Day 116 – Whoa!

“Whoa! What happen to you?!?!” said the Chinese man behind the counter as I entered into his restaurant.

“I stepped in a ditch” I replied.

“You a real mess!” he commented with a thick Chinese accent. “You clean up in here…” he said as he showed me to the washroom…

You see, I went out this morning to pick up a few things in the local market. Unfortunately, the first store I went to still hadn’t opened, so I decided to go to the local mall to pick up some other necessities and then stop by the shop on the way back. As I was walking to the mall, I decided to take a short-cut through a parking lot. In the middle of the parking lot was a large ditch (about 4 feet wide) that was completely full of a black tar sludge. On top of the sludge, a light gray film had formed, thus making the ditch look like concrete. As I walked through the parking lot completely lost in my thoughts, I didn’t recognize the ditch and stepped directly into the middle of it with my right foot. I’m still not quite sure why I didn’t fall over at that point, but fortunately I was able to jump out immediately.

So there I stood, in the middle of a parking lot with black sludge completely covering my right foot all the way up to the middle of my calf. And if that wasn’t bad enough, when I stepped into the ditch, I splashed myself from head to toe, completely soaking the back of my shorts and most of my shirt. Just then, I heard a municipal working who had seen the incident call to me… Through his laughter he told me to go to the museum at the end of the parking lot to clean up. As I walked by the museum, I noticed it was really nice and decided that they wouldn’t appreciate me tracking sludge through their gallery, so I went to the restaurant next door where I was received the absolute best greeting ever:

“Whoa! What happen to you?!?!” : )
The guy was so nice, he even brought me a wash cloth. After I cleaned up as best I could, I tried to buy a drink just to say thanks, but he told me “You a mess! Go clean and then you come back.”

Candidly, I really did get a good laugh out of the experience! Every time I think about it, I can’t help but smile. : ) I consider this God’s way of telling me not to take myself to seriously.

This evening, I went back to the smoothie shop to thank the guy who helped me out… Ju (pictured above) immediately started laughing as soon as I walked in! Despite his accent, his english was really good, so we spent about 30 minutes talking about our travels. It turns out him and his wife are the owners of the shop, so I promised to come back again.

God is good, God is love, God has a (better) plan!

Until next time,
Omar