Dear moonbeams (day 36),

He was beautiful. Looking back, I should have seen the aging in his eyes. The ones that lit up when he discovered he had found a fellow Christian. Sitting across from him in the song-tao, his story betrayed his youthfulness.

He was brilliant. Learned Thai and English from two years in the camp and a few months out of it. He wanted to return to help his people. The Shan people. In a displaced person's camp on the Burmese border. But today he was visiting his brother in the hospital.

He wanted to give. I wanted to cry. Can a persons heart be this good? Could I unite with him so instantaneously?

***************

For some reason my days here run on uneven intervals. 

I usually leave my house at 8:13. The bus usually leaves at 8:37. The kids are done with lunch at 10:38. Almost every time. It's very strange. 

But what isn't?

I think I have come to expect routine. Funny thing, life: it usually rearranges on us instead. Perhaps if I just started expecting change, I'd be more prepared for things when they hit. 

I was talking to one of the social workers and he was telling me that family planning is in decline. "Everything must change," he told me. It was a scary thought. Everything? The centuries of the organized family unit...that has to change? But why?

My friend has been in the hospital with dengue fever from a mosquito bite and it got me thinking: my life is really good. I wonder if it will always be. 

I've actually been thinking about it a lot lately. Things just WORK for me. Dumb things, big decisions. You name it. My mom's best friend says its based on a kind of positive karma you have with the world. Perhaps it means my major trials are saved for later in life. Maybe I'm being followed by a moonshadow. I don't' know. I just know i feel super lucky. Or given a lot. Or whatever.

But I wonder if I'll get to pay the world back someday. 

In some ways, I saw a lot of myself in the reflection from the boy's dark eyes. 

Moonbeam. His nickname is fitting.