for the record I now write here . Thanks for following!
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
my new houseguest and my travel plans
My current post-Post itinerary: Burma>Guangzhou>Hong Kong>Beijing then ??? something around China or maybe Japan or maybe Mongolia. Three weeks later, fly to St. Petersburg (this is early April) then a full month and a half later, fly home from Berlin, doing something like the Napoleonic retreat except with more trains. Pretty sweet I think!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
1) A PiA fellow in Vietnam came to visit, and I suggested we have the authentic Southern Thai experience by going to Patong, perhaps the sleaziest slice of world I've ever seen, but something I felt we should do once. Mission accomplished:
This is pretty accurate as to what it looks like at night.
We met up with friends of another English teacher in my town. Photos are Matt's, used without permission. Deal with it
We then took a day of recovery in Phang Nga. It was once again nice to see someone else's eyes widen at my strange town. The things I get used to really are completely out of this world.
2). My mom, dad and sister flew out to Bangkok to spend Winter holidays with me! We spent a day in Bangkok before heading to a resort near Khao Sam Roi Yot national park:
Photos are Rebecca's no permissions DEAL
3. I went to D.C. to interview with the Foreign Service. I didn't get the job and I'm ok with that. I was going against people who were seriously more qualified than me. However the visit in general was awesome, just awesome. The party Friday in my opinion was one our best. D.C. north of U and south of K looks identical to how I left it but Mt. Vernon Sq. and Shaw are so different they look like a different city. The borders of upper-class D.C. are changing so rapidly it's like watching bamboo grow. I walked around listening to Homecoming and Heard 'Em Say, riding in the 5A from Dulles to Home -- well. Leaving it this time around was much harder. I also visited X, which reminded me exactly what was going on in my life 11 months ago when it took me 4 seconds to decide that I was ready to drop everything and move to Thailand, and also why teaching Kindergarten spoke to my heart so. Absolutely the best part of my visit was giving a powerpoint presentation to the kinders (framed like a storybook) about my time in Thailand. I told them I was 12,000 mi away (I was wrong it's about 9k), and that I biked to school every day and my now seven year old buddy looked at me like I was crazy and said "how you gon bike 12 thousand miles ev-ree day!?!" And noticed that my new school had "jungle, and there's trees everywhere, and, and there's mountains." Totally.
4. I went to Korea to visit our new family friend Quinlin, who took me around town! We saw sacred ancient tourist rituals performed,
stood in front of palaces shadowed by mountains,
and doorways,
and watched the sunset over a fort.
5) I read books and listened to new albums. A) Catch-22: It was very good. I was also reading a bootleg copy that I bought in Vietnam which seemed just right. B) The complete short stories of Flannery O Connor. I first encountered her in a short story collection I picked up at random from the MLK library last year, and "A View of the Woods" left me shaking. Many of her stories are good but after a while they start to run together into a stream of nightmares where the endings, developments and first three lines are all quite similar. I think she's better read in many sittings rather than the entire oeuvre in a week. But that's life. C) I started but did not finish "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and "The Last Tycoons;" the first didn't fully capture my attention and the second was really big so when I left it in D.C. and will finish it someday. D) Re-read Blood Meridian. Probably my favorite book. The first time around, the Judge captured me but this time I thought more about what Glanton is. I have a lot to say about it but I don't want to give anything away. E) just started Underworld so far so good.
Albums: I) The Chronic. I see why it was/is important but it felt pretty dated, even next to Enter the 36 chambers. Some real gems though: Let me Ride for instance. II) The King of Limbs. an album I like but I wonder how we would view it without the Radiohead mystique. III) The College Dropout. Dan's right: if it's at all possible kanye is underrated. The album is superb. IV) Late Registration: Taking me a little longer to get into. V) This is Happening, LCD Soundsystem's last, an album I have been putting off for reasons I myself am not entirely clear on. Very enjoyable, has solidly entered my running playlist. Home is a great track. Still, All My Friends is their moment, like Everything in its Right Place is Radiohead's.
6) I distilled my frustration with the pro-choice arguments popping up around facebook today into a piece about the Komen/Planned Parenthood falling out. It's really difficult to empathize across political boundaries. But if Ward's research, which I cite therin, is to be believed, it's easier for conservatives. I have no idea what that means or why it would be.
Take the GREs, hopefully get a job, travel and then America.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
In 2011, I
1) Touched the ground in 11 countries: not including airports/layerovers/visa crossings, 8. 2) Read 44 books, 40 since June. 3) Ran about 1032 miles, for a not particularly good average of 19.8 per week (40% of the total came in April, November and December). 4) Laughed, taught, lost my cool, messed around with, fell off desks, fell asleep, saw growth happen, got praised, praised, got humbled, at/with/in front of/for/by students. 5) went with the flow, became debris in the river. 6) at major points, changed course, or jumped out of the water. 7) chased a water bottle through a waterfall, emerged with leeches on my feet. 8)Schemed and dreamed on subways and planes and country roads at night. 9) broke two ipods, two kindles and a cell phone. 10) Saw my life weighed, and it came to about 75 pounds in two backpacks and a duffel bag as I left D.C. 7 months ago.
I'm returning for an interview with the Foreign Service in two weeks. D.C. Crew and Dan and Madeleine and Faiza, I will see you soon! I miss you. I just got back from running, and will grandma shuffle to the water refilling station, drink a baht worth, shuffle back, shower and eat, apply to jobs, and be in bed at 10, sleep 9 hours, wake to roosters.
I'm returning for an interview with the Foreign Service in two weeks. D.C. Crew and Dan and Madeleine and Faiza, I will see you soon! I miss you. I just got back from running, and will grandma shuffle to the water refilling station, drink a baht worth, shuffle back, shower and eat, apply to jobs, and be in bed at 10, sleep 9 hours, wake to roosters.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
I had a birthday party! At the restaurant I eat at like thrice a week:
My kindle screen broke and momentarily: IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!
But my family is visiting in two weeks and the replacement is free; I
can study Thai and read a book of travel poetry in the meantime. I love
the device but sturdiness isn't its selling point, this is the second
I've killed in 6 months.
A few weeks ago I had the rare situation of teaching all 17 classes in a single week, but things have come up and I suspect it will be like Mewtwo: seen only once. Classes, especially with my older students, have been going really well. I got each class to write a rap song, and some students were pretty hesitant about it but one class got as far as "yo, yo, he is a good man/I want him in my hand/you and I in Wonderland." The following week I made up a lesson about the RZA's "Grits," which I chose in part because it's a great song and in part because it's about family, growing up poor and food, and I was hoping the kids could relate to it. They got that it was about food, but the connection between the great meal your mom cooked you as a kid and saying no to a life of crime was a bit more difficult to illustrate.
This week, I've been surprised at how difficult it is for them to describe an item of food (and then guess the item based on classmates' descriptions); they don't have English vocabulary like sweet, salty, sour, soup, noodles, etc. But I must have tapped something, because I had some seriously full attention. I read this book called "Not-For-Profit," reviewed here, by Martha Nussbaum about how the socratic method, hands on learning, the liberal arts and the arts themselves prepare us for democratic and cosmopolitan citizenship, and I've been thinking ever since about how to develop lessons that encourage creativity. One of the best things about teaching, as a job, is that it engages the creative mind, and like Dewey said:"The difference between play and what is regarded as serious employment should be not a difference between the presence and absence of imagination, but a difference in the materials with which imagination is occupied."
We had a big Thanksgiving feast at my house for PiA Southern Thailand and friends! How lovely. Some of us went to Kuala Lumpur and had late nights for a good long weekend. Before that, I went to a wedding my co-teacher took pictures:
Because we're in Asia
bride and groom.
Tomorrow I'm going to bike out so Similan and go snorkeling. Lastly, this is how I feel about Occupy Wall Street.
A few weeks ago I had the rare situation of teaching all 17 classes in a single week, but things have come up and I suspect it will be like Mewtwo: seen only once. Classes, especially with my older students, have been going really well. I got each class to write a rap song, and some students were pretty hesitant about it but one class got as far as "yo, yo, he is a good man/I want him in my hand/you and I in Wonderland." The following week I made up a lesson about the RZA's "Grits," which I chose in part because it's a great song and in part because it's about family, growing up poor and food, and I was hoping the kids could relate to it. They got that it was about food, but the connection between the great meal your mom cooked you as a kid and saying no to a life of crime was a bit more difficult to illustrate.
