Monday, October 24, 2011

Then and Now 19 - Hookah

Then and Now 19 - Hookah
Time: Mid-2007, single and at the hostel.

I wandered around the main city for hours, seeing strangers, window shopping, and following bus routes on foot to get the lay of the land. I was pretty beat when I got back to the hostel that night. I had just crashed on my bed, eyes heavy, when a familiar voice called out, "Hey!" It was Ken, wondering if I wanted to go hang with him, Harry and Vicki at a hookah bar. I shook the cobwebs out of my head and agreed immediately. The two of us went outside to catch a late night bus, and in no time, we were at our destination.

All four of us met up in a cozy suburban alley between two normal looking houses. The lights were off in both of them, but there were streetlights that provided more than enough light to look around. After a bunch of hellos, hugs and handshakes, we all went down some stairs that led to the basement of one of the houses. Inside, we were in a dark room that was occupied by a number of locals. Everything was very calm there, though there was an undercurrent of hushed excitement, and a sweet smell in the air. The four of us took a seat, and Harry told us that the last time he had come to this place, he had toked from an incredibly smooth hookah, and that he wanted to get the same one again. The only problem was that he didn't know the word for "base" in the local language to ask for the "hookah with the wide base" to get it again.

Coincidentally enough, that was one of several hundred "simple" words I had memorized in the previous few weeks. I told him the word, the whole table cheered, and soon enough, a local girl came up to us and asked us what we wanted. Harry told her about the special pipe, and off she went to bring it to us. In the meantime, we had a conversation about race, or more specifically, which combinations of race and gender were considered the most attractive to the world's population. It was only discussing other people's perceptions on the issue, not our own, so it wasn't that serious.

When the hookah showed up, I started to have an even better time. I had only ever smoked cigarettes and a single cigar in my entire life, so when I took my first toke of that thing, I was absolutely amazed by how smooth the hit was. The taste was shockingly sweet and good, the smoke didn't burn at all, and it tasted even better on the way out. It was, literally, the best smoke I've ever had in my life. I must have been making a mild "O" face at that point, because everyone at the table snickered and congratulated me on my obvious first toke of a hookah pipe.

From then on, it was a relaxing night of hit after hit, topic after topic. Harry told us all about an excellent banking job he had lined up for himself in America. Vicky told us about some missionary work she was doing for the locals. Ken and I joked about our trip to the beach, about me getting tossed into the water, and how everyone except me had been attacked by jellyfish. We also discussed whether we would date any of the local girls. Ken said that if it happened, it happened, and he didn't award or take away points for where a girl came from. I felt the same: a woman's heart was the most important to me, and her birthplace was just an interesting point. After a while, we all split the bill, then headed back up outside to go home.

Ken and I took a taxi back to the hostel, and on the way there, he got into a conversation with the driver. Thanks to Ken's polite questions and inquisitive mind, I learned the local word for "seatbelt" that night. In no time, he and I were back home. We took showers, complimented the great taste of the hookah through our respective curtains, dried up, said good night, then went off to bed.

That was a real turning point of a night for me and my friends. It was the last time I ever saw Harry, because he was leaving the country pretty soon after that. Ken and Vicky ended up getting together less than 24 hours later at her apartment, and the two of them became a bit too busy to hang with me much more. As for me, I didn't let a few goodbyes slow me down, even though I was sad to see my friends leaving. I still got to see Ken and Vicky one more time, when they came by for my party in Then and Now 4 before they finally left the country for good a bit later.

That's about all I remember Ken, Harry and Vicky. If I remember any more tidbits of them, I'll be sure to put them in a future "Odds and Ends" post.

As for today...

I woke up at 11:00.
I hung up wet laundry.
I went out with my son and wife to the beach to play in the water, then we all got lunch, then we went home.
I watched TV.
I played video games.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I came home.
I ate dinner.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I did the dishes.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I watched internet movies with my son.
I slept.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Strength, jealousy and fear

About a week ago, I got my first traffic ticket in the mail for doing something that's completely legal in America, but not here. When I went to go pay, I opened my wallet and thumbed past nearly US$1000 waiting to be deposited in my wife's account, took a couple of bills out and took care of it.

