Seeing and Believing

Shortly before I left China, as I was walking with a friend through her apartment complex, she asked me why I like China. I told her that everyday brought something new, like a new challenge, a new bit of language, or something beautiful to look at. She was amazed that I found her home country beautiful. She had spent time in the U.K. with her husband's family, and thought that China wasn't nearly as lovely as England. I walked over to a low wall near us and showed her the ceramic tiles that had been used to top it. Each one had a dragon design embossed on it. She had never noticed them before.

I was home, sick, while most of the
community was at the school for Family
Movie Night. I saw this rainbow through
my window and ran to get the picture.
A few days later, my students told me
that rainbows are rare on Atka!

That anecdote is relevant to my life here in Atka because there is always something beautiful for me to look at. The mountains are more or less visible, depending on the amount of fog and cloud cover there is. Sometimes I can see the base of the mountain and the peak, but the rest is obscured by fog. If there's been heavy rain, the waterfalls may be wider and whiter, but if there hasn't been much rain, they become narrower and darker. I love seeing the day's weather report every morning when I let the dogs out.

It rains nearly every day, anything from a light drizzle to a squalling downpour. It also clears up nearly every day. The usual rhythm is rain in the early morning, clearing in the late morning, and more rain in the evening. Sometimes even the rain brings its own surprises!

The most fun thing to watch is the pattern of light and dark on the mountains. The dark patches are *not* the shadows of other mountains. Instead, the dark patches are the shadow of the clouds, while the light patches are where the sun comes through and turns the dying fall grasses gold.

It's easy to see the patterns of light and dark as the sunlight
falls through the clouds onto the mountain.

When I tell my students how much I love this island and that it's beautiful, they think I'm joking. To them, it's just the rock they live on. Like my Chinese friend, they don't recognize the beauty that's all around them. Maybe part of my job is to teach them to see.