This place is even MORE beautiful than I had remembered. It’s totally green, and has a wild, untamed element about it that I love. Bears and moose abound, though we have yet to find a moose for Joel to antagonize (really, I won’t let him…those things are dangerous!!). We’ll post more about our adventures later, but our internet-for-rent connection that we can get at McDonald’s up here is almost finished. Craving green?
 

Seven years after being exiled to hot, dusty West Texas, I am finally heading back to the place that I think of as “home.” For those of you that don’t know, I grew up in a remote part of northern New Hampshire, just a little south of the Quebec border…one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I always knew that the place I lived was beautiful, but I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I moved into the brown, hot, flatness that is West Texas.

While I’ve learned to appreciate the unique and subtle beauty that West Texas possesses (especially the sunsets and sunrises), I am really looking forward to seeing the mountains and billions of trees that I remember from my childhood. We’ll get to visit with extended family, bask in the cool temperatures (it’s supposed to be 70-80 the whole time, compared to last weekend’s 104 in Texas!) and spend a few days in Maine camping at our traditional family camping spot – Hermit Island. I have so many great memories, and I can’t wait to show Joel all of the sites from my stories. I really hope that it’s as beautiful as I remember it, and that I haven’t just built it up to be bigger than life in my head.

Maybe it isn’t “home” anymore, but it’s still a really special place. I’m glad to have the opportunity to go back, with Joel and with my whole family. This may be one of the last times that we get to spend an extended period of time with my family before heading to China, and I hope to relive a lot of our old family stories and memories and make many new ones along the way. I think we’re going to have a blast… check back in a few weeks for pictures and new stories of our New England adventures!

The latest night security drama: I made art, social commentary, highlighted the difficulty of applying ancient Scriptures directly and literally to our contemporary 21st century issues, and most importantly, I made a friend. In some cultures, I would have made food instead. But this is Texas – they may eat catfish, but they do not eat bugs, not even battered and deep-fried, nor do they often eat their work buddies. As someone who is formally trained in cross-cultural sensitivity, I thought it best to apply my education and not eat my new friend. It scares me to think of all those people who don’t have such education, running around the world, eating their new friends. Misunderstood cultural faux pas can cause wars, you know.

Have you ever been in a park with birds or squirrels, and you want to feed them, and someones says, “Just be real still and quiet and they’ll come to you.” Well it was just like that – I was just sitting still reading some Stanley Grenz and my friend just came to me, sat right there on the keyboard.

Yet, it would be disingenuous of me to give the impression that this was an easy choice to make, not to eat my new work buddy. I have tried to artistically display my inner-deliberations through the photographic works of art embedded in this post. Even as I write this I’m tempted to scratch a bite – continual reminders of the dirty who-gets-to-bite-who societal double standards. Some nights on the job I unleash pitiless wrath on every insect that dares enter my personal space, which in this job encompasses the entire first floor of the building.

So I let him live. He camped out on the keyboard and chewed on his legs and one of his antennae (the one I messed with a bit) for hours while I ate cereal, read, and considered contemplating the metaphorical potential of an insect having a good time while oblivious to the giant can of insecticide casting its perceived yet uncomprehended presence over the evenings festivities … for we are like grasshoppers. Hmmm… food for thought.

I know I should have some really gripping title for this little series, but it’s after 5am and my mind is floating off somewhere between the fumes from the bug spray and the Chinese folk classical music (on very cool surround sound)in which I am still trying to find a groove… current song: “The Lawn Is Interspersed With Flower.” Perhaps the experience will provoke some flash of intuition regarding how ancient Chinese worldviews can inform our deliberations regarding troubling implications of the impending strides in technological human alteration on the mind-body problem. Then again, maybe it’s just chemicals and music. Either way, welcome to The Night Security Monologues - which is what happens when I’m done eating, practicing Chinese, and my mind is too fried to read or work on stuff that needs to get done.

Night security sounds like a cool job with guns, big flashlights, dark corners around buildings and guys in black masks to fight with. I hope you weren’t expecting that sort of thing. I sit in the lobby of a dorm full of highschool girls. My job, from 10pm-6am, is to make sure none of them leave and none of their boyfriends get in. Since they’ve already found out that I (a) am married, (b) won’t do their homework for them, (c) think 10pm is past their bedtime, and (d) like to mock their boyfriends, they pretty much leave me in peace. Which is good, because Chinese is tough and requires concentration (the language and the music).

Here is my latest adventure (as best I can remember):
3:12am - strange noise outside of front door of dorm, like someone throwing pebbles.
3:14 - decide to go investigate strange noise.
3:14 & 1/2 – find a really big, scary-looking bug that I have never seen before throwing itself repeatedly against the glass door (apparently he wanted in).
3:15 - get piece of cardboard to catch him with (it looked vicious, and since most insects in Texas bite, I wasn’t taking chances. I don’t know that he really bites, or if he’s actually a ‘he,’ but my ignorance regarding the former guaranteed my continued ignorance regarding the latter).
3:16 - go outside to catch bug. He runs, I chase him. Door locks with 1000 pound magnet. Bug tries to hide in puddle but I catch him and fiddle for my access card to get back in the dorm. My subconscious says, “Puddle? Where’d that come from?”
3:17am - get soaked with “non-potable water” from malicious rotating lawn sprinklers’ direct hit while locked outside dorm fiddling with access card.
3:17-22 - get inside and play with bug.

I let him go in the end… it had huge eyes, and it’s hard to kill things that can look at you unless you plan to eat them, but I only eat stuff like this when I’m overseas. …I think it’s a giant water bug, only mine had bigger talons.