Away from the noise and pollution of China’s larger cities, the ghost town of Old Beichuan is surrounded by green forest-covered hills. Tucked below in the valley, tilted buildings and piles of crumbled brick covered by weeds and vine sit just as they had once fallen.

This place, though in ruins, is not ancient—it is a modern-day rural town devasted in an earthquake in China’s Sichuan province.

The rain fell, it seemed, nonstop for a month. Streets flooded, water rushed under bridges, and still the rain fell. One wet morning in July, coffee in hand and mixed emotions brewing, I looked out the window of my apartment. Raindrops beat against the glass blurring the cityscape below. I sighed. Soon I would leave this place. It all seemed unreal—the rain, the past two years, and what might come next.

I stood in the yard in front of the church while the crowd began to gather. Sirens blared in the distance. For once in my life I felt tall next to the young Indonesian women who surrounded me. I could see the tops of their heads without straining.

People came from every direction as the procession approached. A red carpet lined the path to the church door. Police stood by as news cameras rolled and people snapped photos from their cell phones. Life in Balige, a rural town in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, rarely reached this level of excitement.

“Sister, is the market in your country like this?” said Apriliza as she tugged at my arm.

We were walking together along the crowded street in the mid-afternoon heat. Ahead of us men loaded large bags of produce on top of a bus as a car and motorcycle squeezed through the narrow space between the bus and a row of women selling piles of dried fish, books, and plastic containers.

I remember it well—the day I became a student of Eberhard-Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. Paperwork with official stamps finally in hand, I bounced through the cobble-stoned streets of the Altstadt toward the bridge that hangs across the Neckar River. Looking out over the old buildings of this once-walled city neatly reflected in the Neckar’s still water, I savored the day’s accomplishments. It was indeed a fine start to my second week of life in Tübingen, on Tuesday September 11, 2001.

The elderly woman’s body lies inside the house in a coffin covered only by a thin white veil. Aside from the coffin, the room is void of furniture. A dozen members of the family and surrounding village sit cross-legged on the multi-colored plastic woven mat spread across the tile floor. I add my sandals to the pairs already stacked in front of the open door and step inside.

Our three-wheeler pulls into the dusty lot used as a bus station. Several mini-buses and big red buses similar to school buses idle around, engines humming and doors open, all waiting to depart to various cities in eastern Sri Lanka. I grab my bags and step onto a patch of caked dirt.

Veiled in morning fog, the pyramid emerges, revealing a mystical structure more than 1,000 years old. Situated in a large grassy square surrounded by smaller structures and jungle, the pyramid’s grandeur towers above the gawking tourists below. Sweat drips from my forehead as the fog fades. With the sounds of birds around, few tourists have come here this early.

The sanctuary—lit by hundreds of candles set upon tables and on the floor that stretch the length of the open space—smells of incense, candles, sweat and the grass and pine that cover the floor. Large portraits and figures of the pantheon of Catholic saints line the walls, as people move freely around, praying or offering a bottle of coke or other soda in areas strewn about.

Voices, squeals, and laughter echo in the afternoon air as raindrops start to patter on the metal roof above. Girls and boys are scattered around the basketball court. A pack chases each other, dribbling a basketball. A lanky girl with hair pulled back in a ponytail squares up and shoots with great form, the ball bounces off the rim and away the pack goes. Two boys dart past, kicking a football at each other. Other kids are sitting, chattering away. This, for me, is another moment of holy cacophony, now manifest in a chorus of children.