I was laying on my bed watching something on youtube, half listening to my sister, half watching this video - I shout an answer, and she shouts another question, I shout something that doesn’t answer the question. She comes and sits on the bed she used to sleep on and starts telling me about something. I stop watching the video and listen. She braids her hair as she recounts a conversation. I interject to correct a falsity. Her eyes widen. I laugh. It leads to an hour-long catchup about things you wouldn’t expect to fit in an hour.
Mum and dad keep dragging me out for walks. My parents are legitly more fit than me. But also the reward is all that good food that they have scouted for me these three months. Parents do so much more and worry so much more than I ever will know of, and I am ever so thankful.
my heart is home again.
The 24-hour journey home this time felt okay. I’ve had worse flights, worse transits. I sit beside a man who used to work in Singapore, as he tries to recount the places he’s been. He says there’s a fountain. Suntec city I say? He says yea, but there’s this other neighborhood that starts with a t? nobody calls places in Singapore neighborhoods but I don’t bother correcting him. Tampines? The plane starts to move forward as it prepares for takeoff. I need to look it up he says, as he pulls up his phone and turns it off airplane mode. I think to myself boy you gonna screwup the signals on the plane, even though I know it wont. He says “Teh muh-sake!” that’s it. I’m like ah, temasek. Glad we got that established. It was a nice conversation, as if a preparation to go home to familiarity, to the land where Asians are the majority, where the accents are familiar, (everyone has an accent yall get over it), where my feet can take me places with my eyes closed. I close my eyes as the plane takes off.
The semester passed by so slowly, kinda painfully, but also pretty quick in other ways. There never seemed to be enough time for the amount of things to do, conversations to be had, ideas to churn on. I made do with what I had. I feel like it was a semester where I didn’t have any energy left to try to hold onto or care too much about people, or things around me, it took whatever I had just to keep putting one feet in front of the other. But I think I learnt that, sometimes we carry others, sometimes others carry us, sometimes we all just try to crawl forward together.
The last week of being in the states found me at cedar campus for intervarsity’s chapter focus week. I was the only one from my chapter going, Jessica was so lovely as to drive me, and another student Cam from Roosevelt, and rachael and leann were in the car together too. 10 hours it took to get to the upper peninsula, but so worth it (I wasn’t the one driving though lol). It was a week of having a lot of time to myself, realizing that I was socially not as outgoing as I used to be (but that was okay), I truly enjoy good conversations, i don’t have to have my faith figured out fully and struggling is fine, I am an artist. I feel like I knew this before, but you know the head and the heart thing, these things seemed to do some sort of osmosis to my heart.
I think it was one of the most beautiful places I had been to, so much of it was just what it was, the lake and nature and trees and whatever lived in them. The hikes I took, and time of just lying on the rocks and being small in God’s creation was very life giving. The waters were so clear and it felt nice to breathe and have time to feel my lungs do their thing. It was fun laughing and playing two truths and one lie with with cam, rachael and wardell, where rachael accidentally told us all three truths because she forgot to add a ‘not’ to one of her statements. Waking up and realizing I wasn’t the only one in bed, and laughing with Malory and deciding we both could sleep another five minutes as we waited for the line for breakfast to clear. Watching rachael and jessica be very excited about ice-cream sundaes. Turning off all the lights so we could watch the lightning and the lake when it started raining with jessica. Meeting singaporeans, christine, joel, and adriel! christine and I were in mg at the same time, and adriel and me both went to acsi. It was funny, they came up to me and were like “are you from Singapore?” and I’m like yea.. wait how did they know, as I thought that they said they saw my ac pullover from the day before. I didn’t even realise I had brought it. they very kindly basically adopted me into their chapter and we walked to Narnia together. The conversation with Nicole on the way back was really refreshing too – I love hearing stories, so much. God writes stories, and our lives so beautifully, I may run away and try to deny things He has done, but stories?! They touch my heart. Having people to wake up to, be in community with, having the liberty to be myself – also to disappear when I wanted to and be by myself – I am so thankful, to be known, and loved.
The last few days in Chicago hanging out with Shelby made leaving so hard. We watched romcoms the night I came back and ate food. on Saturday, I ran a couple of errands as she went to work, and we met up after to get lunch at PANERA we go to Panera so much lol and to go to the art institute together. We hadn’t had much time individually to go much this semester (besides work where the students go each week) for ourselves, so we thought it’d be a nice end to the semester to check out the shows that we hadn’t seen together. The Robert frank show was amazing - so Shelby, I loved it. I headed to the lake after to sit for a bit before hanging out with her while she finished up some work stuff before heading home together. The next morning, she made pancakes and we made it all fancy with icing sugar and strawberries! And ate before she drove me to the airport. We missed clare though, it was nice to have time to hangout a little.
A week has passed by so quickly, three more weeks before it’s back to the states. Both places have become home – in their own ways. Places do carry sentiment, but ultimately, it’s the people that carry me through the seasons (o lawd so cheesy but it’s true).
I wish you a wonderful rest of the week, I hope you take time to notice the beauty in something mundane tomorrow and everyday.
