mind, and THEN I'll be flying to the Bahamas.) My roommate gets married on Saturday; I leave the Bahamas on Sunday and spend the night w/ friends in Chicago; leave Chicago on Monday for Hong Kong, and from there to Singapore; spend the night with my friend in Singapore on Tuesday night; and I'll eventually end up in Indonesia on Wednesday night, hopefully. And I should be all set to teach on Thursday. (!!!) I'm scheduled to, jet lag or not, so this should be an interesting school year!
I should be packing and/or doing something useful right now, but I want to recommend a book. Yes, that's dorky, but I finally read a book for fun, and I enjoyed it. It's called "Child of the Jungle" by Sabine Kuegler. It's a memoir about a girl, Sabine, and her family who lived as missionaries in what's now West Papua, which shares an island with Papua New Guinea. (Legally, West Papua is part of Indonesia, but the people on that part of the island had some sort of conflict with the Indonesian government, so now they're a separate entity, for some reason.) Sabine's family ministered to some tribes in the jungles there for about 10 years. This book is about highlights and low points of those experiences, and then she details how she experienced all sorts of culture shock when she had to move back to Europe and America.
It's a great book, for a lot of reasons. It's descriptive and to-the-point, which is a nice balance for easy reading. It's all true, which makes the funny parts even funnier (like eating BBQ worms as a delicacy) and the gross parts even more gross (like discovering not all the worms were dead when she ate them). But I think the reason I liked "Child of the Jungle" so much was that I was pleasantly surprised to read several references about Bible verses and her family's faith in God. By the end of the story, you really do understand that the family's living in West Papua was what God wanted them to do. There's so much to explain about this, so you really just have to read the book.
Anyways, if anyone even reads this, if you want to add me to your prayer list, that'd be appreciated. I've been forgetting to really pray about this whole trip. I'm not going to teach in Indonesia on account of solely me wanting to go there. I do want to go there, but I'm only going because God wants me to, and He's the one sending me there. I have to keep reminding myself that these are always God's trips, not just mine.
Quickie prayer concerns:
*I'm not really too nervous about flying to Asia, because I've already flown there and back before, but there's no reason why I should be so confident about it that I'm not praying earnestly about it. So please pray that God will somehow humble me-maybe make me afraid?-so that I will be praying harder about it all.
*Patience for whatever is bound to come my way during these next several days and weeks. I love traveling and going to airports and meeting new people, but things like not making a flight on time because of a previous late flight, long lines in messy airport bathrooms, and general headaches from flying, can make me impatient.
*Sleep! I don't sleep well on airplanes. I never slept all the way to Thailand and back (that's 30 hrs. one way!), and I can't afford to not get any sleep going to Indonesia. It'll help a lot that I can get a few hrs. of sleep with my friend in Singapore, but I'll still need to be able to sleep on the airplane getting there, somehow, on account of me being scheduled to begin teaching the day after I arrive at my school.
Ok, I really should resume packing and/or doing something else useful now. I most likely will not have time to write on this blog right away (read: a few more weeks). Jet lag and school will consume my life indefinitely. Or, hopefully just for the few weeks or so. However, I think there's a 3-day weekend break coming up soon because of some random Muslim holiday or something, so maybe then I'll be able to post something. And maybe I'll actually figure out how to post photos on this blog, too!
Ok, I'm outta here! :)
p.s. I sincerely hope I'll never be offered BBQ'd worms in Indonesia.
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