This week, I've been surprised at how difficult it is for them to describe an item of food (and then guess the item based on classmates' descriptions); they don't have English vocabulary like sweet, salty, sour, soup, noodles, etc. But I must have tapped something, because I had some seriously full attention. I read this book called "Not-For-Profit," reviewed here, by Martha Nussbaum about how the socratic method, hands on learning, the liberal arts and the arts themselves prepare us for democratic and cosmopolitan citizenship, and I've been thinking ever since about how to develop lessons that encourage creativity. One of the best things about teaching, as a job, is that it engages the creative mind, and like Dewey said:"The difference between play and what is regarded as serious employment should be not a difference between the presence and absence of imagination, but a difference in the materials with which imagination is occupied."
We had a big Thanksgiving feast at my house for PiA Southern Thailand and friends! How lovely. Some of us went to Kuala Lumpur and had late nights for a good long weekend. Before that, I went to a wedding my co-teacher took pictures:
Tomorrow I'm going to bike out so Similan and go snorkeling. Lastly, this is how I feel about Occupy Wall Street.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
American Fried Rice: Burma
This week, I missed two days of school to judge an English competition, where adorable 10 year olds retold such stories as "The 3 little pigs" and then drew inspiring morals from them. Wednesday, we had a, well, I can call it a big celebration at school of foreign languages, where the kids baked Chinese and American food, and has the foreigners try some to test the authenticity. One of those dishes was "American Fried Rice." I was not quite sure how to judge a dish I'd never had and behold, there's a history; a teacher's sister, who runs a Thai restaurant in Canada, said it was invented in Thailand to feed American soldiers during the Vietnam war. Who would have thought?
Thursday I taught, and on Friday I took a long journey to Ranong to cross into Burma to get my visa renewed (so I taught 1/5 days this week, which is not atypical). I was told not to take pictures soon after the boat ride, but I got a few good ones in
(Also I tried to clean my camera lens and just made things worse, darn):
Thursday I taught, and on Friday I took a long journey to Ranong to cross into Burma to get my visa renewed (so I taught 1/5 days this week, which is not atypical). I was told not to take pictures soon after the boat ride, but I got a few good ones in
Books: Reading Capital slowly, started A Feast for Crows, been a long time since I picked up the series but after I refresh on the characters I just know I'll be burning through it again.
Music: So Chika and Mike D. recently made excellent recommendations, Chika The Weeknd and Mike The Microphones. The Weeknd is R+B so hedonistic it borders on evil; one reviewer said of "Loft Music" that it makes you feel unclean just to put it on. Yeah. And The Microphones: Wow. The Glow Pt. 2 is elegant gentle, and a little heartbreaking, words I don't normally associate with lo-fi, somewhere between virtuosic folk and rock; there a name for the genre? Elliot Smith music, Bon Iver on Skinny Love, Radiohead on No Surprises. Also listening to Bjork's Homogenic, which is pleasantly orchestral and a good running album, and Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury; If I'm going to like Southern cocaine rap, it's going to be this album. Joints like Ride Around Shining are so NOT trying to be a pleasant, easy-listen, which is a lot of what I don't like about gangsta rap: the abrasive lyrics against music no more difficult than George Michael. It makes the whole thing seem unreal, like a childish fantasy (I'm thinking of Rick Ross, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, the Kanye crew who fashion themselves street, which Kanye is self-aware enough not to). Clipse, by contrast, make genuinely menacing and unglorified music, even if the lyrics are aggressive and rude in their own way. I suppose I should clarify that I'm really praising the Neptunes, who do what they do every bit as well as the RZA in his 36 chambers-Supreme Clientele peak.
So two beautiful albums, and two evil. I try to keep a nice balance. Also, Madvillian, Good lord is that talent. I honestly have trouble believing the density of some of Doom's rhymes.
Monday, November 14, 2011
How did people apply to jobs abroad before the internet?
I mean long distance phone calls could help but how would you even find out about positions? On a related note, I'm working on arranging my return to the States in 2012, listening to Ravel, trying to slog through Capital, and here are some pictures of Singapore:
I'd have to live to be 123 to have another birthday date as good as the one that just passed. We had a little farang+friends dinner and checked out some new bar where a Thai band sang me happy birthday and then talked to me in Thai for like 5 minutes while I looked at them.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Pictures:
Technology is cool, here are photos from my time in Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Vientiane, Kuala Lumpur and Khao Lak.
Click on the little text icon in the bottom left for captions. At this point, I see no need for facebook. Also they're increasingly invasive, and I know google is too, but I trust google's benignity more. That's a delightful word whose pronunciation is anybody's guess.
These past few weeks I've been reading reading reading and biking. A few weeks back I read Crime and Punishment and On Beauty. I liked C&P, but I liked it more in 10th grade, when I told my own story in more tragic, romantic terms, so Sonya and Raskalnikov made more sense to me. On Beauty was amazing. Highly recommended: her dialogue is A+. I then read a bunch of the Dresden Files which are about a detective who is a magician and it just goes right to the dopamine for me, has for like 10 years. Also, a great piece called "Beyond Gay Marriage" questioning whether gay marriage is really good for queer people/society. It's a great read if you're into pol/queer theory.
Click on the little text icon in the bottom left for captions. At this point, I see no need for facebook. Also they're increasingly invasive, and I know google is too, but I trust google's benignity more. That's a delightful word whose pronunciation is anybody's guess.
These past few weeks I've been reading reading reading and biking. A few weeks back I read Crime and Punishment and On Beauty. I liked C&P, but I liked it more in 10th grade, when I told my own story in more tragic, romantic terms, so Sonya and Raskalnikov made more sense to me. On Beauty was amazing. Highly recommended: her dialogue is A+. I then read a bunch of the Dresden Files which are about a detective who is a magician and it just goes right to the dopamine for me, has for like 10 years. Also, a great piece called "Beyond Gay Marriage" questioning whether gay marriage is really good for queer people/society. It's a great read if you're into pol/queer theory.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Recent History
As a map, my past month looks like this. As an Itinerary:
September 17th: fly from Phuket to Chiang Mai.
September 21st: bus to Chiang Rai.
September 24th: fly to Bangkok.
September 25th: train to the Cambodia border, taxi to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat.
September 29th: bus to Phnom Penh.
October 4th: Bus to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon.
October 7th: fly to Hanoi.
October 10th: fly to Vientiane.
October 15th: bus to Udon Thani/fly to Phuket/bus home next day.
Now HERE is where I want to post the beautiful pictures I took. Que mala suerte then that my memory card failed in Cambodia and I only have photos from HCM onwards. If any are good I'll post them later. So words will have to work. All I know is what the words know, yeah?
Part 1: Thailand
I had come back from Singapore - the whole city so carefully colored in the lines- on 9/14, and I spent the next few days getting my life together so I could depart in peace. Stayed up all night and took a 6:00 bus to Phuket on the 17th, that afternoon I was in Chiang Mai. I walked with a PiA fellow there who is working with a rock climbing group and the rest I covered previously.
Chiang Rai. I found Mike -my first ITBF, In-Transit-Best Friend- who showed me around town, and we ate with the PiA crew/their friends. Chiang Rai struck me with how much it resembled the rest of Thailand. I worry for this country. Sometimes it seems like the whole thing will fall to endless sprawl, which apparently exacerbated recent floods. Nonetheless it was nice to get a flavor of different PiA life. The boys up there have a good dynamic and Mike in particular is making great progress with Thai. Turns out, Thai universities aren't so different from Thai high schools, at least, the kids are similar, carefree until they fail and then worried about their futures.
While there I visited the White Temple
, which, in a country that is remarkably architecturally conservative, stands out. It really is as bizare as these pictures from the internet imply. The artist, Kositpipat, has a vision and he certainly carries it out, so the outside is covered in dragons and mermaids and intimidating white statues and the dude from Predator, while the inside is a mural of pop culture images, keanu reeves and superman and Doreamon flying around the burning twin towers. I found it somewhat upsetting. The whole thing seemed very profane to me. That day I finished Blood Meridian , which also left me feeling a bit sick and confused. It was an astounding book though. I have been thinking about the War is God passage a lot in the past few weeks. "As well ask men what they think of stone." I next went to the Golden Triangle, from which you can see Burma and Laos simultaneously over the Mekong, drank with the fellows and headed to Cambodia.
I had one night in Bangkok before a 6:00 a.m. train. I wrote:
"2:45 a.m. 9/25: Now this is definitely the most interesting thing I've seen so far. Hualamphong Plaza, hard floors and lights on, 75-100 people sleeping, some dirty, some on mats, smoking, monks, some sitting awake in silence, travelers, saying hello to me, asking if I am ok. I am wearing a pink Chang V-neck, Nike Shorts and the adventure shoes, leaning on my backpack propped against a column. A group of men plays and observes a checkers game with bottlecap pieces, a toddler in braids an ornate dress crawling among. The man nearest me, 30s, tattooed skeletal, twitches over cigarettes. Little one cries, why is she awake? It is 3 hours until my train, an alarm set for when sleep comes, but I'm traveling alone, so I can plan 12 hours in a city, 4 in dumb movies, and none in a hotel room, brush my teeth in a mall bathroom. Lives in bags, towels as blankets, bare feet on an older woman with a bandana in her hair, tired and careword are indistinguishable. Trash and dust along the edges, Singapore this is not. Thai guy in a skullcap with an older European, a vivid story, two inscrutable women track their steps. I can smell the ink and hear the checkers man drink."
