Warning: There will be no pictures of rolling hills or breathtaking white sand beaches. Not even a single picture of a wide eyed, bright toothed smiled little Asian child. Don’t let this hinder you from continuing to read.
It’s strange how the world works sometimes. I was just about to write a blog post, inspired by some of the days that were turning around me. A day where I walked upon a parade in the middle of a Sunday and watched, from my bicycle, the sparkling outfits and dazzling hair do’s skate by. A morning where I spotted a monk with his bright orange fabric wrapped around his chest and torso and I couldn’t help but imagine how he must have dipped that cloth in saffron and cinnamon, letting it soak in the sun for days until the fabric was ripe with color. A Thanksgiving day where my first graders swarmed me as I walked into the classroom, thrusting gifts of plastic light-up snowmen, tiny blue ballerinas complete with a music box, homemade cards with imagined families and giant turkeys drawn on the inside, and even real red roses, into my arms.
But all this inspiration was put on hold when my computer suddenly stopped working. Instead of writing in a little café with an overly sweet latte in my hand, I was on the phone to Apple for hours at a time. Quite honestly I thought: This is it. I can’t go on. Life simply cannot pass without Teacher Brenna having a computer constantly by her side. I called my mother the other night and when she asked what I was doing I had to admit that I had just eaten an entire tub of ice cream (granted they are MUCH smaller here). “It’s like I’ve just broken up with my boyfriend,” I said. “Or rather he broke up with me.”
I was stressed. I wasn’t happy. And not even my kids’ bright smiles and crazy antics couldn’t cheer me up.
Somehow though, those moments of torment and distress seemed to cease the other night after dinner.
I was by myself, hoping that some solitude and a blank notebook would give me some relief. I had to chuckle to myself when an old woman came to share my table with me because the table she sat at with her family was too full. “I’ll sit with the American,” she said in Thai, not thinking that I could understand her. I nodded as she sat down at the table, a mutual agreement that we were both okay with this arrangement.
I continued writing as if nothing had happened until I heard a small crash from the front of the restaurant. When I looked up to see the source of the noise I saw that it was the owner of the restaurant’s younger daughter falling down on the brick floor. Now, I must tell you that I frequent this establishment quite often (maybe 2 or 3 times a week) and I have come to know the family who owns the restaurant very well. The older daughter, Dear, who is say maybe 17 years old, always takes my order and will come over after I have my food to teach me a little Thai. Her younger sister, Dew, around the age of four, always scuttles around us, making fish faces at me and showing me her little plastic toys, but she is always too shy to answer my questions, whether they be in English or in Thai.
Now, when I looked up to see Dew’s hair all askew, brushing off her shirt as she was standing up, I made a fish face at her, thinking she would do her normal turn-and-act-like-I’m-not-there move. This time, however, she came up to me and immediately starting chattering away in Thai. I had never heard the girl say more than two words strung together. Now she couldn’t shut up! Her friend trailed behind her, a girl with short, shorn hair and wildly big eyes. She started touching my arm hair and fondling me like a new Barbie doll.
Soon we had the entire restaurant looking our way. I’m sure this was quite the sight. A tall white woman playing with two small Thai children in the middle of a restaurant. The girls crowded into my seat next to me as I ate and soon we were using a pencil case as a telephone, counting each other’s fingers in Thai and English and testing how much Teacher Brenna really could say and understand in Thai.
When I got up to go, the girls blocked the entrance to the restaurant, throwing up their thumb and forefinger to form a gun. They held each other’s hands and stretched their arms wide, giggling and throwing their heads back so far I thought they might tumble over into the street. They asked if they could ride on my motorbike with me, saying that was the only way I could leave. They followed me down the block to see, not a motorbike, but much to their dismay, my orange bicycle. When I mounted the bike and turned to go home, they ran the remaining length of the sidewalk, their small legs pumping against the pavement. They waved goodbye to me desperately, arms flailing against the air. They shouted Good bye!!! See you later! And I turned to see smiles stuck to their faces.
In the cool brisk air riding home that night, I realized how futile technology is. How had my happiness for the past few days revolved around a block of silver metal? How could I ever think that a computer was so important that I thought without one life could not move forward? It was as if the computer was a part of me and it stopping meant that I couldn’t keep walking, like a leg being amputated. It seems silly to me now that we as a society have become so focused on our technology, so centered around our computers and our phones that we miss out on what’s around us.
I don’t want this to turn into some mushy story with a moral. I know how very important technology is and I have felt incredibly grateful for it during my time abroad. It has allowed me to connect with family and friends and make this whole living half way across the globe SO much easier. But in that moment with those two girls’ arms waving viciously in the night air and screaming at the top of their lungs “GOOD BYE!” I felt this surge of happiness that no machine can ever give me, no matter how powerful or necessary.
I came to accept that my computer was broken and no matter how many tears I shed it just may not be fixable; that yes, I might have to shell out a little (or a lot of) cash for a new one. Ironic then, how the next day I receive a call from a friend here in Nan saying that she has an old computer lying around after receiving a new one as an early Christmas gift. “I heard you might be in use of one,” she said.
Yes.
Funny how the world can give us perspective and then bring us exactly what we need.
P.S. If you were wondering how I was writing this post in the first place it is due to the very generous spirit of another friend, a friend who went on a trip a week ago and gave me her computer to use during her time gone. The world has blessed me with some pretty incredible friends her in Nan.
Seeking Clarity 