Moving forward.

Yesterday I walked home from school. It was hot and my bag was heavy but I needed to walk.

I needed time to think, time to pray. It had been one of those days where if I had a car I would have gotten in it and just driven until I became guilty about the amount gas I was using. But alas, I have no car, only a bike with a flat tire, and my legs.

I'm not sure when it went wrong, I was agitated during first period when the computer teacher was more interested in working on his own computer rather than give my kids something constructive to do.

I was frustrated during second period when a chunk of my kids didn't have their review papers.

I was annoyed during third period when I had to move classrooms because a teacher needed to use the TV in my classroom.

I was irked during fourth period when my kids whined about how much they had to know for their morality final.

Its easy to let these things go. A joke with Teacher Rithy about how much he is going to miss me. Chiya trapping me in a corner and calling me lok-crew, which is boy teacher in Khmer. Doing vice-principal Sopheak's job of copying for children because he is too lazy to get up. Sopheak asking me Chhnang ot?! 800 times. And pretty soon, I'm laughing, moving past frustrations.

After school I had a conversation with a student whom I adore that made my heart hurt. During which he said, I laugh, but I don't feel like laughing. I joke because that is what I should be doing.

When I came to Cambodia I was going through some stuff. In the beginning I wondered if I had come for the right reasons. In the beginning I laughed even when I didn't feel it, I joked, I got involved. I found happiness.

But after that conversation with the student, I was left wondering is this happiness I have real and deep or is it just covering my brokenness? That conversation brought up feelings I haven't felt, and thoughts I haven't thought in a while. I know I'm invested, in love, but has it filled me or nearly covered the cracks?

With these questions I did the only thing that seemed reasonable, I walked home. Because sometimes that is the only there is to do, just keep moving forward.

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday you will, without even noticing live your way into the answer."

Rainer Maria Rilk