home, sweet home

a dear friend of mine defines "home" as any place where you have:

a favorite restaurant, 

a favorite place,

and a best friend.

i like that definition.  a lot.  but my definition of home is different.  probably because it isn't a definition so much as a feeling.  i think james taylor put my home-sensation best when he said, "there is a feeling like the clenching of a fist, there is a hunger in the center of the chest, there is a passage through the darkness and the mist".  that's what home is to me.  it is a place that melts in through my skin and finds its way into my heart making me ache and ache for it when i can't be there, but bringing such fulness when i can.

i've had many such places in my life.  growing up i always had two homes, two rooms, two addresses, two places to claim and to claim me.  

the great salt lake city

jacob lake, arizona

i've never really known whether to say i am a utahan or an arizonan and have settled on utah mainly for the simplicity of it.  if you say you're from arizona at the north rim of the grand canyon, a long conversation usually ensues rife with information too in depth for most first meetings.  

commuting between these two residences got me thinking early on about the importance of place and how people can change based on the setting they're in.  i'm a different person in utah than i am in arizona.  different parts of me are needed in both places.  salt lake is more normal, more regular, a more stereotypical home where i live with my mom, dad, two brothers, and dog.  when i'm in salt lake, i'm doing things that most americans do: going to school, hanging out with friends, shopping, watching tv, texting.  jacob lake is more wild, unorthodox.  when i'm there the internet is crap, cell service is out of the question, and up until a few years ago, there was no tv to watch.  hanging out with friends means scampering around zion, lake powell, bryce, the grand canyon (of course).  the backyard is a ponderosa pine forest that smells like vanilla when it rains and like heaven even when it doesn't.  each place carries with it its own responsibilities, challenges, and rewards.  i've been away from my arizona home for a long time.  it is the one i ache for most.  sometimes i suspect that redrock sand runs in my veins.

in the past few years, i've put a few more homes under my belt.  chronologically speaking, hawaii ranks third in my home collection.

kailua, oahu to be exact

my parents have some dear friends who live in kailua, auntie jadean and uncle eric.  due to some gross oversight, i don't have any pictures of them to share.  they are some of my favorite people in the whole world.  i've been lucky enough to visit them 5 or 6 times.  since day one, hawaii nestled me into itself making me feel warm, welcome, and sunkissed.  sometimes i have hawaii days when it feels like nothing but that island will do.  a terribly expensive void to fill.

i think i was predisposed to have a hawaiian soft spot.  when i was 5 i used to hang out with my older cousins sometimes.  they spent a lot of time with polynesians.  wishing i was polynesian started then and has yet to stop.  some of the kindest, biggest, most charitable people i've ever come across are poly.  it's part of their culture in a different way.  so i get to be a slightly different me when i am with them, more open, more connected, more free with myself and those things that i have to give. 

scotland would probably fall next on my home timeline.  i went there with my family when i was 16.  it was extra cool because we went during the world cup.  and thus was cemented my life long love for soccer.  but that is beside the point.  when i got out of the car in edinburgh i thought, "i'm home" and kept right on thinking it even after we left scotland behind.  

who doesn't love this?

scotland feels like a high and haunting bagpipe melody to me, chalk-full of that slightly sad wisdom that comes from history.  oddly enough, i get a very similar feeling when i go to the hopi reservation.  something about these places makes my throat catch when i think about them because of the pasts that they are connected to.  my family, in different ways, comes from these two lonely, lovely places.  both are harsh, scotland for its cold, arizona for its heat.  the people who come from them are strong and proud and i feel honored to be linked to them.

walpi, arizona

if you had asked me while i was on my study abroad in vienna if i would ever long for it, i would have laughed in your face.  and then i would have had to eat my words.  these days, i even miss the german.  and the cold german speakers.  i miss being foreign and daily discovering that my way of life isn't even close to being the only way of life.  i miss my house parents, helmut and edith, who i also don't have pictures of... and i miss milka strawberry chocolate bars.  i put on some goooooooood pounds thanks to those.  oh, the joys of being a 19 year old in europe, thinking that eating american food is a novelty and a privilege.  this is the place and experience that really compelled me to find who i am on my own.  and that is an irreplaceable opportunity.

