#1 BACK TO THE FUTURE
It doesn't feel so odd this time: rolling out of the bright white light and softly comforting carpeting of our Penthouse room at 9:30 p.m., piling into the shuttle van, and driving over (our beloved) KB bridge and into we-know-not-what. In fact, there's a familiar, nostalgic mist covering the whole enterprise.
We're still tired, yet buzzed for our trip (o sweet reunion!), I'm still moving through check-in at the speed of a suddenly-surprised tortoise, E's bag still weighs an obscenely small amount, and WE STILL CAN'T WAIT TO SLEEP ON THE PLANE!! Not even our newly-minted~last night~and highly inebriated buddy M can throw us off-kilter. Like sleepwalkers, we spin, turn, retracing the motions of an old remembered dream.
Sleeping on the plane, a hilarious delicious and AMERICAN dawn breakfast in Guam...the dream continues.
I am jolted out of my reverie, however, as our plane anxiously (and rather bumpily) circles the runway in Chuuk, pacing in order to prepare for the big showdown with the little landing strip. I start to feel tremors of anticipation: THIS IS IT! COS!!! THE FUTURE!!
We land. As our plane slows from warp speed to a (more manageable) taxi down the runway, the island racks into focus: the velvety green Dr. Seuss hill before us, welcoming us to the place; houses and stores line the road; and then--I rub my eyes--IS THAT REALLY IT?
There, in peeling sea green paint, stands the R--. My home during my last night on the island last year, launchpad to [cue Good Charlotte, the Baha Men, and the Beatles here] the best flight of my life, wicked crazed dogs, Kintamani magic, the Hello Guesthouse, and so much more.
I inhale sharply--a gasp, really--as I realize that, oddly, I've just slipped still further into the quicksand of the past.
My nostalgic mood clings to me on the bus ride across the island (like a living thing, almost), as I recognize the landmarks of my past dotting the main road--the spot where we were chased by vicious canines, teeth flashing; the place where we all watched the sun set slowly out over the bodies of ships, dead and living; the store where I bought those fantastic~gratuitously tall~shoes (to the whistling and bubble-gumming of clerks)...
We arrive at the B--. I smile. The rooms, the palms, the white sand beach--it's all pristine, perfect--curated to be the precise fingerprint match to my memories of that time oh-so-long-ago. [Was it really only a year??] It's right on, loop for loop and swirl for swirl. I sigh contentedly.
Suddenly, unbidden, a conversation swims to the surface of my memory.
It's July 2008, I'm covered in freckles and yellow light. T (a fellow M74) and I regard the laughing faces of those a year ahead of us, the "graduating" volunteers, if you will.
Me: Wow. Do you feel like you're looking at the future?
T: No. (Pause) I feel like I'm looking at tomorrow. (More certainly) PST was yesterday; this is tomorrow.
And behold! Tomorrow comes (to take me away?). It is tomorrow and yesterday and today all rolled into one beautiful moment. Funny, I guess you sometimes have to go back to the past to get to the future.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
[Cue Sebastian:] Under Da Sea
we float down down down
out of the white light and heat and everyday into
other, a parallel universe,
alien planet,
so peaceful.
the silence plays
music upon my ear drums
and, suddenly, I breathe in, to
a forest of purpleredgreenyellow
as something tickles my thigh--
a chorus of bubbles softly stroke me
as they rise up
up
up
and into the light,
white light, above us
(looks like heaven, that perfectbeautiful halo of light)
turn, look up,
a forest of fish
eclipse the light from above
and if I die here, in this moment,
hoka hey,
for it is glorious
below me a symphony begins,
symphoy of sea anemone
wave in time to the almighty
beat beat beat
breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe
everything breathes here,
together,
not a thing out of time, out of place
even the fish are full of purpose.
Fred Flintstone-Jersey fish,
on his way to feast on barnacles
and Camo Man,
somehow (foolishly) convinced if he hides extra still I'll have no idea
he exists
(the Don Quixote of the sea, how charming)
and long lanky luxuriant Paris Hilton fish
(for the love of everything will someone please feed them some sandwiches??)
swish swish by,
fashion plates at fify feet
and then excitement
what? who?
in a cave
(is it Platonic?)
but this is no shadow, it's a something,
a prehistoric whatchewhosit,
fallen out of time,
into this sea cave before us,
his feelers testing testing
1 2 3 4
for signs of food life hope anything
(is anything out there? somewhere out there?)
unaware that he himself is the principal player in our little drama,
our eyes affixed to his every move as he struggles
to find a place in his world
it's as though everything--
the anemones, Fred, Camo, Paris, Caveman--
exists only for us,
our private showing into this crazy wonderland,
that when we leave suddenly poof!
all will cease
(will it?)
ah but alas,
the time has come,
the dive guide said,
to talk of many things:
of decompression illness and bottom time
and surfacing and things
and why the sea is boiling hot
and what kind of fish have wings.
so thus we part (reluctantly)
sweet sorrow of the sea
"adieu, adieu, till it be morrow!"
we chorus as we flee
and up we go,
the buoy line
(our glory fadeth fast)
and up we go
to light and heat
and oxygen--at last.
and as we look up at the sun
and round at each glad face,
we feel inside us rise something
that's e'er so hard to place
gladness? awe, perhaps?
or sheer bewilderment?
this universe we've found below--
how in hell can we explain?
for ne'er could we do justice to
the glory that we've seen.
we can't, of course,
each one of us,
and so we smile privately.
for though we can't communicate,
we've been changed by the sea.
out of the white light and heat and everyday into
other, a parallel universe,
alien planet,
so peaceful.
the silence plays
music upon my ear drums
and, suddenly, I breathe in, to
a forest of purpleredgreenyellow
as something tickles my thigh--
a chorus of bubbles softly stroke me
as they rise up
up
up
and into the light,
white light, above us
(looks like heaven, that perfectbeautiful halo of light)
turn, look up,
a forest of fish
eclipse the light from above
and if I die here, in this moment,
hoka hey,
for it is glorious
below me a symphony begins,
symphoy of sea anemone
wave in time to the almighty
beat beat beat
breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe
everything breathes here,
together,
not a thing out of time, out of place
even the fish are full of purpose.
Fred Flintstone-Jersey fish,
on his way to feast on barnacles
and Camo Man,
somehow (foolishly) convinced if he hides extra still I'll have no idea
he exists
(the Don Quixote of the sea, how charming)
and long lanky luxuriant Paris Hilton fish
(for the love of everything will someone please feed them some sandwiches??)
swish swish by,
fashion plates at fify feet
and then excitement
what? who?
in a cave
(is it Platonic?)
but this is no shadow, it's a something,
a prehistoric whatchewhosit,
fallen out of time,
into this sea cave before us,
his feelers testing testing
1 2 3 4
for signs of food life hope anything
(is anything out there? somewhere out there?)
unaware that he himself is the principal player in our little drama,
our eyes affixed to his every move as he struggles
to find a place in his world
it's as though everything--
the anemones, Fred, Camo, Paris, Caveman--
exists only for us,
our private showing into this crazy wonderland,
that when we leave suddenly poof!
all will cease
(will it?)
ah but alas,
the time has come,
the dive guide said,
to talk of many things:
of decompression illness and bottom time
and surfacing and things
and why the sea is boiling hot
and what kind of fish have wings.
so thus we part (reluctantly)
sweet sorrow of the sea
"adieu, adieu, till it be morrow!"
we chorus as we flee
and up we go,
the buoy line
(our glory fadeth fast)
and up we go
to light and heat
and oxygen--at last.
and as we look up at the sun
and round at each glad face,
we feel inside us rise something
that's e'er so hard to place
gladness? awe, perhaps?
or sheer bewilderment?
this universe we've found below--
how in hell can we explain?
for ne'er could we do justice to
the glory that we've seen.
we can't, of course,
each one of us,
and so we smile privately.
for though we can't communicate,
we've been changed by the sea.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
portrait of a burglary, in verse
Popped my head
into the past (the future?)
today
an interesting place to be
that bed
those walls
Les Fleurs du Mal...
(do I know this strange, strange place?)
I'm a cat burglar into a life
of a girl
who seems infinitely familiar and, yet,
somehow
strange, different
someone from another time--
so young,
with yellow light falling out of the September sky onto her
hair
as she glimmers with hope, promise, and a new BA so shiny it reflects light
like a perfect copper penny
but where's the girl?
I can't seem to find her anywhere as I
sleep in her bed
drive her car
hug her parents
barhop with her girls
walk her steps,
from one sunlit patch to another;
a thoughtful cat
searching for a warm, comfortable spot to rest
funny, though,
they all seem to know me,
these people...
"how tan you've gotten!"
"have you lost weight?"
the voices drift to me
as though from a great distance,
muffled, echoy, and yet
somehow beautiful
do they know me?
am I deceived?
have I tricked even myself into living
as this girl,
that faraway sun-dappled idealist who left on a jet plane
(don't know when she'll be back again)
one September morning
to a far distance freckle on the face of the vast, smiling Pacific,
never to be seen again?
I see her at a distance, too--
in a dream--
you know, the bright overexposed kind--
random shots strung together
into some kind of sorry semblance
of a whole
(and then, on waking, you scramble to arrange all the pieces of the puzzle before they disappear in a beautiful oblivion)?
as I drive these familiar paths,
pathways light along my mind:
now she's playing Capture the Flag on a long shag carpet of green, flanked by cars on either side
(6th Avenue Parkway),
grinning mischievously and loving life
girl moves to new house
(what is this strange, strange place?)
and then--get this!--hides from her new babysitter under the dining room table,
clinging desperately to the vain hope that hiding from the change will prevent it,
eyes shut tight in earnest anticipation of the longed-for metamorphosis into yesterday
first day at school:
so many buses;
they're all the same--
yellow, yellow--she's drowning in a sea of familiar strangeness,
gasping for air till she's found (saved!) by Principal K--
he may chain-smoke, but he delivers little one safely home
and oh there's more--
braces, glasses, learning to drive...
learning to drink (or not)
graduation, promise,
manifest destiny
then she was off to great places,
up up and away away
AWAY
out of her cocoon and into The World (look out!)
and so the South, the North, the Continent--
all got a liberal taste of Colorado sunshine in the form
of that bright creature (was she real or apparition?) who floted
(mostly) easily
between among through
them,
touching lightly upon all she encountered
and yet this is her place,
the girl,
nothing on earth--Paris, NYC, Timbuktu--
quite tunes her soul to perfect pitch
the way this view does,
right here, right now,
as I drive back into Denver from the mountains
as twilight gently enwraps that smoggy little metropolis she calls home
and I watch the gradual changes
as I fly up up up
and down the hill,
into that welcoming bosom of city light
nestled between the warm dark mountains on both sides and then spreading,
unfolding its glorious, languorous self
as far as the eye can see
and she (and I) involuntarily inhale
as we catch sight of it cresting the hill,
hold tightly onto its
perfection
and in that crystalline moment
it's clear where the girl I burgled is.
not in North Carolina or New York or lost in Europe or on some distant tropical isle
that young idealist,
the sun-dappled smiling hippie,
she lives in that same secret place that contains this view--
that deeply hidden spot in the soul
which no one or nothing can tug
in quite the way this moment can.
and as the car and her mind and the world
hurtle onward forward
through the space time continuum
(even here, back in the future)
everything settles.
I am home.
into the past (the future?)
today
an interesting place to be
that bed
those walls
Les Fleurs du Mal...
(do I know this strange, strange place?)
I'm a cat burglar into a life
of a girl
who seems infinitely familiar and, yet,
somehow
strange, different
someone from another time--
so young,
with yellow light falling out of the September sky onto her
hair
as she glimmers with hope, promise, and a new BA so shiny it reflects light
like a perfect copper penny
but where's the girl?
