I have always enjoyed where I live. It is a dusty single lane road that seems to stretch for miles in both directions. The neighbors are quite a ways away and the house is tucked away in the middle of soaring pines and spreading hickory trees. More often than not, the only company we get are the animals in the forest. When a plane passes miles overhead, I always turn to look, because the sound is foreign; I am used to birds and crickets.

In spring the geese flock into the swamp and set up gosling factories. The turkeys are out picking at the newly turned fields looking for bugs or corn from the previous year. The deer are teaching their new fawns the safe paths through the woods.

It is a good home, built for my personality. I am something of a loner, completely content with quiet nights doing my own thing. I seldom seeks others’ opinions before I choose to do things or when I purchase things. I like to live a modestly and the country life of good, hard, honest work is very satisfying.

However, all of this is about to change. I have a new home now. One that is right on the skirts of the city. My lawn isn’t quite big enough to need a riding lawn mower. My next door neighbor is close enough that we have a fence between us. Cars are sure to come down the suburban lane more frequently than my old road. And I think the only animals will be the neighbor’s dog looking for a place to squat.

When most people move, I imagine it is in the opposite direction. They move out to the countryside looking to have a place of their own where their family can grow up. It is stereotypical, but it feels like the only ones that move toward the city are the young, looking for something they don’t have.

I am moving because I am beginning a new chapter in life, one I am excited about, though that is not really a good indication of anything. I have always been excited to start new chapters, whether it was heading off to college, or off to Japan, or even coming home again. In some sense, new chapters are always bittersweet, like sunsets that you wish would just hold still for you to really drink in. They never do and when they slip into night, you turn from the view and head into the house, knowing that tomorrow something new is going to happen.

I will miss the old place, though even that is changing. Why, just yesterday, an Amish horse and buggy passed me as I ran in the quiet of the morning. I waved gave a gruff hello and he responded in kind. It was perhaps just a last glimmer of something honest, a final parting gift from God as I leave. Already the sheep farm up the road is gone and a new house is going up where the deer used to run.

I hope that some day I will go back again and be just as excited to begin that chapter. I do wonder if the old house will look the same. Whenever I go back again to something I left behind, it seems to have lost the luster it grew to have in my mind, whether it was my old high school, my old college, or the little flat in Japan.

But that is a question for another time. For now, I am just going to be excited about my new home, making it my own much as I have done everywhere I have lived.

© Seth Crossman

Here in the states, our quality of life is defined by the technology we enjoy. I can wake up to my alarm clock and stumble into the shower. I can hop in my truck and drive down well paved roads and stop at Dunkin Donuts for a hot cup of joe. When I get to work, which is nicely air conditioned now that warmer weather is upon us, I fire up my computer and check my email and the latest sports scores before the rest of our work crew gets to work and need me to pass out their handheld computers. After they get them, they get in their company vans and drive away just as the street sweepers are finishing up cleaning the city streets of trash.

I could keep going about the benefits of technology. I can pour myself a cup of water from the tap. I can turn on the TV and choose from more than a hundred channels. I don’t have to worry about where I eat or what I eat.

Life in Honduras is much different. The temperature is much warmer all year round. A few places have air conditioning and that is a luxury. They are not educated about recycling and throwing away trash. They throw it on the ground and it accumulates in unsightly piles of plastic along the roads, even in people’s yards. Electricity is not a given and is prone to going off at least a few times a week. As such, meat can be suspect. And certainly don’t drink from local water sources. Drink bottled water. Everywhere we went, we had to watch what we ate. Don’t eat the meat here. The lettuce is washed with dirty river water. Avoid it. And sadly, after grade six, many boys leave school to learn how to be thieves. Many girls get married or start the process of having children. To Hondurans, this is normal.

I don’t state these differences to demonstrate that life is better in America. I ate much less in Honduras and felt just as healthy. For the nine days I was there, I didn’t even miss the internet. No TV, no problem. We talked and fellowshipped. Life is not better in America or in Honduras, it is just different.

