Curveballs and reminders

I had a feeling that my long anticipated trip to the incense village was not going to go as planned when I was awoken by the sounds of a thunderstorm in full fury. I asked if I could postpone my bookings for better weather, but was told that the driver had set aside this day for me, and so off we went in the rain. Admittedly, I did not have great expectations given the weather and decided to just let the day roll out as it was going to. Feeling frustrated by my brain holding me back from doing any touristy things like get on a scooter for city tours, I tried to make peace with what was going on with the touristy thing I had chosen. When we pulled up to the factory area in the village, I realized that it really was a working village, not set up for tourists….most of the workers were sheltering under tarps and the manager explained to me (through Google translate)that the incense process could not take place in such rain. Not wanting to keep anyone out in the rain, I asked if I could purchase their incense, take a couple of pictures and be on my way. As they pulled together pieces of their finished incense and put it into different mismatched wrapping for me to buy, a man pulled up with a group of children and told me that I was there to teach them English. Despite my protesting there was a mistake, he said it would help his students, so that must be why I arrived, so I agreed. He sat me down with his oldest student who asked me questions to practice his English. After realizing I was only speaking with boys, I asked if any of the girls wanted to participate at which point one of them literally jumped in. Almost as though she was worried she wouldn’t get enough practice in, she treated it like an exam and asked me question after question after question. One of her last questions was what my favourite flowers are… To make things easy, I showed her my lotus tattoo. All the students got excited and told my driver something, but nothing happened so I thought nothing of it. We posed for pictures in the incense prep area and went our separate ways.

We drove around the back of the factory area and all of a sudden as my driver pulled to a stop, I finally understood what the earlier excitement was about. Lotus flowers and lily pads for as far as I could see. So there I was, drenched through to my skin in this thunderstorm, staring at thousands of lotus flowers as the rain just rolled off them. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. Cliche quote moment achieved. The lotus is often revered because it gets all of its nutrients from the muddy Earth under the water but is never dirty… It also is surrounded by water but never gets wet. Be like the lotus, as the lesson goes. Let your worldly experience roll off. Great! Day 1 thanks for the reminder….