I took a train to Cambodia, beautiful rice paddies endless on the way, and thus ends the Thailand chapter.
Part 2: Cambodia
At the border, everyone was trying to extract money from the foreigners, but an American expat nurse who had done the crossing before gave some guidance, and soon thereafter, she, I a Dutch fellow and a Spaniard were sharing a taxi. The Europeans could speak in French, I could speak Spanish with one and English with the other, and by the time we got to Siem Reap, we were moving together, sharing a hotel room in a hostel recommended to Carlos, de Espana.Rafael, of Holland, was sick, Carlos was on his own ,so I went to Angkor wat that first day on a tuk-tuk , that thing I'm so glad Phang Nga does not have, and took pictures. It was fine. People describe seeing the giant temples as life-changing but they were just nice. I thought a lot about impermanence and grandiosity that day.
Tuesday rained, I sat in the hostel and ate and read War and Peace. Wednesday, biked Angkor Wat with Carlos, drank with Norwegians there to study ecotourism but really just abroad for the same reasons we all went, I miss the Onion being free, but they believe what they wrote.
Onwards to Phnom Penh. I met Micah, who became my second ITBF, and Kristen, and walked in on their lives, sleeping in their living room, pursuing what they pursued. Phnom Penh is a tough city, dirty and loud and a clear-overabundance of Tuk-Tuks and mototaxis, meaningful work not forthcoming. Kristen and I went to the torture museum , appropriately emotionally exploitative and disturbing. Cambodia is 50% 22 or younger, and people older than my parents were essentially impossible to find in the capital, but other than that, the genocide is a somewhat silent presence. The PiA+friends crew is about ten in number and tight, just the kind of friend group I've cherished(coveted) since, what, 2006? that's not so long. I got to choose the initial movie for their Film Club, so we watched Bad Education. I bought a set of 18 of Almodovar's movies for $3, I'm going to watch them all this year.
Life of reading and running, group dinners and frisbee, you were mine once, summer 2009, you are Micah's now, and I went on to Ho Chi Minh.
Part 3: Vietnam
Traveling, everyone wants to be friends- Carlos Rafael and I moved together- so on that bus to Vietnam, I spoke to an American girl from Seattle and two guys from England, all 2011 graduates, and soon the four of us were a traveling pack, sharing two rooms in a hostel, drinking and touristing. HCM wasn't my cup of tea. We went to the War Remnants Musuem and learned why war/America is bad, the presidential palace, a cathedral, some markets, and the tunnels the VC used to stay underneath American bombs, and nothing grabbed me. I was tired. It was the nights that counted, meeting up with an Israeli girl and Portugese dude with whom we had seen the tunnels , introducing myself to some guy who I recognized from the War Remnants Museum (6' goth dudes stand out in Vietnam), hopping with him and his Minnesotan traveling friend who had nannied in Germany, it blurred, and I flew to Hanoi, said goodbye to the three, exchanged emails.
Didn't like Hanoi so much. Another wild, somewhat irrational city, But the Museum of Fine Arts was beautiful and a refuge after weeks of moving too fast. Did I? I thought I wanted to see everything and I did want that! but it took a toll; I needed to schedule in a day of rest. Like Valelly said, you only understand the opportunity costs in retrospect, how could I have known? I lived the local PiA drama for an evening and talked to Europeans who work in banks. I walked around the crowded alleys of the old quarter and over West to the museums and open streets, breathed and realized it was time to move on again, so booked a flight to Vientiane.
Part 4: Vientiane . The first place that was calm, where people just want to be nice since Thailand. Mike, my third ITBF- Mike Mike and Micah, thank you thank you, you made my trip- picked me up and we spoke: he went to his evening classes and I went to read along the Mekong, for which Mike's picture is perfect. Dinner with the fellows, and I spent my days reading in cafes, finished War and Peace, over-descriptive and wonderful thing that it was, and wrote all day. The dust got in my throat and I was ill, like Mike has been, and it didn't matter, all we had to do was sit and look out at the water. Charlotte incorporated me into a lesson about maps- how Bangkok and Phang Nga look the same but are different, maps show some things but hide others. How wonderful it would be to teach in such a supportive teaching environment as theirs! Former professors at Swarthmore seem to like it as well. Perhaps someday.
Vientiane was my favorite place to visit, the one I could most picture relocating to. I could lead a full exterior life there. Reading is my focus here. I realized that while traveling. I'm not precisely sure when. It was perhaps when Charlotte said "maybe learning Thai just isn't that important to you." It is, and it isn't, I want to be functional, but my heart is in books right now.
It was quite a trip. I need to digest more of it to have any analysis. Now I want to talk about Art.
After W+P I opted for something light, twenty thousand leagues under the sea; I got back and Michelle gave me the Chronology of Water, which was pretty great, maybe the best memoir I've ever read. I'm thinking of Oates's A Widow's Story and perhaps Nothing to Be Frightened of. I've been listening to beautiful music again -i'm still predominantly listening to aggressive rap but hey, I needed music to put to the experience of traveling- enjoying Shostakovich's tenth, My Brightest Diamond, Jens Lekman, this song in particular by the Tallest Man on Earth (the second MBD and 1st Lekman song I"ve linked to are seamless on a playlist). I have an idea for how "ASEAN blur" on piano would but I need to wait to realize it, and the kernel might die by the time I can sit down and hash it out. I can't just dream and write the whole thing, I need to be playing.
I'm going to Malaysia tomorrow because I need to finally get my Non-Immigrant B Visa which has been a hassle of uninspiring details. I have a few days there and will take them leisurely. When I was moving, a month ago, it was always, next stop, utopia, and now, I am watching myself move, I will have calm time someday. It will Follow the Rain.
September 17th: fly from Phuket to Chiang Mai.
September 21st: bus to Chiang Rai.
September 24th: fly to Bangkok.
September 25th: train to the Cambodia border, taxi to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat.
September 29th: bus to Phnom Penh.
October 4th: Bus to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon.
October 7th: fly to Hanoi.
October 10th: fly to Vientiane.
October 15th: bus to Udon Thani/fly to Phuket/bus home next day.
Now HERE is where I want to post the beautiful pictures I took. Que mala suerte then that my memory card failed in Cambodia and I only have photos from HCM onwards. If any are good I'll post them later. So words will have to work. All I know is what the words know, yeah?
Part 1: Thailand
I had come back from Singapore - the whole city so carefully colored in the lines- on 9/14, and I spent the next few days getting my life together so I could depart in peace. Stayed up all night and took a 6:00 bus to Phuket on the 17th, that afternoon I was in Chiang Mai. I walked with a PiA fellow there who is working with a rock climbing group and the rest I covered previously.
Chiang Rai. I found Mike -my first ITBF, In-Transit-Best Friend- who showed me around town, and we ate with the PiA crew/their friends. Chiang Rai struck me with how much it resembled the rest of Thailand. I worry for this country. Sometimes it seems like the whole thing will fall to endless sprawl, which apparently exacerbated recent floods. Nonetheless it was nice to get a flavor of different PiA life. The boys up there have a good dynamic and Mike in particular is making great progress with Thai. Turns out, Thai universities aren't so different from Thai high schools, at least, the kids are similar, carefree until they fail and then worried about their futures.
While there I visited the White Temple
, which, in a country that is remarkably architecturally conservative, stands out. It really is as bizare as these pictures from the internet imply. The artist, Kositpipat, has a vision and he certainly carries it out, so the outside is covered in dragons and mermaids and intimidating white statues and the dude from Predator, while the inside is a mural of pop culture images, keanu reeves and superman and Doreamon flying around the burning twin towers. I found it somewhat upsetting. The whole thing seemed very profane to me. That day I finished Blood Meridian , which also left me feeling a bit sick and confused. It was an astounding book though. I have been thinking about the War is God passage a lot in the past few weeks. "As well ask men what they think of stone." I next went to the Golden Triangle, from which you can see Burma and Laos simultaneously over the Mekong, drank with the fellows and headed to Cambodia.