I really didn't care. It's hard for me to get excited about having that much money, or being penalized for this or that, knowing that almost every last bill in my wallet is going to pay for some sort of family expense. That money might as well have been pocket lint.

And that got me thinking... how did it come to this? Of course it's because I got married, but how did so many things go so wrong, so quickly? There had to be some kind of common thread running through all the things I gave up to take care of my family. My freedom, my time, my money... all that stuff left at the same time, so they had to be connected somehow. And slowly but surely, I finally understood what it was that I gave up that bound all of these things together: it was my strength.

What is freedom, if not the ability to choose your path in life, work hard for what you want, and deal with the consequences through your own strength? In addition, money is power, time is untapped potential to express yourself, and adventure, dating and charity also require indomitable will. When I married, I gave up my strength so I could protect and care for those close to me.

I compromise because my wife and I, while similar in many respects, are different people. To do what I want would mean forcing her to do things she doesn't want to do, things which aren't possible with family life anyway. And even traveling a bit a week or hanging with a friend or two makes no difference, because no amount of anything ever returns my old life to me. I sacrifice because my son needs me to be there for him, and to do what I want would mean spending little time with him. I don't want to give up power over my life and my dreams, but I must.

It wasn't always like this. Back in my unmarried days, I was a true man: I took charge, was a leader, experienced new things, cultivated charisma and maintained a powerful attitude of perseverance. I went out and tried new things, and did what I wanted to do. More importantly, though, I combined being a confident beast with honor during my unmarried time. I did what I wanted, but I also stepped on no toes and hurt no person as I enjoyed my life.

Now, for the sake of my family, I have become a workhorse loser by suppressing that part of me who follows his dreams, and letting go of my ability to choose my own path in life. I have returned to the life coasting, order following, goalless complacent boy I used to be. So now, because I'm left without the ability to pursue my goals, or even have much of a say in what I do with my everyday life, an old, shameful feeling has bubbled to the surface once more.

Jealousy walked with me every day of my depressed time, and largely manifested as my stomach feeling like it was tied in knots when I saw other people enjoying what I wanted. I never felt it after I went abroad and those two lost weeks went by. Yes, I saw men with things I wanted, but I never felt like taking anything from them. I never considered another man's property, experiences or relationships anything more than inspiration for me to work harder and better my own life.

As a married man, though, I find myself in the same position as I was in my depressed time. For example, I still see foreigners every day. Four years ago, they would have been potential friends. Now, they're just constant reminders of what I gave up, and will never again have, in my life. They have the power to go out and enjoy life when they want; I don't. They have the power to change and become whoever they want to be; I don't. Every time I see other men out with their beautiful, smiling girlfriends, riding around town with their friends, drinking at a bar, or just hear them telling stories of the great weekend they just had, I feel like someone just punched me in the gut. I can't stop thinking about how I used to be these guys, and I can't forget that I'm never going to experience that young, free, powerful kind of life again.

Similarly, when I was in my depressed years, I hated Alphas and anything like them: CEOs, the police, the rich, America, guys with girlfriends, if they had strength, I hated them. It wasn't just people who abused their power that I hated, either: it was anybody stronger than I was. When I walked by men with beautiful girlfriends, I seethed. Who is this pop-collared loser with that hot girl? I would think. I deserve her more than he does!

When I finished working on myself and had acquired the same strength that I once decried those other people for having, I realized how much of a loser that I used to be. It wasn't those people in positions of power that I hated; it was my own self that I loathed, and I was externalizing my fears, failures and laziness onto people more successful than I.

But now, nothing I do can improve my life. And those thoughts I had about frat boys with girlfriends in college? Now they come to me regarding foreign men here, who have hot girlfriends, make lots of money and have fun, and all the while not even making a token effort to experience the local culture or learn the local language, and instead spend their time bar hopping, clubbing, going to the beach, eating at McDonald's and drinking at Starbucks... the same things they did back home. I don't know what's more striking: the similarity between my current thoughts about other foreigners and my old thoughts about frat boys, or how self-destructive and useless these thoughts are in the first place. I fight these thoughts every day, and I would change my life to keep them from coming in the first place, but I'm married. All I can do now is struggle to keep them from taking root.