However, I saw little boys and girls who were hungry for affection and attention. I saw young mothers with concern in their eyes, wondering how they were going to make it through the day. I saw mothers and fathers who were proud of how their students were doing in school. I saw teens who were excited about their future prospects after high school. I saw boys and girls chasing each other around the playground and older boys and girls covertly touching and finding secluded corners. I saw elderly people trying to find hope and meaning in lives that were not what they once used to be.

Yes, the way people live around the world and what they have is different, but they are also so much alike. I knew this going into Honduras. It is common sense, but sometimes it takes seeing it in person for it to really hit home.

One of the most beautiful moments I had in Honduras came during a Sunday church service. In Honduras they speak Spanish. I don’t. But the worship team was up on stage singing and I was trying to follow along as best I could. Finally, they sang a song I knew. When they started singing the chorus, I was into the song, singing the few words of Spanish I was quickly learning (but in my mind singing it in English because that is how I was understanding it. I think in English, you know!). I opened my eyes and watched the lead singer, a pretty young girl, as she sang the words “Holy, Holy.” (but in Spanish – “Sanctus, Sanctus.”) She was into it too, singing not for anyone in the crowd, but for God. In that moment of worship I realized that God is not a God of language. He is a God of the heart. He was listening to her heart cry out and He was listening to my heart cry out and He wasn’t hearing English or Spanish, He was hearing the adoration of our hearts.

© Seth Crossman

I am not the best of flyers in the first place. A little turbulence can really clench my gut. And I overreact, I really do. In my mind, it feels like we are about to die. As a result, I do whatever I can to distract myself, especially during take-offs and landings.

As we began to land in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, I was in the middle of my inflight movie and loving it. I vaguely noted that we seemed to be flying in tight circles, what I would later come to call our cork-screw landing. The capital of Honduras rests high in the mountains in a bowl shaped valley. To reach the runway, a pilot must spin around until he is low enough to take on the short runway.

Most Hondurans pray during landings in Tegucigalpa. My pastor grinned like a little school boy and kept pointing out the window while I pointedly tried to ignore him. I wanted my focus on the movie. But then our plane tilted and hopped and the landing was on. As soon as our tires hit the runway, the pilot hit the brakes as hard as he could and turned on the backburners as high as they would go. Everything went flying through the air. The smell of rubber and burning brakes filled the cabin. I watched out the window, wondering what was going on, and then I saw the single lane leading back to the airport just as we were about to pass it. Our pilot veered around that corner like we were in a racecar. All of the Hondurans began clapping. That is nothing rare; it happens on about half the flights I am on. But apparently, if you don’t make that turn, you run into a mountain. As we disembarked, it was strange to see the pilot’s ashen face and the way he wiped at his brow. That is not an encouraging sign. I am glad it was only after our flight that I found out the danger of the airport and am terribly glad it was only after our trip that I watched this video of landing at Tegucigalpa. Look at how short that runway is!

Soon after landing, we found our party and headed to Church’s Chicken for lunch just outside the airport. Our guards, armored to the hilt and carrying what looked like ancient AK-47s waited near the van. They were hired to keep us safe on the way to our city. At first, this was kind of cool. I felt like a Vice-President or a rockstar. But then I saw a guard standing right by the door of Church’s Chicken with a well worn shotgun and a whole clip of shotgun shells. When I asked our guides, they informed me that robberies are common and so restaurants and banks and schools and even private homes will hire guards.

We left the capital soon after our chicken and talk quickly turned to the town we were going to and its history. In 1998 that town was hit hard by Hurricane Mitch. We heard horror stories of rain and mud. The hotel we were going to be staying in was buried under 15 feet of mud. (I have seen 7 feet of snow in one day, so I can slightly begin to imagine that much mud). The bridges leading into the town were washed away or damaged by flood waters. I saw those bridges and rode over them and looked down at the river more than fifty feet away and wondered how the water could ever rise that high to damage the bridges. We heard stories of people floating dead in the water that gushed through town. And not just one or two. More than 5,000 people died in that hurricane.

As we drove through Choluteca, I tried to imagine the town covered in water and mud. I have never experienced a hurricane, but if I had to, I can imagine the kind of place I would want to weather it out. I didn’t see a single place in that town that I would have wanted to weather it out. I didn’t see a single place I would have felt safe. It reminded me of the story of the Three Little Pigs.

