Declining the Peace Corps, and trusting God

I declined an invitation from the Peace Corps last week, and it was one of the scariest things I've ever done.

Ever since my great-uncle told me about his time in the Peace Corps, it's been something I've wanted to pursue. I like the PC's mission, its emphasis on serving the community and doing what the community needs, its desire to educate both Americans and those in our host countries in order to increase understanding and mutual respect. I know those are a lot of big words that could come right out of an advertisement, but these are things I've seen play out in my last few years working in the nonprofit sector. Projects don't last unless the community wants them to. Communication and shared experience are some of our best tools in creating peace; think how many conflicts could be avoided if ordinary people on both ends knew and understood one another. These are ideals that the Peace Corps works toward, ideals I admire and believe in.

Despite my long-lasting interest in the Peace Corps, though, when I got my assignment, I think I knew that it wasn't right for me. I was assigned as a health volunteer in Peru, which seemed to mean working with child development and HIV/AIDS prevention. The first interested me. In principle, I agree with the second, but I don't agree with the methods that are commonly used. Primarily, promoting condom use, even in students as young as fourth and fifth grade.

On both a practical and on a religious level, I have trouble supporting that practice. Condoms don't always work, and they aren't very accessible in many countries. They are poorly made, and the high levels of contracts being passed around leads to high levels of corruption, and more poorly made condoms.

Yes, all of that was really general. No, I haven't intensely studied the pros and cons or theory of HIV prevention. Yes, I know some people are going to attack me for that, but the simple fact is that outside of the practicals, this assignment just didn't feel right for me. When we teach young people to use condoms, to have safe sex, the underlying message is that sex is okay as long as it's safe. I don't agree with that. I don't think that's the message we should be passing on to children at home, and I don't think I'd be comfortable moving abroad and promoting that message for two years. There's a lot more to the Peace Corps than that, but if the community asked me to teach sex education, I would have to do so, and I didn't think I could do that.

The PC is really selective, and it's hard to get a first invitation. Getting a second invitation used to happen sometimes, but since there are so many applicants now, it's extremely rare. I knew that saying no to my first invitation meant saying goodbye to my dream, and that was really frightening.

The logical part of me fought it. I argued with myself for a full week. It was possible I'd never even have to touch this part of it, would spend the whole time on child development and other health aspects. Peru is a beautiful country, one I'd love to see. But do I want to live there? I already speak the language, could work on really becoming fluent in Spanish. But do I want to spend two more years learning a language I already speak, instead of mastering a new one? The Peace Corps is one of the few organizations I know of (and I've done quite a lot of research on this) that offers paid (sort of) international work while integrating volunteers into the community instead of creating a little expat community. I would leave in September, which was more than enough time to get over the burnout that's been hitting the last few weeks here and prepare for a new adventure... right? I'd be living with a host family, which would provide challenges, but I'd learn a lot about the culture and the language; I was ready for that...right? Sure, I was uncomfortable with bits of my job description, but that was just part of working for a non-religious organization, right?

One night, just before my decision was due, I decided it was time for some quiet time with God. I'm not very good at that, because I tend to fall asleep (six years of sleep deprivation catching up with me), so I went outside this time. It was a quiet night in Kabul, without a lot of passing cars or barking dogs. I sat in the swing in the garden, surrounded by high concrete walls, alone and yet able to hear the voices of every pedestrian who walked past our gate. I sang and re-sang “The Summons,” which is a song that's been on my mind lately (if you look at the lyrics below, I'm sure you'll see why.) I laid in the grass and read my Bible, tried to get inspiration from Jeremiah and Isaiah and Paul's many journeys.

And then, when the sun had set and I couldn't make out the words anymore, I laid in the grass and watched the stars come out. For the first time, I laid it all before God. I told Him that I'd go if He wanted me to, that my brain was saying I should go, but that it didn't feel right. If He had other plans for me, I prayed that He would make it clear to me. Maybe not what those plans were, although that'd be preferable, but at least that He'd make me feel without a doubt that this wasn't the plan. I prayed for certainty, after a week of battles between heart and head.

Lying there, looking at the stars, my uncertainty melted away. I knew that I was going to decline. I realized that I can't call myself Catholic unless I act what I believe, and how could I spend two years teaching something I'm against and my faith is against? How can I stick to my values on the small things and then turn my back on them on the big things? No matter what others believe, my values are my own, and they aren't much good if I abandon them in the very moment when I should be relying on them to guide my path.

