The Rice Bowl

Ah...To Be Alone...

With a thousand bites from the insects I cannot see, I now regret sitting outside.

My mother got on my nerves again, so I ran away.  I have a knack of doing that.  I have always had a place where I run to.  The backyard was my opt this time, since I ran out of the house with no shoes on and only mu phone in hand.  So I found a dry place to sit, where no one would find me.  It seems almost impossible to find a place where you genuinely know that you can be alone.

I sat out in the rain and watched it as it hit the ground and felt it as it hit my face.  I love the rain.  I love the rain when I get mad, I love it when I'm sad, I love it when I'm happy.  When I'm happy i can splash in it and celebrate life as it is, plain and simple.  When I'm angry or upset, the rain comforts me because it seems to cry with me.  So I sat in the rain.  I sat and I felt and I thought

I thought of my past.  I remember living here before.  I remember all the silly things that I did when I was little.  I remember I had a whole escape route planned in case there was a fire or even if I just wanted to run away and never look back.  I remember I always had a bag stuffed with things that I 'needed' in case i decided to run away for good, and every time I got mad, I would check to make sure everything was there.  i remember the refrigerator box that My best friend and I converted into a 'fort'.  I remember the games of truth or day that I played with everyone.  I remember falling in love for the first time while I watched a boy play Nintendo 64.  James Bond was always his favourite.

I thought about getting up and knocking on the boy's door and asking him why we never talk anymore.  And then I figured out why we don't.  Change.  I changed, he changed.  We don't talk anymore because I don't know what to say anymore.

The older I become the more I seem to distance myself from the world.  I can probably count on one had the people I consider to be my friends, the people that I actually go out of my way to talk to.  Everyone else, they're just acquaintances.

Then I thought.  Am I one of their friends?  The people you think are close to you, are you considered close to them?

I really shouldn't be alone.  It has scary side affects on my mind.

The Price of Gas

So all I've been hearing is how high gas prices are.

In the US, people are complaining about petrol costing around $3 for a gallon.

I did the maths.  In the UK, for a gallon of petrol it costs $6.10.  In Sweden its $5.68.  In France, $5.50.  Germany, $5.64.

So basically in Europe prices are double what they are in the states.  Hmm.

And still, the US does not allow for the sale of Smart cars, etc and I don't see anyone in a real big hurry to sell their SUV or Hummer.

When gas prices are to high, just think, you could be driving in the UK right now.

As You Sleep

There is something about this week that just carries an ominous presence.

It's my last week of school.  My last three days in the school that I grew up in, with the people that I have laughed with for years.  My last three days as a child.

It's nothing like the last three days.  The pressure, the tension.  You cannot enjoy your life.  You have been chained to your books and work.  Sleep is not an excuse.  My classmates and I are all losing sleep.  We come to school with circles under our eyes, disheveled hair and groggy voices.  We fight off sleep for the day and then collapse on our beds as soon as we reach home.  I know I'm not the only one who does it.  Despite how much homework there is for the night, you still have to find some time to sleep and it seems like we're all getting no sleep.

For some, sleep occurs during class, while the teacher is lecturing.  That's a pet peeve of mine.  I have never fallen asleep in a class and I really hate people who do.  It's just disrespectful.  Day dreaming, fine.  Sleeping, no.

It seems that every time I look around the class room, every person has a glazed look in their eyes.  Just make it stop already. Let me wake up at 9 or 10.  Just once.  The weekends are not even relaxing, study, study, study.  Because that is all I do.

Just three more days.  Three more days until bed time.

Blessed is the Monday

I survived yet another Monday.

I hate Mondays.  They're full of heaviness and stress.  It's a day where I have no free studies, so I'm bogged down with work.  How fitting for a Monday?  I did next to no homework on the weekend.  It was Easter, I'm not going to sit in my room and study when I could be spending the day with my family.  I'm sorry but a religious holiday qualifies for a weekend when I don't do homework.  I woke up this morning knowing that I was going to die because of the homework issue.  I had seven past exams and an essay to do, all taking around an hour and a half.  Bollocks if you ask me.  I protest.  I'm not doing it.  I'm pretty good at facing up to things as they are.  I don't like to lie about things like this because I'm a terrible liar.  I figure its better to tell the truth than have a lie chase after you.  So that was it.  I just didn't do it, it was Easter.  NOT GOOD ENOUGH.  Whatever.  Detention...yeah yeah.

