No! No laundry!

One thing you learn about traveling in foreign countries is that you just have to go with the flow, whatever the flow is.

Case in point: In one of our hotels on the way to Mount Everest, I saw a laundry slip in the room and thought great!, I can get my dusty clothes washed! I entered "1 pair white socks" and "1 long black skirt" that I'd been wearing (a discreet and wise choice for when nature calls on the Tibetan plain where there are NO trees to hide behind).

When I placed them on the counter at the front desk, the woman looked at me like I was offending her. "No!" she shouted with disgust, waving me off with her hand. "No laundry!"

"But there was a laundry slip in my room," I explained, trying to justify my behavior.

She just look at me again, perhaps thinking I was deaf as well as stupid: "No laundry!"

I slunk away, rolling my black skirt around my sockies so no one else would notice my grievous error.

Moving Day

I was reluctant to get up when the alarm went off: not because I'd only had a couple hours of sleep, but realizing that once I started moving, I'd be in motion or jostled for a very long time today ... all the way to Beijing.

"OK, let's go!"

Beginning with a single step on the journey of many thousand miles

Tomorrow morning is when I to head to Beijing. This is much of the same trip as I did last year, including going to Mount Everest (29,035 feet); my dad was a geologist, so I grew up with him explaining why the world looks the way it does. He became sick when I was 12 and died when I was 16, so I could only hope that somewhere in the ethersphere, his spirit knew how much those early lessons meant to me as I looked at the folded and crumpled landscape of the Himalayas.

When we stopped at the road side, little children often came up to our Landcruiser, looking to sell ammonites they’d found. What a amazing thought: the fossilized remains of sea life, lifted up to 17,000 feet and more, found casually on the ground 50 million years later to be offered up in tiny, dusty hands.

Want to hear a GREAT spooky story?

For those of you who live in Riverside County (or close enough), be sure to go hear a dramatization of one my stories during GHOSTWALK, a classic Riverside annual event.

Every year on the weekend before Halloween, the California Riverside Ballet hosts a very creative fundraiser: spooky stories set in Riverside and usually written by local people … like me!

This year, I wrote a funny spooky story called “How the Moro Blood Orange Came to Be ... or ... What Happened When Harvey Finally Had Enough”! Four or five stories are staged at locations very close around the Mission Inn, and people are led by a tour guide every 15 minutes to the different locations to hear the storyteller give a five-minute story, staged in an interesting location.

Clint and I started taking the boys to Ghostwalk when they were little, and they liked it so much they wanted to go again! Check it out and tell me if you liked my story. (I'll be in Hong Kong on that day.)

October 26 and 27, 5:40 - 11:00 pm
Ghostwalk
Downtown Pedestrian Mall (just west of the Mission Inn)
Contact: California Riverside Ballet
(951) 787-7850

T-minus two and counting

About three weeks before a trip, I start agonizing over “WHY am I leaving my family? WHY don’t I STAY HOME!?” I am over that now. I will cry at the airport, of course, but then like a scared kindergartener on the first day of school who suddenly sees all the wonderful things that the classroom offers --- art supplies, books and a beckoning teacher --- I feel welcomed to set off into the world to discover what new things I can see and learn.

T-minus three days and counting

I tell myself that if something goes wrong, I can always walk home --- it might take a long time --- but I can walk home.

I can’t walk home from Tibet, but I do feel at home in the world. People will help me if I need help, and there’s not really much time that I will be “alone” alone: just the first three days in China and then on my way to Korea and home. That’s really not much time, and I can’t think of any time during my travels when I’ve felt scared. I’ve felt lonesome, but that makes coming home sweeter. I remember how grateful I was last year to be home.

I am interested to see what I think and feel this trip. I was in such awe of merely being in Tibet last year that I missed details. One of my friends said I changed after that trip. I should hope so, although I am not sure what I’ve changed to.

One of our group from last year is a juvenile court judge from Des Moines; he is the fellow who said he has been fascinated with Tibet since seeing a photo of the Potala when he was a boy in a one-room schoolhouse in Nebraska. What a memory to carry for so many years! He wrote to me last night and said “Have a grand trip,” just like that, with the italics: “a grand trip.”

I am sure it will be that … and more.

OK, let's go!

In high school forensics, I heard a speech about “youth in Asia” when I competed in persuasive speaking events ... I couldn’t understand what all the impassioned fuss was about: My school had an exchange student from Finland; why wouldn’t students from Asia be equally acceptable?

I later found out it was “euthanasia.” (Ah, my mistake. Note to self: always define terms in case the audience might not know the words I am using.)

So, when thinking about what to call my blog for my upcoming trip, I thought that “Karen in Asia” would remind me not to take myself too seriously! So, please join me for October and November during my experiences in China, Tibet, Nepal, the Kingdom of Bhutan, Bangkok, Hong Kong and South Korea.

"OK, let's go!" was one of the English phrases spoken by the Tibetan driver of my last year's trip around his country. It reminds me to get in the Landcruiser and let's go have some more fun! In the last year, I have often used to to prod myself into action: OK, let's go!