Amid the chaos of returning to the states and then returning home, my world in the past five days has been both completely normal and completely alien. 

For example:

I was walking around the grocery store, I wasn't even looking for anything, I was just tagging along with my mom and everything was pretty normal. When I got to the freezer section, with multiple aisles of bizarrely lit up frozen foods in clear glass cases, however, I started to cry. I'm not even sure exactly why.

I went to an Asian (specific I know) grocery store by my house, wandered around it, bought a sticky rice bamboo steamer and some of those crunchy coconut/sesame sweet crepe like things, and it turned out the family who worked there was a Chinese-Lao family, whose daughter had grown up in Thailand. I had thought that they were speaking Lao previously, but it sounded funny, (the Chinese accent I guess) so I didn't think much of it until the check out counter when after finding out that I had been in Lao and China they started asking me things in Lao and Chinese. As things like this normally happen, I could only think of how to say things in Khmer. Oops. During this whole process, another woman was walking into the store and the mother and daughter at the check out turn to her and are like "Oh, she's from Laos too". This poor woman looks slightly confused, but responded with "Sabaidee". My mind was whirling. When I got home I just wandered around it in a confused daze.

While talking on the phone with my boyfriend, I found out that Sam Moog's dad wrote his chemistry textbook.

I went to get my flu shot, and when I walked out of the doctor's little room, one of Stew's friends who had been living in Kunming was sitting there waiting to get his.

I went to go pick out a Christmas tree with my parents down the road from my house. In someways it was normal to my life back home; the same highschool was running the stand and the trees were set up in the same way. It was strange yet familiar to hear people say "Yes ma'am," "ain't," and "y'all" in normal conversation. In some ways, even though I was freezing cold, and the people working there were bundled up actively working with pine trees and chain saws, it felt the most like Cambodia out of any of my experiences back home. There were all ages present and there was both a sense of community and genuine care among everyone present. It reminded me strongly of the way our various homestay villages felt. 

I think one of the best things so far that's happened, however, is that I got a chance to talk to one of my close friends on the phone. He had called me as soon as I had gotten back but I hadn't called him back until last night because I was a little apprehensive about it. On the phone, he excitedly started telling me how he was doing and then he paused and said "What about you? How was your trip? I got so excited the other day thinking about you coming back because I knew you'd come back changed and I couldn't wait to figure out how". I was stunned. 

Those are just a few of the things that have been happening to me in the past five days, but they are a good reminder of 1) the emotional craziness of coming home and change 2) the world being an extremely small place  3) still having space and room to grow even further at home.

Miss you all and I hope your worlds are similarly joyful and crazy,

Mara

Finard and Megrue.

Scarlet Phoenix.

Mindy and Nero.

500 in the airport.

There has been a constant presence on our trip that is hard to overlook; a pack of cards has accompanied us from the Nam Tha riverbanks to the floor of a Thai bus station, from the table top of a coffee place in Kratie to a bubble tea hot spot in Phnom Penh.  Individuals have made sure that the pack of cards is easily accessible because more often then not there's always been a group of people willing to play the addicting game of 500.  

We worship our cards; we would never lose them or throw them away.  

Because we have this attitude towards our 52 friends, it was very strange to us to see random playing cards scattered about on the roadways in Southeast Asia.  It seemed as if everywhere we went playing cards had been too.  Doorways, parks, tuk tuk floors, trash piles, in front of stacks of pineapples in the market...EVERYWHERE, cards were everywhere.  Intrigued by this, Chris, Oren, and I decided it was altogether fitting to create our own pack of cards.  Why pay money for a pack when we could just make our own?  So our quest began to find all 52 cards, plus two jokers, and a rules card.  This challenge was easy, in fact at times we noticed we had 4 jack of hearts and 3 ten of clubs; it was great having such a plethora of cards.  What started as an innocent idea became an obsession.  Every time we spotted a card on the ground we would run over and grab it, placing bets on what it would be.  Sometimes the cards were in mint condition, shiny, bright, and crisp, other times they were faded, scratched, crumpled, and clearly unwanted.  But we did not discriminate, we accepted and loved each and every one.  

As it came nearer and nearer to day 92 the three of us started to get nervous.  We had not yet completed a full suit, and we still needed well over ten cards.  Oren, Chris, and I set out nice and early the morning of the seventh to try to find our last cards.  I think the omens were  on our side because within the first hour of our walk the only cards we found were ones we needed.  Five of clubs, ace of spades, six of hearts! We were hitting the jackpot. Finally we stopped and looked at our Dragon's Most Wanted List.  Four cards remained: three of clubs, queen of spades, six of diamonds, and eight of hearts.  We could not believe it.  One card from each suit, ONE CARD FROM EACH SUIT! The idea that we would be unable to complete our deck scared us, we went into mega search mode.  We went through piles of trash in ally openings, we poked through piles of rubble, we kicked about burnt piles of rubbish.  We still found dozens of cards, it seemed like millions, but not once did we come across the four on our hit list.  As dark descended we were forced to give up our search and head back.