I had one night in Bangkok before a 6:00 a.m. train. I wrote:
"2:45 a.m. 9/25: Now this is definitely the most interesting thing I've seen so far. Hualamphong Plaza, hard floors and lights on, 75-100 people sleeping, some dirty, some on mats, smoking, monks, some sitting awake in silence, travelers, saying hello to me, asking if I am ok. I am wearing a pink Chang V-neck, Nike Shorts and the adventure shoes, leaning on my backpack propped against a column. A group of men plays and observes a checkers game with bottlecap pieces, a toddler in braids an ornate dress crawling among. The man nearest me, 30s, tattooed skeletal, twitches over cigarettes. Little one cries, why is she awake? It is 3 hours until my train, an alarm set for when sleep comes, but I'm traveling alone, so I can plan 12 hours in a city, 4 in dumb movies, and none in a hotel room, brush my teeth in a mall bathroom. Lives in bags, towels as blankets, bare feet on an older woman with a bandana in her hair, tired and careword are indistinguishable. Trash and dust along the edges, Singapore this is not. Thai guy in a skullcap with an older European, a vivid story, two inscrutable women track their steps. I can smell the ink and hear the checkers man drink."
I took a train to Cambodia, beautiful rice paddies endless on the way, and thus ends the Thailand chapter.
Part 2: Cambodia
At the border, everyone was trying to extract money from the foreigners, but an American expat nurse who had done the crossing before gave some guidance, and soon thereafter, she, I a Dutch fellow and a Spaniard were sharing a taxi. The Europeans could speak in French, I could speak Spanish with one and English with the other, and by the time we got to Siem Reap, we were moving together, sharing a hotel room in a hostel recommended to Carlos, de Espana.Rafael, of Holland, was sick, Carlos was on his own ,so I went to Angkor wat that first day on a tuk-tuk , that thing I'm so glad Phang Nga does not have, and took pictures. It was fine. People describe seeing the giant temples as life-changing but they were just nice. I thought a lot about impermanence and grandiosity that day.
Tuesday rained, I sat in the hostel and ate and read War and Peace. Wednesday, biked Angkor Wat with Carlos, drank with Norwegians there to study ecotourism but really just abroad for the same reasons we all went, I miss the Onion being free, but they believe what they wrote.
Onwards to Phnom Penh. I met Micah, who became my second ITBF, and Kristen, and walked in on their lives, sleeping in their living room, pursuing what they pursued. Phnom Penh is a tough city, dirty and loud and a clear-overabundance of Tuk-Tuks and mototaxis, meaningful work not forthcoming. Kristen and I went to the torture museum , appropriately emotionally exploitative and disturbing. Cambodia is 50% 22 or younger, and people older than my parents were essentially impossible to find in the capital, but other than that, the genocide is a somewhat silent presence. The PiA+friends crew is about ten in number and tight, just the kind of friend group I've cherished(coveted) since, what, 2006? that's not so long. I got to choose the initial movie for their Film Club, so we watched Bad Education. I bought a set of 18 of Almodovar's movies for $3, I'm going to watch them all this year.
Life of reading and running, group dinners and frisbee, you were mine once, summer 2009, you are Micah's now, and I went on to Ho Chi Minh.
Part 3: Vietnam
Traveling, everyone wants to be friends- Carlos Rafael and I moved together- so on that bus to Vietnam, I spoke to an American girl from Seattle and two guys from England, all 2011 graduates, and soon the four of us were a traveling pack, sharing two rooms in a hostel, drinking and touristing. HCM wasn't my cup of tea. We went to the War Remnants Musuem and learned why war/America is bad, the presidential palace, a cathedral, some markets, and the tunnels the VC used to stay underneath American bombs, and nothing grabbed me. I was tired. It was the nights that counted, meeting up with an Israeli girl and Portugese dude with whom we had seen the tunnels , introducing myself to some guy who I recognized from the War Remnants Museum (6' goth dudes stand out in Vietnam), hopping with him and his Minnesotan traveling friend who had nannied in Germany, it blurred, and I flew to Hanoi, said goodbye to the three, exchanged emails.
Didn't like Hanoi so much. Another wild, somewhat irrational city, But the Museum of Fine Arts was beautiful and a refuge after weeks of moving too fast. Did I? I thought I wanted to see everything and I did want that! but it took a toll; I needed to schedule in a day of rest. Like Valelly said, you only understand the opportunity costs in retrospect, how could I have known? I lived the local PiA drama for an evening and talked to Europeans who work in banks. I walked around the crowded alleys of the old quarter and over West to the museums and open streets, breathed and realized it was time to move on again, so booked a flight to Vientiane.
Part 4: Vientiane . The first place that was calm, where people just want to be nice since Thailand. Mike, my third ITBF- Mike Mike and Micah, thank you thank you, you made my trip- picked me up and we spoke: he went to his evening classes and I went to read along the Mekong, for which Mike's picture is perfect. Dinner with the fellows, and I spent my days reading in cafes, finished War and Peace, over-descriptive and wonderful thing that it was, and wrote all day. The dust got in my throat and I was ill, like Mike has been, and it didn't matter, all we had to do was sit and look out at the water. Charlotte incorporated me into a lesson about maps- how Bangkok and Phang Nga look the same but are different, maps show some things but hide others. How wonderful it would be to teach in such a supportive teaching environment as theirs! Former professors at Swarthmore seem to like it as well. Perhaps someday.
Vientiane was my favorite place to visit, the one I could most picture relocating to. I could lead a full exterior life there. Reading is my focus here. I realized that while traveling. I'm not precisely sure when. It was perhaps when Charlotte said "maybe learning Thai just isn't that important to you." It is, and it isn't, I want to be functional, but my heart is in books right now.
It was quite a trip. I need to digest more of it to have any analysis. Now I want to talk about Art.
After W+P I opted for something light, twenty thousand leagues under the sea; I got back and Michelle gave me the Chronology of Water, which was pretty great, maybe the best memoir I've ever read. I'm thinking of Oates's A Widow's Story and perhaps Nothing to Be Frightened of. I've been listening to beautiful music again -i'm still predominantly listening to aggressive rap but hey, I needed music to put to the experience of traveling- enjoying Shostakovich's tenth, My Brightest Diamond, Jens Lekman, this song in particular by the Tallest Man on Earth (the second MBD and 1st Lekman song I"ve linked to are seamless on a playlist). I have an idea for how "ASEAN blur" on piano would but I need to wait to realize it, and the kernel might die by the time I can sit down and hash it out. I can't just dream and write the whole thing, I need to be playing.
I'm going to Malaysia tomorrow because I need to finally get my Non-Immigrant B Visa which has been a hassle of uninspiring details. I have a few days there and will take them leisurely. When I was moving, a month ago, it was always, next stop, utopia, and now, I am watching myself move, I will have calm time someday. It will Follow the Rain.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Traveling alone
I had plans for this year, and for this trip, and in a crucial respect, they're not panning out: I spend a majority of my time alone. I thought this would be a big group trip and we'd all move around Asia together, like DC Swatties and CYDC used to hit Wonderland as a pack. But no one's vacation schedules quite line up so I'm reading at most dinners again.
Sure company would be nice sometimes, especially around 8:30 p.m. each night, when I feel the urge to inquire something like "excuse me good sir, which way to the bacchanal?" And would I rather have Dan here? Well yes, but that's always true. But there are big upsides to traveling alone. I've recently finished Twain's The Mysterious Stranger and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which were fun, Madame Bovary, which I really enjoyed up to the last 10 pages at which point it got all melodramatic in that way 19th century literature sometimes does, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was often astoundingly beautiful but went on a few lengthy tangents that didn't do it for me. I just started Blood Meridian, which is hard to read in long sessions.
Perhaps I'll follow this up with a long post about how I'm going to try to make the most of my year here, facing the predicament of being productive in solitude, when no one knows or cares whether you waste the days away watching the Wire (which is mad good) or studying Thai or R. To me, it's high-stakes.
I'm starting to love it. I'm in Chiang Mai now, and I've been able to spend my 3 full days here precisely as I want to, which basically means zero time in museums. A) On Sunday I rented a bike and hoofed it to Doi Suthep about 10 miles outside the city and a mile up in elevation. It was a tough ride, but the temple and the view were beautiful and cruising down for 10 miles at a 10% gradient passing songthaews and motorcycles was among the most enjoyable and reckless half hours of my life. B) Yesterday I pretended to be a Gibbon by ziplining through the jungle and learning a grand total of zero about natural life, along with some British German and Australian tourists who were super nice. Everybody's nice in settings like that. C) Today I climbed the limestone surrounding the city, some 5as and a 6a before a different 6a was my downfall and we had to plan another route. It was just two climbing dudes and me in the whole site (it was raining on and off, which made things a bit tougher). What a great sport. It's so good to feel at ease in nature, like coming down from the middle path in the crum, running with the wolves. I would have been born well in a different century's hunting party.
