Until I see you again, there is no such thing as “Goodbye”.

I got up this morning around 7:45 a.m. and just laid in my bed staring at that still ceiling fan this morning and realized I’m going home. I remember my intentions to write a daily blog before I came on this trip, but as the days went by, I would find myself so distracted and busy that I didn’t have time and the time I did have, I felt my blog could wait. I wanted to enjoy every moment that I had in Cambodia and in Thailand. I would sit outside of my hotel room on the patio, or the open space lobby or at a coffee shop with friends and just enjoy the tasteful smoothie, while I soak up the image of nature’s beauty of this magnificent country and just let it take my breath away. I felt my readers would understand that I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to put time and my visit on hold to stare at my ipad for an hour or even half an hour.
I’m a huge believer that time is of the essence, no second should be wasted on frivilous things and to enjoy life at the most. Even though I got to visit the slum areas and see the poverty staring straight back at me, but I also saw peace, tranquility and acceptance, to me that was beautiful. The people in these country live through faulty plumbing, you can smell the sewage, you see the trash piled up as the wind pushes scraps away from the rest of them, the town seems hopeless as you would assume, but what it did teach me was we as “Americans” have this “My way” of thinking of what hopeless means. We feel the need to diagnose and label everything, this is what these peopple live through everyday, yes it’s a struggle, but every time I see their eyes, their smile and it’s not the fake kind. I first came here seeing pity, I left their country thanking them for teaching me and reminding me that resilience isn’t about living in an uptown world, having a house that looks like everybody else and driving around fancy cars, but that it’s about enjoying life, living life and you do what you can and if that completes you then no one should judge you.
We as Americans have the need to fix things, we bombard someone’s country to tell them how to believe, what to believe and to them that what they believe is wrong, that I do NOT agree with, I want to come back not to fix, but to be apart of their community, to work alongside them and if they want their town clean, I’ll help if not, I’ll sit with them and watch the trash fly down the empty streets, this is their town not mine, who am I to tell them how to live? The only thing I can offer them is my friendship.
Right now I’m on the plane back to LAX (Los Angeles, CA) then off to my connecting flight to DFW (Dallas/Ft. Worth). I don’t feel excited about going home, if I had the money I’d stay longer. I’d love to live in Thailand and help Destiny Rescue or help the Lighthouse Orphanage, I felt my purpose in those country then I ever did here in the states. I don’t want to speak, I don’t care to repeat my story over and over, I want to rescue, I want to be alongside my brothers and sisters that are oppressed and remind them of hope. I literally would give up my home, car, status; EVERYTHING just to live in SE Asia and just be apart of their world. Just saying . . . We may have a flawed system, but no country is perfect. Even in the slums of America, we still have aluminum floors or carpet, not dirt or concrete. We may chose to sleep on the floor, but we have charity, welfare and churches literally handed to us if we are in need, it is our choice to find it; here there is NO charity of any kind. If sewer pipes were overflowing a town, someone or some company would get sued or there would be a protective fence to keep children out, here it just flows into the city and small children and animals drink it. We live in a digital world, we know more about celebrity gossips and reality tv shows then we do in other countries, children here are learning to sew, make necklaces, handbags, blankets and clothing, they have very little understanding of celebrity lives. Even if we aren’t given what we “feel” we deserve, if not now, but later someone will feel sorry for us and have us tattle our sorrows on the media to find someone to give us what we weren’t compensated for, but these people . . . who will listen to their sob stories? If we don’t stop what we are doing, I truly believe we will LOSE everything. I would love to move out here in Cambodia and soak up more of their love, appreciation and of course their genuine smile. Thank you Cambodia/Thailand for reminding me that I am not the lucky one, you are. Well, this is all I have to say, so I’m going to close for now, but I thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts.

About these ads