I relate all of these stories to point out the fact that my biggest concerns of the day are things like: What am I going to wear? Am I going to cook chicken or pork for dinner? I love living in America, a place where these can be my biggest concerns. But my perception is skewed. Traveling helps remind me that I am very fortunate. It reminds me that I am not immortal and that there are more important things than jeans and chicken.

© Seth Crossman

The idea of a human GPS machine might be a bit hilarious, but I am sure most of us wished we had a little foreknowledge at one time in our life or another. That is why so many of us know the saying, “Hindsight is 20-20.” We’ve made mistakes we wish we hadn’t. We’ve passed up opportunities we wished we hadn’t. If only we had been able to listen to a voice saying, “In two days you will come to a…”

However, we don’t have a human GPS, and I am not sure we would listen to it if we did. More often than not it would probably be saying, “recalculating!” Yet, we do have a skill that can be trained that can act like a GPS machine: perception.

Perception is what I needed my senior year of college at the beginning of winter break. Over the summer I had bought my first car, using all my savings. It wasn’t just any car though, it was a black Saab turbo, and I loved driving it around. I liked gunning the turbo and speeding around other cars just like Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder. Like most young boys hope with their cars(and even a lot of men), I also liked the way it turned girls’ heads.

I wasn’t thinking about girls as I was driving home after my last final of the semester that winter though. I was thinking of just getting home. I had been driving eleven hours through a blizzard. It was after midnight and I was tired, but I only had an hour until I reached home. The interstate thruway was closed, but I was still driving on it. The Saab handled the snow decently well and I was pushing it, going nearly fifty-five miles per hour. But then I drove over a frozen bridge and the back end of my car decided it wanted to take the lead. My car went nose first into the concrete side rail, which thankfully held, or I might have been riding clouds from there on out.

I was safe, but my poor Saab was dead. And unfortunately, I wasn’t carrying the type of insurance that would cover a single car accident. There went my beautiful car. There went all my savings. There went all head turning, except for the head shaking the cop gave me.

If I had better perception, I would have realized that fifty-five was much too fast for the conditions. Or I would have realized that adding an extra half hour to the ride wasn’t so bad. Or I could have realized that a few extra dollars a year on insurance was a good investment to make on something I had spent all my money on.

You see, good perception is about seeing beyond the immediate conditions of a situation. Maybe it is future ramifications of a big purchase, or questioning the reasons for the purchase. Or maybe it is the real motives behind choosing to go out on a date with that girl who smokes and has always chosen really bad guys, but is exceptionally pretty. Maybe it is about choosing to say wise and positive things to coworkers, even those that are so hard to love, because it is the kind of person you want to be and the effect you want to have on people.

These are just tips of the perception iceberg. One thing to understand is that all of your decisions are based on your perception. And admit it, our perception is often limited or blinded by a number of things. Desire, lust, education (or knowledge), money, our upbringing, and our location to name a few.

This is why I love to travel. It gives me a different perspective. I get away from all the distractions and confines of “my world” and enter a larger, different world that challenges my perspectives. And I grow from it. I am excited to share my latest journey with you these next few weeks. I am calling it the Honduran Chronicles and know there will be some good truths for you take with you.

© Seth Crossman

The Director of the Secondary School down the road is standing in my doorway. He is drunk and leans in too close when he speaks. “Kolby come outside, it is an emergency, you must come right now!”

I rush into my room to put on long pants. What could possibly be the emergency at 9pm? When I come out of my room the Director is on his hand and knees looking under the table in the living room. At first I wonder if he throwing up.

“Where is the rest of the stereo?” he asks.

“What? You mean the portable CD player? That’s it. There isn’t a rest of it. That’s the whole thing. Now let’s go to the emergency.”

“Ok, but first, make it play some music for me. I want to hear.”

“I’ll play the music later, let’s go to the emergency.”

The Director comes up off his knees and stands up proudly. “The emergency is, we are celebrating a birthday! But you are right, we should go,” and with that, he heads out the door. I race after him through the barrack style teacher housing to where I see four other teachers sitting on the front porch with their feet propped up on coolers of beer. Scattered around them are empty 40oz bottles of 2M, the beer of Mozambique. Mozambicans take their drinking seriously, so it only comes in 40oz bottles. A 16oz bottle would just be an insult.