I can't seem to find her anywhere as I
sleep in her bed
drive her car
hug her parents
barhop with her girls
walk her steps,
from one sunlit patch to another;
a thoughtful cat
searching for a warm, comfortable spot to rest
funny, though,
they all seem to know me,
these people...
"how tan you've gotten!"
"have you lost weight?"
the voices drift to me
as though from a great distance,
muffled, echoy, and yet
somehow beautiful
do they know me?
am I deceived?
have I tricked even myself into living
as this girl,
that faraway sun-dappled idealist who left on a jet plane
(don't know when she'll be back again)
one September morning
to a far distance freckle on the face of the vast, smiling Pacific,
never to be seen again?
I see her at a distance, too--
in a dream--
you know, the bright overexposed kind--
random shots strung together
into some kind of sorry semblance
of a whole
(and then, on waking, you scramble to arrange all the pieces of the puzzle before they disappear in a beautiful oblivion)?
as I drive these familiar paths,
pathways light along my mind:
now she's playing Capture the Flag on a long shag carpet of green, flanked by cars on either side
(6th Avenue Parkway),
grinning mischievously and loving life
girl moves to new house
(what is this strange, strange place?)
and then--get this!--hides from her new babysitter under the dining room table,
clinging desperately to the vain hope that hiding from the change will prevent it,
eyes shut tight in earnest anticipation of the longed-for metamorphosis into yesterday
first day at school:
so many buses;
they're all the same--
yellow, yellow--she's drowning in a sea of familiar strangeness,
gasping for air till she's found (saved!) by Principal K--
he may chain-smoke, but he delivers little one safely home
and oh there's more--
braces, glasses, learning to drive...
learning to drink (or not)
graduation, promise,
manifest destiny
then she was off to great places,
up up and away away
AWAY
out of her cocoon and into The World (look out!)
and so the South, the North, the Continent--
all got a liberal taste of Colorado sunshine in the form
of that bright creature (was she real or apparition?) who floted
(mostly) easily
between among through
them,
touching lightly upon all she encountered
and yet this is her place,
the girl,
nothing on earth--Paris, NYC, Timbuktu--
quite tunes her soul to perfect pitch
the way this view does,
right here, right now,
as I drive back into Denver from the mountains
as twilight gently enwraps that smoggy little metropolis she calls home
and I watch the gradual changes
as I fly up up up
and down the hill,
into that welcoming bosom of city light
nestled between the warm dark mountains on both sides and then spreading,
unfolding its glorious, languorous self
as far as the eye can see
and she (and I) involuntarily inhale
as we catch sight of it cresting the hill,
hold tightly onto its
perfection
and in that crystalline moment
it's clear where the girl I burgled is.
not in North Carolina or New York or lost in Europe or on some distant tropical isle
that young idealist,
the sun-dappled smiling hippie,
she lives in that same secret place that contains this view--
that deeply hidden spot in the soul
which no one or nothing can tug
in quite the way this moment can.
and as the car and her mind and the world
hurtle onward forward
through the space time continuum
(even here, back in the future)
everything settles.
I am home.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Lessons Learned of Late; or "April is the cruellest month"
Lessons Learned of Late…
I title this blog entry in honor of one particular section we get to fill out on our beloved T---------- Report Forms. Now, most of this form-filling out involves remembering and recording all of the specific, minute details of our work (yawn) and math (gah!! And I thought I was done with you forever after sophomore year of college!). There is, however, one section which amuses/befuddles me greatly: (the oh-so-fuzzy, I love it) “Lessons Learned This Quarter” section. Now, I say “amuses” because, without fail, whenever, in filling out the report, I stop and remember all of the “lessons” I’ve learned during that past four months of Peace Corps, I can’t help but smile at my own ridiculousness (who could?). Okay, you say, that explains “amused,” but “befuddled”? Que? That’s because, somehow, someone in the US government (evidently) sincerely believes that I can boil all of the trials, the tribulations, the skinned knees, the tears, and the “aha!”s down into a space THE SIZE OF THE PALM OF MY HAND. Hahaha…so not going to happen.
And so, I present here, for your reading pleasure, a few of my Lessons Learned This Quarter (Or, April is the cruelest month…). Enjoy!
Lesson #1 Sharks>Clifford the Big Red Dog
Huh? you may be wondering. Was there a fictional vs. non-fictional creature throwdown in Ngeremlengui I never heard about?
Well, sort of. Here’s how it happened. Once a month, several teachers, the 1st-4th graders, and I pile onto the school bus and head merrily down to the beach for our Friday noontime meeting of the Book & Lunch Club. It’s fun: everybody brings their bento (boxed lunch), a book to read; I bring dessert [this, incidentally, was previously the site of another lesson learned: ice cream ≠good non-messy snack choice—well, not, at least, if you value your books, your clothes, or the summer house].
Anyway, on this particular Friday, the tide is really in.
“It’s perfect for swimming,” the kids point out, oh-so-subtly hinting their intentions.
[I scramble.] “Well, you can come swimming any time,” say I, “but you can only read now.” [I’m sure any logicians reading this would love to list the ten ways I just—rather blatantly—lied to my students.] When the kids start talking about “tides,” I pretend I can’t hear them, shutting out their “reasoned explanations” and concentrating really hard on the book J’s in the process of reading me, Clifford’s Christmas.
Well, eventually, the kids accept the fallacy with which I’ve presented them and settle down to read. I sigh my relief inwardly, continuing to listen to the tale of Emily Ann and her large, oddly-colored canine. Then I hear it.
“Chedeng! Chedeng,” a small knot of students cries excitedly from the dock. The others, infected by their enthusiasm, put their books aside and run over.
“Hey,” I yell. “You can see a shark any time, but…” The words die away on my lips. Even my intrepid third grade reader J has dropped Clifford to the ground.
Ah, well, I think. Some of them you just can’t win.
Lesson #2 Masseuses Can Read Minds. Really.
In honor of my birthday (in case you don’t know me, this is my favorite holiday of the year. But birthdays aren’t holidays, you say. Really?, say I. I’m sorry you haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting me.), I decided to treat myself to a massage. Now, after taking (the extremely demanding!) Massage Therapy my second semester senior year, I went through pretty heavy withdrawal from those weekly, hour-long “full-body rubdowns” [to quote myself]. By the time I arrived on Kosrae in late September, I was hurting so bad for them (no pun intended, haha), that I repeatedly suggested, “hey…maybe I can teach the ladies of Kosrae to do massage therapy as an, um…secondary project. Yeah! It would promote…health and wellness on the island!”
Though no one had the gumption to tell me straight up, “um, Megan? Women aren’t actually allowed to show their shoulders or thighs here, so massage therapy…? Uh, yeah. Maybe not gonna fly, so much,” that pet project idea never really did pan out.
So, you can imagine how excited I was for my birthday massage. Imagine, then, my reaction, when I strip down, lie on the table, and my masseuse starts…talking to me. Sure, yeah, she was giving me a good massage, but what I really wanted was just to Zen out. Anyway, she asks me the usual cursory small talk queries: how long have you been on the island, what do you do here, etc. Well, once I had successfully supplied the answers to these questions (8 months, I am a teacher here), my masseuse takes the hint (from the curt nature of my responses) and remains silent for quite some time. Some minutes later, I am nearly asleep on the table when, suddenly, I am jolted by pain. Huh? She’s working my upper back. She comments that I hold perhaps the most tension that she’s ever seen there.
And then: “so do you teach little kids?” I love it. How did she guess?
Lesson #3 Puppies are not conducive to Zen.
I think one of my earliest actions out of the cradle rather beautifully illustrates the way I feel about canines. Now, I was my parents’ first child; thus, they baby-proofed the entire house, read volumes of books on how to take perfect care of me, sanitized all of my toys, etc. Imagine their reaction, then, when they found that I had rolled from my cradle, crawled over to our Dalmatian, and had proceeded to suck on Banjo’s paw!
When Bonnie, my dog on Kosrae, got hit by a car and broke both of her legs, I splinted them and fed her painkillers. After a couple of days of rest, my host dad suggested that I put her through a multi-faceted rehab program: taking her to the beach to swim every other day, and massaging her injured legs on the alternating days. Now, knowing my dad, I’m not sure whether his suggestion was sincere or in jest; however, the fact remains that, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I could be seen walking the street of Kosrae, carrying my dog in a basket down to the beach for our “rehab swims.” (I’m sure, also, that I quickly gained the rep among the locals of “crazy dog lady.”)
Yeah, I love dogs. I think the term “dog person” doesn’t quite do justice to the way I feel about them. I think the best way to put it is that I feel the way about dogs that people are supposed to feel about babies.
Thus, when our new puppy, Hunter, arrived a few weeks back, I was thrilled (kind of like, oh… “a little kid with a puppy”). Now, it has long been the tradition of our Siamese cats to join me in my yoga exercises—walking, rubbing up against me, but, mainly, just sitting around on my yoga mat in that very glazy way that cats will do. At first, it was, admittedly, slightly off-putting to (eyes closed) move into plank pose and find—ho, shit—I am planking on a cat! However, I’ve gotten used to their presence; I’ve even grown so accustomed to the cats’ quiet, furry presence that I sort of miss them when they’re not there during my exercise sessions.
Now, I don’t know whether Hunter got the idea from the Siamese twins, or all on his own, but one night he, too, decided to assist me in my yoga practice. Picture it: I’ve just warmed up, I stand up, breathe, exhale slowly down into downward dog and—my hair is being yanked (practically out of my head!) by an unseen force below.
“Hunter,” I say warningly, before continuing my exercise, “you be a good boy.”
Well, I guess if you translate from Human to Dog, “good boy” means “good boy! Pull my hair some more, MORE! That’s it!” because that’s exactly what he starts doing. I sincerely try to keep my calm, but each time he does it, I get madder and madder.
Finally, I stand to my full height and explode. “HUNTER!!” I yell. “Do NOT do that!!!”
The veins stand out on my neck. My crazed voice reverberates back at me from a thousand angles off of the metal roof of the carport above us. Well, I think, I’ve sure Zenned out this yoga session!
Lesson #4 I am a force to be reckoned with!
My school is really cute: we have assemblies every Monday and Friday, each classroom is labeled with its appropriate grade level sign, the kids wear attractive, matching uniforms, and we all brush our teeth together at 12:45 each day. (It seems eerily, in fact, like Lake Wobegon of the Pacific, where all of the men are hard-working, and the women are pretty, and all of the children are above average.)
Anyway, going along with this Twilight Zone-worthy, Americana perfection, we have an actual physical BELL (kind of like the Liberty Bell, only small, not cracked, and maybe—just maybe—slightly less historically significant) which we ring at the end of each period to signal a change in classes. Well, I must have been doing something really good that Tuesday, for—for the first time in my eight months here—I was asked to ring the bell.
Now, I hate the super-loud noise the bell makes when the kids (invariably) SLAM it in turn so, I resolved, I would hit the bell as lightly as possible to still produce a sound. I hit the bell, producing the familiar clang. Quite pleased with myself, I hang the hammer back up and stroll back inside the office.
“Teacher Ngchui!” I hear awestruck children’s voices outside the office. I walk back outside. “Look what you did!”
And I look. HALF OF THE HEAD HAS FALLEN COMPLETELY OFF OF THE HAMMER.
Certain that the kids are just punking me (ha, it must have been like that before, and I just didn’t notice), I walk back over to the bell. Sure enough, the forlorn other-half-of-the-hammer-head lies useless on the ground below. Well done, Megan.
Lesson #5 I am ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah…I know (for those of you who know me personally), this is not at all news. However, there was such a brilliant and amusing recent illustrative example of this fact that I could not, in good conscience, omit it from this blog entry.
