Tag: travel

Update on taxis

In my last post, I mentioned how I liked to imagine myself as a taxi savvy. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the day has not arrived.

My first day of catching my very own taxi was yesterday. Perhaps the only reason any driver stopped at all was because I was a foreign target with light hair and trembling knees.

As the first taxi pulled up, I forgot to greet the driver. Instead, I stumbled over the two words that I needed to say. As we zipped down the road, I fretted that the driver would overcharge me. But I had prepared for this. I pulled out my orange sticky note and reviewed the transliterated Arabic phrases that, if correctly delivered, could save my pocketbook.

I was blessed, however. The driver began to chat with me in English and just before he deposited me on the side of the road, he tried to undercharge me. Imagine! The phrases I had reviewed were all for naught!

I was confident on my way home from school. So confident, in fact, that I when no “petit” taxi stopped for me, I decided to crawl in a “grand” one. The driver misunderstood my butchered pronunciation of my neighborhood and drove me in the opposite direction.

“Wait! No! This is wrong!” He slowed to a stop and had me repeat my neighborhood name several more times before realization dawned. “Aaaaaah!” And then he said the name with the emphasis on the second syllable instead of the first.

We cruised along in the “grand” taxi, the driver overeager to make conversation and the passenger overeager to remain in deflated silence. The driver pointed to random things along the street as we zoomed past them and projected loud words toward my side of the car, as if I was supposed to know what he had pointed at in the first place. I stared out my window.

When we arrived safely in my neighborhood, I looked at him and shrugged to indicate that I didn’t know what he would charge. He pulled out a bill from his stash as a suggestion. I laughed out loud. It was the equivalent of $10 for a ride that normally cost $1.10. Not encouraged by my response, he shrugged and pulled out a hopeful $5. I shook my head and rattled my coins then handed him $2 to compensate for riding in a “grand” taxi and getting lost. He shrugged again and then rushed to introduce himself.

So far, not one taxi driver has known of the school where I teach English. My afternoon driver was no exception. He made a phone call and tried to look at the map I gave him…upside down. I tried to direct him in Spanish while he interpreted through his French filter. He finally believed the school existed when we screeched to a halt in front of it.

The adventures in taxis are probably just beginning.

Photo credit: W.K.

Goodbyes

  • Goodbyes make you wish you could go without leaving
  • Goodbyes are dark clouds that overcast the blue sky of the future and cry raindrops on the path of the present.
  • Goodbyes wear like a nagging pebble in your shoe, making it difficult to think of anything else on your journey.
  • Goodbyes are the question mark that punctuate a calling.
  • Goodbyes welcome a corresponding door of opportunity.

Bittersweet release

Here I am at the coffee shop, thinking that there’s just something melancholy about today.

Dark clouds sprinkle the sky, peppering brick storefronts with moving shadows. Somehow watching the sun and rain play tag makes me not want to go.

I got my ticket today; I’m excited! ecstatic! but also nostalgic. Am I ready to introduce another home to my heart? Can I really say goodbye to life as it is?

These aren’t doubts exactly because I already know the answer to these questions is “yes.” But must feeling fulfilled in a calling always be preceded by a bittersweet release? Perhaps I just want to have my cake and eat it too…

Listen

Sometimes, I imagine I’m a well-known writer. The truth is, however, that I have a hard time expressing myself. Emotions often don’t translate well into prose.

But tonight I’m thinking that maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Expressing myself doesn’t have to be my notable character attribute. What if I were a good listener instead?

My time of training in New York brought out reflective questions: Do I listen with my heart? Do I hear the longings behind the words people are saying? Or am I too preoccupied with finding an avenue of expressing myself?

God used New York for my “ah-ha!” moment. The real training has started since I’ve been home. So many people need listening to. What have I been missing out on all these years?

Today I had lunch with a lady from church who shared some of the struggles of being a mom. In class tonight, a student told me about the discrimination she sometimes faces as an immigrant. Just when I thought I’d used up my daily quota of compassion, another acquaintance expressed concern over potentially losing her job over a moral issue.

So, I listened. Now what? What exactly does “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15) look like from day to day?

I guess I’m still learning.

A Steinway afternoon

Despite the diversity of New York City, Steinway street is different for me. It feels as if God is showing me a map with a red arrow and a clarifying “You are here” hovering over Steinway Street. This is very well what my life might look like for the next year while I’m in North Africa.

What are these people really like? What are their hopes, longings, and hurts?

  • A woman escorting her aging mother to the doctor.
  • A Lebanese man selling pastries.
  • A man with a leg injury, lingering outside of the mosque.
  • An middle-aged Egyptian couple–he sipping coffee and she rattling Arabic, hoping for someone to see her beyond the Alzheimer’s.
  • A young lady with heavy, dark makeup–guarded and watchful.
  • A sales clerk turning every hopeful conversation into a potential sale.

“They don’t know! They don’t know You.”

TELL THEM.

Walking in Phoenix

The drying sun scalds
A tree of drooping red pods

The humming planes are low enough
To brush with jealous fingertips

Shrubbery sprawls over landscape
Like frazzled starfish

A name--Jason--engraved
In concrete not yet dry

A squeaking rope fastens
A willful flag to its pole

Windows of a lonely skyscraper
Glow pink in sleepy sunlight

Choruses of weary air conditioners
Ricochet between adobe houses

Breezes dance along baked concrete
And chase us inside

Photo by PJ Gal-Szabo on Unsplash

Celebration CELTA

Spicy chicken and Mexican coke tingled my tongue.

This was the last day, our last moments together. We had made it, all ten of us. Four weeks of labor, laughter, and tears were suspended in this memory: a memory that would never change by an updating database of other times together. Spain, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, China. We were going places and would never see each other again.

Ashley and I ducked out of the dim pub and into the scorched air of a summer afternoon in downtown Phoenix. I pulled my sunglasses out of my backpack as the misters under the awning created a sheen over our hair.

“It’s sad to think we won’t see each other again.”

“Yah.”

When we reached the corner where she would walk one way to the parking garage and I would walk the other way to the metro, we hugged goodbye. There were so many things we could have said. Indeed, we said some of them, but nothing sounded as final as reality.

As I stood on the platform awaiting my train, I wondered, “Is this the end of an adventure or the beginning?”