As I walk up, I count the empty bottles and people. Twenty-five bottles between four teachers and the Director. Even after taking the Mozambican liver into account, that means they are drunk. As I walk up to the group, a conversation in my head begins.

Why are Mozambicans always drunk?

Now Kolby, you can’t stereotype a race.

Fine, I won’t stereotype a race, I’ll rephrase the statement. Why does Mozambican culture seem to promote drinking?

No, Kolby, you can’t think that either. Cultures of the world are all different. Saying that getting drunk and passing out three times a week is wrong is a value judgment based on your American culture. You can’t say one set of actions promoted in a culture is more or less valuable then a set of actions promoted by another culture. That’s ethnocentric.

Well then, how can I say that everyone here seems to be drunk all that time and nothing ever gets done and that is why everyone is poor!

You can’t, you are suppose to relish the cultural exchange.

Now that’s hardly satisfying now is it?

Not yet.

This is stupid. Mozambique is poor. That is fact. Many Mozambicans men drink beer instead of working longer hours. That is a fact as well. If they—

You can’t say “they.” That creates an us-against-them scenario, which is the basis of inappropriate value judgments.

Fine, I’ll rephrase it. If the Mozambicans who drank instead of working extra hours quit drinking and worked more, the country wouldn’t be so poor. These are all facts.

True, but you are assuming that the goal of Mozambican culture is the same as the goal of the American culture, which is a cultural bias. Maybe instead of talking with yourself you should answer the person talking to you before he thinks you are weird.

I snap to and see that the School Director is holding the beer cooler open with a 40oz beer in his hand. “Do you want a beer or not?”

“No thanks, I don’t really drink. What are we celebrating anyway?”

“We are celebrating the birthday of the wife of one of the teachers at the school.”

“So, where’s the wife?” I ask.

“She couldn’t come to the party.”

“So whose wife is it?” I ask looking at the men in the group.

“It is none of our wives. The husband left this morning.”

“So you started drinking the morning?” I say surprised.

“Kolby, why must I explain so many things to you? Maybe you don’t understand my Portuguese.” The Director leans in closer and begins to yell, reeking of sweat and alcohol. “We started drinking last night, the husband left this morning!” Why is it every time someone thinks you don’t understand what they are saying they start talking louder? As if the volume level you speak at and the size of my Portuguese vocabulary were somehow related.

“Ok, I understand!” I yell back, imitating his wild arm movements. “What about school tomorrow morning! And if the husband and wife went home this morning, what’s the point of drinking now!”

The Director and the teachers stare at each other as if this is a strange question to ask and are unable to furnish an answer. My mind jumps in again to help out.

There is no point. Drinking is the point. The point of sitting with friends and getting drunk is simply to sit with friends and get drunk.

Well now, that’s stupid.

Only to you, everyone else here is Mozambican. And really, you should quit having these conversations with yourself while other people are around, it makes you look strange.

The dialog complete, I stand up to address the group. “I have orange juice in the refrigerator at my house. I’ll go get it so I can sit and drink with you. You drink beer, I’ll drink orange juice.” I run off to the house, grab the orange juice and a glass, and run back to the group and sit down.

As I pour the orange juice into the glass the group looks at me, mouths open, as if I’d just lit up a crack pipe in the Vatican. “Kolby,” the Director said, looking at my glass of orange juice with a combination of humor and disgust, “in America, are things very different than in Mozambique?”

“Yes,” I replied, “They are very different. Too many things to name. For example, the beer bottles are smaller.”

The Director stands up, holds up his hand, and points his finger to the sky like a Military General making a speech to 10,000 people. “Then I will stay in Mozambique!”

As he stumbles off to find a tree to pee on I could hear him grumbling to himself, “Smaller beers…I don’t know why anyone would want to live in America…so rich, and can only afford small beers…Americans should come to Mozambique where we have many friends and big beers…”

image courtesy of istockphoto.com

The holidays have always been festive times for me, bright and happy moments so much different than the rest of life. I remember when all the cousins used to gather at my grandmother’s trailer, a trailer that smelled a bit like cinnamon and a bit like your favorite stuffed animal. The kitchen radiated heat and laughter while us kids sat on the lone couch or leaned up against it and played board games.

