It’s hard to believe it’s been over four months since I came home from my trip to Egypt, isn’t it? I was looking back through some posts the other day and realized that there were a couple more moments of the trip I wanted to tell you about that I never got around to mentioning.

This one happens to be the best part of the trip for me.

– — –

About halfway into our three week trip, we left Cairo for an overnight train that was scheduled to leave the station at 8 p.m. I had spent part of the day at the orphanage and was emotionally worn out (if you haven’t read that post yet, you’ll want to catch up on that experience before you read the rest of this). By the time we got to the train station, most of us were wearing the most comfortable clothes we owned and already in a deep introspective state.

Spending a few hours crying over babies will do that to you, you know.

We were standing in the train station, waiting for it to arrive, when I realized that the day I had experienced — and the night I was about to experience — would be one of those defining moments in my life.

Cate sat near me, leaning against a streetlight as she wrote in her diary.

Nicholas, whom you now know as Gosling, was on the other side of me, laid against his backpack.

And I was just standing there, silent, fighting the urge to take a taxi back to the orphanage.

We boarded the train and picked seats; Cate was a few rows in front of me with her own seat buddy, John, and I was on the left side of the train with my seat buddy, Gosling. We both had single seats and his twisted fully around to cause our seats to face each other.

The first hour or so of the trip was filled with the novelty of being on an overnight train, but as everyone in our group began to wind down, out came the iPods and magazines. Gosling and I began talking and eventually pulled out a piece of paper where we each wrote ten questions to ask the other one with the rule that we had to each answer our own questions, too. We were scheduled to be on the train for a good 13 hours, so we had plenty of time to fill.

Our questions were shallow and deep, interesting and unusual. I can’t remember all of them now, but I know they were about our futures and our pasts and even our present, too. We took our time with them, mainly because we had plenty of time — a commodity that I wasn’t used to having extra of. We talked our way through the questions and, when we were done, we talked some more. It’s strange because, to this day, I can only really remember one part of the conversation.

We had stopped talking and I was looking out the window while he read from a book he had pulled from his backpack. After a few minutes, Gosling laid down his book and asked me if I was thinking about the babies. I nodded my head and then began to tell him the truth.

– — –

I told him how I had never seen orphans before that day. I told him that I had never seen a child hungry for food I couldn’t provide by a quick trip to McDonald’s. I told him that I had never seen such dirty, tattered clothing on babies and then, with those things spilled out, I told him the ugliest, most truthful part of it all –

I’ve purposely never seen them.

I’ve never been on a missions trip before, even though I’ve had the opportunity on several occasions. I’ve never been because I’ve always known that, once I saw what it was really like for children around the world, I would never be the same. I wanted to selfishly protect this time because, once you’ve seen it, there’s no going back.

And so that’s what we talked about as train rolled through the night. We talked about how what you’ve seen changes you, leaves you different than who you were before you saw it. We talked about how the need we saw in that orphanage is only a small glimpse of worldwide need.

I talked about how I felt like, no matter what I did, it would only be a drop in the bucket.

– — –

I haven’t been able to forget about that orphanage since I’ve been back. I’ve had dreams and nightmares about it, thought about it on my lunch break, wrote about it in my diary. I know that there was a reason I was there but I haven’t known what to do about it.

But then I began emailing and speaking with my contacts from there and basically just trying to figure out what the next step is. And now, even though it scares me, we’re throwing around the idea of me going there next year for a little bit. If I do it, I would probably go next December (2010) and stay for about three weeks, including Christmas.

It’s vague right now. I don’t know that I’ll go; it’s hard to plan a year in advance when I don’t even know what’s going to be happening in my life next month. But we’re talking about it, which is a first step. We’ll see; I mean, for all I know, I could end up going to a different orphanage to give my time.  Really, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

But I know I’m supposed to do something.