Ten years ago this week I went on a "once in a lifetime" trip to Argentina to visit my brother at the end of his study abroad semester. Over the course of the two weeks I was there I fell in love with the country and rekindled the love of travel that I had discovered on my own study abroad semester a few years earlier in Aberdeen, Scotland. Those two weeks I spent in Argentina drastically changed the last decade of my life, leading me to move to Buenos Aires myself two years later, and then on to Bangkok a few years after that. I never could have imagined this international teacher life- that someone would pay me to teach in a Christian school in a foreign country where the perks include introducing students to Christ and traveling on weekends. I never imagined as I struggled with caring about high school and college German classes because "when would I ever use a foreign language?!" that years later I would speak Spanish and even a little bit of Thai (and spend a week in Austria during college really wishing I'd paid attention in German class!).
My life in Bangkok comes with a great many sacrifices, but it also comes with much joy, great adventure, and a daily life that feel amazingly normal to me now. The more I travel and live, the more I leave pieces of my heart scattered around the globe. The more people and cutlures that I encounter the more beauty and suffering I see in the rainbow of faces around me. I love being a part of this global community, love living as an ambassador for Jesus in a land where his name is barely known. I hate the unknowns, the how longs, the what nexts. But I love the present, the todays. I love summers in Michigan and around the US, connecting with friends and family around the world.
In the ten years since I stepped off that flight at Ezeiza airport (to a baggage handlers strike and a swarm of angry Argentines, I might add) I have changed in ways I never could have predicted, shaped into something new by both the beauty of it all and the pain that accompanies. So the next ten years? I don't think I can even begin to imagine.
Yes!!! Loved this.
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