It’s Wednesday afternoon, second grade library time. To everyone’s delight, we’re starting out with (that old, time-tested favorite) Simon Says. O, one of the boys, is now Simon. Now, this kid is something of a class clown.
“Touch your butt,” he says. Whoa! Did he really just say that? Honestly, I am just so amused that a seven year-old just told me to touch my butt that I forgot to scold him and just go ahead and, well, touch my a**. After this direction, however, he seems to have run out of ideas. He scratches his head, stalls for time. Eventually, my impatience (and semi-awkwardness) prompts me to speak up.
“Okay! Now give us a new one so we can all stop touching our butts!”
My friend A turns to me, “Um, he said ‘back.’”
General laughter. Nice, Megan, nice.
Lesson #6 Do not dyslexify directions.
Now, I’ve never been diagnosed with formal dyslexia for reading or anything. I do, however, occasionally have troubles with numbers. This explains, for instance, how, on Kosrae, where you only have to remember four numbers in order to call any person on the island, I REPEATEDLY (we are talking maybe 50 times) called the taxi company while trying to reach my friend G. I just couldn’t get those four numbers, IN PROPER ORDER, to work their way into my Permanent Record.
So, I have a lurking suspicion that, on occasion, I do the same thing with directions. After all, if you have to travel northeast to get somewhere, does it really matter whether you go north or east first? In this particular instance, I learned that, sometimes, yes, it matters a lot.
It’s Sunday morning. I’m excited because, for the very first time, I am going out SPEAR-FISHING! (I have wanted to do this my entire time in Palau.) My enthusiasm builds as we approach the reef: ooh boy! Ooh boy! I am a dog, wagging his tail at 90 mph; I am a warrior, getting ready to wage a battle against the creatures of the sea; I am—so not listening to the directions M, my companion, is issuing.
I dive in. Operating the gun is surprisingly easy, I soon learn. All you have to do is draw back your spear into a slot, secure it with two rubber bands, and ka-ching! you are armed and ready to go spear some unsuspecting aquatic life. I shoot once. A miss. Reload. Shoot again? Miss.
For my third attempt, I decide I will sneak up really, really close on the fish before going for it. I swim over a big coralhead and spot my target: a blue-green parrotfish a few yards away. He sees my spear, he starts making for the deep water…hey! Not so fast! I chase him down, take aim, pull the trigger and…miss. The difference, however, between this and my previous attempts, is that this time I shot into a huge abyss of water that I can’t even see the bottom of. I can’t even see my spear, let alone retrieve it.
I pop to the surface. “Um, M?” I call. “Don’t kill me, but…”
And that’s when I learned why you shoot from deep water into shallow. Ah. Now it ALL MAKES SENSE.
Lesson #7 “There are nice things in the world…We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked…referring every goddamn thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.”*
*Wish I could claim credit for the quote, but it’s actually from J.D. Salinger’s Franny & Zooey. In fact, I urge each and every one of you to read the whole book; it does more justice to the quote.
I remember, back during PST (Pre-Service Training, for the uninitiated), the PC staff showed us this graph. Now, I’m not really one for math, but what it really reminded me of was the graph of a sine wave, only superamplified, like y=300 sin (x), or something like that. It’s this crazy roller coaster of a graph.
I leaned over the table to one of my fellow training mates. “What is that?” I whispered.
Imminently, my question was answered by our PC doctors, who were leading the session: “That’s your mental health during Peace Corps,” they explain.
And how true it was. Never have I ever experienced such vast, continued mood swings as during my service over here. It is like a rollercoaster: on high days, I swear to everything that I have the best f***ing job in the entire world! But, on low days, tears and anger flow freely.
The past couple of weeks had definitely been a long ride down the roller coaster hill, it was a (storm-threatening) Saturday afternoon, and I was attempting to hitch from Koror (our capital) out to Ngeremlengui (my home). Now, this drive only takes about 45 minutes; however, I had not had the good fortune in town of running into anyone from my place. So, three separate rides, a little patience, and a lot of tekoi er Belau later, I had managed to land myself at the compact road turnout to Ngeremlengui (thus putting myself maybe a 3-4 mile walk from my home).
At first, I stood there, just waiting. However, as the minutes ticked by and not a single car passed by on the compact road (going anywhere), I decided, well, might as well start walking… This was easier thought than done, though, so to speak, for my personal articles included:
a) My backpack, loaded with clothes, toiletries, etc.
b) My full bag of groceries
c) An (open—you really think I could wait to see what I got in the mail? Hahaha, think again.) box
A couple of cars go by, both traveling in the opposite direction from me. One stops. It’s a white car with A plates, a woman (whom I’ve never seen before) driving.
“Do you need a ride?” she asks.
Just as she does so, I spot a car coming off of the compact road travelling in the same direction as I am.
“Oh, no,” I say. “Ke daitsob. It looks like they’re coming this way—I’m sure they’ll stop.”
Satisfied that I am taken care of, the woman continues on her way out. The incoming car, however, does not stop for me. The b******s! Can’t they see all the s**t I’m carrying??
However, I brush aside my anger and continue walking. Well, I think, only 2.75 more (hilly) miles to my house…My (bitter) thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a car behind me. I turn: it’s my old friend, the white car!
“Hop in,” the woman tells me, in perfect English. “It looks like you’ve got a lot of stuff there.”
I gratefully assent. As we ride in, we chit-chat. She was here visiting the SDA missionaries. Yes, she knows B, the Peace Corps from her place. She asks me questions: how do I like Palau? Am I thinking of extending to a third year? What exactly do we get out of Peace Corps when we’re done, anyway?
I think about my own circumstance. Hm, I don’t want to work in a government job. I’m not doing the Masters International Program. In fact, my “real job” will probably have absolutely nothing to do with PC. She breaks my thoughts—
“Is it just for the value of helping people?”
“Yeah,” I answer, slightly awed at the newfound revelation of what a good person I am, “it is.”
L then goes on to say, “Sulang. [Thanks.] Maybe you don’t hear that too much, but we are so grateful you’re here, that you would leave our country, your family, to make things better for us here on our small island. (Pause) In fact, when I look at you guys, and all you’ve sacrificed, it inspires me to do more for Palau, for my country.”
Honestly, I almost couldn’t open my mouth and produce the sounds requisite to thank her, knowing that, if I said more than a couple of syllables, I would certainly start crying. Somehow, in those few minutes, L, a complete stranger, had made everything worth it: the tears, the sweat, the difficult moments we all have when we bang our heads against the wall and honestly wonder how it is that we do this job sometimes.
As I walked up the hill to my house that afternoon, despite the rain, I swear I was radiating sunshine. Zooey was right. There are goddamned nice things in this world, and we are morons to get so sidetracked. It is for these moments that I joined the Peace Corps.
I title this blog entry in honor of one particular section we get to fill out on our beloved T---------- Report Forms. Now, most of this form-filling out involves remembering and recording all of the specific, minute details of our work (yawn) and math (gah!! And I thought I was done with you forever after sophomore year of college!). There is, however, one section which amuses/befuddles me greatly: (the oh-so-fuzzy, I love it) “Lessons Learned This Quarter” section. Now, I say “amuses” because, without fail, whenever, in filling out the report, I stop and remember all of the “lessons” I’ve learned during that past four months of Peace Corps, I can’t help but smile at my own ridiculousness (who could?). Okay, you say, that explains “amused,” but “befuddled”? Que? That’s because, somehow, someone in the US government (evidently) sincerely believes that I can boil all of the trials, the tribulations, the skinned knees, the tears, and the “aha!”s down into a space THE SIZE OF THE PALM OF MY HAND. Hahaha…so not going to happen.
And so, I present here, for your reading pleasure, a few of my Lessons Learned This Quarter (Or, April is the cruelest month…). Enjoy!
Lesson #1 Sharks>Clifford the Big Red Dog
Huh? you may be wondering. Was there a fictional vs. non-fictional creature throwdown in Ngeremlengui I never heard about?
Well, sort of. Here’s how it happened. Once a month, several teachers, the 1st-4th graders, and I pile onto the school bus and head merrily down to the beach for our Friday noontime meeting of the Book & Lunch Club. It’s fun: everybody brings their bento (boxed lunch), a book to read; I bring dessert [this, incidentally, was previously the site of another lesson learned: ice cream ≠good non-messy snack choice—well, not, at least, if you value your books, your clothes, or the summer house].
Anyway, on this particular Friday, the tide is really in.
“It’s perfect for swimming,” the kids point out, oh-so-subtly hinting their intentions.
[I scramble.] “Well, you can come swimming any time,” say I, “but you can only read now.” [I’m sure any logicians reading this would love to list the ten ways I just—rather blatantly—lied to my students.] When the kids start talking about “tides,” I pretend I can’t hear them, shutting out their “reasoned explanations” and concentrating really hard on the book J’s in the process of reading me, Clifford’s Christmas.
Well, eventually, the kids accept the fallacy with which I’ve presented them and settle down to read. I sigh my relief inwardly, continuing to listen to the tale of Emily Ann and her large, oddly-colored canine. Then I hear it.
“Chedeng! Chedeng,” a small knot of students cries excitedly from the dock. The others, infected by their enthusiasm, put their books aside and run over.
“Hey,” I yell. “You can see a shark any time, but…” The words die away on my lips. Even my intrepid third grade reader J has dropped Clifford to the ground.
Ah, well, I think. Some of them you just can’t win.
Lesson #2 Masseuses Can Read Minds. Really.
In honor of my birthday (in case you don’t know me, this is my favorite holiday of the year. But birthdays aren’t holidays, you say. Really?, say I. I’m sorry you haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting me.), I decided to treat myself to a massage. Now, after taking (the extremely demanding!) Massage Therapy my second semester senior year, I went through pretty heavy withdrawal from those weekly, hour-long “full-body rubdowns” [to quote myself]. By the time I arrived on Kosrae in late September, I was hurting so bad for them (no pun intended, haha), that I repeatedly suggested, “hey…maybe I can teach the ladies of Kosrae to do massage therapy as an, um…secondary project. Yeah! It would promote…health and wellness on the island!”
Though no one had the gumption to tell me straight up, “um, Megan? Women aren’t actually allowed to show their shoulders or thighs here, so massage therapy…? Uh, yeah. Maybe not gonna fly, so much,” that pet project idea never really did pan out.
So, you can imagine how excited I was for my birthday massage. Imagine, then, my reaction, when I strip down, lie on the table, and my masseuse starts…talking to me. Sure, yeah, she was giving me a good massage, but what I really wanted was just to Zen out. Anyway, she asks me the usual cursory small talk queries: how long have you been on the island, what do you do here, etc. Well, once I had successfully supplied the answers to these questions (8 months, I am a teacher here), my masseuse takes the hint (from the curt nature of my responses) and remains silent for quite some time. Some minutes later, I am nearly asleep on the table when, suddenly, I am jolted by pain. Huh? She’s working my upper back. She comments that I hold perhaps the most tension that she’s ever seen there.
And then: “so do you teach little kids?” I love it. How did she guess?
Lesson #3 Puppies are not conducive to Zen.
I think one of my earliest actions out of the cradle rather beautifully illustrates the way I feel about canines. Now, I was my parents’ first child; thus, they baby-proofed the entire house, read volumes of books on how to take perfect care of me, sanitized all of my toys, etc. Imagine their reaction, then, when they found that I had rolled from my cradle, crawled over to our Dalmatian, and had proceeded to suck on Banjo’s paw!
When Bonnie, my dog on Kosrae, got hit by a car and broke both of her legs, I splinted them and fed her painkillers. After a couple of days of rest, my host dad suggested that I put her through a multi-faceted rehab program: taking her to the beach to swim every other day, and massaging her injured legs on the alternating days. Now, knowing my dad, I’m not sure whether his suggestion was sincere or in jest; however, the fact remains that, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I could be seen walking the street of Kosrae, carrying my dog in a basket down to the beach for our “rehab swims.” (I’m sure, also, that I quickly gained the rep among the locals of “crazy dog lady.”)
Yeah, I love dogs. I think the term “dog person” doesn’t quite do justice to the way I feel about them. I think the best way to put it is that I feel the way about dogs that people are supposed to feel about babies.
Thus, when our new puppy, Hunter, arrived a few weeks back, I was thrilled (kind of like, oh… “a little kid with a puppy”). Now, it has long been the tradition of our Siamese cats to join me in my yoga exercises—walking, rubbing up against me, but, mainly, just sitting around on my yoga mat in that very glazy way that cats will do. At first, it was, admittedly, slightly off-putting to (eyes closed) move into plank pose and find—ho, shit—I am planking on a cat! However, I’ve gotten used to their presence; I’ve even grown so accustomed to the cats’ quiet, furry presence that I sort of miss them when they’re not there during my exercise sessions.
Now, I don’t know whether Hunter got the idea from the Siamese twins, or all on his own, but one night he, too, decided to assist me in my yoga practice. Picture it: I’ve just warmed up, I stand up, breathe, exhale slowly down into downward dog and—my hair is being yanked (practically out of my head!) by an unseen force below.
“Hunter,” I say warningly, before continuing my exercise, “you be a good boy.”
Well, I guess if you translate from Human to Dog, “good boy” means “good boy! Pull my hair some more, MORE! That’s it!” because that’s exactly what he starts doing. I sincerely try to keep my calm, but each time he does it, I get madder and madder.
Finally, I stand to my full height and explode. “HUNTER!!” I yell. “Do NOT do that!!!”
The veins stand out on my neck. My crazed voice reverberates back at me from a thousand angles off of the metal roof of the carport above us. Well, I think, I’ve sure Zenned out this yoga session!
Lesson #4 I am a force to be reckoned with!
My school is really cute: we have assemblies every Monday and Friday, each classroom is labeled with its appropriate grade level sign, the kids wear attractive, matching uniforms, and we all brush our teeth together at 12:45 each day. (It seems eerily, in fact, like Lake Wobegon of the Pacific, where all of the men are hard-working, and the women are pretty, and all of the children are above average.)
Anyway, going along with this Twilight Zone-worthy, Americana perfection, we have an actual physical BELL (kind of like the Liberty Bell, only small, not cracked, and maybe—just maybe—slightly less historically significant) which we ring at the end of each period to signal a change in classes. Well, I must have been doing something really good that Tuesday, for—for the first time in my eight months here—I was asked to ring the bell.
Now, I hate the super-loud noise the bell makes when the kids (invariably) SLAM it in turn so, I resolved, I would hit the bell as lightly as possible to still produce a sound. I hit the bell, producing the familiar clang. Quite pleased with myself, I hang the hammer back up and stroll back inside the office.
“Teacher Ngchui!” I hear awestruck children’s voices outside the office. I walk back outside. “Look what you did!”
And I look. HALF OF THE HEAD HAS FALLEN COMPLETELY OFF OF THE HAMMER.
Certain that the kids are just punking me (ha, it must have been like that before, and I just didn’t notice), I walk back over to the bell. Sure enough, the forlorn other-half-of-the-hammer-head lies useless on the ground below. Well done, Megan.
Lesson #5 I am ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah…I know (for those of you who know me personally), this is not at all news. However, there was such a brilliant and amusing recent illustrative example of this fact that I could not, in good conscience, omit it from this blog entry.
It’s Wednesday afternoon, second grade library time. To everyone’s delight, we’re starting out with (that old, time-tested favorite) Simon Says. O, one of the boys, is now Simon. Now, this kid is something of a class clown.
“Touch your butt,” he says. Whoa! Did he really just say that? Honestly, I am just so amused that a seven year-old just told me to touch my butt that I forgot to scold him and just go ahead and, well, touch my a**. After this direction, however, he seems to have run out of ideas. He scratches his head, stalls for time. Eventually, my impatience (and semi-awkwardness) prompts me to speak up.
“Okay! Now give us a new one so we can all stop touching our butts!”
My friend A turns to me, “Um, he said ‘back.’”
General laughter. Nice, Megan, nice.
Lesson #6 Do not dyslexify directions.
Now, I’ve never been diagnosed with formal dyslexia for reading or anything. I do, however, occasionally have troubles with numbers. This explains, for instance, how, on Kosrae, where you only have to remember four numbers in order to call any person on the island, I REPEATEDLY (we are talking maybe 50 times) called the taxi company while trying to reach my friend G. I just couldn’t get those four numbers, IN PROPER ORDER, to work their way into my Permanent Record.
So, I have a lurking suspicion that, on occasion, I do the same thing with directions. After all, if you have to travel northeast to get somewhere, does it really matter whether you go north or east first? In this particular instance, I learned that, sometimes, yes, it matters a lot.
It’s Sunday morning. I’m excited because, for the very first time, I am going out SPEAR-FISHING! (I have wanted to do this my entire time in Palau.) My enthusiasm builds as we approach the reef: ooh boy! Ooh boy! I am a dog, wagging his tail at 90 mph; I am a warrior, getting ready to wage a battle against the creatures of the sea; I am—so not listening to the directions M, my companion, is issuing.
I dive in. Operating the gun is surprisingly easy, I soon learn. All you have to do is draw back your spear into a slot, secure it with two rubber bands, and ka-ching! you are armed and ready to go spear some unsuspecting aquatic life. I shoot once. A miss. Reload. Shoot again? Miss.
For my third attempt, I decide I will sneak up really, really close on the fish before going for it. I swim over a big coralhead and spot my target: a blue-green parrotfish a few yards away. He sees my spear, he starts making for the deep water…hey! Not so fast! I chase him down, take aim, pull the trigger and…miss. The difference, however, between this and my previous attempts, is that this time I shot into a huge abyss of water that I can’t even see the bottom of. I can’t even see my spear, let alone retrieve it.
I pop to the surface. “Um, M?” I call. “Don’t kill me, but…”
And that’s when I learned why you shoot from deep water into shallow. Ah. Now it ALL MAKES SENSE.
Lesson #7 “There are nice things in the world…We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked…referring every goddamn thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.”*
*Wish I could claim credit for the quote, but it’s actually from J.D. Salinger’s Franny & Zooey. In fact, I urge each and every one of you to read the whole book; it does more justice to the quote.
I remember, back during PST (Pre-Service Training, for the uninitiated), the PC staff showed us this graph. Now, I’m not really one for math, but what it really reminded me of was the graph of a sine wave, only superamplified, like y=300 sin (x), or something like that. It’s this crazy roller coaster of a graph.
I leaned over the table to one of my fellow training mates. “What is that?” I whispered.
Imminently, my question was answered by our PC doctors, who were leading the session: “That’s your mental health during Peace Corps,” they explain.
And how true it was. Never have I ever experienced such vast, continued mood swings as during my service over here. It is like a rollercoaster: on high days, I swear to everything that I have the best f***ing job in the entire world! But, on low days, tears and anger flow freely.
The past couple of weeks had definitely been a long ride down the roller coaster hill, it was a (storm-threatening) Saturday afternoon, and I was attempting to hitch from Koror (our capital) out to Ngeremlengui (my home). Now, this drive only takes about 45 minutes; however, I had not had the good fortune in town of running into anyone from my place. So, three separate rides, a little patience, and a lot of tekoi er Belau later, I had managed to land myself at the compact road turnout to Ngeremlengui (thus putting myself maybe a 3-4 mile walk from my home).
At first, I stood there, just waiting. However, as the minutes ticked by and not a single car passed by on the compact road (going anywhere), I decided, well, might as well start walking… This was easier thought than done, though, so to speak, for my personal articles included:
a) My backpack, loaded with clothes, toiletries, etc.
b) My full bag of groceries
c) An (open—you really think I could wait to see what I got in the mail? Hahaha, think again.) box
A couple of cars go by, both traveling in the opposite direction from me. One stops. It’s a white car with A plates, a woman (whom I’ve never seen before) driving.
“Do you need a ride?” she asks.
Just as she does so, I spot a car coming off of the compact road travelling in the same direction as I am.
“Oh, no,” I say. “Ke daitsob. It looks like they’re coming this way—I’m sure they’ll stop.”
Satisfied that I am taken care of, the woman continues on her way out. The incoming car, however, does not stop for me. The b******s! Can’t they see all the s**t I’m carrying??
However, I brush aside my anger and continue walking. Well, I think, only 2.75 more (hilly) miles to my house…My (bitter) thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a car behind me. I turn: it’s my old friend, the white car!
“Hop in,” the woman tells me, in perfect English. “It looks like you’ve got a lot of stuff there.”
I gratefully assent. As we ride in, we chit-chat. She was here visiting the SDA missionaries. Yes, she knows B, the Peace Corps from her place. She asks me questions: how do I like Palau? Am I thinking of extending to a third year? What exactly do we get out of Peace Corps when we’re done, anyway?
I think about my own circumstance. Hm, I don’t want to work in a government job. I’m not doing the Masters International Program. In fact, my “real job” will probably have absolutely nothing to do with PC. She breaks my thoughts—
“Is it just for the value of helping people?”
“Yeah,” I answer, slightly awed at the newfound revelation of what a good person I am, “it is.”
L then goes on to say, “Sulang. [Thanks.] Maybe you don’t hear that too much, but we are so grateful you’re here, that you would leave our country, your family, to make things better for us here on our small island. (Pause) In fact, when I look at you guys, and all you’ve sacrificed, it inspires me to do more for Palau, for my country.”
Honestly, I almost couldn’t open my mouth and produce the sounds requisite to thank her, knowing that, if I said more than a couple of syllables, I would certainly start crying. Somehow, in those few minutes, L, a complete stranger, had made everything worth it: the tears, the sweat, the difficult moments we all have when we bang our heads against the wall and honestly wonder how it is that we do this job sometimes.
As I walked up the hill to my house that afternoon, despite the rain, I swear I was radiating sunshine. Zooey was right. There are goddamned nice things in this world, and we are morons to get so sidetracked. It is for these moments that I joined the Peace Corps.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A Day in the Life--Palau
A Day in the Life—Palau
6:20 a.m. Wake up. Curse, slam my alarm off. Back to sleep.*
*Nice to know some things never change, eh?
6:40 a.m. Wake up for real: go shower and get ready.
8:00 a.m. Begin tekoi er Belau tutoring with J, our librarian.
8:11 a.m. I learn—to my shock, dismay, horror—that there is no word for “perfect” in the Palauan language. Decide that, evidently, I cannot live here long-term.
10:30 a.m. I am introducing persuasive essay writing to my 8th graders today. I love this lesson. In a nutshell, here's how it works:
I make them a ridiculous proposition (in this case, “we should have school six days a week, Monday through Saturday”)
After voting to make sure that they disagree with me wholeheartedly, I—through wily, skillful argument—manipulate my unsuspecting victims from outraged argument into strong agreement
Then, finally—this being the coup de gras, my favorite part of the lesson, of course—, I reveal the trick (“Just kidding—I was only arguing. You got punk'd!”), make some Ashton Kutcher-esque gesture, and go on to explain the basic structure of an argumentative paper. (The lesson from the trick being, of course, that—as Nick Naylor might say-- “The best thing about arguing is that, when you argue correctly, you are never wrong”.)
Now, when I taught this lesson on Kosrae, it worked flawlessly, my trusting little cherubs eating up my every word with a spoon, then starting in genuine shock and surprise once they realized that they had been tricked. Here, however, my students interrupt me every couple of minutes to ask: “Teacher, is this for real?”
[Aw, how cute! It just warms my heart to know that, as a teacher, I have succeeded in projecting an appearance of professionalism, knowledge, and...untrustworthiness. Well done, Megan. :)] Anyway, each time they ask, I unblinkingly assure them (with equal measures of hurt and surprise in my tone), “of course! You think I would lie to you?”
“Yes.”
Surprisingly, they eventually settle enough that I can pull off the trick. The kids are irate.
“See! We knew you were lying.” They swear that they will never come to class again. Ah, I think, another class well taught.
12:00 p.m. Lunchtime.
12:45 p.m. The cowbell rings. (And with Christopher Walken nowhere in sight!) Now comes my favorite time of day: Community Toothbrushing. I still remember witnessing this event for the first time, back on my first day at school in September. I had wondered: Where am I? Did I just walk onto a soundstage? Am I being set up? Seriously, 55 kids and 12 teachers brushing their teeth together? I felt as if I had stepped into an awkward (but extremely dentally hygenic) parallel universe.
I have come to believe that the kids have devised a game surrounding this time of day, game being: “Let's see who can make Teacher Ngchui spit toothpaste all over the schoolyard. (Wait and watch.)
12:47 p.m. Put toothpaste on my toothbrush. Start brushing.
B, a precocious 4th grader of mine approaches: “Ngchui, why aren't you wearing any pants?” I almost inhale toothpaste, before looking down and realizing the skirt I'm wearing is transparent. I give her a thumbs-up, meaning, roughly, thanks, B! I appreciate your comment, but I love these undies, so I don't mind all of Ngeremlengui checking them out.
D, an observant 1st grade, comments: “The inside of my mouth is very hot!” I nod sagely, I'll bet it is, I nod, mine is too.
A, a curious 4th grader, peppers me with personal questions:
-How old are you? 23, say my hands.
-Do you have any baby?
Wham-o. Crest violently shooting across the schoolyard as I spit, “NO!”
1:00 p.m. Remember how, as a kid, your favorite subject was PE? Yeah, I never outgrew that. As soon as the cowbell chimes again, I race out to the field. Bats, balls, and gloves have come out. Survey says...we are playing yakyu [baseball].
When I find out that I am on one of the teams, I am stoked. I am extremely competitive (some would say “too competitive,” those “some” being “wimps who like to lose.”); I can't wait to help my team grind the other team into the playing field. Bring it!
We are fielding first. I ask my kids (3rd and 4th graders, mind you): “where should I play?” They gesture somewhere around center field. I'm mildly offended, but figure: hey, they must be really good at fielding then. I'm sure they've got it covered. They don't. It's one of those long, painful innings where, as a spectator, you'd have time to, say, buy a hotdog, drink a beer, and debate the nature of man, time, and God with your neighbor, with time left over to make a phone call or two.
After witnessing error upon error, becoming more and more disgruntled, I cannot wait for my turn to bat and save my team at the bottom of the inning. When I look at the batting order, however, I see that I am far down the list—sixth or seventh, at least. I then watch our first three hitters strike out. I can't take this any more. As we head out to field, I (oh so coyly) ask: “Which base should I play?”
“First.” Sweet. I am their play maker, their Hank Aaron, their A-Rod. Give me your tired, your poor, your third foul tips yearning to be caught...
First batter smacks it hard to SS. He catches it, the runner's halfway to first--
“Here, here!” I cry, smacking my glove, adrenalin pumping.
S rockets the ball to me, as I hold my glove out and watch the ball's progress as it heads straight to me and—smacks me in the kneecap at around 80 mph.
I am on the ground, yelling words I am to tell my students not to use.
“Teacher, teacher, are you okay?”
I hobble off the field. I should not quit my day job. Oh, wait. This is my day job.
4:00 p.m. Finished with my work, I head home. Though my mom has offered me a ride, I feel like walking: the sky is perfect blue, the sun is shining, and who doesn't want to walk after taking a hardball to the kneecap? As I walk, I often like to fantasize about what I will eat when I get home. Today, the object of my desire is a Dulche de Leche Luna bar. I slowly, gently undress it, picturing its silky smoothness, its lovely golden hue. I begin to salivate as I luxuriate in its taste—the memories, the imaginings, the possibilities...so sweet, so caramelly, so not-found-in-Palau-and-only-coming-every-so-often-in-a-care-package-of-awesome.
4:15 p.m. By the time I reach the door, I can barely work my key I'm so entranced by the bar I'm about to eat. I rush to the kitchen, open my food box, remove the bar, and unwrap the wrapper to find...my lovely energy bar CRAWLING WITH ANTS.
I feel a rush of emotions—anger, hurt, sadness, hunger, and, above all, confusion: the bar was fully wrapped. HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET IN THERE???
As the ants begin to crawl from my the bar to my arm, I walk across the room, possessed of purpose. There is only one thing to be done. I walk to the sink, run water over the bar, and—stick it in my mouth. I chew and smile. Nothing like an energy bar with a little extra protein.
4:45 p.m. Snack time over, it's time to lift weights. (By “lift weights,” that is, I mean “do squats, lunges, dead lifts, etc. with a backpack full of rocks and other heavy shit.”) All's going well; in fact, as I'm in the middle of a set of (backpack-enhanced) lunges, I find myself thinking, Ha, to think that some people fork out money for gyms! All's I need is my hilltop, a step, and a backpack full of rocks.
Now come military presses. For a military press, I need to lie on my back, hold my pack to my chest, and push the pack up and down, like I'm doing a bench press only, well, without the bench. I hold the pack, exhale, and push up until—I lose my grip on the (weirdly-weighted) pack. Before I can think, let alone move, my backpack has come crashing down straight onto: a my right eye. After screaming a few expletives, I get up and go look in the mirror. I am bleeding—swell. Not only do I have to explain the yelling to my family, tomorrow I will also get to explain to my students why I look like I ended up on the losing side of a bar fight. And the importance of spotters.
8:15 p.m. After a shower, dinner, and, of course, “Mr. Bean,” I am sitting in my room lesson planning for the next day. (As they say, no time like the last minute!) I hear a rustling, pause. I decide to ignore it—probably one of the cats outside. Then again. And that's when I see him: a giant red figure, beady eyes staring at me, little mind whirling as to where in my room it's about to go hide and lay one million tiny disgusting cockroach eggs.
Adrenalin a-pump, I gingerly grab a shoe from my closet, all the while my eye never leaving the little red intruder. I carefully raise my shoe in the air, take aim, and—SMACK! I slam down with all my might on the sucker.
“Gotcha, sucker!!” I shout.
I pause. Wait a second, I think to myself, gazing slightly impressed and yet, slightly disturbed at my reflection on the interior of my window, did I just shout at a cockroach?
10:30 p.m. As I'm about to turn in, I realize I have a problem. Now, this past Christmas, I asked for a French press, with which I could make real coffee. When my wish came true, I was overjoyed.
“Show us how it works!” said my family, intrigued.
“No problem,” said I, nonchalantly. (After all, I was a barista before I joined Peace Corps—I could do this in my sleep.)
I pull the press from the box and open my bag of beans.
“So, you just put the beans in there and put in water, and it makes coffee?” they ask.
“Ye—es,” I reply, slightly less sure of myself. Is that really all there is to it?
I measure out a spoonful of beans, pour in my hot water, put the press in, and sit, waiting for the magic to happen.
“It's not changing color,” my sister G commented.
“Give it time,” I reply, “it takes a couple of minutes.”
And so we wait. Two minutes, five minutes...and still, all we are looking at is a container filled with clear water and brown beans.
“Oh shit!” I have remembered. “When I had to grind coffee at S, we had to ask 'is that for regular, cone filter, or French press?'” I am a dumbass. “What should I do?” I ask my mom.
She turns, goes to a drawer, rummages through it. I'm thinking she'll emerge with a grinder, a blender, or--
“A taro spanker?” [This is a small wooden club, used for spanking taro.]
“It should do the job.”
And so, at 10:30 tonight, I am to be found out in our kitchen, spanking coffee beans.
And such is my life.
6:20 a.m. Wake up. Curse, slam my alarm off. Back to sleep.*
*Nice to know some things never change, eh?
6:40 a.m. Wake up for real: go shower and get ready.
8:00 a.m. Begin tekoi er Belau tutoring with J, our librarian.
8:11 a.m. I learn—to my shock, dismay, horror—that there is no word for “perfect” in the Palauan language. Decide that, evidently, I cannot live here long-term.
10:30 a.m. I am introducing persuasive essay writing to my 8th graders today. I love this lesson. In a nutshell, here's how it works:
I make them a ridiculous proposition (in this case, “we should have school six days a week, Monday through Saturday”)
After voting to make sure that they disagree with me wholeheartedly, I—through wily, skillful argument—manipulate my unsuspecting victims from outraged argument into strong agreement
Then, finally—this being the coup de gras, my favorite part of the lesson, of course—, I reveal the trick (“Just kidding—I was only arguing. You got punk'd!”), make some Ashton Kutcher-esque gesture, and go on to explain the basic structure of an argumentative paper. (The lesson from the trick being, of course, that—as Nick Naylor might say-- “The best thing about arguing is that, when you argue correctly, you are never wrong”.)
Now, when I taught this lesson on Kosrae, it worked flawlessly, my trusting little cherubs eating up my every word with a spoon, then starting in genuine shock and surprise once they realized that they had been tricked. Here, however, my students interrupt me every couple of minutes to ask: “Teacher, is this for real?”
[Aw, how cute! It just warms my heart to know that, as a teacher, I have succeeded in projecting an appearance of professionalism, knowledge, and...untrustworthiness. Well done, Megan. :)] Anyway, each time they ask, I unblinkingly assure them (with equal measures of hurt and surprise in my tone), “of course! You think I would lie to you?”
“Yes.”
Surprisingly, they eventually settle enough that I can pull off the trick. The kids are irate.
“See! We knew you were lying.” They swear that they will never come to class again. Ah, I think, another class well taught.
12:00 p.m. Lunchtime.
12:45 p.m. The cowbell rings. (And with Christopher Walken nowhere in sight!) Now comes my favorite time of day: Community Toothbrushing. I still remember witnessing this event for the first time, back on my first day at school in September. I had wondered: Where am I? Did I just walk onto a soundstage? Am I being set up? Seriously, 55 kids and 12 teachers brushing their teeth together? I felt as if I had stepped into an awkward (but extremely dentally hygenic) parallel universe.
I have come to believe that the kids have devised a game surrounding this time of day, game being: “Let's see who can make Teacher Ngchui spit toothpaste all over the schoolyard. (Wait and watch.)
12:47 p.m. Put toothpaste on my toothbrush. Start brushing.
B, a precocious 4th grader of mine approaches: “Ngchui, why aren't you wearing any pants?” I almost inhale toothpaste, before looking down and realizing the skirt I'm wearing is transparent. I give her a thumbs-up, meaning, roughly, thanks, B! I appreciate your comment, but I love these undies, so I don't mind all of Ngeremlengui checking them out.
D, an observant 1st grade, comments: “The inside of my mouth is very hot!” I nod sagely, I'll bet it is, I nod, mine is too.
A, a curious 4th grader, peppers me with personal questions:
-How old are you? 23, say my hands.
-Do you have any baby?
Wham-o. Crest violently shooting across the schoolyard as I spit, “NO!”
1:00 p.m. Remember how, as a kid, your favorite subject was PE? Yeah, I never outgrew that. As soon as the cowbell chimes again, I race out to the field. Bats, balls, and gloves have come out. Survey says...we are playing yakyu [baseball].
When I find out that I am on one of the teams, I am stoked. I am extremely competitive (some would say “too competitive,” those “some” being “wimps who like to lose.”); I can't wait to help my team grind the other team into the playing field. Bring it!
We are fielding first. I ask my kids (3rd and 4th graders, mind you): “where should I play?” They gesture somewhere around center field. I'm mildly offended, but figure: hey, they must be really good at fielding then. I'm sure they've got it covered. They don't. It's one of those long, painful innings where, as a spectator, you'd have time to, say, buy a hotdog, drink a beer, and debate the nature of man, time, and God with your neighbor, with time left over to make a phone call or two.
After witnessing error upon error, becoming more and more disgruntled, I cannot wait for my turn to bat and save my team at the bottom of the inning. When I look at the batting order, however, I see that I am far down the list—sixth or seventh, at least. I then watch our first three hitters strike out. I can't take this any more. As we head out to field, I (oh so coyly) ask: “Which base should I play?”
“First.” Sweet. I am their play maker, their Hank Aaron, their A-Rod. Give me your tired, your poor, your third foul tips yearning to be caught...
First batter smacks it hard to SS. He catches it, the runner's halfway to first--
“Here, here!” I cry, smacking my glove, adrenalin pumping.
S rockets the ball to me, as I hold my glove out and watch the ball's progress as it heads straight to me and—smacks me in the kneecap at around 80 mph.
I am on the ground, yelling words I am to tell my students not to use.
“Teacher, teacher, are you okay?”
I hobble off the field. I should not quit my day job. Oh, wait. This is my day job.
4:00 p.m. Finished with my work, I head home. Though my mom has offered me a ride, I feel like walking: the sky is perfect blue, the sun is shining, and who doesn't want to walk after taking a hardball to the kneecap? As I walk, I often like to fantasize about what I will eat when I get home. Today, the object of my desire is a Dulche de Leche Luna bar. I slowly, gently undress it, picturing its silky smoothness, its lovely golden hue. I begin to salivate as I luxuriate in its taste—the memories, the imaginings, the possibilities...so sweet, so caramelly, so not-found-in-Palau-and-only-coming-every-so-often-in-a-care-package-of-awesome.
4:15 p.m. By the time I reach the door, I can barely work my key I'm so entranced by the bar I'm about to eat. I rush to the kitchen, open my food box, remove the bar, and unwrap the wrapper to find...my lovely energy bar CRAWLING WITH ANTS.
I feel a rush of emotions—anger, hurt, sadness, hunger, and, above all, confusion: the bar was fully wrapped. HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET IN THERE???
As the ants begin to crawl from my the bar to my arm, I walk across the room, possessed of purpose. There is only one thing to be done. I walk to the sink, run water over the bar, and—stick it in my mouth. I chew and smile. Nothing like an energy bar with a little extra protein.
4:45 p.m. Snack time over, it's time to lift weights. (By “lift weights,” that is, I mean “do squats, lunges, dead lifts, etc. with a backpack full of rocks and other heavy shit.”) All's going well; in fact, as I'm in the middle of a set of (backpack-enhanced) lunges, I find myself thinking, Ha, to think that some people fork out money for gyms! All's I need is my hilltop, a step, and a backpack full of rocks.
Now come military presses. For a military press, I need to lie on my back, hold my pack to my chest, and push the pack up and down, like I'm doing a bench press only, well, without the bench. I hold the pack, exhale, and push up until—I lose my grip on the (weirdly-weighted) pack. Before I can think, let alone move, my backpack has come crashing down straight onto: a my right eye. After screaming a few expletives, I get up and go look in the mirror. I am bleeding—swell. Not only do I have to explain the yelling to my family, tomorrow I will also get to explain to my students why I look like I ended up on the losing side of a bar fight. And the importance of spotters.
8:15 p.m. After a shower, dinner, and, of course, “Mr. Bean,” I am sitting in my room lesson planning for the next day. (As they say, no time like the last minute!) I hear a rustling, pause. I decide to ignore it—probably one of the cats outside. Then again. And that's when I see him: a giant red figure, beady eyes staring at me, little mind whirling as to where in my room it's about to go hide and lay one million tiny disgusting cockroach eggs.
Adrenalin a-pump, I gingerly grab a shoe from my closet, all the while my eye never leaving the little red intruder. I carefully raise my shoe in the air, take aim, and—SMACK! I slam down with all my might on the sucker.
“Gotcha, sucker!!” I shout.
I pause. Wait a second, I think to myself, gazing slightly impressed and yet, slightly disturbed at my reflection on the interior of my window, did I just shout at a cockroach?
10:30 p.m. As I'm about to turn in, I realize I have a problem. Now, this past Christmas, I asked for a French press, with which I could make real coffee. When my wish came true, I was overjoyed.
“Show us how it works!” said my family, intrigued.
“No problem,” said I, nonchalantly. (After all, I was a barista before I joined Peace Corps—I could do this in my sleep.)
I pull the press from the box and open my bag of beans.
“So, you just put the beans in there and put in water, and it makes coffee?” they ask.
“Ye—es,” I reply, slightly less sure of myself. Is that really all there is to it?
I measure out a spoonful of beans, pour in my hot water, put the press in, and sit, waiting for the magic to happen.
“It's not changing color,” my sister G commented.
“Give it time,” I reply, “it takes a couple of minutes.”
And so we wait. Two minutes, five minutes...and still, all we are looking at is a container filled with clear water and brown beans.
“Oh shit!” I have remembered. “When I had to grind coffee at S, we had to ask 'is that for regular, cone filter, or French press?'” I am a dumbass. “What should I do?” I ask my mom.
She turns, goes to a drawer, rummages through it. I'm thinking she'll emerge with a grinder, a blender, or--
“A taro spanker?” [This is a small wooden club, used for spanking taro.]
“It should do the job.”
And so, at 10:30 tonight, I am to be found out in our kitchen, spanking coffee beans.
And such is my life.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
palau.
I paint Palau in watercolor,
bluegreengoldenred melting, seeping into one another,
intertwining into new and rare patterns
of perfect
red of the dirt
(Martian-moonscape, howling, lonely Canyonlands-mesatop dirt)
runs red in the rain,
our hillside bleeding down down down into the sea
gold is for sunshine,
those glistening moments of good
as giggles ring through the schoolyard
as we jump jump and do the splits, splits, over the bridge and—
we collapse into laughter, cannot finish,
fall and laugh and start again,
as the golden rays kiss our faces,
floating down out of that cloudless, endless, Robin’s-egg-Dear-Prudence sky
I admire it from my mesa top,
stretch up up with all my might
as though maybe, just maybe, if I reach just far enough I can grab that perfect blue and hold it in my hand, for keeps.
around me, the sky darkens to a deep, majestic shade as it stretches (like me!)
out over the serene azure sea—
and I’m quickly running out of words, of language
for all the shades of beautiful before me.
and green! there’s another—
somehow kelly, hunter, lime—
the old standbys pale inadequately when faced with the momentous task of embodying a landscape of Serengeti trees and Japanese mist and and George of the Jungle vines and Dr. Seuss mountains
(you know the kind, almost friendly-looking, with a single tree growing out of the top at an almost comically sideways angle, to the point where, looking at it—every time!—you wonder, with a mix of jealousy and wonder, how the hell it can balance there like that anyway?)
yet we can’t forget the most brilliant watercolor of all,
the pinkorangeredpurple fireworks of sunset,
as the dying sun lights the sky and sea on a fire,
a grandiose last gesture on its (nightly) road to dusty death.
at first, the whole canvas is ablaze—
(our kelly-lime-hunter vegetation reduced to black silhouettes in its shadow)
yet then the picture changes—form, color, tone—by the second,
until slowly, slowly the sun dies away,
leaving only a few slow-burning embers in remote corners
as a remembrance to itself,
and then—
nothing.
we are left wrapped in the black velvet sky
and the promise of tomorrow’s masterpiece.
bluegreengoldenred melting, seeping into one another,
intertwining into new and rare patterns
of perfect
red of the dirt
(Martian-moonscape, howling, lonely Canyonlands-mesatop dirt)
runs red in the rain,
our hillside bleeding down down down into the sea
gold is for sunshine,
those glistening moments of good
as giggles ring through the schoolyard
as we jump jump and do the splits, splits, over the bridge and—
we collapse into laughter, cannot finish,
fall and laugh and start again,
as the golden rays kiss our faces,
floating down out of that cloudless, endless, Robin’s-egg-Dear-Prudence sky
I admire it from my mesa top,
stretch up up with all my might
as though maybe, just maybe, if I reach just far enough I can grab that perfect blue and hold it in my hand, for keeps.
around me, the sky darkens to a deep, majestic shade as it stretches (like me!)
out over the serene azure sea—
and I’m quickly running out of words, of language
for all the shades of beautiful before me.
and green! there’s another—
somehow kelly, hunter, lime—
the old standbys pale inadequately when faced with the momentous task of embodying a landscape of Serengeti trees and Japanese mist and and George of the Jungle vines and Dr. Seuss mountains
(you know the kind, almost friendly-looking, with a single tree growing out of the top at an almost comically sideways angle, to the point where, looking at it—every time!—you wonder, with a mix of jealousy and wonder, how the hell it can balance there like that anyway?)
yet we can’t forget the most brilliant watercolor of all,
the pinkorangeredpurple fireworks of sunset,
as the dying sun lights the sky and sea on a fire,
a grandiose last gesture on its (nightly) road to dusty death.
at first, the whole canvas is ablaze—
(our kelly-lime-hunter vegetation reduced to black silhouettes in its shadow)
yet then the picture changes—form, color, tone—by the second,
until slowly, slowly the sun dies away,
leaving only a few slow-burning embers in remote corners
as a remembrance to itself,
and then—
nothing.
we are left wrapped in the black velvet sky
and the promise of tomorrow’s masterpiece.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Soundtrack to my vaction: Side B (Thailand)
Soundtrack To My Vacation—B side (Thailand)
You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello...The Beatles
As with Bali, we hit Bangkok late and without plans. (Obviously, based on our utter inability to LEARN BY EXPERIENCE, we deserved whatever we might get.) Bookless—we'd elected to buy a cheap Lonely Planet off of the street upon arrival—we knew our best bet would be to head down to Khao San Road and try our luck checking into somewhere:
a) cheap
(but)
b) not a “den of iniquity,” as the tactful and euphemistic might put it.
We had, I suppose, learned something in Bali: we did elect, on this “wonderfully spontaneous” occasion, to station our friend G at a Swenson's (yes, they have Swenson's in Thailand!) with all of our bags. Meanwhile, J and I bravely, wearily ventured forth to price-compare hostels in the area. (It's around midnight by this time, btw.) After visiting several “contendahs”--one, swear I'm not making this up, called the Cha-Cha (see? I wasn't kidding with my lodging criteria above)--J and I returned to Swenson's.
We've collected prices and business cards. A little clean (though slightly strange-seeming kind of) place called the Hello Guesthouse is cheapest. Sweet. Decision made. We gather our stuff, wheel slowly over, and crash for the night (well, morning at this point). Look out, Bangkok! (In about ten hours!)
Now, our friend A—the recipient of the fateful phone call on Chuuk, if you remember—is, coincidentally, also going to be in Thailand and wants to meet up.
“No problem!” we had said. “There's Internet everywhere—it'll be a cinch to work out!”
So, that later morning, before we head out for the day, we email A to let him know where we're staying, what we're doing for the day, etc. Surely he'll be able to find us based on that.
We fill our first day to the brim and then some. We start out by trying to visit The Tourist Attraction: the Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Though the palace ends up being closed for a national holiday, we do learn a few key pointers on Thai dress and custom. Now, as it is about 3000 degrees outside, and we're on vacation (e.g. off-of-perma-t-shirt&knee-length skirt duty), G's wearing shorts and a tank top, I shorts and my (new-found $5) Little Miss Naughty t-shirt. We do, however, know temple rules; we've brought sarongs to cover our offensive legs.
But, before we get a chance to show off our remarkable amount of cultural sensitivity, a temple employee before us snaps, “No tank tops in the temple!” Then, looking around at the slowly-collecting crowd of hopelessly dressed foreigners, she picks up her megaphone in order to tell us, loudly: “no sexy in the temple.” Evidently she likes her own phrasing, for she then repeats to the crowd at large, with added vehemence: “NO SEXY IN THE TEMPLE!!”
The day flies by as we flit from wat to wat, then finally from tourist office to home. When we get in, the desk informs us: “there was a man call for you. Nine o' clock.”
Hooray! A had gotten our message. We sought further information. “He called? He's coming by? Wait, nine o' clock this morning? Tonight? Tomorrow morning?”
Our only answer were puzzled expressions, shrugs. Without any phone number at which to reach our compatriot, we did the only sensible thing to do in the situation: go up to our room, eat ice cream, and wait...and wait...and wait. Finally, when around 9:30/9:45, we still had heard nothing, J called down to the desk.
“Hello Guesthouse,” they answered.
“Can you tell us,” J asked, “has our friend called?”
“Do you need a room?” they offerred.
“I'm IN one of your rooms,” a frustrated J cried.
Her questioning revealed that the desk had (well, we were pretty sure) received no calls or visitors for us. So, after a bit more waiting, J went down to the desk. They greeted her excitedly: “Your friend called!”
“Really? When?”
“A girl this time.”
A girl? Huh? We didn't have any girl friends in Bangkok. We scratched our heads about this for awhile. Then we got it: J was the “girl friend” of ours who had called for us. Good times.
As we would later learn, our friend A came by the following morning to find us checked out and gone, the only souvenir of our visit my photocopied ID at the desk.
With that, it was Goodbye Hello, Hello Chiang Mai!
When You're In Prison...The Offspring
Boy had we gotten a deal! (Or so the smiling man at the “official” Tourist Authority office had told us as we—quite unsmilingly—bought our tickets the prior night.) A two-day trek, two nights of lodging, mucho food, and a FREE BUS RIDE TO CHIANG MAI, all for a modest...[you get the idea].
Hello Chiang Mai!, the side of our bus cheerily proclaimed. I think after our ride, however, if anyone had greeted us after such a fashion, we would have punched them in the face. Hard.
You see, we had been assured that we would be traveling north in the lap of luxury—“not a bus, really...more like a hotel on wheels!” The seats were to recline to a near-sleeping angle, there was to be air-con, lively, interesting fellow travellers, and entertainment! [Care for a translation?]
Reclining seats! “Well golly gee! My seat reclines to a
luxurious 92-degree angle!!"
Air-con! Haven't been this cold since, oh, a real winter
Worldly and interesting travel Noisy, drunken British kids (who nearly miss the
companions! bus when we stop midway for dinner because they
are so oblivious), who enjoy nothing better than
lounging with their smelly socks on my armrest!
Entertainment! They're showing a DVD of a movie called THE
CONDEMNED. At least they've got a healthy sense
of irony.
I believe in miracles. Know why? Directly following this delightful jaunt, we got off the bus, and I asked J: “how did you sleep?” She answers something along the lines of “awful. And you?” “I slept great!” I reply. I AM STILL ALIVE AFTER THIS CONVERSATION. Case closed.
Every Little Thing's Gonna Be All Right...Bob Marley
After I fortuitously survived the above exchange, the tour people pack us off to the hostel we're staying at in Chiang Mai for the evening—Nice Place (gotta love the names!). We shuffle in with the other turistas and sit along the side of the lobby, sipping complimentary coffee and awaiting further instruction. We watch with a combination of amusement and horror as some of our fellow travelers put away beer alongside their morning coffee. Um, excuse me, I wanted so badly to ask, did you just get off of the same bus I did? Or did you just step out of some kind of parallel universe?
Well anyway, I'm sitting there in wonderment when I see a strange sight out of the corner of my eye. Could that familiar-looking white boy be...
“A!!!” I yell, putting aside my coffee and running over to give him a hug. “We found you!!”
“You found me?” he laughs. “I've been chasing you bastards all over Thailand!”
When we inform him that we're signed up for this all-inclusive trek, A's displeasure is evident (e.g. “you guys got yourself suckered into this and so now I have to come along?”). He's a good sport, though, and signs up to come explore with us the following day.
The next morning (post-bucket—the bucket is highly essential if you visit Thailand) dawns far too early. We're tired, headachey, wondering what exactly we've gotten ourselves into. (If this translates from spiel to reality anything like the bus did, I'm pretty certain that fewer people will come out of the mountains than went in, if you know what I mean.)
However, I think it was somewhere between our guide Pon singing Bob Marley with us in the truck, riding an elephant, and he and I turning our hats sideways gangstah-style that I knew the trip would be epic. Words can't describe accurately what was truly the greatest travel experience of my life, so a few moments/images will have to do...
being pounded by clear rushing water in the sunshine
laughing down a mud hill in the rain
rounding a bend in the road into a village out of another world,
wreathed in cloud like a holy place
and green curry and laughing and singing and Elephant beer and Pink Floyd—and no one can sing
along, but it doesn't even matter—and lying in a pile like warm puppies against the cold
and the dark
waking up fresh and bright
can't leave, but must,
our green-gold wonderland of goodness
and down down we go, singing all the way
on the truck, the wind whips our faces as we travel through time and space out of magic,
back to real
Singing don't worry,
about a thing,
'cuz every little thing's
gonna be all right, child...
Crazy Train...Ozzy Osbourne
We rolled out of our trekking world and back into real life on a tight schedule: we had to make the 5 p.m. night train back to Bangkok. Theoretically, this train would put us back in town at 7:30, and we would then hustle to catch our 8:30 bus down to Ko Chang. Perfect. This would give us two nights and a day on a gorgeous little island before heading back to Bangkok to spend one day sightseeing with A and a last day sightseeing on our own. Come Saturday, we'd catch the plane back for the long haul aaaalllll the way back to Kosrae. (Sorry, I know this seems boring, but it's relevant.)
Well, those of you who have traveled with me are probably quite familiar with the Megan Dichotomy: chill most of the time, insanely high-strung when it comes to making planes and trains and buses and things. We actually arrived at the train station quite early, so we stocked up on provisions (read: street food), hung out with A, and just generally chilled. Suddenly we realize: hey, whoa! Our train is leaving in about four minutes!
We accordingly start walking along the train. What we don't know is that we are in practically the LAST CAR. We're walking, the train has started making its starting up noises, we're in 5 and we're walking by 10 for crying out loud! We pick up the pace—this is it! No wait, dining car. Then we hear that awful sound—air brakes being released. We're going to miss the train and we weren't even late!!
J for some reason has gone at some point to the other side of the train to walk, we don't even know if she's abreast of us or not, I reach car 5, practically throw myself up the stairs, and then there's J and there's G and we've made it. I'm so worked up that I'm screaming profanity as we bust in the door. It must have taken me a good fifteen seconds before I look around, take in my surroundings. Holy shit. We're in a train car. We made our train, and now we are surrounded by a bunch of quiet, subdued, sophisticated travellers who are staring at me in shock whilst covering their children's ears in order to prevent the introduction of some decidely spicey new vocabulary words. I AM the walking stereotype of the asshole American. Awesome.
I shut up. The people in the booth to the left are giving me looks of horror. I silently skitter down the car to our compartment, shame-faced. (The train just started going.) However, J informs me that the people giving me the horrific looks were only kidding—they're Europeans. This makes me feel better.
We eat our food and begin to soak in the ambience of the train. (I think I like Goodbye Chiang Mai much better than the Hello version.) Our train attendant comes by and, though we hadn't planned to order additional (expensive) food, he's just so charming we can't help ourselves.
When our fabulous waiter returns with our food, he asks us what we'd like for breakfast in the morning. “We'll be getting in at 9:30. Would you like your eggs scrambled or fried?”
The problem? We can't get past his first sentence. “Whoa! What?? We're getting in at 9:30?? We have a bus to catch at 8:30. Are you sure about that time??”
He just repeats the scrambled/fried query, confused as to why we are freaking out.
“We don't want any eggs! Are you sure we're delayed two hours?”
Yes, we are in fact two hours delayed. Only now do we decide to refer to our newly-purchased guidebook. “Trains,” it informs us, “are a somewhat unreliable form of transit as they are frequently delayed.” Awesome. Our whole plan is fucked.
I'm crying on our tray table, G and J are flipping through travel books searching for a remedy to our problem, our non-refundable bus ticket problem. Around this time, the staff decides to come around and fold out beds. Sleepy time, everyone. Joy.
I broke my watch in LA en route to Peace Corps. I tried once to replace it, but that watch died by rain on Kosrae. Taking this to be Fate speaking to me through electronics, I never replaced it. So, on the train, my alarm clock and my iPod were my only guides as to time. I slept fitfully, waking up several times in the middle of the night. Upon one of the waking occasions, I discovered that my alarm clock had stopped. (This happens periodically when the battery slips out of place.) I reset it according to my infallible little iPod. (Thank you, Steve Jobs.) Alarm set for 6:15. This way, we could wake up early enough that, in case of an on-time Bangkok arrival—a possibility, we had been told—we would be ready to zip off and catch our bus and save our trip.
I awake to my alarm. No one else is moving about the cabin, but I'm sure they are just lazy, ill-planners. I run over to J and G's beds and wake them up. “Get ready, guys! I'm going to go find out when we're getting in.”
Five minutes later, G is cursing at me. “Megan, it's 5:15!” She brandishes her cell phone.
“Haha, whoops!” I say. Turns out the iPod doesn't know its time zones so well as it thinks it does. “Sorry.”
We all go back to bed.
By some sort of miracle, we end up rolling in to the Bangkok train station at 8:15. (Late, but still possible to make our bus.) As soon as we're there, I go into full-on NYC mode—weaving through the crowd on the platform, not looking back, prepared to bowl over the young the weak and the elderly, if need be. We are MAKING THAT BUS, GODDAMMIT!
I hurry over to the taxi stand. We get the first taxi, ants around in the car, jump out in traffic at Khao San (where we are to pick up the bus). We run over to the tourist office and find...all the other tourists are still there! We're saved.
We wheel through traffic to the bus stop (well, bus median, really). And wait. Ten minutes later, the bus rolls up. (We thought we were late—ha.) Then we sit for a good fifteen minutes at the stop, wind around town, and (around 9:30) make a stop at the train station before peacing out of Bangkok for Ko Chang. Told you this country had a healthy sense of irony.
You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello...The Beatles
As with Bali, we hit Bangkok late and without plans. (Obviously, based on our utter inability to LEARN BY EXPERIENCE, we deserved whatever we might get.) Bookless—we'd elected to buy a cheap Lonely Planet off of the street upon arrival—we knew our best bet would be to head down to Khao San Road and try our luck checking into somewhere:
a) cheap
(but)
b) not a “den of iniquity,” as the tactful and euphemistic might put it.
We had, I suppose, learned something in Bali: we did elect, on this “wonderfully spontaneous” occasion, to station our friend G at a Swenson's (yes, they have Swenson's in Thailand!) with all of our bags. Meanwhile, J and I bravely, wearily ventured forth to price-compare hostels in the area. (It's around midnight by this time, btw.) After visiting several “contendahs”--one, swear I'm not making this up, called the Cha-Cha (see? I wasn't kidding with my lodging criteria above)--J and I returned to Swenson's.
We've collected prices and business cards. A little clean (though slightly strange-seeming kind of) place called the Hello Guesthouse is cheapest. Sweet. Decision made. We gather our stuff, wheel slowly over, and crash for the night (well, morning at this point). Look out, Bangkok! (In about ten hours!)
Now, our friend A—the recipient of the fateful phone call on Chuuk, if you remember—is, coincidentally, also going to be in Thailand and wants to meet up.
“No problem!” we had said. “There's Internet everywhere—it'll be a cinch to work out!”
So, that later morning, before we head out for the day, we email A to let him know where we're staying, what we're doing for the day, etc. Surely he'll be able to find us based on that.
We fill our first day to the brim and then some. We start out by trying to visit The Tourist Attraction: the Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Though the palace ends up being closed for a national holiday, we do learn a few key pointers on Thai dress and custom. Now, as it is about 3000 degrees outside, and we're on vacation (e.g. off-of-perma-t-shirt&knee-length skirt duty), G's wearing shorts and a tank top, I shorts and my (new-found $5) Little Miss Naughty t-shirt. We do, however, know temple rules; we've brought sarongs to cover our offensive legs.
But, before we get a chance to show off our remarkable amount of cultural sensitivity, a temple employee before us snaps, “No tank tops in the temple!” Then, looking around at the slowly-collecting crowd of hopelessly dressed foreigners, she picks up her megaphone in order to tell us, loudly: “no sexy in the temple.” Evidently she likes her own phrasing, for she then repeats to the crowd at large, with added vehemence: “NO SEXY IN THE TEMPLE!!”
The day flies by as we flit from wat to wat, then finally from tourist office to home. When we get in, the desk informs us: “there was a man call for you. Nine o' clock.”
Hooray! A had gotten our message. We sought further information. “He called? He's coming by? Wait, nine o' clock this morning? Tonight? Tomorrow morning?”
Our only answer were puzzled expressions, shrugs. Without any phone number at which to reach our compatriot, we did the only sensible thing to do in the situation: go up to our room, eat ice cream, and wait...and wait...and wait. Finally, when around 9:30/9:45, we still had heard nothing, J called down to the desk.
“Hello Guesthouse,” they answered.
“Can you tell us,” J asked, “has our friend called?”
“Do you need a room?” they offerred.
“I'm IN one of your rooms,” a frustrated J cried.
Her questioning revealed that the desk had (well, we were pretty sure) received no calls or visitors for us. So, after a bit more waiting, J went down to the desk. They greeted her excitedly: “Your friend called!”
“Really? When?”
“A girl this time.”
A girl? Huh? We didn't have any girl friends in Bangkok. We scratched our heads about this for awhile. Then we got it: J was the “girl friend” of ours who had called for us. Good times.
As we would later learn, our friend A came by the following morning to find us checked out and gone, the only souvenir of our visit my photocopied ID at the desk.
With that, it was Goodbye Hello, Hello Chiang Mai!
When You're In Prison...The Offspring
Boy had we gotten a deal! (Or so the smiling man at the “official” Tourist Authority office had told us as we—quite unsmilingly—bought our tickets the prior night.) A two-day trek, two nights of lodging, mucho food, and a FREE BUS RIDE TO CHIANG MAI, all for a modest...[you get the idea].
Hello Chiang Mai!, the side of our bus cheerily proclaimed. I think after our ride, however, if anyone had greeted us after such a fashion, we would have punched them in the face. Hard.
You see, we had been assured that we would be traveling north in the lap of luxury—“not a bus, really...more like a hotel on wheels!” The seats were to recline to a near-sleeping angle, there was to be air-con, lively, interesting fellow travellers, and entertainment! [Care for a translation?]
Reclining seats! “Well golly gee! My seat reclines to a
luxurious 92-degree angle!!"
Air-con! Haven't been this cold since, oh, a real winter
Worldly and interesting travel Noisy, drunken British kids (who nearly miss the
companions! bus when we stop midway for dinner because they
are so oblivious), who enjoy nothing better than
lounging with their smelly socks on my armrest!
Entertainment! They're showing a DVD of a movie called THE
CONDEMNED. At least they've got a healthy sense
of irony.
I believe in miracles. Know why? Directly following this delightful jaunt, we got off the bus, and I asked J: “how did you sleep?” She answers something along the lines of “awful. And you?” “I slept great!” I reply. I AM STILL ALIVE AFTER THIS CONVERSATION. Case closed.
Every Little Thing's Gonna Be All Right...Bob Marley
After I fortuitously survived the above exchange, the tour people pack us off to the hostel we're staying at in Chiang Mai for the evening—Nice Place (gotta love the names!). We shuffle in with the other turistas and sit along the side of the lobby, sipping complimentary coffee and awaiting further instruction. We watch with a combination of amusement and horror as some of our fellow travelers put away beer alongside their morning coffee. Um, excuse me, I wanted so badly to ask, did you just get off of the same bus I did? Or did you just step out of some kind of parallel universe?
Well anyway, I'm sitting there in wonderment when I see a strange sight out of the corner of my eye. Could that familiar-looking white boy be...
“A!!!” I yell, putting aside my coffee and running over to give him a hug. “We found you!!”
“You found me?” he laughs. “I've been chasing you bastards all over Thailand!”
When we inform him that we're signed up for this all-inclusive trek, A's displeasure is evident (e.g. “you guys got yourself suckered into this and so now I have to come along?”). He's a good sport, though, and signs up to come explore with us the following day.
The next morning (post-bucket—the bucket is highly essential if you visit Thailand) dawns far too early. We're tired, headachey, wondering what exactly we've gotten ourselves into. (If this translates from spiel to reality anything like the bus did, I'm pretty certain that fewer people will come out of the mountains than went in, if you know what I mean.)
However, I think it was somewhere between our guide Pon singing Bob Marley with us in the truck, riding an elephant, and he and I turning our hats sideways gangstah-style that I knew the trip would be epic. Words can't describe accurately what was truly the greatest travel experience of my life, so a few moments/images will have to do...
being pounded by clear rushing water in the sunshine
laughing down a mud hill in the rain
rounding a bend in the road into a village out of another world,
wreathed in cloud like a holy place
and green curry and laughing and singing and Elephant beer and Pink Floyd—and no one can sing
along, but it doesn't even matter—and lying in a pile like warm puppies against the cold
and the dark
waking up fresh and bright
can't leave, but must,
our green-gold wonderland of goodness
and down down we go, singing all the way
on the truck, the wind whips our faces as we travel through time and space out of magic,
back to real
Singing don't worry,
about a thing,
'cuz every little thing's
gonna be all right, child...
Crazy Train...Ozzy Osbourne
We rolled out of our trekking world and back into real life on a tight schedule: we had to make the 5 p.m. night train back to Bangkok. Theoretically, this train would put us back in town at 7:30, and we would then hustle to catch our 8:30 bus down to Ko Chang. Perfect. This would give us two nights and a day on a gorgeous little island before heading back to Bangkok to spend one day sightseeing with A and a last day sightseeing on our own. Come Saturday, we'd catch the plane back for the long haul aaaalllll the way back to Kosrae. (Sorry, I know this seems boring, but it's relevant.)
Well, those of you who have traveled with me are probably quite familiar with the Megan Dichotomy: chill most of the time, insanely high-strung when it comes to making planes and trains and buses and things. We actually arrived at the train station quite early, so we stocked up on provisions (read: street food), hung out with A, and just generally chilled. Suddenly we realize: hey, whoa! Our train is leaving in about four minutes!
We accordingly start walking along the train. What we don't know is that we are in practically the LAST CAR. We're walking, the train has started making its starting up noises, we're in 5 and we're walking by 10 for crying out loud! We pick up the pace—this is it! No wait, dining car. Then we hear that awful sound—air brakes being released. We're going to miss the train and we weren't even late!!
J for some reason has gone at some point to the other side of the train to walk, we don't even know if she's abreast of us or not, I reach car 5, practically throw myself up the stairs, and then there's J and there's G and we've made it. I'm so worked up that I'm screaming profanity as we bust in the door. It must have taken me a good fifteen seconds before I look around, take in my surroundings. Holy shit. We're in a train car. We made our train, and now we are surrounded by a bunch of quiet, subdued, sophisticated travellers who are staring at me in shock whilst covering their children's ears in order to prevent the introduction of some decidely spicey new vocabulary words. I AM the walking stereotype of the asshole American. Awesome.
I shut up. The people in the booth to the left are giving me looks of horror. I silently skitter down the car to our compartment, shame-faced. (The train just started going.) However, J informs me that the people giving me the horrific looks were only kidding—they're Europeans. This makes me feel better.
We eat our food and begin to soak in the ambience of the train. (I think I like Goodbye Chiang Mai much better than the Hello version.) Our train attendant comes by and, though we hadn't planned to order additional (expensive) food, he's just so charming we can't help ourselves.
When our fabulous waiter returns with our food, he asks us what we'd like for breakfast in the morning. “We'll be getting in at 9:30. Would you like your eggs scrambled or fried?”
The problem? We can't get past his first sentence. “Whoa! What?? We're getting in at 9:30?? We have a bus to catch at 8:30. Are you sure about that time??”
He just repeats the scrambled/fried query, confused as to why we are freaking out.
“We don't want any eggs! Are you sure we're delayed two hours?”
Yes, we are in fact two hours delayed. Only now do we decide to refer to our newly-purchased guidebook. “Trains,” it informs us, “are a somewhat unreliable form of transit as they are frequently delayed.” Awesome. Our whole plan is fucked.
I'm crying on our tray table, G and J are flipping through travel books searching for a remedy to our problem, our non-refundable bus ticket problem. Around this time, the staff decides to come around and fold out beds. Sleepy time, everyone. Joy.
I broke my watch in LA en route to Peace Corps. I tried once to replace it, but that watch died by rain on Kosrae. Taking this to be Fate speaking to me through electronics, I never replaced it. So, on the train, my alarm clock and my iPod were my only guides as to time. I slept fitfully, waking up several times in the middle of the night. Upon one of the waking occasions, I discovered that my alarm clock had stopped. (This happens periodically when the battery slips out of place.) I reset it according to my infallible little iPod. (Thank you, Steve Jobs.) Alarm set for 6:15. This way, we could wake up early enough that, in case of an on-time Bangkok arrival—a possibility, we had been told—we would be ready to zip off and catch our bus and save our trip.
I awake to my alarm. No one else is moving about the cabin, but I'm sure they are just lazy, ill-planners. I run over to J and G's beds and wake them up. “Get ready, guys! I'm going to go find out when we're getting in.”
Five minutes later, G is cursing at me. “Megan, it's 5:15!” She brandishes her cell phone.
“Haha, whoops!” I say. Turns out the iPod doesn't know its time zones so well as it thinks it does. “Sorry.”
We all go back to bed.
By some sort of miracle, we end up rolling in to the Bangkok train station at 8:15. (Late, but still possible to make our bus.) As soon as we're there, I go into full-on NYC mode—weaving through the crowd on the platform, not looking back, prepared to bowl over the young the weak and the elderly, if need be. We are MAKING THAT BUS, GODDAMMIT!
I hurry over to the taxi stand. We get the first taxi, ants around in the car, jump out in traffic at Khao San (where we are to pick up the bus). We run over to the tourist office and find...all the other tourists are still there! We're saved.
We wheel through traffic to the bus stop (well, bus median, really). And wait. Ten minutes later, the bus rolls up. (We thought we were late—ha.) Then we sit for a good fifteen minutes at the stop, wind around town, and (around 9:30) make a stop at the train station before peacing out of Bangkok for Ko Chang. Told you this country had a healthy sense of irony.
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