THREE

So I have about three weeks left before leaving for India. There is one piece left that still need to nail down before I can leave. I will be on a non stop flight from Newark to Deli, but I need to get to Newark. So either today or tomorrow I need to book that flight. Going from the Boston area to Newark is not going to be too bad, but being on a plane for almost fifteen hours is going to be brutal. The upside is that there is a much less chance of losing my bags.

I am not worried about culture shock when I arrive or even after being there for a couple of weeks. If you know me you know I am pretty adaptable. Culture shock will really hit me when I get home in mid August. I will be returning to a place of privilege and cleanliness where I eat with utensils, where there are flush toilets, where I simply go to a grocery store when I want food, clean water form the faucet. These are all things that we take for granted that at some point I will not have access to.

After building relationships with people who have so little and somehow seem happy I will question what I consider to be true happiness. I will question what I really need in order to live a fulfilling life. I may even get frustrated at God for being born in America where if I work hard enough I can have just about anything, compared to those who work like slaves and still barely have enough to survive.

I know this is coming and yet I go because to not go is to keep myself ignorant. It is to pretend that I know anything about sacrifice, or poverty. Even after I come back I will still only be an observer of it and not a participant in it.

Just a Meandering Thought...