It's good to hear that you're in Nepal. I don't really have a theological thesis to write up for this particular occasion, so I'm just writing a regular old letter to say I'm glad that we still get to here from you. Not that I here much, but I believe you liked something I posted on Facebook, so that means that you're either still alive or someone hacked into your account. Your mother said that you contacted her and told her about how poor Nepal is.
If you can, it would be awesome if you started a journal or a blog or something so that when you got back, you would have a giant list of things you learned while over there. I'd be interested in hearing some stories.
Mission work is discouraged in Nepal; I believe it was illegal once to come into the country with that goal. How they could figure out whether or not someone entering was a missionary, I don't know. Did they ask people up-front? I'm not sure. This isn't particularly relevant to your mission in Nepal, since your purpose in being over there is to learn from a doctor in order to improve your resume, and to have an interesting experience to boot. Although, I wonder that if you're respectful of their customs while also being completely yourself, maybe they'll be just as curious about you as you are in them.
But in any case, I just said it. You're probably curious to know more about them, and I am, too. Since Nepal has been in the news, I saw a story come up about something called the Kumari, a child goddess selected at the age of five and then replaced once she hits puberty. The report was sloppy from a journalistic perspective, and people who know more about Hinduism criticized it for sensationalizing this little aspect of Nepali culture and treating it as more exotic and mysterious and backwards than what it really was. There were also all sorts of atheists in the comments section who thought that this was preposterous and who went on miniature rants against religion.While we obviously don't believe that the Kumari is a child goddess, I'm personally fascinated and not overly critical. No, she's not the way to salvation, and Hindus don't have looks at mankind with a salvific narrative. But anyway, I wondered, and I thought that Jesus would be fascinated with the people of Nepal and want to know more about them. Would He preach His own message? Yes, but I think He would listen first, a lot like He did with the Samaritan woman, and He would be genuinely interested in what they had to say.
So unlike the atheists, I look at these people who have odd ideas and I'm unappalled (I can really make a pun with that word. Can you see it?), just curious.
Anyway, Wikipedia can only teach me so much, and it's also only information. I don't think that it's the same as actually hearing an eye-witness description of the Kumari, and perhaps more importantly, to hear someone describe what she actually means to the Hindus in Nepal. You'd probably be able to explain this to me better than anything on the internet can.
It would also be great to have some of the language explained to me. Are you picking up anything about the language? You're obviously not learning to speak it, but I was wondering if you were noticing any patterns or things that made it unique, sort of like how neither of us can speak German or Japanese, but we can recognize it when we hear it, and we know of various stereotypes to associate with each language. So in that sense, we have a feel. Do you get much exposure?
Anyway, back here in home sweet home, I suppose a bit has happened, and I would like to keep you up to date. Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner and appeared on the cover of Vogue, and a lot of Christians find that offensive and see cultural implications in this. I've personally taken a "come as you are" approach, and he's also apparently an evangelical Christian, which nobody ever talks about. The only thing that really bothers me at all about this is that of all the names in the world, he now wants to share the same name as my friend, Vaags (whom I never call "Caitlyn," either).
There's been another cop controversy. This time, both people are at fault and everyone looks bad, so everyone in America is worse off because of this.
Hillary made a speech and said that "The speech would serve as the interview" before any news outlet could ask her questions. Bill's okay, keeping cool and not saying anything stupid, and now that there's some distance between his presidency and where we're at right now, I've made peace with him and can say that I genuinely like the guy. Even so, if Hillary wins the election, I'm getting out of here. As in, I'm getting my passport and traveling the world, because teetering close to the point where I'm not sure if there's any place in the world anymore where I feel is particularly "mine." America will be mine forever, I'm sure, but maybe it's my parent's house and I'm meant to move past it.
That's the subject of a deeper personal letter, though, and I think I'll save that for later. It's a deep thought though, questioning your place in the world.
Christopher Lee died today. He was ninety-three years old, and one of my favorite actors. My mother called me today to tell me about it, and I'm now telling you about it because I know the about of respect that you had for The Lord of the Rings.
Jurassic World also premiered this evening, and there were a ton of people there. Our cousin Nick was there, and also Trevor Pieper. For all of the adventure you're getting over there, there's one thing you should be envying me for: I got to the T. rex.
Okay, just a moment here. I'm having a special moment. Please don't judge if this seems a little silly. And I apologize, since I don't swear often, but this is legit enough to merit it.
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWRRRR!!!
The movie didn't quite get the music right, and the first half of the movie didn't have enough positive fantasy building, nostalgia, and magical moments of simple glee. It should have. But if there's one thing that the movie got right, it was the raptors and the motherfucking T. rex! Eventually, you'll get to see this movie, but bro, you won't see it on the big screen and it's a crying shame. You're missing out, because the movie got the T. rex damn right. There were three shots in the film that were just perfect, and they all had the T. rex in it. The plot was, overall, okay, good but not great, giving me enough of what I wanted to keep me going, but once it got to the T. rex (and I sort of saw this coming, because I knew that it would redeem the movie ten times over) it gave me exactly what I wanted to the point where you should have seen me jumping up and doing a dance in the front of the theatre and yelling with delight when the almighty king of the dinosaurs roared his mighty roar. No, you're more than just the king of the dinosaurs; you're the king of the world, and Leonardo DiCaprio was miscast in Titanic. T. rex, I love you. T. rex, you're the love of my life. More than wine, more than women. I'd marry you and change my last name to yours, T. rex.
I'm done now. Okay? Seriously, though, I love the T. rex. So long as the movies treat her like she's the Rex she really is, she's my Rex. Or...queen, I guess.
So yeah, best movie of the year, thus far. Star Wars might be able to top it overall (and you'll be back in time for that), but I'm pretty sure that Jurassic World had the single most awesome moment.
...But I don't know. That versus being in Nepal for a few months. Tough call. I hope you're not as sentimentally attached to the T. rex as I am.
Sincerely,
John
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