Sure company would be nice sometimes, especially around 8:30 p.m. each night, when I feel the urge to inquire something like "excuse me good sir, which way to the bacchanal?" And would I rather have Dan here? Well yes, but that's always true. But there are big upsides to traveling alone. I've recently finished Twain's The Mysterious Stranger and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which were fun, Madame Bovary, which I really enjoyed up to the last 10 pages at which point it got all melodramatic in that way 19th century literature sometimes does, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was often astoundingly beautiful but went on a few lengthy tangents that didn't do it for me. I just started Blood Meridian, which is hard to read in long sessions.
Perhaps I'll follow this up with a long post about how I'm going to try to make the most of my year here, facing the predicament of being productive in solitude, when no one knows or cares whether you waste the days away watching the Wire (which is mad good) or studying Thai or R. To me, it's high-stakes.
I also just got a letter from the foreign service for an in-person interview next February in D.C. and I am trying to decide on whether to say yes. The idea of a position is frightening. I honestly took the initial exam thinking I would fail but here I am, some rounds in. I'll meditate on it. Good thing then that I'm going to Angkor Wat in a week. First, Chiang Rai. I'm off to Burritos, the second time in 3 days. Forgive me but I've had a lot of Thai food these past few months.
Friday, September 16, 2011
in a rush
somehow the night slipped away from me and a lengthy post about my 4 days in Singapore -which were tight- will have to wait until mid October, which is the next time I can update with pictures. For now, I will say that you should go to Singapore if you get the chance, and this is something like what it looks like, and this.Now, I'm going to Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Cambodia Vietnam and Laos, and I've planned no step beyond my flight at 10:00 a.m. today! Here we go.
Friday, September 9, 2011
2 most excellent developments
1) My visa expires tomorrow so I am taking an unplanned trip to Singapore for the next three days-- SWEET. 2) One of my classes asked to learn about rap so I finally, FINALLY got to incorporate the Wu Tang into a lesson, using the first lines of Protect Ya Neck to demonstrate that rap is rhythmic, often aggressive, full of slang, and that the sounds clip and blend to make it easier to say.
I am writing a 3 month report on my time here now and I will post portions of it when I'm finished.
I am writing a 3 month report on my time here now and I will post portions of it when I'm finished.
Monday, August 29, 2011
I'm happy right now. This past week was not so good. I got a serious attack of the self-pities! thinking about all the cool things I was foregoing by living in American cities with my friends, then it rained for 6 consecutive days, and then I got sick. But I'm feeling better and the sun is finally out. Three things about getting sick: 1) It's somewhat relaxing because I drastically lower my expectations for being productive, 2) it's hard to tell if you have a fever when you're sweating all the time and 3) pharmacies are pretty much the pinnacle of civilization. FYI when you leave the U.S. you can get some high-quality stuff that would be prescription only in the States for like $4.
Right now I'm really appreciating all those times my co-teachers have skipped class because when I say "I'm sick, I think I will go home today" they're pretty much guaranteed to cover me. Mutual back-scratching makes this system work.
About the weather: did you know that belts, pillows, shoes, cabinets and staircases can mold? Because now I do. Between the sun and some bleach hopefully I can conquer most of it. Too bad about Bolt and Bekele at the world champs. They might change the false start rule now, but each alternative to automatic DQ has serious downsides.
The other day I saw this
in my bathroom (about 4" leg to leg) and I was about as viscerally scared as I've been in my adult life. But I calmed down enough to take a photo. My bug tolerance has gradually increased to the point that I don't freak over cockroaches- nor take them as a sign of my uncleanliness, because my house is simply so open that I'd have to rub poison on every piece of wood to prevent entry - but this was too much.
I'm sorry I don't have more to say about Thailand. Not much has happened recently that feels distinctly Thai or really distinct at all. My Thai lessons are on momentary hiatus due to unforeseen circumstances. I hung out with some other foreigners -farang, we're called, but only white people are called that, and get this, France is "Farangsed," something like "place of foreigners" - which was cool, and classes have been going much better, but otherwise it's been pretty dull here. In like 3 weeks the semester ends and I'm spending a month traveling, so yeah! something to look forward to.
Right now I'm really appreciating all those times my co-teachers have skipped class because when I say "I'm sick, I think I will go home today" they're pretty much guaranteed to cover me. Mutual back-scratching makes this system work.
About the weather: did you know that belts, pillows, shoes, cabinets and staircases can mold? Because now I do. Between the sun and some bleach hopefully I can conquer most of it. Too bad about Bolt and Bekele at the world champs. They might change the false start rule now, but each alternative to automatic DQ has serious downsides.
The other day I saw this
in my bathroom (about 4" leg to leg) and I was about as viscerally scared as I've been in my adult life. But I calmed down enough to take a photo. My bug tolerance has gradually increased to the point that I don't freak over cockroaches- nor take them as a sign of my uncleanliness, because my house is simply so open that I'd have to rub poison on every piece of wood to prevent entry - but this was too much.
I'm sorry I don't have more to say about Thailand. Not much has happened recently that feels distinctly Thai or really distinct at all. My Thai lessons are on momentary hiatus due to unforeseen circumstances. I hung out with some other foreigners -farang, we're called, but only white people are called that, and get this, France is "Farangsed," something like "place of foreigners" - which was cool, and classes have been going much better, but otherwise it's been pretty dull here. In like 3 weeks the semester ends and I'm spending a month traveling, so yeah! something to look forward to.
Monday, August 15, 2011
leeches, bangkok, dysfunctonal schools, Nietzsche
1. This leech came from my foot:
the picture is Michelle's. I'm in the background in the purple bandana and that's blood on my feet. I am kicking myself now for panicking when I discovered this dude on me and failing to snap the picture, but it was inevitable. Two weekends ago, Michelle, Lan and Keenan (two other PiA fellows in Southern Thailand) and I went hiking in Khao Sak national park. I don't regret jumping in the waterfall to go after a floating water bottle, but leeches are probably the grossest thing I've ever encountered in person, so definitely be careful about freshwater. We all had them from the muddy path.
2. This past weekend, the same foursome + friends Tine and Rafael took an overnight to Bangkok, did touristy stuff and drank. Walking down Khao San road at night, I was reminded how much there's a whole world expressly aimed at satisfying young first world people. It was all foreigners everywhere drinking cheap drinks all night in this one particular street just packed with bars, but it was actually joyous and free and cosmopolitan, not the sleazy mess I continue to expect. Well it was sort of both.
3. I have had not too much to do recently. Due to some allegations of financial shenanigans or something on the part of my school's administration, we got inspected by Dept. of education officials today. The school decided to prepare by basically canceling all class for the past week and having every student scrub the entire school down, from the floors to the seats of a giant stadium. Educationally sub-ideal you say? Man, who cares?
4. I'm rereading The Genealogy of Morals, and I had forgotten just how disturbing and strange the first essay is, and that the second is really on point. I've been thinking about how I would teach Nietzsche (someday I hope to); I think I would organize around a few big questions: how should we read Nietzsche? Was Nietzsche insane? Are his ideas evil? What sort of world does he point the way to? The first is, I think, the most interesting question. Nietzsche is deliberately anti-systematic, so it's not really that useful to go in for deeper consistent meanings. Also I think that perhaps of all the philosophers I've ever read it's really the most ok to cherrypick him. Some of his aphorisms are just ridiculous and others are wonderful, but because it's not a system, it doesn't need to stand or fall as a whole. As to whether it's evil, well, the first essay reminds me a bit of Ollivander's unwitting admiration of Voldermort's power in "Deathly Hallows-" I think Nietzsche doesn't necessarily WANT to admire the blond beast, and he certainly wasn't the aristocratic class in his life time, but there's something in the natural man he can't help but admire. That reminds me, I also reread Harry Potters 1, 2 and 6 this past fortnight, bringing my 2011 rereading of the series to a finish, and Jim Butcher's Ghost Story, which was quite entertaining.
I'm trying to re-explore some of the 20th century classical repertoire I don't know that well, like Janacek, Lutoslawksi, Ligeti and Dutilleux, and if I find anything I absolutely love, I'll post it. Khachaturian's piano concerto is pretty freaking sweet though.
the picture is Michelle's. I'm in the background in the purple bandana and that's blood on my feet. I am kicking myself now for panicking when I discovered this dude on me and failing to snap the picture, but it was inevitable. Two weekends ago, Michelle, Lan and Keenan (two other PiA fellows in Southern Thailand) and I went hiking in Khao Sak national park. I don't regret jumping in the waterfall to go after a floating water bottle, but leeches are probably the grossest thing I've ever encountered in person, so definitely be careful about freshwater. We all had them from the muddy path.