It was disappointing not being able to complete a full deck.  It is hard to believe that after the hundreds of cards we had come across we could not find just four simple ones.  But I think there is another meaning behind the absence of these cards; throughout the whole process of accumulating our diverse group we went into areas most wouldn't....we sorted through peoples' rubbish and rejoiced at finding what we were looking for....we got excited about picking up trash, we did not scoff at it, we embraced it.

Where are the cards now?  Well Chris has them with him in Vietnam; we believed that out of the three of us he had the greatest chance in finding the last four. Perhaps Oren will pick a card up on the sidewalks of New York, or maybe I will see one in a Hong Kong park, but I highly doubt it.  Even though Mr. Megrue is on the look out for our four friends, part of me hopes he does not succeed in finding them.  It was cards that brought us all together in the first place, I think it will be cards that bring us together again in the future.  Now we have a great excuse to return to Southeast Asia; there are many more piles of trash to be sorted through and many more decks to be started.

Hi Everyone!

If you haven't heard (literally), you can find Lizzie speaking about her Bridge Year India experiences on Public Radio International (PRI): The World, broadcast on November 26th, 2009. 

Just follow this link and turn up your audio!

http://www.theworld.org/2009/11/26/university-program-promotes-social-service-abroad/

Enjoy; I did!

GREAT JOB LIZZIE!

Christina

http://www.theworld.org/2009/11/26/university-program-promotes-social-service-abroad/

       One night on our most recent trek, Sam read us a provokative speech by Ivan Illich, called ¨To Hell with Good Intentions¨ delivered in 1968.  In it, Illich was discouraging a group of American college students from volunteering in Mexico, as they had planned.  He was vehemently opposed to the American ¨do-gooder vacation¨ culture and extremely pessimistic about any help that could come from volunteers.  Furthermore, he believed volunteers were damaging to a community because of their cultural ignorance and their promotion of the American middle class way of life.  Notable quotations are ¨all you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder,¨ ¨There is no way for you to really meet the unerpriveleged, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on,¨ and ¨It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don´t even understand what you are doing or what people think of you.¨

      Ever since hearing this, I have been trying to reconcile what Illich said with my desire to help.  Much of the speech was pretty convincing, though forceful, and I definitely believe it to be true in many cases of volunteering.  Our project at Tres Hermanos, however, has restored my faith in the existence of meaningful, unimposing service. 

      The community was a collection of cabana-like dwellings with a one room school located an hour boat ride and 30 minute walk from Rurre.  For the two nights that we were there, we stayed in tents on the floor of an abandoned ecolodge of sorts (a failed tourism project) and cooked our food outside of the school.  We spent our first afternoon transporting the filters and playing with the children of Tres Hermanos, who are the kindest, most well-behaved kids I have met so far in Bolivia. 

      In the evening, we gathered the families together and sang and danced for them.  I played guitar for a grand rendition of Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show and then charango for the traditional song Viva mi Patria Bolivia, to which no one, even the families, seemed to know all the correct words.  Everyone was laughing when Natalie led us in Thriller and Chris performed an excellent Michael Jackson dance.  Then we taught the kids the hokey pokey, having, rather disasterously, translated it into Spanish.  And that right there, Ivan Illich, the human ability to laugh, is the common ground on which we can connect. 

    The next day we installed 8 filters in the community.  The families who paid 70 Bs, about half of the 150 Bs they cost to construct, received a concrete filter that we filled with layers of clean rocks, gravel, and sand.  When water runs through the filter, the rocks and sand not only remove organic matter, but also harbor bacteria that sterylize the water.  It was not backbreaking work, but the simple fact of it is that before, they did not have clean, filtered water, and now, they do.  And Joselo, the supervisor of the filter project, could not have done the job without a large group like us.  Maybe there will be fewer children in those families who do not suffer from diarrhea, but for this we are not patting ourselves on the back at what a good little job we have done.  We did no more or less than offer assistence in meeting the demands expressed and partially paid for by the community and they treated us accordingly.  It was not charity, and I am glad that neither party acted like it was.

    That night, the families of Tres Hermanos played some traditional songs on the flute and drums for us.  The melodies were beautiful and effortless and the women taught us to dance.  I stared into the eyes of my Bolivian partner, her face simultaneously weathered and vibrant, her hands in mine, our feet moving back and forth rather clumsily, and I felt an overwhelming sense of acceptance. 

    I was very sad to leave Tres Hermanos that last day and truly wish we could have stayed longer.  We took photos with the kids, who assembled at the speed of light when a camera came out, and gave our final hugs and handshakes to the villagers.  The project was not perfect by any means, but it was done in the spirit of sharing and learning and these good intentions were indeed fruitful. 

     So, Ivan Illich, though you would find a million ways to discount our experience in Tres Hermanos, I have faith in volunteering.  I have faith in the existence of unpresumptuous help, and most importantly, I have faith in the ability of all human beings to connect with each other.

Hasta la proxima vez,

Anne.