The thing that kind of ticked at me was the fact that earlier in the year, a classmate missed about a week and did no homework during that week claiming that it was her religious festival thing.  She got off.  She always gets off.  I, however, didn't.  The other thing that bothered me was that only myself and another student received detention for not doing homework, when only like two people in the class actually did it.  Shouldn't that rest of the students have received detention?  Whatever.  It's the favourites thing that teachers play.  I really hate it when teacher's play that card...especially since I am never a favourite.

My teacher said that I was looking at her like I hated her earlier in the day.  There might be a reason for that.  Anyways.  I don't hate her.  I just really don't like her when she does stuff like this.  It makes me mad because I can name all these other people that should have had detention when I did, and yet there I was, sitting there all alone, doing my time.  She does it a lot to me.  I don't want to sound like it's a conspiracy, but I'm starting to get suspicious.  Maybe she just likes seeing me really annoyed at lunch time a lot.

Whatever I guess.  Let it slide.

I didn't want to go to school today.  I really didn't.  I so wanted to skip and I really thought about it.  This week is my last week of school, technically.  After Friday, I only have to show up to do my exams.  So why am I still in school?  Why don't they just send us home so we can get some revision done.  Nope.  You have to come to school so we can set you pointless homework assignments and give you thousands of detentions.  I swear, I have had more detentions in the last three weeks than I have in the last two years.  I think that is saying something about how anally retentive my teachers are becoming.  First of all, I'm getting yelled at by certain teachers because I'm not revising enough in their subject.  I'm sorry but the last I checked, I was passing your class, however, I am not passing Chemistry, A HIGHER LEVEL SUBJECT.  I don't think you can stress that enough with some teachers.  I know they are stressed too about me and how well I'm going to do, but let's put it this way.  What if they were getting the treatment they give me from six other people.  Who's stressed now?

Anyways...shut up and deal now.

His Girl Friday

Good Friday. 

Normally my Good Friday is not going to school as usually it world out that we get the day off.  I usually go to Good Friday mass, and then Easter Sunday mass.  Today is not the norm.  With my IB exams clearly on the horizon, I've been chained to my books and chained to my school.  Intermolecular Forces intermingle with Ecology and Conservation, The Great Gatsby, Statistics and Calculus, Development and Resources, and the correct conjugations of the verb 'avoir' in the past and future.  My brain is basically fried.

We're all a little insane at the moment.  I hate pretty much every person in my class for some stupid reason.  Their voice gets on my nerves, they're pathetic, they spas out every two seconds about something really stupid.  Basically it comes down to, I just don't care anymore.  I feel apathetic at the moment.  Frozen in time.  Grrr.  That's it.  I feel Grrr.  Always my explanation for things that frustrate me to a breaking point.  It's grrr.

So now.  Good Friday.  A highly religious holiday, if you're Christian.  To me, it seems even more important than Easter, more of the message is delivered on this day.  A day to mourn.  I'm not really into the doom and gloom of God, but there really is no getting around it on Good Friday.

This morning I decided to pay my own tribute to the day that I hold so close to my religion.  I wore a dress.  I never wear dresses, but today I did.  I wanted to do something that reminded me of these days that I would have in my past.  A day where family come together and celebrates something so full of mystery and wonder.  It really is a special occasion for us.  A friend of mine, a catholic from South America, stayed at home today.  I nearly did.  How I go to an international school that doesn't allow Easter Monday or Good Friday off, I have no idea.  But there it is.

So when the question arose this morning as to where abouts my class mate was, I told them he wasn't allowed to come.  Quizzical looks came over teacher's faces.  How can someone not be allowed to come to school?  Surely this must be sacrilege!  How Ironic.   Explaining that it was Good Friday to day I got, and I quote, 'Oh, that weird Christian holiday.'

Stunned.  I was stunned.  I'm sorry but Good Friday is simply an extremely important date in the Christian Calender.  Would someone say that about passover or Ramadan?  I'm confused.  Why can these days be so sacred when they are laughed at by some?  What happened to the respect for religion?  Where has it gone?  When did school become more important than a person's faith?

I really don't know.  My faith is being refuted by others as weird.  I can take that there are a lot of weird Christians and many aspects of my faith can be ridiculous at times, but to say that one of the most vital days in the Christian calender is 'weird' is beyond me.  There goes international understanding I guess.