And all of this is connected to my video game addiction. How could I go from playing video games twelve hours a day as a depressed boy, to playing them a few hours a day abroad, to having them boxed up and ready to sell because I felt I didn't need them anymore, to the man I am today? The one who hoards games and plays them by the dozens every year? The answer, again, is strength. I have limited power over everything in my life: money, work, sex, chores, time... and everything requires at least some kind of approval of my capricious wife. But compare this to before I got married, where I answered to nobody but my boss, who paid me for my time, and my honor.

Video games are the last shred of power I have over my married life. Yes, they're not real, and yes, I realize that. But without them, I would have no control over any part of my life, no matter how illusory. I save the lives of imaginary people and explore imaginary worlds not because I believe they exist in an alternate dimension or anything, but because when I play video games, I can forget for just an hour or two a day that I have no power over anything else. What was once a surrogate parent became a hobby, then an obsession, then something I no longer needed, and finally came back to filling a void in my life.

Truthfully, if there's one "benefit" I've received from losing all of my strength to marriage, it's that I no longer have any fear. Aside from serious things happening to my family, like assault, rape, a car accident, kidnapping, drugs, murder or something similar, I don't really care. My entire life feels like a derivative, unsurprising, (barely) interactive movie that just keeps going on and on. After nearly four years of this, very few things even feel real.

My boss is yelling at me for something stupid. So? My wife and mother-in-law don't do it as much now, but it's been a week since either of them popped, so one of them is due to go off any day now.

I won some money in the lottery. So? It's not like I'm going to spend it on anything but rent and bills.

I have more useless work training to go through. So? I wasn't doing anything fun at home.

Only 5797 days to go, and I'm free. So? By then I'll be in my late fourties, and life's pretty much over then anyway. And I'll still be married, which means my wife may end up too unhealthy or uninterested to follow me on my travels around the world, so I'll probably just end up buying a house with her and waiting around in it for a decade or three to die.

I had a good trip with my family today. Great, but we're heading back home now, work is two hours away, I have chores waiting for me tonight, I'm going to wake up tomorrow to more sitting around and staring at the wall, and somebody's probably going to pop before I go to work again.

Before I got married, people begged me to take jobs that I applied for. Strangers approached me every day wanting to get to know me. Friends (including my wife) literally apologized to me for the slightest mistake, because they didn't want to risk losing me as a friend. I helped others through my words, my money and my work. I was thanked, trusted and honored in return for my efforts, but even when I received nothing, it didn't matter to me. I helped people where I could because I wanted to, and when my work was done, I was off to do something adventurous to make myself even happier. And all of this was possible because I was an amazing, powerful human being who tempered that strength with honor.

Now, people walk by me without a second glance. Nobody needlessly apologizes to me; they expect apologies of me. Nobody cleans up my messes or buys me gifts out of the blue; they get those things from me. All I do is work, sacrifice and compromise. People still make use of my efforts, but not only is my work usually not rewarded (or even recognized), but I don't have that personal strength to go off and do something I want to do to balance it all out. My life is a cycle of working for others and sitting around, with my desires forever pushed back or outright shut down by the needs of my family.

The vast bulk of my life is a wash, and it doesn't matter if good or bad things happen to me. Whether I solve a problem in my life or not, whether I get this or that monkey off of my back or not, things will just keep decaying or outright falling apart, and I'll spend the rest of my life cleaning up other people's messes. I won't be going back to the man I was, no matter what I do, and no matter how hard I try. And all of this is because I gave up all of my strength when I married.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Then and Now 18 - An Empty Stop

Then and Now 18 - An Empty Stop
Time: Late 2007, single and at my apartment.

One day off from work, I decided to go out into town and see something that wasn't on my subway map. I don't remember where the stop was, but it's to be expected because I just picked a random place to go to, one that clearly had no touristy places labeled next to or around it. I knew something had to be there, and I was going to find out what... so after I got dressed and spiked my hair, I took a quick bus to the subway station to see what I could see that day.

When the subway car reached my destination, I got off and started to walk in a random direction. I chose to walk down an alleyway that was barely wide enough to accomodate a single car going in one direction, and checked to make sure that I wouldn't get hit by anybody going to or from the subway station.