So I said no.

As soon as I did, the most amazing feeling of peace came over me. It was like nothing I've experinced before. My job here is ending in just over a month, and after that, I have no plan. Nothing. No clue what to do next. Normally, that would scare me to death, because I ALWAYS have a plan for what's coming next. And yet, this time, I wasn't worried. For the first time in a long time, I trusted in God and followed what my heart knew to be right, and it felt wonderful.

The story could end there, because that's a pretty amazing ending. The equally amazing part is that that's not the end.

When I sent my email to decline, I told my placement officer that I'd like to be considered for a second invitation. He'd basically told me that I probably wouldn't get one, but that a panel of placement officers would review my application and my reason for declining if I asked them to, and then we'd see. So I asked.

I never expected to get another email the next day. “Peace Corps- invitation!”

This time I was invited to go to Morocco. Working with youth development at a community center, which meant I'd have options to teach everything from English to computers, soccer to debate, writing to dance. All the things I love to teach anyway, and chances to teach many classes on topics that give important skills to modern youth. Leaving in January, which would give me time (including Christmas) at home with my family, enough time to get tired of living in the US and be ready for an adventure, time to watch my sister's senior soccer season and another sister's dance recital and be a part of their lives for the first time in ages. Learning Arabic, which Dari has both spoken and written roots in. In a country that is Islamic but appears to have more diversity and more varied influences than Kabul- a chance for cultural learning without having to wear a headscarf!

In so many ways, this position felt right. It felt like something I'd be good at, something I find important, and something I feel comfortable teaching. It felt like a good fit for me, and I was so incredibly amazed to be given the opportunity.

Tonight, I responded to my second Peace Corps invitation very differently. I said yes. Fully confident that this is where I belong, where God wants me to go. I've had that surety so few times in my life, and it feels amazing. What an incredible ending to an up-and-down week and a half, and what a lot I've learned along the way!

I wish you could...

I wish you could taste warm naan on a cool spring evening. When you are walking home from work and the guys at your favorite naan shop call out to you to say hi, because you had a thirty-second conversation the first time you bought naan there and now they think you are best friends. When you see that the shop has your favorite type of naan, the thick kind with an almost-hollow center and little spices baked in the top. You buy one for only ten Afs and you can't picture anywhere in the States where you can buy bread like this for only 20 cents. When you take your naan and wave goodbye to your shopkeeper friend, heading down the street with the naan warming your hand. You tear off a piece and let it melt in your mouth, and it's a little piece of God's gift to man.

I wish you could watch as graceful hands swoop and swirl across the page, making strokes that mean words that you can't understand. You try to puzzle them out, try to force yourself to concentrate on possible meanings, but you are mesmerized by the way the pen dances from right to left, right to left. Loops and lines, dots and dashes. It feels like a Morse code that you haven't yet been taught, but you are content to watch magic be made.

I wish you could hear the cacophony of a Kabul street as the officer workers and fruit vendors and traffic police start their day. You hear the vendors hawking their wares- bedrang! Bedrang! Yak kilo da rupya! (Cucumbers, cucumbers, 10 Afghanis per kilo!)- from the back of a cart pulled by a tired donkey, and the ice cream man pushing his cart down the street as his horn blares the thousandth rendition of Happy Birthday. Big police trucks go past honking, armed guards sitting in their bed, and Indian music floats out the windows of little white Corollas decorated with flowers and on their way to pick up a bride and groom. Little red motorcarts, with carpets draped over over the backs to make miniature taxis, splutter their way to movement, and gangs of schoolboys in matching blue uniforms push down the street in a clump, their rapid Dari interrupted by farts and whistles and laughter- boy noises that are the same in any language. You see blue burqas with bright purple pants sticking out below and hinting at the person beneath the veil, hear the swish swish of colorful chadars bustling down the street, admire the music made by the stomping feet of a two-year-old with bright white shoes. It's a smorgasbord of sounds and colors, a world that seems straight out of Aladdin but is real, daily life.

I wish you could sit in the circle with us in the grass at the family park. When the sun has set and the stars are twinkling, but the bright lights around you twinkle more forcefully, decorating practically every stationary surface within the park. You sit on a blanket and eat a picnic with your host family for the week, as little children run around with delighted screams and the Ferris wheel across the park whirs to life. It feels like a Fourth of July celebration from childhood, like you are back with your family as you eat and laugh and chatter with one another. Families here are just like families from home, who just want the peace to sit in the grass and eat buloni and ride the mini amusement park rides.