Anyways, my thoughts.

God Bless and Peace.

Only Hope

I read something today that made me think.

On Saturday morning I stumbled out of my bedroom and flopped on the couch fighting off the last of my sleep and basking in the glory of the weekend.  Two days that I don't have to deal with school, after school classes and really stupid people that never seem to go away.  Since nothing happens to work in my house, I never got to see the thing on the 'Gospel of Judas' on the NG channel.  A bit put out by that, I figured I veg out on the computer.  Popping onto Fox News, I just wanted to see what was going on.  I saw something about Katie Holmes and decided that I had nothing better to do, might as well watch some of it.  It popped up and low and behold underneath lay a report on the 'Gospel of Judas'.  Click.

I watched it.  I love the mystery of religion.  I love how there are all of these unlocked doors.  I love the mysteries not only behind my own religion, but others as well.  I don't know what it is.  The tradition, the wonder.  It's so powerful.  Being a Lutheran, I'm always commenting on how the catholics have all this mystery, and I'm always getting retorts from my mother like 'So, What?  You want to become catholic, talk to your grandfather about that."  Yeah, okay mum.  But, I love walking into cathedrals and just taking it all in.  The magnificence of the building and the art.  I love it all.  From the complexities of the rosary to the stations of the cross.  Don't get me wrong, I love my church in the states, the homey feel that it has to it and the welcome that I feel as I sit in the pews.  The only problem is that it's too new.  I have an attraction to history.  This is probably why I was so attracted to this story about the 'Gospel'.

So I'm watching it, when dad comes in and starts asking me about it.  I'm sitting there telling him that there's this priest bloke that is like really intelligent and is actually making a decent argument and not just throwing science aside.  This is something that I have a problem with, on both sides of the religion science spectra.  Generally, if one side does something it is completely thrown out by the other side.  The other day I was caught in a battle during science class about the statement that there is 'no proof for special creation'.  Sorry, but there is about as much proof for the idea that God created us as there is for evolution and all that.  Personally, I have a mixed belief.  I like to take ideas of science and blend them with my faith.  Honestly, I find the Adam and Eve story slightly hoaky, but I don't disregard it completely,  I believe that some amount of evolution occurred...but monkeys?  I don't really like to go there.  Why not pigs?  Just a thought.

Dad said that the priest bloke had a blog too.  So, I looked at it today.  Never got around to it on the weekend.  Father Jonathan Morris is the smart priest bloke.  I read his blog.  The story that caught my eye wasn't his news stories but his story about his choice to become a priest.

This intrigued me because in a way, the story has mirrored my wonderings about my faith.  No, I'm not becoming a priest or anything.  But, seriously, I have had a lot of God moments in my life.  In the last five years really.  I used to sit in my room at night crying and praying to anything that would listen that I just wanted to go somewhere that I belonged.  I wanted to go home.  I would sit in that same room praying that our best friend's daughter would somehow pull through her cancer.  I prayed in China for our best friend to pull through her own cancer, and now again I am praying for their daughter to pull through yet another bout of cancer.  To think, four years ago, the only reason I went to church was to make my mum happy, while I was sure that there was no faith left in me.  I would sit in the pew and pretend to pray while everyone else was really praying.  What were they praying for?  Was there really a God or is this all just some big sham?  These thoughts were always running through my mind.  I think it was when my grandfather passed away that I found my faith again.  While people found only sadness and anger with God, I developed a sense that there was a reason for this.  Maybe now, he wasn't suffering so much.  Maybe now, he was in a place with my uncle and my great-grandparents.  Maybe that was my call.  While I was searching for proof of God, I forgot that faith was the only proof I needed.  Somewhere inside of me there was this voice telling me to believe.  That there was a reason to believe.  Believing didn't mean that I would have to throw all my ideas of the world out.  But in making that choice I chose an entirely different path for my life.  Before I was confirmed I don't know where I was.  Lost in my own adolescent mind.  One day thought, I stood up and all of a sudden, Holy Communion really meant something to me.  I was no longer embarrassed to cross my self.  The wine that I always looked forward to on Sundays became something bigger.  That dry wafer that got stuck at the roof of my mouth became different.  Suddenly, faith just made sense.  And I was happy again.  I wasn't always dwelling on the bad in my life.  There seemed to be good things too.  I don't know how to explain it.  But it all made sense from then on.

