I'm moving again!

I know I need to start blogging more regularly. I should probably also improve my writing. Maybe both will come with time.

I hinted earlier that I might be moving to Africa but it is now a reality. I move to South Sudan in a couple of weeks and I couldn't be more excited/I don't know how to feel. I feel sure it is the right thing for me but it is a big change that I'm doing my best to deal with.

For the past 3 weeks, I have been living in Boston for work. I haven't had an entire day off for those three weeks and have been trying to complete all my pre-departure paperwork and loose ends at the same time. It has been a little overwhelming at times. Really strange things have made me tear up a little.

I don't have much time to write now but I wanted to update this in case people still read it. Hopefully, more people will read it in the future so I have a way of updating my friends on how I am. I hope everyone will leave me messages and not let me get lost in Africa. :)

Military reality

I really did think I could be in a relationship with someone in the military and never have to deal with a deployment. I got spoiled by him being stationed overseas where he would never be deployed from. I knew when he took his new job he would get deployed because that's part of it.

But it feels horrible.

We have been apart before. I left Japan a little more than four months before he could come to America. We've taken trips without the other for work, to see family, see friends in different countries. We are not strangers to a long distance relationship. So what's different? Apparently, a lot and he feels so GONE.

I have always been a very independent person, I have never been afraid to take on life by myself. I don't know what has changed but I currently hate this deployment. It has only been 3 days and I hate it. I don't think I will ever even mildly like it. There is no silver lining.

This sucks.

disconnected thoughts

I have this green notebook that I wrote in when I went to Niger/Nigeria for a month. I co-led the trip and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I found the notebook while I was moving a few months back and really wanted to read it, knowing that I had written a lot about what I was going through during the entire trip. I haven't read it yet, it seems too intimidating, kind of scary. It would probably be important at this point to add some perspective to why it may seem more scary to me now: I am thinking about the possibility of moving to Africa. The stay would be longer than a month but no more than one year.

There are times it feels like I am considering having a dream come true, living in Africa, and other times it feels like the timing is off. Then again, thinking back on every amazing thing I've done I can easily see the timing is usually "off" but ends up being perfect. Honestly, I often think about if I am ready to give up being comfortable in America to adjust to a different country, a country that would most likely not be comfortable for a lot of reasons. It's a very selfish thought but it is real. I also wonder if moving there would be my way of escaping where I am now.

There are a lot of questions.... Which is WHY I decided to not deeply explore any answers, apply for the job, and deal with things as they came. Not many companies in America are willing to hire me so I figure if this company wants to give me a chance maybe it's God telling me this is the right way. As I was editing my resume and writing a cover letter for the job I realized I have cultivated more experience for a job like this than any other job I have been applying for, as if I was moving towards this my whole life. That also felt scary.

I feel like lately there have been a lot of life decisions to make. When I was younger, these decisions seemed so easy. I knew what I wanted, I worked, and I got it. Now I feel like things are a bit cloudier, I'm not exactly sure what I want and there is much more at stake when I accept or chase certain opportunities.

I probably should read that notebook. I think it would help me remember why I feel so passionate about a continent I only spent a grand total of two months in my entire life. Remembering my passion would make the decision a lot easier.

The day the earth shifted

March 11 is only a few days away and it will mark one year since a tsunami and 9.0 earthquake struck the East coast of Japan. I know I was far enough south to be safe, but I cannot say I was far enough away to be completely unaffected. The past couple of days I have found myself thinking about that event a lot.

I know I will never forget it. It was a very warm, spring day. I was two weeks away from finishing my job at the pre-school and starting my job at the middle school. Lots of transition was going on and I was just beginning to feel like I was getting the hang of living in Japan. I had routines, friends, and I was even speaking and understanding Japanese enough to feel comfortable! I felt so optimistic about my future there and was hoping my upward trend would continue. It was the end of the school day, 2:45 pm, so all of our students were assembled into one room to wait for their parents. A few parents had already come to pick up their children, the other teacher's and I were waiting in the doorway to call for the child to gather their things as we saw their parents arrive. Dora the Explorer was playing on the tv. At 2:46 pm, in the middle of laughing with a co-teacher, we started to feel a little shaking. I remember thinking it felt larger than normal, but I told my co-worker it was no big deal anyways and just to wait it out. Of course, the students looked at us and we said it was okay, just stay sitting. There were no desks in that classroom and, luckily, the school was designed to always be close to the outdoors by being built in the midst of a bamboo forest. The shaking did not stop. Instead, it got increasingly more violent to the point that we decided it was safer to not be in our school anymore. The eraser board was slamming back and forth against the wall, a teacher ran to make sure the tv didn't fall on any students, and we scooped up children too scared to walk as we made our way to the playground.

Watching the building sway was absolutely surreal. I felt like my mind was videotaping it all the while thinking, "no way is this real." Everything shook. Even after the earthquake itself finished, everything continued to shake. I can remember thinking the Earth was furious with us for some reason. It actually felt like that Earth was so angry it shook and afterwards, it trembled. I know that a lot of people may not think this experience was traumatizing for me or maybe think it should not have been traumatizing, but I look back and still know it was horrible. Who do you turn to after something like that?

There are many things about that day I will never forget. Being one of the very few foreigners in my town never bothered me until the earthquake. I felt so lost and isolated, unable to understand most of the public messages being blared every few minutes throughout the town. I heard rumors of tsunami's but it wasn't until I went to a friend's apartment and saw live footage of the tsunami sweeping across Northeastern Japan that I understood exactly what everyone was talking about. I had no idea there was also a tsunami miles away from where I lived. While many seemed calm, others just looked as if they were waiting for something even worse to happen. I was so thankful for at least one friend who kept me company while aftershocks made sure the night was never still for more than a few minutes. Every foreigner I knew was making plans to go back home. If they weren't making plans to move, they were making plans to at least get as far south as they could. Looking back, I am glad I didn't let my emotions take over completely. If that had been the case, I would have found a flight home within a week or taken an offer to get on a government flight.