I remember having one Christmas in a large hotel in Beijing, China. I looked out of the window at the wide roads and the people riding their bikes in the middle of winter. There were no decorations, no lights, no visible signs of Christmas. But it felt like Christmas. I was doing something special, something I had always dreamed about doing.

I remember Christmas at home too. The tree out on the porch and all the colorfully wrapped presents seeming to spill from under the like seeds from a sack. Outside the snow was beginning to fall, covering the grass with a clean white carpet. Grandma already sat in her chair and the parade was on TV. My sisters toted in plates of food still dressed in their pajamas. I remember the intense excitement that had me hopping all over the place, trying to pull everyone around the Christmas tree.

That’s why I liken the holidays (and not just Christmas) to a string of Christmas lights. They shine bright in our memories, points of reference mixed in with all the other experiences we have forgotten. The holidays come in all shapes and sizes and turn out differently every year just like those old strings of multi-colored lights that are out of fashion now. And ultimately, the string of lights always comes to an end, long before we have finished covering the tree.

We wish the best these holidays, joy and happiness, peace and love, and fond memories to remind you of it for years to come.

The Staff at the Opinion Guy

Travelers grow and evolve over a period of time. The desire to experience different things, new cultures and places is a very strong motivating factor for a traveler. He looks forward to his next adventure and to exploring a new destination. When a traveler stops traveling, a certain part of him dies – sometimes when we get very old it becomes physically impossible to travel; other travelers may retire prematurely when they settle down to raise a family or become absorbed in a career. In addition, some people go to the same place year after year for their annual holiday – that becomes their comfort zone. As an example, I know some middle-aged ladies who have traveled to Negril, Jamaica every year for the last 15 years but really haven’t been anywhere else in Jamaica or in the Caribbean. Negril is their comfort zone. Their sense of adventure got lost at some point in their lives. Travelers they are not.

On the other hand, I am a bonafide traveler. After getting my baptism in 1973 on a 3-week adventure to Mexico, I have kept growing over the years as a traveler. While I often return to some of my favorite haunts, I always make it a point to explore some new places and destinations. I never remain static. In 1995, I traveled to West Africa and in 2001, I began traveling to Thailand and Southeast Asia. In my 7 trips to Thailand, I have traveled all over the country and every time I go, I make it a point to check out some new places – whether it be Sakaeo, Koh Jum , Khao Sok or Sanghklaburi. In 2007, I made three trips – late March, I spent 10 days in La Manzanilla and Barra de Navidad on Mexico’s Costa Alegre; in late August, I traveled to Peru and Ecuador in South America and in November, I returned to Thailand.

Coming up – in November 2008, it’s back to Thailand, then I am off to Malaysia for the first time. I guess you can say that I am a traveler.

Bus Goldberg is a seasoned world traveler and the director of Calypso Island Tours, a travel company that specializes in botanical adventures and nature tours to such diverse destinations as Costa Rica, Thailand and the Caribbean. He also maintains his own travel blog, Calypso Island Chronicles which features insightful commentary on traveling in the tropics and ecotourism as well as destination tips, travel anecdotes and humor.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bus_Goldberg

I did not always want to travel. When I was a boy, I hated being cooped up in a car. Any trip seemed like eternity. I did not understand distances and I could not picture where we were going. I understood that it was 60 feet to first base (at little league distances), I could cast about twenty feet, and the prettiest girl in school was about four feet tall. I understood these distances. But how far was four hours, or six hours (that was a lot of trips around the base paths)? I knew where the best patch of forest was and where the deepest part of the river was. And the best vacation came during summer when the field days came to town. I did not need anything more, or want it.

I changed my mind about traveling when I was seventeen. My friends were going to Ireland with the International Club and I did not want to be left behind. Even though I wasn’t sure about foreign countries, I did not want to be the only one not going.

I still find it awesome that such poor intentions resulted in such a desperate passion. In that, I am much like other travelers I have met. One taste of traveling, and the longing to go again will always come back.