I sound like I was one of those 'alleluia I saw Jesus I'm saved' types.  It really was nothing like that.  I was always raised with the faith.  At one point though, I just found it childish for some reason because I was seeing things with different eyes.  The question is, what would have happened if I hadn't listened to the voice that was somewhere inside of me?  Would I be the same?

There are somethings that are just funny that way. 

Whether you find God in a church, in a Bible, in another person, in a light, or even in you walls (my analogy My walls are like god, they listen but they never tell and they're always around me), I guess one day we all face our pivotal decisions as to whether we put God away somewhere and never look at it again, or whether we keep God somewhere that is always accessible to us and even others.

I Woke Up In A Car

"I've never been so lost, I've never felt so much at home."

Disorienting isn't it?  Waking up in a car wondering where you are.  I remember listening to this song while sitting in the car driving through the streets of Guangzhou I thought that I would never see again five years ago.  I remember seeing things that looked so familiar, and yet so vague.  Lost, but I felt like I belonged.

I grew up here.  This is my home.  It's funny, but it's true.  China is now my home.  When I lived in the States I was unaccepted by many.  I had few friends and in short I became a basket-case.  I was engrossed by the news and politics.  In my mind, the news networks were my only link to something that I knew.  Something that I cared about.  Talking politics or current events to someone at school was like talking to my locker, I just became frustrated.

So there I was, the place that I call home.  Yes, things would be different.  I had been gone for three years, no one would remember me, but still, it would be easier.

The hardest part about moving back to the States was the fact that by the eighth grade, I had had more experiences in the world than any of my own teachers.  I was constantly correcting my History teacher on her teachings about China and other countries in Asia.  The answer that I got back was that that was what was in the text book.  Of course I would get myself into trouble by inquiring when they themselves were last in Asia.  By the end of High School, I was probably best friends with my principle.  I would get in fights with my maths teacher about how I supposedly write my dates 'backwards' (day/month/year not month/day/year).  I got in fights with all my teachers about the spelling of 'colour' and 'favourite' and so on.  I even corrected my french teacher's accent a few times, telling her that she sounded 'too American'.  I scored no points.  Looking back, I'm sure people saw me as arrogant.  I was British, I had the accent, I had the spelling, no one was going to change that in me.  I didn't want what little of home that I had left to slip away from me.  I guess I was a bit of a cow back then, I didn't realize it though.  I was being me.  I couldn't understand what all the hype was about 'yank football' when they had to wear all those pads.  What was so rough about a sport like that?  I grew up on rugby and proper footie.  I went to one school dance and was ridiculed because I danced with the resident gay guy.  So what?  That apparently made me gay as well.  I was asked out by a few guys, but I constantly made the excuse that I had a boyfriend in China...even though he had a girlfriend that wasn't me.  I ended up laying all of my time on swimming, the only friend that I had for about two years.

At the same time that I say that I didn't like being in the States, I have to say that I am glad that I went back.  I was able to experience things that I didn't have the opportunity to in China.  The freedom one has to walk down the street with a Bible was a shock for me.  I loved the fact that there were so many churches in a ten mile radius of the city centre.  I loved the fact that I could go to a restaurant and order a steak, and know that I was going to be dead when it came out.  To go out and have a proper breakfast, with sausages.  Biscuits and Gravy.  Try explaining that concept to a British person.  I could walk into the supermarket and have a wall of dairy products, breakfast cereal and bread.  Do you know how much bread there is in one town in the United States?  Wonder Bread, Sourdough, White, Wheat, Potato, Multigrain...the list goes on.  In China, we had to make our own bread...it sounds so primitive.  A bag of Doritos in the States doesn't cost $12  and they're not past their expiration date.

So why am I having these thoughts again??  Why do I feel so far from home, yet so at home?  Where is home for me?  As the end of my high school career ends, the real world becomes so close to me.  College, driving.  Both a scary prospect.  I don't think you will ever meet a seventeen year-old so afraid to get behind the wheel.  Basically, three days after my prom, I'm swept up on a plane an bound for the place I never thought I'd go back to.  I'm leaving my home.  Have I already left?  They say that 'Home is where the heart is'.  An over used cliche...but I don't know how it applies to me.  Where is home?  I guess its my curse to just not become attached to a place.  I leave and that's it.  It was a place I lived for a while, that's all.  Like a hotel room.  Maybe that's all it is for me, the world is my hotel, and I just change rooms a lot.