I wish you could walk down a Kabul street with us and see the kids playing with sticks and rocks and bits of dirty rope. They play jump rope with a muddy piece of twine strung across the unpaved road, tied to a dumpster on one side and held in someone's grimy hand on the other. But the dirt and the mud and the grime matters so little to them, for their grins are a mile wide and their delighted shouts echo off down the street. They grin wider when they see you coming, for you've become fast friends in the months you've been walking past during playtime, and they scamper over to say hi. They hold out their grimy hands to shake yours, and you bend down to give them the customary air kisses- one, two, three. They grin even wider; there is nothing quite so cool as being kissed by a foreigner.

I wish you could be here to experience all of this with me.

They show it better than me...

I'm not very nice about asking other people to guest blog for me, because that requires telling other people that I blog, and it requires sharing, which I'm not very good at. But there are so many others sharing the amazing things going on in this country, and I wanted to pass them on to you.

My coworker, Josh, writes a blog purely about debate in Afghanistan. His articles are much more informative than mine, since he sticks to the facts and I take advantage of a blog's ability to let you rant. He's a good writer, though, and his site does really good work to spread the knowledge of what we do here. I encourage you to check it out here.

Pax Populi is another organization dedicated to peacebuilding. We partner with them to give our students chances to have a native English speaker as a tutor through classes over Skype. They do a lot more than that, though, and their work is really impressive. I especially like their interview with our Executive Director- found here.

If you couldn't tell, I really like the organization I work for and truly believe in what they are doing. But there are a lot more groups doing great work here. One organization that really impresses me is Morning Star Development, which puts on leadership classes, among other things. They also provide medical services through clinics and traveling doctors. Check out their site here.

I've done some work with the Kabul Dance Studio while I've been here, and although I plan to write a whole post about it later, let me just say that this is a labor of love I never expected to find in Kabul. In a place where girls have so few outlets, dance gives them a place to express themselves. It's really beautiful to watch. They have a blog here. We are preparing for a recital in about a month, so I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this group!

There are a few other nonprofits I like a lot. PAD offers classes and other tools to support education. When I was here in 2011, I got to visit one of the schools they run (used to run? I'm not sure), which was a really neat experience. Omega International is another organization that works with education, with a focus on training teachers- a service that is very needed here. There are groups opening soy factories to help introduce more protein into the carb-heavy diets here, groups offering badly needed services for the deaf and for the disabled, groups working with street kids to teach both trade skills (sewing, etc) and academic skills, groups working to lower unemployment rates by donating the tools that young men need to become apprentices and then to open their own shops- carpentry, welding, etc. So many fascinating projects!

Colgate University and Linfield University both competed in our Debate Without Borders Skype Tournament, and they posted really nice articles about it. 

      

The organization I work for, APT, participated in a radio program designed to introduce various members of the United Network of Young Peacebuilders to the world. We created a radio program that introduces APT and shares our vision for Afghanistan's future. You can listen to it here- it's pretty cool.

I don't want to make it look like the only ones creating change in this country are foreigners, because there are lot of really cool articles about Afghanistan and its people and the incredible things they are doing. From the women's soccer team to the bowling alley that an Afghan woman opened to the first female Afghan rapper- there are so many things here that I just love hearing about. I hope that they fill you with hope just as they've done for me!

The beauty of a taxi ride

The taxi bounces along, speeding over roads just paved enough to allow us to drive quickly but full of enough potholes to make a morning ride to the airport feel like an amusement park ride. I have a water bottle in my hand, but taking a sip seems a risk on par with crossing the street in Kabul or swallowing water from the outdoor pool back home.

The streets are essentially deserted at this hour; the sky hasn't yet given birth to the sun, but the faint light emerging on the Eastern skyline indicates that the hour is approaching. The rest of the world is still in their beds and I'd rather be with them. And yet, there's something beautiful about our early-morning drive through Herat, something that makes me feel as though I'm intruding on a world in which I don't belong. It is the time of birds and shepherds, the hour of sleepy guards who drew the short straw and mothers whose wailing infants demand they rise. This is their world, not mine; they have allowed me but a glimpse into this alternate existence, and as we fly through the streets, I discover a side of Afghanistan I rarely see.