2. This past weekend, the same foursome + friends Tine and Rafael took an overnight to Bangkok, did touristy stuff and drank. Walking down Khao San road at night, I was reminded how much there's a whole world expressly aimed at satisfying young first world people. It was all foreigners everywhere drinking cheap drinks all night in this one particular street just packed with bars, but it was actually joyous and free and cosmopolitan, not the sleazy mess I continue to expect. Well it was sort of both.
3. I have had not too much to do recently. Due to some allegations of financial shenanigans or something on the part of my school's administration, we got inspected by Dept. of education officials today. The school decided to prepare by basically canceling all class for the past week and having every student scrub the entire school down, from the floors to the seats of a giant stadium. Educationally sub-ideal you say? Man, who cares?
4. I'm rereading The Genealogy of Morals, and I had forgotten just how disturbing and strange the first essay is, and that the second is really on point. I've been thinking about how I would teach Nietzsche (someday I hope to); I think I would organize around a few big questions: how should we read Nietzsche? Was Nietzsche insane? Are his ideas evil? What sort of world does he point the way to? The first is, I think, the most interesting question. Nietzsche is deliberately anti-systematic, so it's not really that useful to go in for deeper consistent meanings. Also I think that perhaps of all the philosophers I've ever read it's really the most ok to cherrypick him. Some of his aphorisms are just ridiculous and others are wonderful, but because it's not a system, it doesn't need to stand or fall as a whole. As to whether it's evil, well, the first essay reminds me a bit of Ollivander's unwitting admiration of Voldermort's power in "Deathly Hallows-" I think Nietzsche doesn't necessarily WANT to admire the blond beast, and he certainly wasn't the aristocratic class in his life time, but there's something in the natural man he can't help but admire. That reminds me, I also reread Harry Potters 1, 2 and 6 this past fortnight, bringing my 2011 rereading of the series to a finish, and Jim Butcher's Ghost Story, which was quite entertaining.
I'm trying to re-explore some of the 20th century classical repertoire I don't know that well, like Janacek, Lutoslawksi, Ligeti and Dutilleux, and if I find anything I absolutely love, I'll post it. Khachaturian's piano concerto is pretty freaking sweet though.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
debris in the river
hi. It's been a while, and my diary is also sparse these past few weeks. Not much to say. But now I have stories to tell.
Two weeks ago Michelle's friend, who teaches English in Korea and also shares his name with a celebrity, visited and we did some touristy stuff around Phang Nga like go to the waterfall and get lost (that was my fault). It was midterms time so I had like no class, and last Wednesday I took a bus to Phuket and met my mom for 4 days of beach and explore time.
Phuket: not my cup of tea. The center of town was kind of a sprawling congested mess and the beach, certainly beautiful, was somewhat monotonous, as were the restaurants and stalls surrounding. But back in Phang Nga (here I'll quote from my diary) my mom's "wide-eyed reaction to the heaven and hell temple drove home just how cool and strange this town is, and how at ease I feel here. Don't miss my pack quite so vividly." She did some tourist stuff while I went to work, and I incorporated her into a lesson about family. She is off with a tour group to the North of Thailand, bon voyage.
Teaching has not been very good this week. One challenge of having 400 students and not being their primary teacher, assigning grades or taking attendance is that less motivated kids can be disrespectful, recognizing my weak position. Turns out the other high school in town has an entrance exam; students who fail come to ours. But another portion of the problem was revealed when I conducted a little experiment, assigning a class of sophomores (here, "matayum 4") something comparatively unstructured: write about yourself for 10 minutes and then we'll share. It was a disaster. Absolutely no one wanted to share with the class, so I divided into small groups and went around to listen. One girl showed me her essay, and it was fine: "I am __ I am from ___ I have two sisters __..." so on. I asked her to read it aloud to me, and she could not. She couldn't read the word "I."
Eventually I stopped torturing her and thought, maybe she is just shy. Another boy, who generally whispers to his friends through my lessons until I get all up in his business and say "YUT" (stop) , came up to me smiling with a passage. I asked him to read it. he did, slowly and struggling, but reading. Around 4 lines in, I realized I had heard it all before. The only thing that he changed was the name and address, but otherwise he had entirely plagiarized, and he could only read about 1/4 of what he had written down.
I was furious. If their vocabularies had been more complex they would have recognized just how unprofessional my feedback was, but I think he properly understood my body language and raised voice (the class went silent). Should I have been so pissed? It's possible that he's embarrassed about his lack of English and simply wanted my approval, and copying someone else's work was the best way, he thought, to get it. Last year, a kindergartner erased someone else's name on a drawing and wrote his own, and showed it around for approval. Too bad for him he didn't erase thoroughly enough and we could still read the other name, and it was sad. But with this 14 year old, putting it all together, I think he was trying to play me for the fool. I will never know. But I reacted as if that were the case.
I don't regret the activity, because I learned a lot, but what I learned was somewhat disappointing. I've been running fairly high level comprehension and speaking lessons, things I thought were fun, and I assumed that when only a few students actively called out, that the rest understood most of it but were just shy. I think I was wrong. I think sizable portions of my class can neither read nor understand English. But they all can write, down to a T. They have been taught to copy English letters. I do not know how I am going to create lesson plans that entertain the gamut. My instinct is to push the best and let the knowledge trickle down, but this is, I think it's fairly safe to say, not cool, and really not my mission here. I would not be the first person to go into an unfamiliar setting with unrealistic expectations and, some months in, find myself drastically reevaluating. But I didn't think it would happen to me. I want to be a good teacher, and unfortunately, it looks like I can't just wing it. I'm going to start reading and reaching out. On my list for tonight is this.
My own learning is going much better. I think for the first time in my life perfect pitch is actually useful. I write notes on the sides of long phrases and just memorize the music. However, pronunciation is still a major challenge. At dinner tonight, I thought "hey. I'm going to try out my new phrases. I am going to say I am a teacher at Stree Phang Nga, and I'm going to say I'm from America!" However everyone just looked at me blankly. I gesticulated my ideas and then it went better. Complete sentences are not quite at my disposal. But if someone really slowly says "today. is. X day. X day of X Month. x year." I can figure it out.
Dinner tonight illustrates something major about my time here. I often find myself floating in the river, not directing myself, with almost no idea of what's happening. It happens at school all the time, when 4 students will show up and the teacher will say: "the rest of the students are getting haircuts. We are having an inspection next week. Ok you are ok I will leave now." This evening, I was running around in my full anomalous glory - no shirt bearded and hairy-chested in my weird vibram toe-hugging shoes - and these older folks, setting up what looked like a party said something to me, from which I caught the words: "layow! geen!" which are, respectively, finish and eat. So I thought: maybe they are inviting me to dinner. That was an interpretation I felt really good about so of course after running I showed up on my little Chinese bicycle and tried out my Thai (it didn't work) and they said "geen? dinner? ok" and pointed to a table. I sat down with a bunch of people wearing polos with the words "fly hawk" in English on the front (I googled it, no luck) who spoke zero English, and ate the meal. It was delicious, Thai style which means a bunch of dishes in common you share and then waiters just fill anything that runs out, so it's like infinite food. I recognized one dish from a funeral I had previously attended, thought it was delicious but didn't dwell on it. But then, dinner's over, and everyone is walking somewhere and sitting down in new chairs, and turns out, sure enough, I was at another funeral. As I was sitting down someone spoke in Thai, I shrugged, he said "home. home" and pointed away from the funeral, and I thought he meant, you can go home now, so I did. I am debris in the river, just waiting for direction and signs. All I have to do is put myself out there and things happen.
The rest of this post is not about Thailand. It's about books.
In the past two weeks I read "Finding George Orwell in Burma" which was ok and made me really want to go to Burma (I am, actually, for maybe 5 days in September), and a book called "Women Who Run with Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a Jungian, feminist reinterpretation of fairy tales, casting each character and setting as an element of the female psyche. Estes repeatedly urges women to reconnect to the "Wild Woman" in them, the free and uncivilized thing in our souls that loves and protects and creates fiercely. Parts of it put me into a trance, because I remember running with a pack, and words like feral weave in and out of my personal writing, and because I take seriously the semi-reality of dreams, solitude and music. I once dreamt that I was sheltering friends from something elemental and dangerous, and my friend Madeleine pointed out that we didn't have enough beds. So I raised my arms and sang the first Soprano part of Steve Reich's Proverb, and others joined me, and beds came into being. In my subconscious, music is magic!
And other parts were like a self-help manual for people in bad relationships and whose rivers have, in Juana Molina's phrasing, dried up, and I don't need it. I have nothing I need to escape. Nonetheless it's very different than anything else I've read and really interesting, so I recommend it. Love Medicine, however, managed to get many of the same ideas across in narrative that made my hair stand on end. Now there's a book I would recommend unequivocally. The two Weinstein classes I took at Swarthmore, one freshman fall the other senior spring, probably impacted my inner life more than any others, mostly just by introducing texts that mean a lot to me.
