Yesterday

Hi All, 

Yesterday two days of sleep deprivation caught up with me and I was too exhausted to teach, let alone write. Here are some updates.

The day I got the police officers phone number to report the abuse I'd been hearing in my apartment, I went home to find that they had moved out. 

The door to their room stood completely open and there was nothing inside. It was completely clean, too clean. It seemed almost as if the walls had been scrubbed which just ripped my heart out and I found myself standing at the threshold of the door trying not to cry. Trying to not hear the pleading screams I had heard the night before that still hung in the air. 

 I found it so strange that to an outsider the room looked like any empty room in the world. But for me, the place gave me chills. You could just feel something horrible had happened, and I murmured a prayer for the woman to be safe as I shut the door and headed back to my room. 

.....

Yesterday morning I woke up early, hell bent on getting to school on time. I hailed a song tao and we were going towards my school, when suddenly the driver took a strange turn and parked the car on a side road to drop off the front seat passenger.

Okay no big deal, still got plenty of time to get to school. 

Suddenly I heard what sounded like throat singing, and peered through the back window. The other passenger was red monk. I'm pretty sure they are higher up on the food chain than the orange monks, and they wear these really beautifully colored crimson red robes. 

The throat singing I heard was Mr. Red blessing the driver, and I sat back closing my eyes listening to him chant over the drivers head.

Five minutes pass. Still chanting.

Ten more minutes pass. Still chanting.

It's one thing to know that a monk will be chanting for 20 minutes when you can expect it, sit back and relax. But when you have no idea what's going on and you're sitting there needing to get to school now , I found myself getting really anxious. 

When I finally accepted what was going on an stopped trying to control the moment or will Mr. Red to wrap it up already, I found myself being carried away in this voice. Carried away from the freeway traffic whizzing past us, from the wafts of raw sewage or dumplings that occasionally consumed the air. I just sat in silence, looking at the light red light behind my eyelids, having no thoughts and just listening. When I finally listened, I found the monks voice to be so powerful and I just sat in the back seat, floating.

Moments later the monk stopped, hopped out, and laughed as he walked away into a cell phone store. As the song tao started and then swirled away back into traffic, I found myself smiling and in a state of peace and great compassion. A perfect place to be before starting my day.

....

That peaceful state of mind soon disappeared, that day was long. I was exhausted and wasn't paying attention to my surroundings. 

After school I got stuck in a song tao with 8 smelly high school boys for a song tao comfortably holds at most 5 people. The boys were loud and chowing down on fried chicken and mystery meats covered in this thick sticky orange sauce. We ended up having to drive 45 minutes in the opposite direction of where I live to drop these brats off, and the entire time I was in the sun.

I got stuck next to a kid I called Chubby Mc Chubsters, who chewed with his mouth open, had his gut hanging out of his shirt and kept leaning on me. When I couldn't shuffle over anymore because they kept cramming bodies on the song tao, I was stuck next to Chubby who proceeded to sweat gallons and stick to me.  They had to practically peel him off me when they got off because he had sweat on me so much. Disgusting.

....

In the end, driving in the song tao everyday is teaching me how to let go of things I cannot control and practice being patient. This morning I woke up late because I figured I was going to get to school late anyways no matter what I do. 

This time I had an entire song tao to myself and we went straight to school. Hallelujah!

Thanks for reading and much love!

Love, 

Andi

PS

It's Dec 21st over here and every thing's looking good. No end of the world in sight. Unless you count the song tao experience with Chubby, which definitely was 45 minutes of hell.