We pass the park, where yesterday there were food carts and print shops, children playing on a tiny ferris wheel, street kids shining shoes and trying to sell packs of tasteless gum. It was a park bursting with life, from the games of street soccer to the businessmen passing through to the women in burkas or long hijabs who sat at the tables to share a cold drink and a friendly conversation. Now, though, the park is empty, the food carts shut and their shades locked down as though winter has come and they are bears hibernating until the snow melts. The concrete soccer fields are abandoned, the one functioning swing on the playground creaking back and forth in the wind with mournful aloneness. At this hour, the park's only inhabitants are the packs of dogs who frequent it, trotting through as though they own the place. Which, right now, they do.

We leave the park behind and pull onto a busier street, with other cars and motorbikes and bicycles taking ambitious workers to the office or teenagers to their early classes. Some have their headlights on, but the bikers don't have that option. We almost hit one, a youth with a scarf around his head, but he swerves, looking more cold than angry.

As we leave the city proper behind us, the number of cars diminishes, leaving us on a once again solitary drive. We drive past compounds of dirt houses, built into one another, each with thick mud walls and sprouts of grass at the base to announce that spring is here at last. A lone guard stands outside a security gate; he yawns and inspects his fingernails, lured into sleepiness by the peaceful world around him. A shepherd chivvies his flock through another gate and down the path- not a hard task, since his flock includes only three grown sheep and two lambs who skip and cavort after their mothers. The shepherd follows, no skip in his step, leaning on his stick, his weathered face weary but patient.

Trees line the side of the road, funny trees with long, smooth trunks and then a bird's nest of leaves forming a head at the very top. The larger trees rise above the buildings and look proportional, if not exactly majestic. The smaller ones have yet to grow much of a trunk, and they just look like gawky, awkward teenagers who have Afros too big for their bodies.

We pass a motorbike with a man and a woman, the first female I've seen all morning. She leans into his back, gripping his shirt with one hand while desperately trying to control her hijab with the other. It is big, as all hijabs are, and its black and white patterned lengths flap in the wind, eager to escape. Another motorbike slows down beside a fruit stand, only to find the stand closed, the watermelons and oranges locked away until day dawns and there's enough business to warrant the fruit seller starting his workday.

We pass decorated roundabouts, with a giant fruit bowl adorning the center and the graceful curves of Dari lettering lining one side. I manage to read the first word- چَوىي (roundabout or square)- but my reading is too slow to absorb the second word. We pass compounds with walls short enough to see over, allowing us a glimpse into a young girl's morning routine, the way she stands from the pump with a full water jug in her hand and pauses to survey the sky, perhaps feeling God's majesty as much as I do right now, despite the fact that we worship different gods. We pass a series of buildings that appear to have the shape of a grenade- spherical base, the size of a large water tank, with little square tops that stick up above the rest of the buildings. I wonder what they are, but my quiet query in the taxi is met with no answer, either because no one knows or because no one wants to disturb the silence with a reply. We pass a field of grass, and the first rays of the sun tip over the horizon just in time to angle across the tops of the grass stems, as though reassuring them that the light that gives them life will soon be back.

All too soon, the barricades that signal an airport's gates appear through the front windshield. It is time to go back to the world of security scanners and ticket counters and airplanes with loud jets. But this morning's taxi ride has given me the tranquility to survive, the calm heart to step back into real life and all its hustle and bustle. The break from reality, the glimpse of the beauty of Herat's pre-dawn world, have reminded me yet again what a wonderful world we live in.

Debate Without Borders Skype Tournament

I spend a lot of time telling students the reasons we debate. It's not hard, because, just as my dad told me almost ten years ago, there are lots of reasons. It teaches skills- listening, respect for one another's ideas, public speaking, the ability to b.s. your way through practically any situation (yes, brother, that was directed at you.) It gives you knowledge- about your country, about the world, about random countries in Africa, even about yourself. It makes you think critically, question everything, see flaws in logic everywhere.

It's easy for me to tell students these things, because all of them are true and I've seen all of them manifested in my life. But until I moved to Afghanistan, I didn't know that debate also offered cultural exchange, or what an important option this could be.

My organization, Afghans for Progressive Thinking, recently ran an entire tournament completely over Skype. Sixteen universities competed, sixteen universities from three countries, nine cities, six time zones. I walked to work in Kabul as the sun was rising, but by the time the tournament began, the sun had long since set on our teams in the U.S. The last rays of the sunset disappeared from Kabul's skies during our final round, just as the first hints of light were shyly peeking through the Oregon team's windows.