The alley was lined on both sides with short apartment buildings. Laundry hung outside to dry here and there, some of the locals' doors were open to let the heat out and a breeze in, and I even saw a few people watching TV inside their cozy places. I passed by an older lady, and though she gave me a bit of a stare as I passed, I just half-grinned at her and kept on my way. I walked for a while down this alleyway and past several dozen more tiny apartment complexes, and when they were all behind me, my journey continued down a non-descript road filled with zooming cars. It was a peaceful walk, and though there wasn't much to see, I was still satisfied that I could cross this stop off my list, and turn around to go back to the subway station to see one of the last few things that was labeled on my map.

But at that moment, off in the distance, I saw a two-story temple erupting out from behind a gas station in front of me. I figured I might as well head over to see what was what before I headed back. It was beautifully decorated, and for a temple of its massive size, it was almost completely deserted. There were a few locals here and there praying, but for the most part, I was almost completely alone. I wandered around quietly so as not to disturb my spiritual neighbors, then went up a flight of stairs that led around the back part of the temple. From up there, I could see that I was pretty close to the ocean, and I saw a beautiful sight that some other buildings had obscured before: there was a biking and jogging trail that cut between the lapping waves of the ocean, and the thick grasses of a forested plain that waved in the breeze. Having seen the beauty of the temple, I decided it was time to go natural and see the trail.

But as I was leaving the temple, I heard a familiar music beat. It had been a while since I had heard this song, but once I had followed it to its source and it was loud enough, I placed it immediately: it was "The Man with the Machine Gun" from the soundtrack for Final Fantasy 8, my favorite video game of all time. I snickered and wondered why they'd be playing this song at a temple of all places. The song was coming from an arm of the temple, way off to the side, so I walked over to it and peeked in.

The arm was a long and tall, but quite narrow, hallway that led back into the internals of the temple. The song was being piped in through a PA system above me, and on both sides of this narrow arm were several centerpieces featuring elaborately designed scenes, where intricately carved dolls and puppets were positioned. From where I had come in to where the path led out, I saw that it showed the history of the country. Some of the pieces showed dolls fishing, others showed how the locals dealt with historic invaders and subsequent occupation, and the last one showed the country as it is today: a mix of old traditions and new culture and experiences. It was quite an amazing scene, something I never expected to accidentally stumble upon. When I had finished looking around, I left the temple and headed to the nature trail.

There were several locals going up and down on bikes and on foot. With the temple behind me, to my right was the boundless, rolling ocean and several boats sailing upon it. To my left was a huge, absolutely massive field of tall grass, and a forest that semi-circled its way far, far behind it. I could see where the buildings that I had walked by before were originally blocking my view of this place, just to the side of the forest. As I walked down this peaceful trail with locals all around me, the ocean sent gust after gust of relaxing wind past me and through the grass. It was serene.

The trail continued for about thirty minutes until I was skirting the forest itself. Eventually, I reached a T-intersection where the trail went straight towards some old houses, and left towards a massive canal. Amid the trees, I saw a couple of old, but cozy-looking, house-farms, and outside the one at the little intersection was a young local boy, who was drawing some pictures in the dirt. He looked up at me with mild surprise, then told me that I had to go left to get back to the subway station. I thanked him and moved on.

So at this point, the sun was starting to set, and I was feeling a bit beat. I followed the edge of the forest for a very brief time until I found myself at the canal that I saw earlier. I walked along the left side, casting occasional glances to the right and into the ditch, and to the left at some more house-farms.

The house-farms were amazingly beautiful. They were between me and the setting sun behind them, and the water where locals had planted submerged crops reflected the sun's rays as glittering cyclones of orange and red. I passed several farms, and every time I drew next to them, the sunlight found another way to cast lazy shadows over the buildings, or come off of the water to meet my eye. The canal was interesting, too. It was mostly dry and empty, but in some places there were tiny pools of water where trapped fish were desperately swimming around. Around those little pools were local fishermen, relishing the easy catches that these fish had made of themselves, and pulling them out to clean and sell at the market later. I admired their resourcefulness.