The entire experience was shocking. There is no other word for it. Whether anyone knew it or not, I had never felt like Japan was a home for me and this event put me over the edge of feeling like my time in Japan was finished. For a few weeks after the earthquake I was looking for reasons to either stay or leave. One week I would be convinced I should stay and then the next week I would think it was a good time to leave. After a series of unfortunate events involving someone I thought I could rely on turning on me, my bike getting stolen, and the chance that I'd have to move apartments presenting itself, I decided my time in Japan had indeed come to an end.

In the past I have relied quite heavily on intuition and how I feel about the future help me make decisions. Experiencing this disaster taught me that I could never predict what will happen and my emotions are a terrible indicator of anything to come. There are times intuition helps, but those times are usually laced with solid logic to back up that "feeling" one has. I thought my life was going awesome, so much better than the year before. I thought everything was finally working out, I was finally progressing and my plans would work. And then the Earth literally shifted.

I got angry for awhile. I felt like life was being so unfair. Then I started my new job at the middle school and found out some of the orphans from the tsunami were new students. I believe we had one student whose family moved to our town to start over and ove student was sent there with no family. I guess life had not been that unfair to me, I was still alive and my family was very safe back in America.

One thing I noticed about the Japanese throughout the entire crisis was the taboo nature of discussing your feelings. Everyone knew this disaster was horrible and stress expressed itself in physical ways, especially in children, but no one talked about how devastating it made them feel. I suppose feelings are irrelevant in situations like this, but I am sure this society norm of silence being forced on some traumatized children did not help their recovery. It was strange to me that it was almost as if the earthquake had never happened...except for the occasional earthquake alarm (indicating an approaching aftershock), helmets handed out for safety drills, and inspections of new cracks in the school building. I do remember a comical happening starting to become routine: I would be in the school office, which was a big room where all the teachers did lesson plans and other work, and suddenly hear an alarm screeching from someone's cell phone. Then, many Japanese teachers would stand up and go stand near the doorway leading outside or just look as if they were bracing themselves. The first time it happened I had no idea what was going on and if I was supposed to go somewhere or not. It was then explained to me that screeching was an earthquake alarm. It couldn't tell us how strong the quake would be, but it could tell us one had just happened close enough that we could expect to feel it. I started to hate that screeching sound and of course, heard it everywhere from then on.

There are so many things I could write about remembering March 11, 2011 at 2:46 pm and beyond. I know I had a great experience compared to so many who lived farther North. If you watch anything about what happened, this documentary is narrated by children. There is no better perspective to understand it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_AxnoNrr_8&context=C3043f09ADOEgsToPDskLs7TnOWlrtO6A6Hjz0VQJW

Conclusion

A friend once told me even if she got married she would still want to live in separate places. After much thought in study I have concluded: I agree.

Loving someone with a little distance involved makes things spicy and different. Surprises are easier and alone time is easier to find. It might sound a little selfish but in so many ways it seems less selfish if it's what is needed to add a little spark.

I love to work

I love to work. I don't hear a lot of people say this but I can honestly say I love to work. I love feeling like I accomplished something, helped someone, furthered my own financial cause (pay off debt!!), and completed a task. I love to learn, I love to help, I LOVE to work. The problem with this is: nobody wants me to work for them.

I think there could be an assortment of reasons for this, a different reason for every job that has rejected me. However, I can safely say a minimum of 50 jobs have rejected me since December. That's a lot. The one person they all have in common as an applicant being me...so what am I doing wrong? There has GOT to be something. The one thing about at least half of them that I cannot get past is: I am over qualified. WHY would they not want to hire someone that has MORE than enough experience and school for the job?!?!?! WHY?!?!?! And that might also be the problem. Maybe I should leave out that I have a Bachelor's and downgrade it to an Associate's degree to make people feel better.

Or MAYBE I am not friendly enough. I need to get out in the community and meet everyone until someone wants to give me a job.

This city is the worst city I have ever lived in. Hands down.

musings of the unemployed

Oh my, unemployment...we meet again!

I had a job but I quit. Normally I would not be quitting jobs so quickly when I have felt the pain of unemployment before, but this time...I just had to quit. It was actually a very hard decision and just as I felt like I was getting my financial life back on track, I took a steady paycheck out of the equation and it wasn't so on track anymore. Now I'm grappling with getting any job I can for any amount of income I can get and tracking down the job that is just right for me. I'm not sure that just right job exists in this so not right town.

This all leads me to thinking about that day I took the picture of Omar and that old man riding bikes. I had just returned from a trip to see my family back in America and Omar and I had decided to ride bikes in a town near Narita. We wanted to see something new and needed a little adventure. This old man befriended us on the bike trail and after he beckoned us to follow him he led us to his house to share homemade liquor and strange stories in broken Japanese. He did not know a single word of English. It sounds really creepy...especially if I add details like his birdcages filled with beetles and no trace of an indoor toilet...but at the time it was so magical! Days like that helped me believe life was so full of surprises and God was active in making sure I understood what joy could mean on a daily basis. I need a day like that. It was a silly day but worry was absent so it was a good day.

I know I took a risk moving to North Carolina, especially to a city where opportunity is lacking, but the hope is with the risk will come reward. I need to GROW in whatever way this city can offer. For now, maybe I will just take whatever job I can.