Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Sunday/Monday - Coping

I apologize for taking a blog break here. It has been a bad time for me. Let me tell you about our train trip first. We had first class sleeper cars. I didn't know what to expect really. I had seen pictures. We had 4 bunks in our berth. Josh was in the berth right next to ours and his bunkmates turned out to be 17 year olds on holiday. Within minutes of stowing our luggage I spotted a cockroach. Turns out that our train was full of them. Rachel had already determined that she wasn't crawling into her bunk and was bunking with the mommy. At any given time through our trip I would look up and see 3 or 4 crawling on the wall and that many crawling on the floor. To say my skin was crawling was an absolute understatement of the year. Once the kids were settled and asleep – I started to sob. How in the world would I cope with this for the next 12 hours? I was essentially in a 5x5 jail cell. Ed was doing his best to console me, but every stop we made on our journey, I wanted to jump out and find the nearest airport to fly home. To say I am homesick would be the second biggest understatement. But alas, we finally made it Kerala. I don't think I slept even an hour that night. I greeted Blessy's parents, found my room and collapsed. I slept all morning and into the afternoon. It wasn't really restorative sleep since my stress level was still far to high. In actuality it took 2 days to calm down from this new life of living with bugs. Lots of bugs.

Monday was just an assimilation day. I spent a lot of time in prayer. My devotional had an interesting statement. “God wants to give you the tools to live successfully or leave successfully (ie a situation that you shouldn't be in).” To be honest – I wanted part B but would be happy to have a part A. One thing I knew, I was not currently living successfully. I was merely coping. So I began to pray for God to show me how to live successfully in this new reality. Funny thing, He reminded me that I packed Burt's Bees insect repellent. I started using it. Seems to be working. I also used it in the bathroom by the window. We had no mozzies in the bathroom after that. So slowly but surely it is getting better. I am still homesick though. Reading everyone's Facebook status on making Christmas cookies, wrapping presents, decorating and the like, makes the reality of missing Christmas that much greater. Good news – I have successfully learned how to eat everything with just my right hand. No utensils required. Sad news – Rachel just can't eat with her right hand. She is a lefty and that is that. So she may offend some, but I will not even try to force the situation. We are Americans and we use toilet paper and we wash our hands. That is our reality.

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