Home

So, we made it safely back home (after disposing of all our water in Taipei) and are glad to see that our house is still standing.  For those who haven't heard, we're having TWO photo nights- one this Sunday, August 20 (I think it's the 20th) in BV and then one in Denver at Zach's mom's house on August 25.  For more info, please email me.  After five days, I am still feeling some major jet lag.  Weird, because we didn't feel it a bit going to Asia.  Please be thinking of us as we try to sort things out with jobs (I might not have one anymore), bills, and the house.  We went into debt towards the end of the trip because we used all our savings and didn't have quite enough support, but we are trusting that He will provide.  I am thinking of selling some framed prints from the trip to help with that.  It's good to be back home with our friends, and I was able to see my little sister before she heads to college in the fall.

We are finding that the hardest question to answer is, "So, how was it?"

How was it?

Well, we travelled by foot, plane, bus, tuk-tuk, mini-bus, taxi, motorcycle taxi, sleeper train, pickup truck, gondola, sky train, elephant, bamboo raft, ox-cart, and longboard.  We ate yak yogurt, tsampa, strange fruits, fried chrysanthemum root, lots of Chinese food, Thai food, Lebanese food, Cambodian food, Italian food, and Pizza Hut.  We met more people than we can keep track of.  We goofed off with our friends and spent days in the ICU with Grandma.  We spoke Chinese, English, Spanish, Tibetan, and bits of Thai.  We prayed.  We helped the kids with homework, made coffee for Dave and Lisa in the mornings, offered sympathy, fixed computers, offered camera instruction, entered data, and brainstormed.  We handed out medicine to those who needed it.  We gave our money away to beggars and we bought them meals.  We got drenched by monsoons and stuck on the Cambodian border.  We were charged the steep "foreigner price" and the discounted "friend price".  We saw things that seemed miraculous and things that appalled us.  We once spent five and a half hours wandering around Bangkok looking for a computer part that we never found.  We studied.  We rode elephants, pet tigers, and lived with a bunny that would come when you called it.  We met pastors, athiests, teachers, doctors, monks, homeless people, and a transvestite shoe sales...person.  We shared our testimonies.  It was exciting, confusing, tense, comforting, enlightening, disappointing, inspiring, frustrating, and encouraging.  We're glad to be home, but we miss it (and by "it", we mean Bangkok, the mountains of Tibet, our Tibetan friends, our Chinese friends, our American friends, public transportation, and real Chinese food).

So, when we hear, "How was it?" , there's a long pause, and we look at each other, take a deep breath, and say, "Um... good."