Last year, I realized I was Rosencrantz in the students' lives. Now I am like a stick in the river here, and it's strange. I am trying to meditate more, but, turns out, it's very difficult to clear my mind.
Two weeks ago Michelle's friend, who teaches English in Korea and also shares his name with a celebrity, visited and we did some touristy stuff around Phang Nga like go to the waterfall and get lost (that was my fault). It was midterms time so I had like no class, and last Wednesday I took a bus to Phuket and met my mom for 4 days of beach and explore time.
Phuket: not my cup of tea. The center of town was kind of a sprawling congested mess and the beach, certainly beautiful, was somewhat monotonous, as were the restaurants and stalls surrounding. But back in Phang Nga (here I'll quote from my diary) my mom's "wide-eyed reaction to the heaven and hell temple drove home just how cool and strange this town is, and how at ease I feel here. Don't miss my pack quite so vividly." She did some tourist stuff while I went to work, and I incorporated her into a lesson about family. She is off with a tour group to the North of Thailand, bon voyage.
Teaching has not been very good this week. One challenge of having 400 students and not being their primary teacher, assigning grades or taking attendance is that less motivated kids can be disrespectful, recognizing my weak position. Turns out the other high school in town has an entrance exam; students who fail come to ours. But another portion of the problem was revealed when I conducted a little experiment, assigning a class of sophomores (here, "matayum 4") something comparatively unstructured: write about yourself for 10 minutes and then we'll share. It was a disaster. Absolutely no one wanted to share with the class, so I divided into small groups and went around to listen. One girl showed me her essay, and it was fine: "I am __ I am from ___ I have two sisters __..." so on. I asked her to read it aloud to me, and she could not. She couldn't read the word "I."
Eventually I stopped torturing her and thought, maybe she is just shy. Another boy, who generally whispers to his friends through my lessons until I get all up in his business and say "YUT" (stop) , came up to me smiling with a passage. I asked him to read it. he did, slowly and struggling, but reading. Around 4 lines in, I realized I had heard it all before. The only thing that he changed was the name and address, but otherwise he had entirely plagiarized, and he could only read about 1/4 of what he had written down.
I was furious. If their vocabularies had been more complex they would have recognized just how unprofessional my feedback was, but I think he properly understood my body language and raised voice (the class went silent). Should I have been so pissed? It's possible that he's embarrassed about his lack of English and simply wanted my approval, and copying someone else's work was the best way, he thought, to get it. Last year, a kindergartner erased someone else's name on a drawing and wrote his own, and showed it around for approval. Too bad for him he didn't erase thoroughly enough and we could still read the other name, and it was sad. But with this 14 year old, putting it all together, I think he was trying to play me for the fool. I will never know. But I reacted as if that were the case.
I don't regret the activity, because I learned a lot, but what I learned was somewhat disappointing. I've been running fairly high level comprehension and speaking lessons, things I thought were fun, and I assumed that when only a few students actively called out, that the rest understood most of it but were just shy. I think I was wrong. I think sizable portions of my class can neither read nor understand English. But they all can write, down to a T. They have been taught to copy English letters. I do not know how I am going to create lesson plans that entertain the gamut. My instinct is to push the best and let the knowledge trickle down, but this is, I think it's fairly safe to say, not cool, and really not my mission here. I would not be the first person to go into an unfamiliar setting with unrealistic expectations and, some months in, find myself drastically reevaluating. But I didn't think it would happen to me. I want to be a good teacher, and unfortunately, it looks like I can't just wing it. I'm going to start reading and reaching out. On my list for tonight is this.
My own learning is going much better. I think for the first time in my life perfect pitch is actually useful. I write notes on the sides of long phrases and just memorize the music. However, pronunciation is still a major challenge. At dinner tonight, I thought "hey. I'm going to try out my new phrases. I am going to say I am a teacher at Stree Phang Nga, and I'm going to say I'm from America!" However everyone just looked at me blankly. I gesticulated my ideas and then it went better. Complete sentences are not quite at my disposal. But if someone really slowly says "today. is. X day. X day of X Month. x year." I can figure it out.
Dinner tonight illustrates something major about my time here. I often find myself floating in the river, not directing myself, with almost no idea of what's happening. It happens at school all the time, when 4 students will show up and the teacher will say: "the rest of the students are getting haircuts. We are having an inspection next week. Ok you are ok I will leave now." This evening, I was running around in my full anomalous glory - no shirt bearded and hairy-chested in my weird vibram toe-hugging shoes - and these older folks, setting up what looked like a party said something to me, from which I caught the words: "layow! geen!" which are, respectively, finish and eat. So I thought: maybe they are inviting me to dinner. That was an interpretation I felt really good about so of course after running I showed up on my little Chinese bicycle and tried out my Thai (it didn't work) and they said "geen? dinner? ok" and pointed to a table. I sat down with a bunch of people wearing polos with the words "fly hawk" in English on the front (I googled it, no luck) who spoke zero English, and ate the meal. It was delicious, Thai style which means a bunch of dishes in common you share and then waiters just fill anything that runs out, so it's like infinite food. I recognized one dish from a funeral I had previously attended, thought it was delicious but didn't dwell on it. But then, dinner's over, and everyone is walking somewhere and sitting down in new chairs, and turns out, sure enough, I was at another funeral. As I was sitting down someone spoke in Thai, I shrugged, he said "home. home" and pointed away from the funeral, and I thought he meant, you can go home now, so I did. I am debris in the river, just waiting for direction and signs. All I have to do is put myself out there and things happen.
The rest of this post is not about Thailand. It's about books.
In the past two weeks I read "Finding George Orwell in Burma" which was ok and made me really want to go to Burma (I am, actually, for maybe 5 days in September), and a book called "Women Who Run with Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a Jungian, feminist reinterpretation of fairy tales, casting each character and setting as an element of the female psyche. Estes repeatedly urges women to reconnect to the "Wild Woman" in them, the free and uncivilized thing in our souls that loves and protects and creates fiercely. Parts of it put me into a trance, because I remember running with a pack, and words like feral weave in and out of my personal writing, and because I take seriously the semi-reality of dreams, solitude and music. I once dreamt that I was sheltering friends from something elemental and dangerous, and my friend Madeleine pointed out that we didn't have enough beds. So I raised my arms and sang the first Soprano part of Steve Reich's Proverb, and others joined me, and beds came into being. In my subconscious, music is magic!
And other parts were like a self-help manual for people in bad relationships and whose rivers have, in Juana Molina's phrasing, dried up, and I don't need it. I have nothing I need to escape. Nonetheless it's very different than anything else I've read and really interesting, so I recommend it. Love Medicine, however, managed to get many of the same ideas across in narrative that made my hair stand on end. Now there's a book I would recommend unequivocally. The two Weinstein classes I took at Swarthmore, one freshman fall the other senior spring, probably impacted my inner life more than any others, mostly just by introducing texts that mean a lot to me.
Last year, I realized I was Rosencrantz in the students' lives. Now I am like a stick in the river here, and it's strange. I am trying to meditate more, but, turns out, it's very difficult to clear my mind.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
It's July, and I'm sitting on my porch once again, and it feels like my corner of the world. This past weekend I went to Bangkok and did some touristy stuff, and although I expected to not like it --because I found Cairo oppressive and I had read that traffic is "apocalyptic" and extrapolated that the whole city was unpleasantly loud and congested -- I actually found it civilized and tourist-friendly. A 5:00 bus from Phang Nga got me to Bangkok at 5:00 a.m., a taxi took me to town, and a room (a double) cost 200 baht, a bit under $7. After a rest, I met up with a PiA fellow in town, and we got lost wandering in Chinatown, then walking around a major park and to her officearea; after dinner I went to Harry Potter, which I found profoundly disappointing because my expectations were too high, but I enjoyed the King's song montage that played before the film, for which everyone stood. The accompanying images extolled renewable energy. The next day, we toured the Jim Thompson house, I got a massage, and then made my way to the hostel and back to Phang Nga.
Bangkok was fun. Only one place I went was notably seedy. Lots of people saw me looking at a map, lost on Saturday, and offered to help me. Maybe that's something that would happen anywhere. But my city norms are oriented around New York. Even in D.C. it'd be more acceptable to offer unsolicited help.
I got in around 5 in the morning this Monday (a 4 day weekend for a Bhuddist holiday), and biked back to my house in the darkness- serene! - and I was relieved to be back in phang nga. It was unexpected to feel at home. But I do.