It wasn't long before I had walked all of the way back to the subway station. I was still pretty far from the stop that would take me home, so I decided to see just one more thing before I got there. On my map, there was very little left for me to see of the main city (that was labeled, at least). But one of those things was a sports stadium, and it was on the way home, so when the car pulled up to its stop, I got off and took a walk to go see it. I didn't know what I was expecting to see. I didn't know if there was anybody playing that day, what sport they would be playing, or even if I had the interest to go to a game. When I rounded several corners around brightly lit local shops with flasing signs advertising their varied wares, I finally found myself face to face with the stadium. And... it was closed.

I shook my head with a slight smile. Oh, no! I thought to myself. It's not going to end this way. So I just kept walking, looking for something amazing to end the trip with a bang. The roads around the stadium were huge, several lanes wide and covered in towering trees. It was night by then, and the streetlights seemed hardly enough to illuminate much more than a small circle of grass around them. It was eerie, and the perfect atmosphere for the final stop of my trip: an art museum.

The place had just closed up, and one by one, the lights were going out in the windows. I rushed over as fast as I could to go see what I could see, which turned out to not be much: the lobby was one of the last places to shut down, and I saw a marble statue of a woman and a beautiful landscape painting before it, too, went dark. When the entire building was swallowed up by the night, it was then that I noticed some spotlights at the corners pointing up at the top of the museum. I smiled and nodded my head in amazement; it looked like an unassailable fortress.

I checked my subway map and noticed that this museum was also on my list of things to see, but I didn't cross it or the stadium off the list. After all, I had barely seen either of them, so I couldn't very well say that I had the full stadium or museum experience. Shortly after, I was on the train heading home to a comfortable bed.

That was one of, if not the, last time I ever traveled as an unmarried man before my wife broke the news of her pregnancy. My old subway map is still in my memories box, and that stadium and museum still haven't been checked off. Maybe when my son is old enough, he and my wife are interested, my wife and I are both not working, the weather's not too bad and I have some money, I'll get to see them.

As for today...

I woke up at 10:30.
I played cars with my son.
I watched TV.
I went out for job training.
I came home.
I surfed the net.
I hung up wet laundry.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I ate dinner.
I came home.
I took my son to eat at McDonald's, then we went home.
I watched TV.
I hung up wet laundry again.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I did the dishes.
I started a load of laundry.
I watched internet movies with my son.
He fell asleep.
I hung up wet laundry yet again.
I played video games.
I slept.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Then and Now 17 - The Two Who Saved My Life

Then and Now 17 - The Two Who Saved My Life
Time: Mid-2007, at my bud's aunt's place, and single at the hostel.

I'll start this Then and Now a bit farther down.

First, even though this has little to do with marriage, I can't let what my best friend has done for me go unsaid. Were it not for him, I would never have had my time as an awesome, unmarried man. Back in my high school days, two really serious things went down in my life. In both of those times, I was a very, very short decision away from running away from home and probably ending up dead on the streets. Even the members of my family that weren't the source of my pain weren't enough to keep me from making that decision. I wasn't all that close to anybody in my family until I was in college, and in my depressed, teenaged mind, they would all have been better off without me.

It was my best friend that kept me from throwing it all away. It wasn't just the fun times we had together, or the talks we had about life, or the unspoken support he offered me while I was still in America. He was my inspiration, my hero, even. All those things I mentioned about myself before I got married (in my Freedom post) were things that I was inspired to by my best friend: the charisma, the humor, the cool exterior, the passionate inside, they were all things I learned from him. He was those things, and I wanted to be him. Just knowing that there was hope, however slim, that I could come out of my depressed days and get to where he was in life, kept me from making that decision to run.

My best friend was the first person to save my life. He kept me alive and living a life of hope, even in my darkest moments. I'm eternally in his debt for what he has done for me. And because of him, I met the second person who saved my life, this time in college.

