Shangri La

I miss Shangri La the most. I miss Xien Xe, Jah Shua and all the kids at the orphanage.
I remember arriving every morning to the orphanage and having the kids rush out to me. "Shao tsung hao!" they would yell. I miss that...
I wonder how they are doing. I wonder if they miss me as much as I miss them. I hope they know that I think about them constantly. Their smiles are burned onto the back of my eye lids. Whenever I close my eyes, or pause during my hectic day of TV watching, its their wind burned faces I see.
I would give anything to fly back to Shangri La, just for a day, so I could see them again. I would hug each of them and tell them that I missed them...
I hope I impacted them, because they impacted me so much that it hurts.

What to do...

My college applications are done. I have applied for a few jobs and contacted the new family shelter about volunteering. So, what do I do now?...
Everyone wishes to have no responsibilities. My high school friends envy my free time and my lack of a schedule. But its killing me!
In between my runs and workouts I sit at home, watch TV and listen half-heartedly to my mothers incessant nagging. She keeps asking me to do something. BUT I HAVE NOTHING TO DO!...
I have never been so stressed out by nothing in my entire life.

Time has Passed

During my time in Asia I grew to view the world, myself and the problems that plague our society in a whole new light.
Though I worked hard, spending hours at the orphanage in Shangri La, building a new school in Cambodia, and teaching in Yongshuo I also had a lot of excess time to contemplate what I hoped to achieve from my journey and life in general.

I struggled for my entire trip with the question “How can I change the world?” In Shangri La, I sat in a café for hours reading the books I brought from home, frantically scribbling my thoughts on paper, and drinking milk tea. I felt I was making progress, that my thoughts would blaze new trails for humanitarian efforts, and change the world forever. But at the end of the day I had nothing more than a bad headache and two notebooks full of indecipherable scribbles.

When renewing my visa in Hong Kong, I met with a big businessman who was a friend of the executive director of Global Roots. In our meeting he told me that “To make change in the world, people need to listen to you and to do that they need to respect you. Before you can make an impact, you have to be successful.” My ideas were not unique. People have been talking about “happiness for all” and “world peace” for as long as the written word has existed. For my ideas to matter, I had to matter.

I took a year off after high school because I wanted to see what I could do, without school, or any form of support. If I could help people without an education, then why waste my time and money in a classroom? I now know, in the bottom of my heart, that college is where I need to be. I need to be stimulated and forced outside of my comfort zone. I want to learn and succeed more than almost anything in the world. I say ‘almost’ because the things I want most in the world have been said for generations. I hope to be one of the voices that lead my generation to realizing those goals.

Final Blog

I’m sorry its taken so long for me to write this final blog, but readjusting to being home has proven to be far more difficult than I had ever imagined. I have been thinking back on the experiences I have had over the last three months, and I can barely believe that I had them. I traveled many miles both physically and mentally, and through it all I learned a lot about myself and the world. I feel blessed to have been able to travel like I did while contributing my time to something meaningful, and I strongly encourage anyone who is even contemplating taking a gap year to seriously consider it. Thank you all for following my journey and supporting me along the way. I am so happy to be home with my family and friends, though I am excited for the next adventure in my life… whatever it may be.

Homeward Bound

My last few days in Cambodia were just what I needed to unwind. It was the end of my trip, and the fact that my next flight was going to bring me home, and not to some foreign country blew my mind. But just when I was getting used to the idea, I realized that I didn’t have a Chinese visa!
My original plan was to fly into Shanghai and spend the day at Patrick's house. However, because I didn't have a visa, I couldn't leave the airport. Which wouldn't have been all that bad, if it wasn't a 13 hour lay over.
I sat, I walked, slept and thought... for thirteen hours. I did end up accomplishing a few things that I had always dreamed about doing. I was kicked out of Burger King for sleeping, for example. I also perfected the art of sleeping on airport benches with an armrest every two seats, while holding on to my stuff. So, I suppose I can't call it a complete waste of time.
The worst part of the whole situation was that I was waiting to get on a plane for a 14 hour flight. Luckily, I had a lot to mull over and I spent much of that thirteen hours thinking about my trip, as I tried to digest all of my experiences. What I realized was that in order to fully appreciate my experiences, I needed to talk about them with people who know me. I have changed, but I'm not sure how. And traveling around Asia, volunteering for Global Roots had begun to seem normal to me.
Also, it was apparent to me that the hardest parts of my trip were internal. I was isolated by the language barrier, and so it was easy to slip into the introversion that dominates my personality. I began to ask the answerless questions: What is the solution to the world's problems? How do you acheive peace and happiness for all people? Who am I? And I became obsessed with finding the answers.
It will take me a long time to fully grasp everything that I have seen and done, and I hope that you are around when that happens, because I'm sure there are some very important lessons in there.