Sunday, November 21, 2010

Hanoi 2- What Do You Know??

I swear that 95% of taxi drivers are either significantly visually impaired, under the influence of alcohol…..or a good mix of the two. Every time I catch either a car taxi or a motorbike taxi, they stare at where im pointing on the map….cant even make out streets let alone the names..and then take the map and go and get someone in the street to read for them. Every time. I’m not even starting to think about how they can see the road lol…. Might be the reason why there are so many crashes here…. I mean, I could kinda understand how a person on a motorbike can be mistaken as a sign saying SPEED UP!

Well, a few weeks have passed and I am starting to feel more familiar with my surroundings….I know how much I should be paying for things so am slightly reducing the amount that I am being ripped off for just cos I’m a foreigner who can’t speak Vietnamese…

You know living a life like this is all about “knowing” and “patience”. For example….I “know” from experience that no matter where I am, I do get to know my way around, it just takes time, so I will be “patient” until I reach that point. I also “know” that I will make friends and feel content and comfortable, it just takes time so I will be “patient” until I meet people I want to hang out with on a regular basis. I “know” that I will learn to speak the language, and so until then I will be “patient” about being ripped off and about not being able to join in conversations and understand whats really going on. If I don’t cling on to what I know…then I would very easily give up and go home, because it is hard to move to totally new countires and environments all the time, leaving behing everything you know and like and enjoy and understand…. But it’s the “knowing” that makes me force out the “patience” that I need to get through the uncertain stages like this. And because I have such confidence in the fact that everything will happen the way it has in the past, that it is kinda easy for me to move around like this. People ask me all the time, how do you just pick up and leave everything behind, over and over again???? Well, I suppose its that comfort I have in knowing that everything does always work out. Its a lot like my relationship with God too….. I “know” from the past that God has never failed me or led me down the wrong path, so I will have “patience” when things don’t make sense because I “know” that He will never leave me. Its good to know

What do you “know”????.