wein, osterreich

lately my blog has taken on a latin flavor.  as has my life.  somehow, through the friends i have made at the elc, i have started to feel a new home-call: latin america.  i've never been there and i get homesick for it.  i love who i am when i'm with brazilians, mexicans, bolivians, argentines, colombians, peruvians.  i can be as loud and crazy as i want.  dancing to heavy-beats is the dominant activity.  humor is a little off color.  and the food is phenomenal. 

it's like i've just been waiting for life to sound like this:

and for james taylor to sound like this:

i love speaking english in a really heavy accent and somehow thinking that makes me bilingual.  i love trying to help people find their place in my culture and, consequently, finding my place in theirs.  i love seeing how many different ways there are to look at the same things.  latins see me very differently than americans do.  i think that's due to a combination of factors: that i am different with them and that they see the world differently.  

sometimes i get afraid that i am going to lose this home before i even get to visit it.  what a horrible fate that would be.

songs

sometimes my itunes gets stuck on one song.  this is not a natural occurrence, something that my itunes does all on its own.  nor is it a technological glitch.  it gets stuck on one song because i make it get stuck on one song.  sometimes, even though that song is embedded deep within the expanses of a playlist, that one song is the only song that will do.

right now, this is that one song:

it's hard to say what determines which song will be the chosen song.  this was my last repeater:

and this was the one before that:

many say that the eyes are the windows into a person's soul.  and i don't disagree with that.  music is the front door, the hallway, the kitchen, the bedroom, and even some secret passageways.  if you can get your hands on someone's music, you have their answers right there for your inspection.  you might not know exactly how to put it all together, but i believe that people's songs can tell you almost everything you need to know about a body.  

teaching

my new class-crush is 18, colombian, and decided to study at the university instead of playing professional soccer. whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

today was the second day of class, a day the school sets aside for diagnostics and i set aside to get to know my students.  yesterday i introduced myself a little bit to them, told them where i'm from, where i studied, that i love soccer and jazz basketball even though they were abysmal this year.  and then i told them about jacob lake.  then we started talking about the idea of being unique.  i said that growing up at the north rim of the grand canyon working at my 88 year old family business is something that makes me unique.  their homework assignment was to to think of something that makes them truly unique and come to class ready to give a 3-4 minute presentation about it.

today was one of my favorite class days ever.  one girl talked about how she cooked pasta in order to get into investigators homes and preach the gospel.  a guy talked about taking bike tours across s. korea.  this is where i found out that my latest glp chose education over pro soccer.  we also learned that one girl has 25 dogs at home and collects more whenever she can and that another girl likes to eat her cereal with eggs.

but my favorite story came from a brazilian student named samantha.  i had her in my class last semester and have always been impressed with her.  she talked about her conversion story.

she is 32 years old and came to america for the sole purpose of improving her english so she could advance in the company she was working for.  her boss told her that she should come to provo to learn because there are a lot of nice people who would help her.  she thought that sounded good, so she came at the beginning of january. when she got here, she was immersed in mormons.  so they, being the good member missionaries that they are, invited her to church.  she went because she thought it would be another good way to learn english.  she liked the way that she felt there, so she decided she'd let the missionaries come over and teach her a discussion.  after their first visit, the missionaries asked her if she'd get baptized on february 19 (about two weeks).  she said "no!  i don't know anything about this church!  it is strange to me!  i am here for my english!"  so, the missionaries asked her to kneel and pray for them.  they then marked some scriptures for her and asked her to read them that night and see how she felt.  after reading the verses, she knew they were true.  "i got my testimony.  i knowed the church is true, that joseph smithe is prophet, that this church is a good church, the right church.  so i called the missionaries in the morning and said to them that i would be baptized."  the missionaries were overjoyed, of course.  and she was baptized with her friend on february 19.

i went to that baptism.  it was  stunning.  i've never felt the spirit like that before.  the meeting was in portuguese, but i understood it.  i don't know that i understood the actual words so much as the meaning and emotion that they conveyed.  i've never been so impressed by the importance and potency of the gospel and the God that it proclaims.  i got a little, tiny taste of what it must be like to be in the mission field and see people convert and change their lives to accommodate this saving grace.

i never dreamed that being a teacher would touch my live in the ways it has.