The View was Anything but Ordinary.

One of my students here in Austin is a spunky blonde second grader.  She is pretty sharp, but she has a diagnosis of Asperger's so she has trouble with summarizing and figurative language.  We've been practicing paraphrasing, changing one word at a time in short sentences.  On last week's homework one of the sentences was

"The view was anything but ordinary."  

That one was a bit tricky for her.  She had to think in concepts instead of single words.  I think the sentence she had come up with was something like,

"The look was something but the same."  

Not quite there, but an honest effort.  We talked about what the sentence really meant.  What is a view? What does it mean to be ordinary?  And she came up with this sentence instead:

"What I could see was very special."

The other night I hung out at Blues on the Green with my dear friend, Katie G. and her roommate, Jess.  We connected with another former GIS staffer who happened to be in town visiting family.  Listening to Julie talk about the triumphs and challenges of this year at Grace brought to mind my student's sentence.

What I could see was very special.

View from our bedroom window on our first day

And it's not just that the view out my window in Thailand was literally amazing, it's that the view inside the people there was literally amazing.  They had stepped outside their comfort zones, taken a risk, and were living lives that were anything but ordinary.

Harvesting bananas

As we get ready to make another move I feel a little sad that Thailand is getting further and further away from me.  The Thailand part of my story is starting to fade.  I'm disappointed when I realize that phrases like "We spent a year overseas," or "We lived in Thailand," won't come up naturally in the introductory part of conversation anymore.  Sometimes I wonder if we really did that.  But when I close my eyes, I can still see it.  I can see myself sitting in a chair at our dining room table, a drop of sweat dripping down my back, the banana tree out the side window, the mountain in the distance, the sound of geckos barking out their warning.  And I smile at a life that was very special.

Here's to a future that is anything but ordinary.

Ah, the possibilities...