Our dear tai chi master, Dr. Paul Lam, and his partner Hazel invited us to join them as part of a small group on a two-week tai chi workshop/tour of China. Dr. Lam said he designed the trip to be “fun and serious, leisurely and exciting, like the yin and yang of tai chi.” This design of contrasts generated a trip of remarkable paradoxes: Absolutely clean wide modern streets and filthy holes-in-the-ground bathrooms. Great Wall preserved from history and high-speed trains speeding into the future at over 300 km/hour. Ancient […]

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We entered a narrow lane crowded with shoppers, shopkeepers, motorcycles, rickshaws and animals. Throngs of people pushed their way past us, ogling us suspiciously, much like the dead fish lying in frozen ice in one of the shops, their eyes wide open staring at us. Above us there were twisted and tangled cables and wires, like spaghetti, hanging from buildings and poles. On each side were endless rows of shops with dirt floors and corrugated tin roofs held down with bricks or a log. My husband and I had decided […]

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The air in the waiting room at the Bilbao International Airport pressed against us, dank and heavy. A greasy stench rose from a counter loaded with plastic containers of Spanish omelets. “Where are they?” My voice sounded edgy. “I thought Brad told us he would be right under that Celular sign.” We scanned the room. In the far corner, a group of young men, all wearing identical yellow and black T-shirts displaying an image of a large soccer ball, slapped each other on the back and exchanged high and low […]

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At 9, I thought it was crazy. My dad was going to squeeze Mom and all six of us kids into a boxy, top heavy, narrow Volvo station wagon, and we were going to drive for three months from our home in Paraguay to Kansas where my father grew up. This trip had been his dream since coming to Paraguay in 1951 to found and manage a Mennonite leprosy mission. “Is there really a road that goes all the way from Paraguay to the States?” I asked. Dad pulled out […]

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