It's so easy to think that debate doesn't offer real cultural exchange. In our final round, 'tournaments are the best future for debate', one team even argued this. Debaters are told which side to defend and which topic to discuss, which means that their arguments may not, probably don't, represent their actual opinions. How can you learn about someone's culture when you never get to hear what they truly think?

But as I watched and listened to the round of this tournament, I realized that isn't necessarily true. All of us are raised seeing the world through a certain lens. It is a lens created by our family, our town, our religion, our politics, our culture. It's a lens that even the most open-minded of us possess, because no matter how willing we are to see other opinions, the mere fact that they are 'other' opinions means that we have something to compare them to and to measure them against. Good or bad, we grow up looking at the world in a certain way.

It isn't until we have conversations or debates with other people that we realize what our lens is like. Japanese internment camps from World War II work as an example when your opponents and your judge know what they are, but when they are a part of US history that Afghans have never heard of, they suddenly become useless in a debate. When a debate about women traveling alone is relevant, or when a topic about media altering the shape of models talks more about Big Macs than body image, or when trying to use 'Titanic' as an example in a debate class is a bad idea because it could potentially seem like I'm trying to make my students think about falling in love, I realize how different my lens is.

One of the things I love about my job here is seeing people become aware of their lens. I love talking to students about life here and about life in America, swapping stories of a childhood on a family farm with stories about a childhood as a refugee in Iran or under the Taliban. Both sides latch onto the tiniest things- they are fascinated by the fact that I've raised pigs, that I don't live with my father any more, that I can type so rapidly. I am awed by the way Afghan families live entirely in shared spaces, by the way they sometimes sleep in their head scarf because they forget it's there, by graceful dance of their fingers as they swoop and swirl their way through written Dari. When we comment on these little things that are interesting, these little pieces of life that seem so unremarkable to one side and like such novelties to the other, we learn about both cultures at once.

When I first arrived in 2011, I was told firmly that the people of Afghanistan are 'Afghans. The currency is the Afghani. They were very intense about this; any time I said it wrong, I was quickly corrected. When I returned to the States, I mentioned that to a lot of people, including the American debaters I worked with, one of whom competed in the Skype debate last week. At the end of the round, while the judges were deliberating, the final teams from Oregon and from Kabul continued to chat over Skype. I heard one of the Oregon debaters say 'the Afghani people,' and then I heard the quiet correction- 'Afghan.' But the correction didn't come from any of the ten Afghans in the room. It was his teammate. How's that for cultural exchange?

Students during the final round at Debate Without Borders.

The terrible cost, not just in Boston

I was shocked and saddened to hear of the explosion at the Boston Marathon earlier this week. And of the thirty people who were killed in Kandahar when a wedding was bombed. And of the university chancellor who was kidnapped and murdered a few days ago. It seems like every day we turn on the news and see more deaths, more senseless loss of life.

The saddest part was talking to my Afghan colleagues about Boston and hearing him say, “I'm sorry people died, but I'm not sorry that they get to know what this is like.”

I couldn't believe it, and yet, I could. Someone else commented that no one cares when ten kids are killed in Afghanistan, but when one dies in America, it's headline news, and it's not fair.

He's right. It's not fair. Death, especially the senseless, terrible death that sometimes seems so common, is never fair and never understood. It's not fair that we don't feel outraged every time a child dies, no matter where, no matter how. Our threshold for bad news can only stretch so far, and there comes a point when we have to train ourselves not to feel so deeply for the victims of each headline, but my heart mourns for all of those who have died without so much as a headstone to remember their life. It's sad that people all over the world are dying unnecessarily, and it's a shame that the rest of the world doesn't cry out in constant outrage over their deaths.

But at the same time, my co-worker's comment was frightening. What does it solve, wishing more pain and death on others? It won't bring back any of the children who have died in the years of bloodshed that Afghanistan has gone through. It won't change the past. It'll only make more families grieve, more children lose their chance at a future, more lives are wasted for no good reason.

