Bizarro World

During my 25 years of living in the Philippines and being a part of the ministry of CSC, I've had the chance to have a lot of different experiences and see and hear things that boggle the mind. Sometimes those things are the result of an American's westernized perception of a vastly different culture and that culture's values, other times it's unrelated to culture and something that's way too close to home, and occasionally it's an unfortunate collision of those two things. Being a participative observer of one of those unfortunate collisions can leave a person almost speechless and shaking one's head. I've been shaking my head way too frequently lately and today was another one of those days. But who doesn't have an occasional visit to Bizarro World?

But later in the day I spent some time at the shelter just cruising around to see what different kids were up to until I finally plopped myself down for a while. While making my "rounds" I got to see: one of our short term staff playing a spirited game of basketball with a group of kids, one of our teachers doing some prep work at school and explaining to me how one of her kids who used to hate doing puzzles now loves doing puzzles, one of our teen girls successfully playing a prank on kids and workers in the home, one of our younger boys repeatedly calling my attention that he likes lions, one of our Level A students reading part of a book to me that she thought she couldn't read, that same Level A student showing me a very touching picture her sister had drawn of their previously intact family, and a small group of precocious toddlers trying to convince me that I was, in fact, not myself but one of the other CSC staff. And upon my goodbyes to these wonderful kids as they sat down to eat with their houseparents, I received several invitations to stay for a while and share their meal with them.

I couldn't, but it was the final dose of the perfect antidote to Bizarro World.