It used to be that traveling overseas was a luxury. Only the affluent could afford it. It was almost a symbol of status, a rite of passage for those in higher circles. But the internet and a burgeoning current of society that valued travel changed that.

So many sites offer travel discounts, cheap airfare, and lush accommodations. It is so easy to see a hundred destinations, the sights of that particular city or geographical area, the hotels, all of which get you interested in traveling there. And then it is easy to book them with a click of a button.

I remember traveling when you had to call a hundred hostels just find one that had a spare cot, learn Spanish and German just to find out the best place to eat or how to get to that famous UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Traveling became easy and affordable and the wealth of pictures and video of exotic locales and charming hosts propelled people into the skies and across the seas. It was not uncommon to meet someone who was an avid traveler and more often than not could regale you with tales of their experience in Prague or Beijing just like you had experienced (and sometimes nothing like you experienced).

Gas prices have affected that culture. So did September 11th and the radical changes that took place in air travel in the proceeding days. Flights were cancelled, airlines collapsed, pilots began retiring, security and efficiency became more important than the experience.

Remember when air travel was considered an experience itself?

Unfortunately, these days, if you do book a flight, even one within the United States, there are bound to be delays. Quarters are cramped (too often you know exactly what the person next to you ate for breakfast and get into that strange bear mating ritual when they have to use the bathroom as you half-stand and they squiggle past you right when the plane hits a pocket of turbulence and before you know it you’re both sitting in the same seat) and there is now an extra charge for bringing on luggage.

These inconveniences will not deter the most determined of travelers or those like me who have it in our blood. But it might deter a brand new generation of travelers—people who have the desire hidden inside and do not know it.

© Seth Crossman

When I arrived in Japan, I was excited about living in the countryside. I thought it would provide me with an authentic Japanese experience. In the sixty or so years since the end of the second world war, much of Japan has modernized, and while that Japan is intriguing, I was more interested in the traditional one that lurked beneath the technological structure and neon lights. Fortunately, my little village was far from the city, tucked near the top of the mountains and spread along several slender valleys. The buildings were older and smaller and more rustic with brown tiled roofs or thick thatch with tumbledown barns attached to the side. The rice fields were more plentiful and dominated the thought and life of the villagers even to the extent that holidays and festivals centered around the cycles of the growing season. Old bicycles carried the children to school and farmers walked around in the plain, flowing older style of dress with straw hats on their heads. It was perfect, exactly what I wanted. But it was also very different than what I was used to.

I had no English speaking friends with which to process this new world and the strange experiences I was having until I met Yukie. She spoke English very well and had more energy and spunk than many of the elementary school children I was teaching. She was exuberant to meet the new foreigner and before long started inviting me out to dinner at the local restaurants to teach me all about Japanese food and to make sure I tried a large share of it.

The first restaurant she took me to was a noodle shop, where they had huge pots with steaming water and freshly kneaded and cut noodles drying on the counter. We ordered her favorite noodle combination (fresh noodles, spicy kimchee, thin slices of tender pork, green onions, and a lot of garlic) and ended talking for a long time, not just amongst ourselves but to everyone in the noodle shop. By the end of the night I was friends with everyone. The owners served me pork dumplings on the house, and all of the farmers in the shop bought me beers and clinked glasses and shared odd advice on how to date Japanese women. The noodle shop wasn’t the only restaurant we visited—indeed before long I knew the owner of every restaurant and they knew my favorite dish—but it was the one we visited most often.

When one of us was frustrated with our day, excited about a recent triumph, just wanted to spend an evening laughing, and most often when there was nothing at all on our minds except the thought that we hadn’t done anything together in quite a while, we called the other up and made plans for noodles.

Now I can’t eat noodles without thinking of Yukie and all her energy.

But it wasn’t only with Yukie. I visited three middle schools and five elementary schools on a rotating basis. By my second year in Japan I was finally considered a respected part of the teaching staff at most of the schools rather than a novelty.