This week I've begun Thai lessons which I find very entertaining. I'm still learning the numbers and colors, unable to put together complete sentences; the main challenges are remembering the tones (there are five, and the wrong tone completely changes the meaning) and this weird u-like vowel that has no english equivalent. I simply cannot get it right. but it's only been about 3 days. It's possible I'll never get it; some things need to be learned in childhood.
I've been debating whether or not to ride the motorbike that comes with my house, and I'd been rationally weighing the pros and cons. However when I rode it to dinner tonight, I realized that I'd been neglecting the most important thing- that riding a motorcycle is TOTALLY SWEET . So that's settled.
This week, due to midterms, I've only taught 3 classes, and I have time off next week, and then I'm taking vacation time to travel with my mom, but I like teaching and the structure it provides. I'll be happy to get back to regularly scheduled programming.
I'm jamming out to Twin Sister's Bad Street- the most a dance track has grabbed me since I heard Hercules and Love Affair in fall 2009, and Within and Without's Echoes. Last week I read Peter Hessler's excellent River Town, about his two years teaching English with the Peace Corps in Fuling, China which has brought my attention to how fundamentally first world my experience has been. It's because of the internet, I think. I'm in touch with people like all the time, and periodically skyping my parents or Dan, it's not like a whole other world than life in the past 5 years. But mostly, reaching out in superficial ways to talk about movies on facebook or something, feels good at first but leaves me desiring something I can't have. It's good and bad. I probably experienced less culture shock than pre-internet volunteers, and my kids all know Taylor Swift. But my heart is all over the place, and I sometimes wake up longing.
Also, Hessler reminded me of a conversation I had with Liz over crawfish and beer before I left- how great it would be if we were fantastically gifted writers. I'm good, I think, but I wonder if I could be great, and I wonder how I would get there. Listening to Tyler, the Creator all the time recently has me interested in writing some rhymes again. That dude was born in 1991.
I put some photos up on facebook.
Bangkok was fun. Only one place I went was notably seedy. Lots of people saw me looking at a map, lost on Saturday, and offered to help me. Maybe that's something that would happen anywhere. But my city norms are oriented around New York. Even in D.C. it'd be more acceptable to offer unsolicited help.
I got in around 5 in the morning this Monday (a 4 day weekend for a Bhuddist holiday), and biked back to my house in the darkness- serene! - and I was relieved to be back in phang nga. It was unexpected to feel at home. But I do.
This week I've begun Thai lessons which I find very entertaining. I'm still learning the numbers and colors, unable to put together complete sentences; the main challenges are remembering the tones (there are five, and the wrong tone completely changes the meaning) and this weird u-like vowel that has no english equivalent. I simply cannot get it right. but it's only been about 3 days. It's possible I'll never get it; some things need to be learned in childhood.
I've been debating whether or not to ride the motorbike that comes with my house, and I'd been rationally weighing the pros and cons. However when I rode it to dinner tonight, I realized that I'd been neglecting the most important thing- that riding a motorcycle is TOTALLY SWEET . So that's settled.
This week, due to midterms, I've only taught 3 classes, and I have time off next week, and then I'm taking vacation time to travel with my mom, but I like teaching and the structure it provides. I'll be happy to get back to regularly scheduled programming.
I'm jamming out to Twin Sister's Bad Street- the most a dance track has grabbed me since I heard Hercules and Love Affair in fall 2009, and Within and Without's Echoes. Last week I read Peter Hessler's excellent River Town, about his two years teaching English with the Peace Corps in Fuling, China which has brought my attention to how fundamentally first world my experience has been. It's because of the internet, I think. I'm in touch with people like all the time, and periodically skyping my parents or Dan, it's not like a whole other world than life in the past 5 years. But mostly, reaching out in superficial ways to talk about movies on facebook or something, feels good at first but leaves me desiring something I can't have. It's good and bad. I probably experienced less culture shock than pre-internet volunteers, and my kids all know Taylor Swift. But my heart is all over the place, and I sometimes wake up longing.
Also, Hessler reminded me of a conversation I had with Liz over crawfish and beer before I left- how great it would be if we were fantastically gifted writers. I'm good, I think, but I wonder if I could be great, and I wonder how I would get there. Listening to Tyler, the Creator all the time recently has me interested in writing some rhymes again. That dude was born in 1991.
I put some photos up on facebook.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
2 ridiculous stories
1. In a speech exercise, I had asked the students to ask each other: "Who is the best band?" And to answer "I think___ is the best band" and then to write down _____ thinks _____ is the best band. Well anyway I was writing some bands on the board, English and Thai, and a couple students said "Big S." So I wrote that, but they said "No no no. Big S! Big S! B. I. G. A. S. S." and I said hold up? big ass? "Yes! Yes!" "What do you think that means?" no idea. So I explained big with my hands, and then said "ass-" and pointed to mine. They were very surprised. Turns out, they're a real band, not named for the related medical condition.
2. I wasn't sure about sharing this one,but here goes. In the same exercise with a different class, I was writing a girl's name on the board, and our conversation went like this:
Me: "What is your name?"
Student: "T. I. T. I."
at which point I'm suppressing a smile: "Yes?"
Student: "P.O."
Me (thinking "no way. no way. she's not going to say it")
Student: R. N.
Me: "Titiporn?"
Student: "Yes, Titipawn."
I honestly couldn't keep a straight face at that one. it's probably the best name ever.
Right now, I'm reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young man, and it's pretty good, although it's going a bit slowly. I read Portnoy's Complaint last week over two afternoons, finding it an extremely fun read, but I'm honestly surprised it's considered such a classic. It was a very straightforward book. I can't imagine doing much interpretation or analysis, or finding new meanings a second read through. It was interesting to see how far obscenity standards had changed, though between 1969, when Complaint was published, and Rabbit, Run in 1960. I thought Rabbit, Run was better. It stayed with me longer emotionally. Rabbit was, I think, a more "unforgettable character" than Portnoy.
I'm really enjoying Jamie of the XX's remixing of Gil-Scott Heron's "I'm New Here." Two tracks I especially like right now are My Cloud and "NY is killing me." There's a lot of music about New York, isn't there.
2. I wasn't sure about sharing this one,but here goes. In the same exercise with a different class, I was writing a girl's name on the board, and our conversation went like this:
Me: "What is your name?"
Student: "T. I. T. I."
at which point I'm suppressing a smile: "Yes?"
Student: "P.O."
Me (thinking "no way. no way. she's not going to say it")
Student: R. N.
Me: "Titiporn?"
Student: "Yes, Titipawn."
I honestly couldn't keep a straight face at that one. it's probably the best name ever.
Right now, I'm reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young man, and it's pretty good, although it's going a bit slowly. I read Portnoy's Complaint last week over two afternoons, finding it an extremely fun read, but I'm honestly surprised it's considered such a classic. It was a very straightforward book. I can't imagine doing much interpretation or analysis, or finding new meanings a second read through. It was interesting to see how far obscenity standards had changed, though between 1969, when Complaint was published, and Rabbit, Run in 1960. I thought Rabbit, Run was better. It stayed with me longer emotionally. Rabbit was, I think, a more "unforgettable character" than Portnoy.
I'm really enjoying Jamie of the XX's remixing of Gil-Scott Heron's "I'm New Here." Two tracks I especially like right now are My Cloud and "NY is killing me." There's a lot of music about New York, isn't there.
Phang Nga bay
so we've been traveling a fair bit now. The first weekend Michelle and I walked around town, the next I went with the teachers to a faraway funeral, and the third we went to visit other PiAers in Bangsak, near Khao Lak. The beaches were stunning, and it was a fair degree more rural than Phang Nga. The 2004 Tsunami really hangs over the place; Khao Lak was devestated, but now big developments and hotels are going up. One fellow's house, a spacious bungalow about half a mile from an empty beach, was actually really close to my original fantasy of what my year in Thailand would be like. At night we swam and watched the phosphorescent plankton stick to our skin.
When we first got to the beach, I was in love. but now, back in town, I'm not sure I would trade. Each has its charms. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to Khao lak so pictures will have to wait.
I did, however, bring it to this last weekend's trip to Phang Nga bay. We biked about 4 miles to get on a longboat, and soon enough:
From there, we got in a little blowup boat with an entertaining thai man and he took us to caves in the limestone islands:
This village is on stilts.
When we first got to the beach, I was in love. but now, back in town, I'm not sure I would trade. Each has its charms. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to Khao lak so pictures will have to wait.
I did, however, bring it to this last weekend's trip to Phang Nga bay. We biked about 4 miles to get on a longboat, and soon enough:
From there, we got in a little blowup boat with an entertaining thai man and he took us to caves in the limestone islands:
This village is on stilts.
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