What I Do on My Day Off

It's really wonderful to have a day of rest. By rest I mean a day in which I only worked for four hours, researched for one hour, and spent the remainder walking in the woods with a friend, picking up a book from the library, biking to Wal-Mart for trash bags and toilet paper, cleaning the apartment whilst listening to audio Russian lessons and YouTube videos about free market economies, and finally, baking up some hot cross buns with which I have every intention of blowing Panera Bread's mind.

The buns aren't done yet, and they will probably be minus the crosses. It seems wrong to make hot cross buns on a not-Easter weekend, but this is coming from someone who doesn't do Christmas music before Thanksgiving either. Just ask Brittany, my room mate. She knows.
Still to come is the book I got from the library, about Ghengis Khan. I'm in one of those Central Asian moods again, mostly due to a study abroad program my supervisor suggested casually at work yesterday. It's in Kyrgyzstan. (Anybody wanna buy a vowel?)

This is a map from a Wikipedia article about Kyrgyzstan that I was reading earlier. Kyrgyzstan is the little one tucked between Khazakstan and China and smattered with brown, indicating that people there speak a lot of, well, Kyrgyz. It borders Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and it's just a hop-skip-and-jump (only over a few of the most colossal mountain ranges on the planet) to Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

According to Wikipedia, which was quite thoroughly cited for once, the population is mostly Muslim, with some Russian and Ukrainian orthodoxy thrown in. It used to be part of the USSR. Interesting place. And then there is this program that almost seems too good to be true for a history major who would like to get acquainted with that mysterious part of the world and already has a smidgin of Russian to give her a start. There are summer internship opportunities with NGOs if you go in the spring. And to top it all off, the program is in Bishkek, the capital, where I believe there are some friends of friends living. So the ends of the earth are not really that far. And of course Ukraine is right on the way and I could make a little jaunt to see some people who are very dear to me.

So many dreams. The crazy thing is, these opportunities are open to me. And it's not something I take lightly. Even though spending the night in a yurt and learning a language a tiny portion of the world's population uses (not Russian, the other "Stan" languages) seems frivolous, it isn't. I don't understand where my life is headed exactly, but I know that something beautiful happens when worlds collide. Something in my soul is wrapped up in this part of the world. When I tell people I'm planning to major in history, they say "Going to be a teacher, hm?" And I look at the floor and say "No, not exactly."

It isn't that being a teacher is tame by any means. Ask any teacher with a classroom full, working 8 to 5 and then into the evening, riding the highs and lows of light bulb moments and discipline issues. This is an ultimate and fulfilling goal for some people, and rightly so. But for me, there is an urge to push further, past the expected. Maybe it's stubbornness or pride, wanting to prove the expectations wrong. Wanting to prove the voices in my head wrong when they tell me I don't have the gumption to do certain things, to talk to people I don't know how to talk to, or to learn to do jobs I never thought I could do.

Well. I don't have the gumption. Not yet. Or the skills. Not to do some of the things in my head.
But one thing I am learning at school, at my job with Kay, who seems to know how to push me way out of my comfort zone without actually making me bitter, is that I can learn. I can't just sit around waiting for ninja skillz to fall on my head. And in beautiful correspondence with that is the promise of Proverbs that God does give wisdom to those who seek it. It's a thing to be sought.

Well. In the time that has elapsed since I started this entry, I have managed to burn the hot not-crossed buns. This is a grave disappointment, because I was so proud of them and they took a lot of time to make. I will probably eat them anyway. A little charcoal never hurt anybody. After all, it's just the undersides that are pushing inedible. Darned oven. Turn my back for six minutes and it's toast. I mean buns. You know what I mean. My head is still in the steppes of Central Asia.

And now for my rendezvous with Genghis Khan, that old scoundrel...