Just Bloggin #2 By: Luke Williams

                22,000 ft in the air and I’m locked inside of a giant metal bird known as an Airbus A320-200 jet. As much as I love flying I’m more than eager to get off this plane after the previous 20 hours of flight. I’m ready to step foot in my new home for the next nine months; my final year of high school abroad in Viet Nam.  I’m tired yet very excited; a combination that left me entrapped inside my head, not quite paying attention to my surroundings.  One thing that did stick out on that plane ride was the beautiful rice terraces on the mountains in Sa Pa. I didn’t know that this postcard perfect scenery sitting outside of a glass frame the size of my head would have anymore meaning to me than the layer of grime and dirt on my face from a couple days of travel.

                Now fast forward from that moment about 34 days, 9 hours and about 30 minutes. I’m not tired this time. Instead I’m exhausted and about to pass out to the cadence of the bus tires hitting the dirt road. My group is leaving the village of Hmong people with whom we spent the day working.  I look outside of my mud splattered window to see rice terraces on the mountains creating stairways to the heavens. I think about that climb I took all the way to the top terraces up a dirt path covered in mud and manure from the previous day’s rain. I think about the slip and slides we had. However the most resounding thing on my mind is what I learned from this experience: humility.

                Our class spent a good 4 hours bending our backs to harvest the rice in the leech infested mud paddy and climbing a grueling goat path up a slippery mountain. Our reward was the quintessential feeling that you get from a good deed, a chance to exchange yarns with the villagers over a hot meal, and afterwards the comfort of warm beds inside a hotel with running water. The people who constantly work these fields day and night, rain or shine for a majority of the year don’t get even half as much. Their reward was their pay, which is less than two dollars a week. They may come home to a hot meal, but also to a house full of hungry kids and wooden cots instead of a cushioned spring mattress. The houses of the workers that we saw (with the exception of where we ate) were truly humble homes; wooden shacks without indoor plumbing. Nevertheless everyone was happy and not complaining about life’s struggles every two seconds like many of us Americans tend to do. That being said I’m reminded not only is it necessary to work hard to make a living, but also that I’m lucky to be where I am today.  I’m reminded that what we consider basic necessities in America are still luxury pieces in other countries; things that we want, but don’t always need.