It wasn't a magical process for me to eradicate my depression. I tried so many things to get better: prayer, positive thinking, leaving school, magic, talking with people about my problems, complaining, ignoring my issues, asking girls on dates... but nothing worked. It was at that time that a girl, Leena, came into my life, and turned everything around. I didn't know her that well at first; she was just an acquaintance of my apartmentmate. We talked a bit, and I thought she was cute, but I didn't bother getting to know her at first. But as she started coming around more and more, I felt less scared around her. And after a time, I started to lust after her. I thought she could be the girl who I not only slept with for the first time, but the girl who could fix my life for me. And yet, no matter how many times that fat, hairy, boring loser I was asked her out, she always said no. Go figure.

It was my 21st birthday when it happened. I was on my way to work at a cafeteria on campus, and at the suicidal bottom of one of my depression waves that usually lasted for several hours before returning me to a steady unhappiness and unease. And out of nowhere, there she was. In this entire city-sized campus, she just happened to meet me right there. She saw that I wasn't looking happy, and asked if I was ok. I don't know why, but I just spilled my guts right there: my family, my depression, everything.

Then she asked me a simple question. It was a question that broke through my exterior, sliced right through me and drove itself right into my soul. I would never be the same after she put it to me:

"Do you want to get better?"

The world spun. I was in absolute shock, and thoughts raced through my mind in a fraction of a second. Did I want to stop blaming others for my problems? Did I want to take charge of my own life? Did I want to change the person I was, and become someone completely different? Would I take that responsibility on my shoulders, and stop coasting through life with a comfortable pain over an uncertain future?

And without further hesitation, I answered, "Yes."

No "if you'll go on a date with me." No "but I don't want to spend ten years doing it." No conditions, no negativity, just a simple, straight answer.

That question focused my mind on fixing myself more than anything before. No longer would I be content to blame my family, or self-diagnosed illnesses that I didn't have, for ruining my life. It was all on me from then on. Within the next year, I dug down deep within my heart and found all the reasons I was depressed. I focused all of my thinking away from depression or anger, and instead on confidence and forward-looking. I forgave or forgot everyone in my life that hurt me, and slowly formed my goal to be an honorable, married man (that second goal would later ruin me), and never again stopped fighting for my happiness. It took me a week to stop feeling suicidal, a month for the worst of my depression to leave, three months for the bulk of it to be gone, and a year to destroy every last trace of it. And just five months after I made that pledge to Leena, I started dating my first girlfriend.

After things fell through with my first and we mutually broke it off, I started working minimum wage jobs to support myself while I tried to find my goal in life. I knew who I wanted to be, but not what I wanted to do. I already mentioned before that my good bud got me to travel with him to this country, and that was what helped me to formulate my goal of going abroad and experiencing life. But to tell the truth, it wasn't just him. Leena is originally from this country, and I wasn't just going abroad to become a new man and live my new dream. That was the biggest reason, of course, but the other was that she moved back to this country just as my good bud asked me to travel with him. I wanted to be with her, so I came to see her.

I started getting back into contact with Leena while I was still at my bud's aunt's place. We set up a time to meet through email, and Leena invited me and my bud to see one of the heads of her church, Daniel. I met and talked with him a lot in America, and I had no idea he lived so close to my bud's aunt. So after I got the time all set up for us to meet, only a day or two went by before Leena and Daniel came to pick up my bud and I and take us to a vegetarian restaurant.

And there she was, this amazing, beautiful, friendly, smart and funny girl that I had pined for for several years. I could barely contain my excitement while Daniel took all of us to eat, but I spent a lot of my time in the car and at the restaurant talking and playing with Daniel's little son, who had looked up to me as a big brother for several years in America.

When we got to the restaurant, I ate one little piece of everything in the shop, because there were just so many choices. Leena taught me how to say, "I ate one of everything" in the local language while I was at it. Daniel even came to my aid when I was showing off my up and coming skill at the local language. At one point, I said the word for "hotel" that I learned from the dictionary, then my bud started to bust my balls about how it was the wrong word. Daniel then took on the stern old uncle personality and told my bud that I was entirely correct, because I was talking about a certain kind of hotel. My bud smirked and shrugged his shoulders in surrender, and I beamed with pride.

We talked and ate for about an hour before Daniel took us all home. And it was only a little bit after I moved to the hostel that I was able to set up a time for Leena and I to meet up again. A quick subway ride after I got her email, I saw the inimitable, intelligent beauty that was Leena once again. I think I blushed a bit there, but I kept my feelings in check. She took me past a bunch of shops to her friend's house, where we all ate lunch together. I told jokes, shared stories of my experiences in her country, listened as they shared their religious beliefs with me, practiced my language skills, and played some games with their kids. Leena took me back to the subway about an hour later, and we met up with another of her friends and his family a few days later. It was much the same fun experience as my time with her first friend's family, but I scared these people's little girl on accident while I was playing ball with her.

On yet another day, Leena took me on a trip up into the mountains to have a picnic with her and her friends. We all met up at the foot of the mountain and chatted for a bit, then loaded up in separate cars and drove up winding roads looking over amazing views of the forests and city below. When we neared the top, we all got out and took a healthy hike up for the rest of the trip. It was a hot day, and the road was covered in dirt from the mountains above. We also saw some wild, homeless dogs sleeping to the side.

The picnic area was a very comfortable spot shaded by trees and at the foot of a very mild hill. It also had a communal barbecue grill for anyone to cook in. We ate so much food up there that I thought I would explode. Leena and I ate with a dozen of her friends, and families from all over the city. Everyone spoke in English that day out of respect for me and my ok skills, but I tried to converse in the local language when I could. I talked with Leena a lot, too, while we sat around in some trees. I knew she came back to take care of her sick father, so I listened as she simply (and humbly) just told me about the long hours at her job. When the day ended, we all went back down the mountain. But instead of going back to the hostel by myself, I went to an independent supermarket to pick up something healthy for Leena's dad. I got a box of Special K, because I wasn't sure if he could take vitamins or something stronger.

I delivered this gift to her at our final meeting together, when I went to her church to meet more of her friends. We talked a lot about life and the importance of helping others with her friends, and when I got Leena by herself, we discussed her parents, dreams and work, and also how much I had grown. After dinner, and meeting the head of her church (a nice old guy with a lot of stories to tell), Leena took me back outside to walk me to the subway station. And it was there that I made my move.

I asked her if she wanted to go to dinner with me sometime. She asked, "As a date?" so I said yes. She got quiet for a bit, then said that she had to think about it, because she was so busy working and taking care of her father. I held out the optimistic thought that she actually meant what she said, but truth be told, I've heard the "I'm not all that into you, but I don't know how to let you down without hurting you" response enough times to know that that's what I was getting.

Still, I didn't let her response get me down. Two days later, I woke up in the hostel with the morning sun settled just behind some high rises far to the east, and in my hand was my cellphone. Since some time had passed, I thought Leena had had enough time to think, so I was going to call her and get her final response. I dialed, pressed the phone to my ear, and was ready to date her.

But as I looked out the window and on the city from that high floor, I was overcome by a sense of smallness, wonder and adventure. Cars were going up and down roads cutting between huge buildings, people were on the streets and ready to live another day, and here I was to experience it all.

"Hello?" Leena said.

I smiled, still looking outside. "Hey, Leena!" I replied. "Listen, I'm sorry for putting you on the spot that night. I know you're really busy taking care of your father and working so hard, and I shouldn't have bugged you about a date."

"Oh!" she responded in surprise.

"Yep. Don't worry about what I said," I replied, "just concentrate on your family for now. That's the most important thing."

"Ok, thanks a lot!" she said back. "I will."

"No problem. Gotta go, you stay cool and let me know if you need anything," I said.

"Ok, goodbye!" she replied.

I let her go. We had two different paths to follow in life, and while hers took her down the road of support for her family, I had a world to explore. Looking out of that window, I knew that life was an adventure, and the only person who could see me through to experience it was myself. That's what the two people who saved my life taught me.

As for today...

I woke up at 12:00.
My wife took our son to his grandma's house.
I played video games.
My wife and son came home, so I turned off the game.
I ate lunch.
I took my son to the arcade, then we went home.
I watched internet movies with him.
I went to work.
I taught students.
I came home.
I roughhoused with my son.
I watched internet movies with him.
I surfed the net.
I cleaned up the floor and table.
I folded and put away dry clothes.
I watched internet movies with my son.
He fell asleep.
I played video games.
I slept.