And that sort of thinking only puts more obstacles in the way of true peace. As long as we keep wishing death on one another, death on one another's innocents, we will never be able to get along. How can we? Peace requires understanding and the ability to consider the terrible cost exacted by your fighting. If you see the other side as someone who deserves your bullets, someone who isn't good enough to warrant the right to life, someone inferior, then of course you will feel justified in bombing their children. It's the 3/5 Compromise all over again; the slaves aren't 'fully human,' so their suffering doesn't count. From the Roman Empire to the Rwandan genocide, from Genghis Khan to 9/11, we've seen what happens when we let divisions- be they ethnic, sexual, national, or any other- give one group license to see themselves as more human, more worthy, than any other. We've seen the pain, the suffering, the terrible consequences. And yet we continue to let ourselves think this way.

When will it stop? How many more eight-year-olds must die for their parents to learn the lessons that history has striven so hard to teach us?

To those who lost loved ones in Boston, I'm sorry for your loss. To those who lost loved ones in Kandahar, or in Syria, or in Herat, or Bangalore- I'm sorry for your loss. 

Going out, Coming back, Finding 'me'

I took a week off this month and went to Japan. It was a hard decision for me to make, because every time I saw a beggar on the street, I felt guilty. I thought about all that money I was going to spend, and I thought about all the good that money could do here, and I wondered how I could justify spending it all on just a vacation.

Eventually, I talked myself into going, and I had a fabulous time. No matter how much I love this country, no matter how enjoyable and meaningful my work, no matter how adjusted I've become to daily life, I can't deny that my trips out of country have been little tastes of freedom. Japan was a fascinating place, and it was great to spend time with my friend Leah. While I was there, I wore T-shirts. Gasp! Took off my headscarf. Gasp! I went running every day, wore jewelry, ate frozen yogurt (and sushi, of course!), went hiking, saw more of my skin in one day than I have in the last six months. Gasp!

But the thing about vacations is that they end. And you return to normal life.

That moment came when the loudspeakers at the Delhi airport announced my flight. I went to change into my Kabul-appropriate clothes, and just like that, I changed into a different me. The one who doesn't wear T-shirts, who doesn't leave her hair down, who keeps her gaze down when she walks. The one who has (partially) learned to guard what she says, who has discovered that freedom of religion isn't universal. The one who walks past street kids on her way to work. The one who sat in the Delhi airport with a scarf wound around my neck, delaying the moment when it had to go on my head, when it ceased to be a pretty accessory and instead became a chadar, an annoyance, a blinder, a symbol that trumpets my gender and my worth and my status in society.

When I got back to Kabul, culture shock didn't hit me so much as knock me over with a sledgehammer. It broke my heart to return to streets with beggars in burqas and little kids selling sticks of gum. Tiny linguistic misunderstandings made me want to throw my arms up and leave, and I couldn't bear the thought of living through several more months of that. I got annoyed when I couldn't take a hot shower, or roll my sleeves up on a hot day, or walk down the street without being stared at. The call to prayer woke me up at 4:30 am again, which hasn't happened since I first arrived last year. My running shoes sat in the corner, resigning themselves to more months of disuse.

And then, a week after I got back, I had a day off. My cold was finally on the mend, the sun was shining, and I had enough free time to sit in the garden for a while. I brought my Bible and my journal and a book, but once I got outside, I didn't touch any of them. I just sat there, eyes closed, face turned up to the sun. And I heard the ice cream truck go by, and it made me smile. I heard the scuffle of a street soccer game, felt our dog lick my hand, smelled the fresh naan that the guard had brought for lunch, and they made me smile.

I'm glad I went on this vacation, no matter how hard it was to justify the cost. Even more, I'm glad I'm back. When I boarded that plane in Delhi, I wasn't an entirely different person than I had been in Japan. I was a blend of the two, and in the process of blending them together, I learned something about myself.

They say that living abroad gives you new perspectives, but it's not until we stop to examine that perspective that it has any impact on our lives. I've become so accustomed to daily life in Kabul that I couldn't fully appreciate the changes it has made in the person I am now. Those changes are sometimes hard to see until we take a break from ourselves and remember who we used to be. Until we leave for a while, return to the person we are used to being, and realize exactly how different we've become. That's why vacations are so valuable, I think. They give us a chance to distance ourselves from the changes, to go back to the person we were before, just for a little while. Away from communities that know us and people who expect things of us, we have time to examine what we have learned. We can separate the personal growth from the pure survival. We can find the elements the have made us better, or worse, or simply different. We can decide which elements of the “new me” get to stick around.

A few photos from Japan: