Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Shaken


In February 2011, Christchurch was struck by an earthquake that registered a 6.3 on the Richter scale. Centered just 10 kilometers outside the city center, the earthquake and its aftershocks left the city badly damaged, with 185 dead. At the time, Christchurch was the second most populous city in New Zealand.


Visiting Win’s family friend in 2016, it was amazing to see the CBD (Kiwi for central business district) still full of empty lots. Patched here and there with intense construction, efforts to save historic buildings, and invisible bureaucratic red tape, the city is still in partial disarray five years later. Outside the city center, many suburbs were completely red-zoned, with vast acres that were once filled with cookie-cutter subdivisions being gradually reclaimed by flora and fauna.



And in the midst of it all, endless examples of the triumph of the human spirit and the artistic response to tragedy are on display. From the transitionary church (known as the Cardboard Church) to the pop-up shipping container mall to the sprawling street art, Christchurch has equal parts physical and emotion construction underway. 


Sunday, June 22, 2014

Wedding Crashers


“When we go to India, are you gonna wear a sari and get your hands henna’ed?”
“Probably not. It’s not like we’re going to be attending an Indian wedding.”

It’s conversations like this that make the universe silently chuckle about all the things you don't know.


Mid-way through gallivanting around India, we found ourselves sitting in a café with a group of perfect strangers. They swept in, sat down, invited us to a wedding three days hence, and promptly left.

Leaving me eating my words.


So, Win got a haircut and a Rajasthani-style mustache. My hands were henna’ed. A sari was purchased (to later be twisted, stuffed, folded, and pinned by the family of the bride). And off we went to an Indian wedding.


We had been invited to the fifth and final night of said wedding, a ceremony that turned out to be a triple-decker party of sorts. Two sisters were having arranged marriages; a brother-in-law was having a (less prestigious) love marriage.


The pomp and ceremony, makeup and costume changes, set design and pyrotechnics were enough to put a full Broadway production to shame. Grooms with feathers fluffed and turbans twirled rode in atop bedazzled horses. Brides shuffled slowly to center stage, at times carried by brothers, beneath the weight of beautiful, elaborate, bejeweled marriage saris.


Time between ceremonies, of which there was much, consisted primarily of eating. And being photographed. And being asked if we had eaten. And being asked if we would take just one picture.



It was exhausting, but it certainly wasn’t dull. Plus, the universe gave me good reason to wear a sari in India. 


Thursday, January 30, 2014

Outside Learning



I remember my elementary school days being full of creative projects and hands-on experiments. We watched butterflies emerge from cocoons, constructed geometric kites, listened to stories read in character voices. We turned the room into a paper Amazon jungle (surely a fire hazard), held silent auctions of our old toys, feasted as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, made our own story books. Of course, we also memorized multiplication tables, practiced writing in cursive, learned all those basics. But it wasn’t only sitting and listening to the teacher; it was learning through discovery and experience.


As an elementary and kindergarten teacher in a foreign country, I am witnessing firsthand just how varied the approaches to education can be from culture to culture. As young as first grade, Thai students are expected to spend a great portion of their school day sitting in a desk and being taught lecture-style. From the age of three up through high school graduation, copying and repeating are the standard methods for information transfer. Math, science, English, students copy the answers off the board. It is assumed that they have then learned said information. There will be a test. I hope you were listening.


Of course, the enjoyable part of school for most students is all the extras – art, dance, gym, swimming – and the Thai school system has those in spades. In this department, the Thais go far beyond, holding special events, activities, camps, and holiday celebrations on a regular basis.


Over the course of the past semester, the classroom sitting has been interspersed with more holidays than you would think could fit into four months. Before Christmas, not a single week passed without some special event or activity to prepare for a special event; since Christmas, we have had two undisrupted weeks of class (though I, personally, have had at least three classes per week cancelled to rehearse for a play for next week’s special event); through the remainder of the school year, only one week has nothing special or cancelled.


Between Thai holidays, American holidays, and school events, the activities list is pretty impressive. So far we have had:
  •  A Halloween party -- a wonderful way to have first graders come up, hold out their hand, and say “Teacher, candy” or “Trick-or-treat” for months to come
  •  Sports Days – from football to chair ball to tug of war, plus a fairly impressive parade
  • Three weeks of shortened days to prep for the Sports Days
  •  A field trip to the local science discovery center, complete with a busload of students dancing to Thai pop songs
  • Loy Kratong
  •  The King’s birthday, which doubles as Father's Day
  •  Constitution Day – tinted with irony this year, as parliament was dissolved just days prior
  • An open house for the kindergarten
  • Christmas – literally weeks of activities and parties

  • New Year’s Eve/Day – huge holiday in Thai culture
  • Midterms – okay, not really an event, but definitely an interruption to regular classes
  • Children’s Day – let’s dance, eat free ice cream, and drink free Fanta
  • Boy and Girl Scout Camp – walking field trip, camping at school (for the 6th grade), lessons in knot-tying, first aid, crawling through tunnels, and generally getting prepared
  • Teachers’ Day – One of multiple days to honor teachers, for this one school is closed. Best way to reward teachers for their hard work

Which brings us to this week, during which time everyone is preparing for next week’s Open House. My January has been packed with rehearsals of Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, which my 63 first graders will perform for the evening portion of the Open House.


The only remaining activities are:
  • The aforementioned Open House and evening Khantoke dinner for parents (traditional Northern Thai Lanna dishes in endless portions, shared among the table, while watching performances)
  • Promotional Drive for CVK – literally a drive, as we foreign teachers join other faculty members in driving to other districts to hand out pamphlets and try to increase enrollment
  • Valentine’s Day – the Thais love love. And they love giving gifts. It’s the perfect storm of a holiday
  • Makha Bucha (Magha Puja) – Theravada Buddhist holiday celebrating the arrival of 1250 monks to listen to the teachings of the Buddha.
  • Final Exams – the end.

Between all of the reasons to cancel class and the fact that class is mostly spent zoning out while the teacher talks (even the best student can only listen for so long), the difference between Thai school and American school is stark.


Through the activities they learn how to become members of a team, how to dance, how to do craft projects, how to be a member of Thai society, but they do not necessarily learn how to be good students. After all, we were all, in some manner, taught how to learn and how to work hard. I have greatly enjoyed being a part of the Thai school system, but I think they could bring some of that spice and variety, seen so heavily in their activities, into the classroom.


That being said, fault them for what you will, but the Thais sure do know how to throw one helluva party.


Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Thankful


Tiny high fives and smiles riddles with missing teeth. Stray cats that just want to cuddle. Random butterflies drifting past. Sun through banana leaves. The sweet serenade of a thousand frogs as they settle in for the night. Courage. Making silly faces. Deep breaths. Cricket concertos.


A world full of challenges, both physical and mental. Failures that teach. The endless possibilities evident in a map. Creativity. Bare feet. Hot showers. Handstands. A life full of risks and uncertainty. Stray dogs in sweaters. Sunsets and thunderstorms. Starry nights. Street food vendors. Quiet cups of tea. Balance.


The world is full of things worth being thankful for. It is in these small glimmerings of beauty that I find bliss spontaneously.


It is important to be grateful for life’s blessings, no matter how small, how seemingly insignificant. Gratitude can be life-altering, mind-changing.  Taking time to remember that each day offered us something wonderful can wash away the negativity.


It is easy to focus only on what goes wrong, simple to get swept away by a bad mood. Life is full of mishaps, insults, disagreements, challenges, and shitty days. The good things, the positive, can sometimes get lost in all that muck; they tend to be smaller, more commonplace, less abrupt and abrasive.


Much like meditation, painting, football, yoga, running a marathon, or any of the myriad practices to which we dedicate our time, practicing gratitude every now and then probably isn’t going to get the results you’d like. Stopping to acknowledge life’s splendor and blessings should be something we do on a regular basis.


Like eating well or going to the gym, we need to commit to being grateful. Not once a month or week. Not once a year. Be thankful every day. Because somewhere in all that muck, beneath the bad moods, we all have something to be grateful for. Daily.

So, here’s to a happy, bliss-filled Thursday.


Thursday, September 26, 2013

CVK Animal Kingdom: It's a Wild, Colorful World



 I have fallen in love with my students. For the most part, they are overwhelmingly sweet and loving. My days are made up of hugs, high fives, and games. (And sometimes cheek kisses, which occasionally turn into group cheek kisses, which end with students kissing teacher on the lips, at which point we have a weeklong cheek kiss. But that is neither here nor there.) We sing and dance, do arts and crafts, and read stories together. Even when they do misbehave, it’s mostly just because they’re kids being kids, and I don’t really have the wherewithal to stay mad at them.


This past weekend, all that love and affection, all that desire to have fun, really paid dividends. Well, that plus two months of seriously intense planning by myself and my Thai co-teacher, supplemented by heaps of help from Win. Thanks to all that preparation and hard work, we were able to give our students the most colorful English Day Camp you’ll ever see! 1, 2, 3, YAY!


Choosing to make the only goals those of a) having fun and b) playing games in English, we went all out. Basically, we gave 250 first, second, and third grade students an animal-themed English carnival day. They got different colored shirts and bags, nametags and pencil cases, ridiculous animal-shaped snacks, spaghetti for lunch, and a parade just for the school. Each foreign teacher planned one games, through which the students would cycle, while being bombarded with intense, joyful, loving energy.


They tossed balls, popped balloons, made masks, drew, spun roulette wheels, fished, acted, sang, spelled, and balloon animal-ed their way through the most absurdly exhausting day ever. And, damn, if all that planning, exhaustion, frustration, and difficulty wasn’t completely and totally worth it. The pure joy radiating out of their little faces made all the hard work seem like nothing.


This might be what people mean when they say ‘maternal instinct.’ That is, if that maternal instinct rolled around a color wheel and ended up with screaming, enthusiastic games, giant smiles, and lots of English. If ‘maternal instinct’ means never having to apologize for wearing yellow and orange leopard print leggings paired with a yellow t-shirt and yellow and orange feather earrings. Well, and if ‘maternal instinct’ includes the desire to avoid seeing any children for at least 48 hours after spending 8 hours straight entertaining them.



As an addendum of sorts, I have since learned that the day of our English Camp, September 21, is World Gratitude Day. Personally, this feels fitting in a way. It’s not always easy to teach such small children, especially when they don’t speak your language – sometimes it requires an immense amount of work, time, patience, and equanimity – but it is worth the effort to be able to help these children grow and flourish. The laughter and smiles are truly a gift that fills my life with immeasurable joy.


I am incredibly grateful for all the wonderful blessings that have allowed me to becoming a teacher of young learners. And I am grateful for the students themselves; they help me to see when I am taking myself too seriously, they help me to tap into the creative parts of my brain, they let me use my imagination and act like a complete fool, they are forgiving and loving and constantly remind me that the world is a big, beautiful, amazing place. And all this without even being able to speak the same language. 


Saturday, September 21, 2013

Home Away From Home(land)



It’s an odd sensation, returning to a foreign country and experiencing a feeling of homecoming. It’s strange, a language re-emerging from forgotten corners of your mind. It’s interesting, something so exotic feeling so normal, so commonplace.


As we found ourselves back in Thailand for a second round, we were dealing with new classes, new students, new friends, new restaurants, and wholly new experiences. But, here we are in the same culture, speaking the same language, working with the same Thai co-workers, at the same loving, supportive school. It’s not quite the same, but neither is it drastically different.


Things we missed about Thailand –
  • ·         The food. Hands down, Thailand has some of the most diverse, delicious food selection we have encountered in all our travels. We started anticipating, and salivating over, specific meals months before we landed back in Thailand.
  • ·         The generosity. The Thais are some of the most giving, loving, supportive people you could ever hope to meet. Whether co-workers, strangers, or government employees, we have always been surprised by the lengths to which the Thais will go to help a fellow human.
  • ·         The cost of living. No, seriously, it is just so easy to stretch the baht you make working in Thailand. It’s not hard to live without budgeting, travel for three months of the year, and still return home without emptying your wallet.
  • ·         The compassion for street animals. As I have mentioned before, the way that Thais treat stray animals is far and away one of the most heartwarming examples I have ever witnessed of a culture having respect for the life of all beings.
  • ·         The acceptance. It is amazing to see an entire country that is willing to accept homosexuality from childhood. Especially when teaching children and witnessing those who would be bullied and harassed in the US rise to the top of their class.



Things we didn’t miss about Thailand –
  • ·         Tonal language. Despite being not-so-bad at Thai, I am still not a robot. And while I can effectively communicate here, divorcing emotion from inflection is incredibly difficult. Win, on the other hand, has such a hard time with it that all we can do is laugh and not worry too much.
  • ·         Gossip and bizarrely insulting cultural tendencies. Though by no means exclusive to Thailand, it is difficult to constantly be asked why I do things and why I am fat. (As an addendum of sorts, we recently discovered that the asking about weight is the Thai way of saying that you care about someone and their health. But I could still do without someone rubbing my belly while saying, “baby?”)


Things that probably belong on the latter list, but don’t bother us enough to make the cut –
  • ·         Squat toilets. Okay, in our travels we have definitely encountered far worse than those in Thailand. Plus, I like to think of it as a bit of a game. Target practice, if you will. (It’s entirely possible that that is nothing more than a coping mechanism when faced with something unpleasant.)
  • ·         “Thai time”. It is a common joke in Thailand that things happen on “Thai time”. Typically, this means things happen eventually, but never when they were supposed to happen. Meeting at 7 can mean 8, and when something would be done by Tuesday it will almost certainly be finished no later than Friday. But, this is also something that we have encountered in numerous places and to worse degrees. Apparently, if you want things to happen promptly, move to the US or Europe; otherwise, just roll with it.



Of course when returning to anywhere there is the fear that it will not be the same. That you might in some way ruin your good memories with a new, worse experience. That it doesn’t live up to the memories you have.


We have been lucky in that regard; the Thailand we remember is intact and the Thailand we live in now is just as good (and, in some ways, just as bad). When all is said and done, we are thrilled to be back in Thailand.


It’s a wonderful feeling: to find home in the most faraway of destinations, and to know that, despite the common saying, sometimes you can, indeed, go back.


Monday, April 15, 2013

Hakuna Matata




You can’t go to Africa, particularly East Africa, and not go on a safari. Okay, you can, but really, why would you want to? The practical, grown-up answer is, of course, money; as a general rule, experience-based commodities, especially when the experience is something rare or precious, tend to be either expensive affairs or jam-packed with people.


Luckily for us, Uganda currently falls right in between those two extremes: not the most popular, over-touristed destination in the region (like Kilimanjaro or Serengeti National Park) , but with a newly-blossoming budget safari industry. And by ‘newly-blossoming’, I mean ‘has two reasonable options.


Now, the difference between a budget safari and your other safari options comes down to one thing: number of passengers, i.e. are you willing to risk sharing your experience with a bunch of strangers, potentially putting the fate of your trip in their hands? Some people would rather pay more and keep the whole thing as a private endeavor, since, as we have learned in the past, the group is one of the vital ingredients, with the power to completely sabotage an experience. We got lucky. Not only did we save money, but we ended up with a fantastic group of people, something that certainly augmented the whole experience.


Of the two most impressive national parks in Uganda, we opted for Murchison Falls National Park as it is the cheaper of the two and home to the country’s only giraffes, both equally important in my book. It is also home to one of the world’s most powerful waterfalls, where the entirety of the Victoria Nile squeezes through a tiny 6-meter-wide space, making for some mighty impressive views.


But let’s get to the important part, the reason we’re all here. Wildlife.

Seeing exotic creatures at the zoo is lovely, a glimpse into another world. Seeing those same creatures in their own habitat, roaming free, is absolutely beautiful. Breathtaking. Awe-inspiring. Surreal. An experience unique unto itself.


Over the roughly six hours spent on game drives, bouncing down dirt roads perched atop an open-roof van, we spotted a wealth of wildlife strewn about the park’s vast, lush landscape.


The elegant Ugandan Kob, the befuddled-looking Jackson’s Hartebeest, the stockier Waterbuck, all dot the horizon, grazing wherever you look.


Warthogs trot past, tails skyward, trailing their tiny wart-piglets.


Water Buffalo stand stock-still, only their jaws working away at grass, staring as we pass, birds comfortably hitching a ride on their back.


It’s a wonder to top a verdant hill, coming several feet from a herd of elephants, ears flapping, wrinkles mud-caked.


Hippos bob in the Nile, ears and eyes visible, cool in the midday heat. The males viscously assert their dominance in splashing, open-maw bouts. At night they roam our camp, grazing in the cover of night.


The vibrant flutterings of color that make up Murchison’s birdlife runs the full spectrum of the rainbow. Greens, blues, reds, oranges, and yellows, each shade is represented with a flapping of wings, a making of nests.


But for me, it’s all about the giraffes. Their unique markings, like no other creature on earth, pale in youth and darkening with age. As they run, it is as though they are moving through a viscous liquid, like the tape is played in slow motion. Graceful, majestic, and magnetic in their beauty; to witness numerous giraffes, reaching with ease into the tallest of trees to pluck a snack, towering over even the elephants, sauntering about without a care, is an experience unlike any other.


And, yes, these are animals we’ve seen a thousand times, in zoos, on nature specials and in the pages of National Geographic. But there is nothing that can take your breath right out of your chest like the beauty of seeing them carousing in their natural habitat, miles to roam, nothing but ground underfoot (or hoof or paw) and sky overhead.