Some friends of mine wanted to go out to eat last night, and they had a certain place they were wanting to go so i joined them. We took an auto out a little ways away and got down at a paved walking bridge which we used to cross the road. As soon as we got to the top, a wave of gentle nostalgia washed over me as the buddhist prayer flags flapped evocatively to my left and to my right. Suddenly I was remembering grand stupas and precious young monks in Kathmandu. My time in Nepal was a high point in my last year (really, in my last twenty years), so memories summoned by the prayer flags were fond. We kept walking down dirty alleys populated with increasingly Nepali- and Tibetan-featured inhabitants and suddenly we passed a monastery with bells and a huge prayer wheel. It looked different than what i was used to. Delhi had tinted and shaped their customs, and i could recognize it after only a few previous visits to their ideal places of worship. I wondered how they felt about it. I wondered if their refuge felt like home in the middle of a hostile and foreign city, or if it felt like hell was bearing in on them, infiltrating even into their most sacred places. I wondered what it must be like to be in this city coercively instead of by choice.
We sat down in a restaurant with distinctly Chinese-y music playing; far eastern curtains and other decor adorned the walls and hung from the ceiling.
I can't tell you how it felt to be an American imagining Nepal in Tibet in India.
Let me be honest with you. China is probably the last place i'd voluntarily go. I'm not curious about it, I don't love the customs, I've never been into the food. But as far as the China that's fallen in my lap lately, I've enjoyed its company. And the closer I get to China, whether it's the Nepal-Tibet border or the Tibetan refugee camp in the middle of Delhi, the more i can see its intricate beauty. Passing the shop windows with gorgeous painted ceramic vases - the style simply astonishing for its sophisticated smallness, and the small market stalls with vendors who lacked the characteristic intense aggressiveness of Indians, was almost soothing. It was culture within culture. It was layered experience. It was rich and deep, which are words i often use to describe these Eastern cultures; they're words i feel the absence of when i am in America. I appreciate some things about the East so much when i compare them to what i know and grew up around.
God opens up your eyes and your heart when you don't expect Him to, and i like that about Him.
Ironically enough, the next morning i found myself fraternizing with a volunteer team who came here to serve from.....
just guess.
Yes, Hong Kong.
I joined the class they have offered for the week they are staying, and so i'm spending two hours of my day speaking Mandarin. It's a tonal language, which has always scared the crap out of me. But today in the first two hours of learning, the mystery was debunked as i found out that there are only four tones in Mandarin and that they have more to do with relative pitch than perfect pitch. as long as you move in the right direction, you're speaking the right language. here are the tones:
We sat down in a restaurant with distinctly Chinese-y music playing; far eastern curtains and other decor adorned the walls and hung from the ceiling.
I can't tell you how it felt to be an American imagining Nepal in Tibet in India.
Let me be honest with you. China is probably the last place i'd voluntarily go. I'm not curious about it, I don't love the customs, I've never been into the food. But as far as the China that's fallen in my lap lately, I've enjoyed its company. And the closer I get to China, whether it's the Nepal-Tibet border or the Tibetan refugee camp in the middle of Delhi, the more i can see its intricate beauty. Passing the shop windows with gorgeous painted ceramic vases - the style simply astonishing for its sophisticated smallness, and the small market stalls with vendors who lacked the characteristic intense aggressiveness of Indians, was almost soothing. It was culture within culture. It was layered experience. It was rich and deep, which are words i often use to describe these Eastern cultures; they're words i feel the absence of when i am in America. I appreciate some things about the East so much when i compare them to what i know and grew up around.
God opens up your eyes and your heart when you don't expect Him to, and i like that about Him.
Ironically enough, the next morning i found myself fraternizing with a volunteer team who came here to serve from.....
just guess.
Yes, Hong Kong.
I joined the class they have offered for the week they are staying, and so i'm spending two hours of my day speaking Mandarin. It's a tonal language, which has always scared the crap out of me. But today in the first two hours of learning, the mystery was debunked as i found out that there are only four tones in Mandarin and that they have more to do with relative pitch than perfect pitch. as long as you move in the right direction, you're speaking the right language. here are the tones:
That's cool, right? That's not just me, right? I may have been out of a classroom for far too long, but i was eating it up! I really enjoyed learning the little bit of Mandarin that we got to today, right down to the alphabet song. What a treat, to have the opportunity to learn something like this, practically gift-wrapped and right at my fingertips. I'm super thankful!
Maybe i'd like the Far East more than i thought i would.
Zài-jiàn!
Love from Chinatown,
Julie
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