It's been a while...

It seems that it has been a full 5 months since I last updated this thing. I'm writing in the wee hours of December 26th, after a wonderful Christmas at home with the entire family (which won't be the case next year unfortunately), and directly after destroying the rest of the family in a game of Settlers of Catan (I got them hooked on a board game, wonderful for developing that competitive family spirit!). So last time I wrote it seems that I had just visited the Killing Fields of Cambodia, a rather sobering experience. I guess this post is simply an update from where I left off and a bit of a recapping of the year.

And 5 months has brought me a long way from there: to the temples of Angkor Wat the very next day, to Burma for an afternoon, to the top of a mountain in Hong Kong, and back home to Chapel Hill, through my third semester at UNC, into a new minor (Social Entrepreneurship), through another amazing concert with Psalm 100, and into the beginnings of a CD project. I have seen a lot of relationships really develop in this time, and have also been disappointed with my ability to keep in touch with many of my old friends. I have read a number of books (Brothers Karamazov, The Four Loves, some Rumi...) and have a ton more on my "to read / in the middle of" list (The Politics of Jesus, The Cost of Discipleship, and Hold the Enlightenment).

This semester: I've spent many nights up late drinking coffee and talking, but not as many as I would like. I've spent many nights up late studying Arabic before that next quiz, a few more than I would like, but it should pay off in Amman. I've spent way too many hours at the pool lifeguarding instead of sitting in the arboretum with a book or a friend, and I hope to correct that in the spring.

This year: I have been to 7 countries in Southeast Asia thanks to the Carolina Southeast Asia Summer program, I have learned a lot about the way that I react to people who are different from myself in both positive and negative ways, I have had the amazing opportunity to learn a ton from a family of Burmese refugees that I tutor.

Next year: I hope to be more intentional with those that are close to me (even if the distance between us is rather large), I plan to climb glacier mountains in Mexico with my brother, Steven, and to study abroad for the summer and fall in Amman, Jordan. While there, I will also do an internship with the group Questscope, hone my Arabic skills, and focus my studies on the Palestinian/Iraqi refugee problem (!إن شاء الله). I also hope to slow down a bit and spend less time being worried about my achievements and more time investing in the people around me (if you haven't noticed that's one of the lessons I have been learning this year).

I could go on for a while. I like to think I learned a lot this year. However, it's late and this is already getting long. More to come, I've been thinking a lot recently and I'll try to get up a more thought provoking post in the next week (gotta get regular again...). I hope everyone is having a wonderful break! I can't wait to catch up with some SB2W people next week and all my UNC friends in January. Just in time for my birthday! Get excited, it's gonna be an exhilarating spring!

(enjoy the dread-mullet!)

Briefing from the Killing Fields

It has been an intense few days, kinda like camping, just a bit more serious and contemplative. In the last week I have visited a number of monuments and museums that commemorate some of the most horrendous acts carried out by mankind in the last 50 years. It has been quite an experience seeing reactions to the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia from the other side. I have learned a lot and been thinking a lot and been angry at times, and have been wondering how to mourn for these all of these slaughtered neighbors of mine as I walk between their mass graves. And how do I go forward, how do I follow Jesus' call to be a peace-maker in this world?

In Ho Chi Minh City, we went to the American War Museum and saw a lot of photo displays depicting the effects of the war: agent orange, the bombing of civilians in Hanoi, the burning of villages, and the slaughter of villagers. It was definitely a bit one sided in it's portrayal of the war, but it is I side that I needed to see. Looking back at my history classes, every required one ended at WWII or before. Only my elective class, contemporary world history, covered the Vietnam war at all (thank you Tito Craige!), and that by a teacher who was arrested multiple times for protesting during it. So I had a bit of exposure to the Vietnamese perspective, but nothing compares to being here for a bit and seeing some of the scars of the war, the scars that were left by my countrymen, every time I walk down the street and am approached by the deformed beggars still affected by Agent Orange.

This morning, we went to the Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In 1975, as the result of a spillover war from Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge forced US troops out of Cambodia and started a bloody reign of terror. In the end over a million people were slaughtered to achieve their dream of a perfect, communist, agrarian society. It failed miserably to achieve any results except for starvation, broken families and a decimated country. At the memorial in Choeung Ek, we saw a pagoda full of hundreds of skulls from the victims of the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields and then walked around the now empty mass graves. How does something like that happen? How can 1 million people be killed for an ideology? How does hell so easily come to earth? And yet we escalated the violence in order to prevent dominoes falling. We bombed the country side and in effect raised the troops for the very enemy we were fighting. Have we learned from our mistakes? Does Afghanistan or Iraq look any different? Or is it just another game of dominoes that we are playing and loosing and will eventually give up once we have mixed them all up sufficiently.