In the early Fall of that year, my base school invited me on the annual teacher’s trip to Korea. There were about a dozen of us on that trip; I was friends with two of them—the two Japanese teachers of English. But when you spend time walking through terrible smelling fish and pickled vegetable markets in the hot sun, tasting wafer after wafer of salted seaweed, and climbing mountains in the rain, you learn something about each other. You learn what they are looking forward to eating that night, and how many kids they have. You learn that not all women mind the rain and that not all men are mountain hikers. You also learn who sweats a lot and who has to visit the bathroom the most. You learn who likes to buy gifts for those back home and those who like to try new things. One night we went to a traditional Korean Barbecue house where the beef was piled a foot high on bronze platters and the only thing to drink was beer. There’s nothing wrong with that…unless you try the really red and oily sauce, that if eaten, is as close to drinking gasoline and then swallowing a match as you can get. Trying to put the fire out takes a lot of beer, but at least I wasn’t the only foolish one willing to eat a whole spoonful of the red stuff before tasting it. And by the end of it all, after several nights of experimenting with new and spicy foods and having drinking adventures down dark alleys I realized that my coworkers are more than just teachers who sit across the office poring over their textbooks.

In the late Fall, when the warm grip of summer has abandoned the trees and the leaves begin to turn to brilliant shades of red and yellow, my town has a tradition of going to the local gorge. It is a fantastic place where the river babbles over crumbled rock and swirls and eddies until it tumbles over several waterfalls. A path has been cut through the forest and rock on one side so that visitors from all over Japan can trek the five mile journey along the gorge. All the schools plan trips for their students, forcing them to bring pads and bags of crayons. They hike up into the gorge for a few miles, far from the parking lots full of buses and cooking trout and chestnuts to where the rocks are perfect for sitting and drawing. But it’s not really about the drawing. It’s a time for the students to mingle together, growing closer as they appreciate the nature around them.

That’s the Japanese style. Relationships matter.

I am not sure I really appreciated the trips and parties and noodle nights until I didn’t have them anymore. And even then it took me a few years. It took me a few years of working in an American workplace where accomplishment is the most important thing. The boss always wants more of my time, and more of it spent behind my desk. My coworkers are more interested in pay raises and promotions than in catching a bite to eat.

It was easy for me to fall into the same habit. Now it is all about getting as much done as possible so that it looks good and I get a little bump in the old paycheck. Then I can get a little bigger car with a couple new speakers in back so everybody can hear me coming down the block. I can buy a nice tie and afford to take my dates out to someplace nice where the waiters wear starched aprons and desert is included in the price of dinner.

Now I am so busy that it’s easy to forget about noodle nights. I was making mad money, but it was the contact with people and the development of meaningful relationships that I needed and craved.

© Seth Crossman

Emi is my host and she has been doing tea ceremony since she was a small girl. She is twice my age, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She sits much lower than me, as though her knees have given way over the years and the rest of her has settled down like a snow drift settles. She wears a pink and black kimono, her small feet shrouded in white socks. I can just see her shoes at the door, like children’s slippers next to my overgrown clodhoppers.

Emi’s eyes are soft and brown, but I can barely see them. She is modest, but she is also keeping watch over her movements as though she hasn’t quite perfected them in the forty years she has been practicing them. Her hair is a lustrous black, like slivers of jet given motion. Emi and I are friends, so she doesn’t mind my stares. At least I don’t think so. She has never mentioned them, and often times I catch her watching me out of the corners of her eyes.

But not now. Not when she is concentrating so hard on the tea before us. She sifts green powder into our cups and stirs. Then with two hands she gives me one cup. Little cakes, with stacked layers like French apartment houses, sit on a plate. She offers me one and then looks up at me with a smile.

It is time to drink. The tea is so thick and frothy with green that I feel like I am drinking grass and leaves and lily pads. But only a sip. Then the warmth hits me and the sugar of the little cakes.

Tea ceremony is tradition, and as an American I know that we have very little tradition. What we have has been passed down through our family and is much different than our neighbors.

Most countries have traditions, even if they are dying traditions. I feel slightly at loss for having none, and perhaps that is why I am so interested in others’ traditions. Traditions are like great big oaks in the middle of the woods, solid long before I got there and past the point of struggling and knowing where to grow. Touching them, even if only briefly gives me that solid feel too.

Perhaps it is strange, but I feel bigger, like I have grown two inches, or three, when I leave Emi’s house.

© Seth Crossman