Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Ascension House Part 4


                                   
I was in bed by seven last night and up by five today. The silence is absolute and the cleanliness of my surroundings is thorough. No insects appeared last night and I am grateful. My entire body is wrapped in humid warmth and when I opened the windows this morning, the temperature outside was exactly the same as what I had slept in.

But the windows open, the hotpot works, and the Vietnamese  metal coffee filter that I bought at Modern Trading before I left Seattle makes a very espresso-like cup of coffee. The dining room table is just the right height for typing and the chairs have supportive backs. I am a happy and fortunate woman; this is all lightyears away from my usual Hong Kong experience.

Mist is coming in threads down the hills that I can see from the kitchen window and the weather forecast promises a morning of heavy rainfall. However one of the cleaning ladies yesterday had brought out an umbrella early on in our encounter and left it by the door, looking at me in a way that told me I was a complete fool not to have brought one with me. This is indisputably true,

But I am a very fortunate fool who is cherishing every minute of privacy and the run of the house before five men from Indonesia join me tonight around eight. Given this morning's pre-dawn wake-up call, I will be sound asleep when they arrive.

1 comment:

Sherry said...

Wow! How very fortunate to encounter such understanding and kind treatment after such an unsettling arrival...... I'm pretty sure I would have turned to a quivering gob of jelly under the same circumstances - even in the U.S.. Ascension House sounds like a sanctuary to me. I am curious what happened that encouraged you to go there since your previous post(was it last year when you visited?) gave the impression that you had decided it was probably not for you. So looking forward to following you about on this journey.