It was pretty powerful watching the movie, The Killing Fields, last night before our trip this morning. A bit like watching Hotel Rwandi while staying in Kigali. Check it out, it's a good movie, but not for the faint of heart. I have a lot of questions that have been raised by this trip, a lot of reading to do, and a lot of discussions that I hope to have especially searching to answers as to how something like this can be avoided in the future. There is no reason for genocide, it is all confusion and madness, but yet it continues, and the madness spreads. Life is made a living hell, but as a follow of Jesus I am called to pray for the kingdom to come, and for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. So may our mission be to somehow bring some part of heaven to this earth. May it come to pass.

Good Morning Vietnam!

It has been one wild week in Vietnam since I split up with the whole SEAS group. It was a bit rough traveling through Thailand with our group of 30+, and it has been really nice being down to a more manageable 4 people. So far no major setbacks, sicknesses, or injuries, and none to come in the next 3 weeks, inshallah!

Run down on the week:
- We pulled into Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, on the night of the 12th. The 13th was spent wandering around the city on the backs of the motorbike taxis, walking down side streets, checking out the Ho Chi Minh Mauseleum, and Ho Loi Prison (the Hanoi Hilton, where John McCain was during the war). Really cool city, it was a ton of fun just walking around, seeing some side streets, and getting to know people around the hostel.

- Took a trip to Halong Bay through the hostel, it was amazing! I'll get pictures up sometime, but it's basically really cool rocks coming out of the ocean. We boated around, kayaked for a bit, and then spent the night on the boat. I loved the opportunity to meet some other travlers and swap stories and advice. It was great running into a ton of the people from the cruise in the rest of our travels: hung out with the London crew in Hoi An and then with Victoria in Saigon.

- Then down to Hoi An (half way down on the coast) by way of night bus. A bit of a crazy ride, but after a dramamine cocktail I was right out. Beautiful beach! Spent a whole day out in the sun, added a shade of pink to my back. I loved how all the Vietnamese locals swarmed to the beach as soon as it got cool around 5. Spent the night out with Dom, Tom, Jim, and Conrad from the cruise. Shouldn't have stayed out dancing until 3am when we had a 7am ride to the airport, but when Sweet Home Alabama comes on you just have to run back in and dance with the Vietnamese motor-taxi drivers.

- Flew down to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on Friday, saved us a 20 hour bus ride. We went to the War Museum, quite a sobering experience seeing memories from the American War (or Vietnam War) from the other side. We really did a lot of crazy things over here, and you can still see the effects of it. Beggers affected by agent orange walk the streets of Saigon, deformed since birth. Every student in the US should learn about this, but instead we decide to stop history at WWII, when we won.

- Today, we took a tour to the Mekong Delta. Most tourist activity of our trip, but good fun. I figure that any trip I come back from with good pictures is well worth it.

- Tomorrow, we take a bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A couple stops to look forward to there, mostly the killing fields, and then on to Angkor Wat and then to Thailand again!

So that's the short version, tons more to tell, and I can't wait to talk to everyone else about their wild summer adventures! I'm sorry I can't get a ton of internet access here, we're moving a lot, but I will try to reply to everyone as I can. Vietnam was a blast, you should all come sometime! Good night Vietnam!

Last Night In Bangkok (for a bit)

Wow, it is really difficult to keep in touch with people while traveling. I try to get online just long enough to check my email, but with the hotel trying to charge 50 cents a minute, it's hard to spend much time replying to everything. So I'm sorry for anyone who has not heard from me for a bit enough though I promised to get back to you, I've been a bit preoccupied.

Last night, I finally got word that my visa had gone through for Vietnam, and good timing as we are arriving tomorrow night in Hanoi! So that was a big relief, also found a place to keep our bags for free. Things have really been falling in place this week, which taught me a lot about anxiety and trusting God to provide. Yesterday, before those two things had worked out I was freaking out a bit. But then I thought, what is the worst that can happen? I thought about the part of the sermon on the mount where Jesus tells us not worrying, but to know that we are loved by God and will have our needs provided for. Also, every time I travel I try to remember James 4:13-17 and not boast about what I will be doing tomorrow.

I'm sorry that this is a bit rushed and not incredibly coherent. I'm in an internet cafe in Bangkok next to an arcade and a karaoke bar, so the noise is a bit intense. I'll try to put in another update from Hanoi in the next few days.

A time to rest...

I'm on my last week here in Singapore, wow that went by way too fast. And the strangest part is that my trip is less than half way done! I still have Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Hong Kong to go, but only another 2 weeks with the whole team. It has been a wonderful first half of the summer. I want to go ahead and thank all of you who have been reading my very random posts on this thing, and everyone who has been engaging in some amazing conversations with me on facebook messages/skype/emails, and for those of you that have been praying for me while I'm gone, you all know who you are and you are all so very wonderful!

