settling in

It is now the third week of the new school year and I am finally feeling as though the children and I have settled into our routine. They pretty much wake themselves up at the appropriate time each day thanks to the fact that I have them in bed at the appropriate hour each night. They know what to expect each day and where they are going. I have my student schedule that is becoming routine, and will be adding new classes around those which I already have.

Coupled with a rather predictable weather pattern in which we currently find ourselves, the routine is understandably comfortable--and comforting to those of us who thrive on routine, pattern and The Predictable.

*-------------------*

My student this morning mentioned that a supposed meteor hit the altiplano of Southern Perú over the weekend, making those who went to investigate this very UNPREDICTABLE event very sick due to extraterrestrial gases, according to the experts, accompanything this meteor. That part of Perú is where I visited in 2000, close to where Lake Titicaca joins the two countries, in Andean highlands that are between 10,000 and 12,000 feet in elevation. The air is crisp and clean, the skies are blue and it feels like you can actually peek into Heaven there. Imagine having your day violently interrupted by a huge steaming rock that fell out of that sky...

They have had a lot of interruptions to Life As Normal in that country lately.

*------------------*

I dreamt about Thailand the other night. It must have been a dream triggered by the recent news regarding the plane crash on Phuket of all the tourists in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. I was fortunate enough to visit Thailand in December/January 1995/96 when the weather tends to be more stable.

I was walking along the beach of Koh Samui. The northwest beach was built-up in what I imagine to be Phuket-style, with the touristy hotels and pools and activities for the tourist trade. Not interested in this side of the isle, I left, walking south, in search of the Koh Samui that I knew, with the rustic bungalowes with no electricity and toilets we flushed with buckets and the vast beaches upon which I could lay on warm, white sand and have fantastic massages by the local ladies and watch pirated movies in small, dark restaurants serving steaming, spicy prawns...

The beach curved sharply to the east, and I was walking now away from the "Phuket" side and what I thought to be closer to the Koh Samui side. The beach seemed to go on forever, but I then realized that, to my left, there was a wall that was partially washed away. I understood then that this area was where all I had previously experienced used to stand--all the stands filled with natives peddling their wares, trying to find the tourist that would pay the highest price and not show too much bartering prowess. The dirt roads upon which you had to avoid the car, or the tuk-tuk, or the elephant that sauntered by. All gone.

-What happened here?- I wondered.

It then dawned on me that this area must have been hard hit by the tsunami of a couple years ago and has never rebuilt due to the fact that this side of the island became ocean, that all was washed away and covered with sand and water, returning the commercial side of the island to a pristine natural beauty that the natives decided to leave henceforth untouched.

*--------------------*

I have been revisiting my former voyages...wishing? Perhaps. But more than anything, in extreme thanksgiving for the great opportunities with which I have been presented to know our World.