I don't have a ton of insight to share with you this week except this: there is a time for everything, including a time for rest. God is very specific with the Israelites about how he wants them to rest regularly, a wonderful command which somehow got turned into a burden. I have been learning a lot the last few days about my own neglect for rest and seeing how my intellectual pursuits of how to live can sometimes negatively affect my own living of that life (if that made any sense).

This morning, I jumped on the MRT and made my way to the Every Nations church of Singapore. My friend Brian recommended it, and I figured I should check it out before I leave (friday!). The first thing that I realized is how awkward it is to show up to a new church completely alone. I've visited a number of churches, but always either with a member escorting me or at least with other visitors. This was the first time in my life that I have ever just shown up at a church by myself just to see what happened. I met a few people on the way in after standing around awkwardly for a few minutes, and then sat down next to some nice guys from Sierra Leone.

No need to share about the whole service (except it was a bit different than the traditional Anglican service I attended last week), but I will say that the thing which most impacted me was something the worship leader said about resting in the love of God. And I realized that while I have been searching a lot recently for truth and trying to figure out how to live my life as a response to the call of Jesus, I have not been resting much or remembering the love of God. In seeking obedience, I found my own form of legalism. In trying to follow, I forgot to rest.

So this week I am going to try to rest a bit. That said, I have 3 papers and 2 exams to do in the next 3 days. And after that it's a whole ton of travel. It should be a wonderful experiment in rest taking.

One last thing, I am going to have a bit less internet in my travels, but I would still love to hear from all of you. Here is a general itinerary of where I will be the next month or so in case you are interested:
July 4th - Leave Singapore
July 4th-12th - Thailand (Chang Mai and Bangkok)
July 12th-21st - Vietnam
July 21st -25th - Cambodia
July 25th-August 4th - Thailand again
August 4th-8th - Hong Kong
August 9th - Back home!

(the pictures are from the Chinese Gardens, where I wrote the ants poem below, one of my few days of rest here)

Ants

sitting alone by the water,
ants cover my feet,
moving slowly,
working quickly,
carrying the remains of fallen warriors

back home,
to show the queen,
the triumphs of her brood

comrades,
bound by duty,
seeking no fame,
there is no room for honor,
in the crowded subterranean halls,
where they find refuge

only obedience,
to a higher authority,
they stay the course,
fueled onward,
never ending,
by the thick nectar of,
esprit de corps

they gain momentum,
mandibles quivering,
dragging brothers,
all together,
only distracted by the cracks in the stone pathway,
which, like trenches on a barren battlefield,
hinder their retreat

and from above it seems so pointless,
the endless movement of waring regimes,
for their queens these ants keep marching,
for their queens they return with the spoils of war

fighting on for scarce resources,
fighting on the basis of colored carapaces,
fighting on for no clear reason,
for this is the way it has always been done

and from above i wonder,
what we must look like from above

A lovely and not overly insightful day...

I nearly ran over a python today while hurtling down a hill on a bicycle. Yeah, it was just that kind of a day. Let me explain:

- We began the day with a visit to the Changi POW museum. Not a whole lot to say about the museum itself, it was a very solemn place, but it has been eye opening seeing WWII from the other side of the ocean. Singapore, and the rest of SE Asia, was occupied by the Japanese shortly after Pearl Harbor. The occupation is still very present in the collective memory of people here, mostly because of the rampant persecution, torture, and slaughter of the primarily Chinese population here. It is weird to see a people who hail the dropping of the atomic bombs as the act of their liberation compared to the questioning in American history of whether it was the appropriate action. All I'm saying is everything has multiple perspectives, and it can be rather enlightening to step outside your own for a bit.

- Most of the day was spent at this little island next to Singapore called Pulau Ubin. We rented some mountain bikes and took off for a few hours of adventure. The great thing was that we split up so that we didn't have to lumber around in our usual group of 25+, which just makes transportation difficult. I spent most of the afternoon riding around with Elliot, Raley, and Patrick. We got a bit adventurous and took on the mountain bike park on the island. This is where that whole python thing came in. After a while riding around on the easy trails in the park, we decided to try out one of the "Black Diamond" courses. (Mother, skip this sentence) Maybe not the best idea given the lack of helmets and relative sketchiness of the bikes, but you only get to do this sort of stuff once. (appropriate for my mom to continue reading) It was a really cool trail, some great downhill sections, and at the bottom of one of them we came across the dead python seen in the picture above. I had just enough time to get out my camera before Elliot came down the hill and freaked out. Anyway, it was a really cool experience. I loved the bit of freedom that we had within a larger group activity, sometimes the need to stick to a big group makes stuff kinda difficult.

- Finally, we spent the evening at the final event of the Singapore Arts Festival (which hosted stuff like Radio and Juliet). It was called Hydro-Sapiens, and was one of the most bizarre things that I have ever seen. I can't really explain it, but just check out the video below, it's from the very end of the performance.