Future Travel Plans in the Making

Hello there, friends!

I think I'm pretty much all settled in back here in Illinois. I've managed to only drive on the correct side of the road, order in English at restaurants, and still take quick showers even though now I have the resources to drag them out a little.

I got home just in time to pick up a bunch of Xmas party hours at Duke's Catering (call them if you ever have a party, wedding reception, luncheon, etc to cater; they'll take good care of ya), which is awesome considering I hadn't made a dime in the previous 4+ months. I love my job. Unfortunately, I am of the generation that has been hosed by the American higher education system, and thus I find myself with a retardedly large amount of student debt. I love my job, but I've been keeping my eyes open for additional work that will help pay the bills. (If you know of anything good, help a sister out.)

People have asked if I'd like to travel again, to teach English again. My answer is absolutely -- the question is where? And when, I'm not sure. I had planned on staying here in the US for at least a year and paying off some of the aforementioned debt, but lately I find myself wondering if I should just scamper off to some other corner of the world and teach for a while. I had a great time in India; as many people pointed out, if you can travel in India you can travel anywhere. My confidence has gotten a boost and thanks to the magic of The Internets, I can keep in touch with all of you. Four months really didn't seem all that long. I think I could do a year-long contract now, especially if I were getting paid decently.

I'd still love to see Europe, but my sources indicate that the opportunity to make a profit there is limited. Japan might be a better option for me, at least for the near future. At some point I'd like to make my way to Hungary, where my grandparents are from. I've always felt that if you're going to live in a country then you have an obligation to learn at least a few basic phrases in the local language; for this reason, there are places I'm just not all that interested in traveling to. Chinese and Thai intimidate me: China, Taiwan, and Thailand are not at the top of my must-see list. (Well, China I don't particularly want to visit for plenty of other reasons... I DID just get back from teaching a bunch of Tibetans, after all.)

In other travel news, I actually will be leaving the States again in a mere 2 months. This time I'm staying much closer to home, though -- I'll finally get to see Vancouver! It's a place I've wanted to visit for years now and just never seemed to get around to it. After spending a third of a year on the other side of the world, hopping a plane to the west coast doesn't seem like such a big deal. I hear there's also snowboarding to be done out there.

Adventure ho!

Post-India sushi!

P.S.: The short amount of time it takes to upload and post photos here, as compared to the last few months, is practically obscene.

Mind. Blown.

HH Rolls Into Town

I'm sitting in a cafe drinking Tibetan herbal tea, waiting for 4pm so I can check out another of the local yoga classes. It's raining outside; I suppose it is still monsoon season, so I shouldn't be too surprised that the sunshine this morning was short-lived.

My Pre-Intermediate class took their first test of the semester yesterday morning. Class begins at 9am and typically ends between 10:30 and 10:45 so I can get ready for my other class at 11, but for tests I think they ought to get to use the entire 2 hours if they need it.

We went over the homework from the previous night and I asked if they had any questions before we started the test. After having a minute to think about it and telling me they didn't, I explained to them that there were two parts to the test, and that when they had finished both they were free to go. “Don't be scared!” I told the room full of deer-in-headlights faces. Some of them laughed sheepishly and I handed out the tests.

At about 9:45 I heard sirens outside. This went on for maybe 30 seconds and the students started looking at each other and whispering. I must have gotten a teacher-y look on my face, because one of them smiled shyly, put her hands in prayer position, and said to me “Dalai Lama is here.”

They quieted down pretty quickly and worked on their tests. I've only graded the first of three pages (one is double-sided), but so far the grades seem to be decent. I wound up marking three questions as extra credit and another one I just threw out altogether, because even I wasn't sure what answer they were looking for. I changed the reading part of the test to a text they'd worked on the other day because they struggled with it so much more than I expected; again, the cultural barrier is just so dense, so tall, so deep sometimes that I didn't want to stress them out any more than necessary. I did change the questions from the ones they'd seen the first time they read the passage; I figured that would test both their ability to comprehend a short article and whether they paid attention in class when we broke it down together.

Occasionally a student would catch my eye and whisper “Teacher...” and ask me what a word meant or for a better explanation of the instructions. One of my students nodded and let out the Tibetan equivalent of “oh, ok” – “acha cha” – that I have come to recognize, first in Palsang and then in others. It's fun to see how cultural norms differ in even the most mundane, automatic of ways. For them it's just something they do; for me it's still a little funny.

When I first started teaching here I tried to get through a lesson (as they were planned out in the textbook) every day. By the end of the first week I'd talked to a couple of more experienced teachers and observed in my classes that this wasn't likely to last very long. Lately I've slowed way down, covering about half to three-quarters of a lesson each day, depending on the subject matter and how the students seem to be responding to it. Some days we get off on tangents, with them asking about some aspect of the material, often a new vocabulary word or concept, and then the discussion spirals from there. I figure they're still learning and using English, and I'm not particularly in the habit of following rules just because they're there (I consider myself sort of a chaotic good, or maybe neutral, alignment), so I don't mind getting off the book's topic as long as I feel like we're on to a suitable new one. This is especially true considering the fact that I think much of the book's content is not appropriate for students like mine; not only do they have to learn the words for cappuccino, online dating, or “neighbors from hell,” they have to learn the entire concepts. My students had no idea what sushi was. Most of them have never been on a plane. The roads here don't have intersections or crosswalks, and these are the things that the book assumes are familiar to everyone.

It just doesn't work here.

Regardless, their tests have been turned in and I told them there's no homework for the weekend, so they can just relax and go to the teachings and do whatever without worrying about school. They seemed to appreciate that.

After classes Julie and I did a little apartment (hotel room) shopping, and eventually wound up meeting a bunch of her students who have also become friends. Most of them are Bhutanese, with at least one Nepali in the mix. So tonight I met Tashi, Sonam, Sertso, Rigsel, Tashi, and Rangdol. By the end of the night Rangdol, Rigsel, and Sertso were asking me all about the States. Sonam was amazed that it would take a few days to cross the country by car. They were incredibly intrigued to learn that there isn't just one “American accent,” and my stories of the ridiculous amounts of snow that Chicago received a few years ago had them absolutely fascinated.

I thought it was really funny. Here I am, in India, this exotic country, and the people here are so thrilled to learn about the distant, strange land of the USA. They were really sweet. You know how a lot of times it takes a person a while to warm up to someone new? They didn't seem to have much trouble with it; by the end of the night they had each seemed to effortlessly find a way to talk to me and, as far as I could tell, they really wanted to. I got a really good vibe from the whole evening.... which was probably facilitated by the fact that we got dinner at a Japanese restaurant that made damn good miso soup and veggie sushi. I wasn't quite to the point where I was craving sushi just yet, but it's nice to know I can get a fix if I need it. I wouldn't trust raw seafood here, in the north of India, but I think cucumbers and cabbage and that sort of thing is probably ok.

New friends and sushi! <3

I've also been befriending the stray dogs around town a few at a time. We already have some that follow us when we are near; I figure it can't be a bad thing to have a guard dog wherever you are. They just sort of pass us off to each other as we move through the different areas, especially at night when we're on our way home. It's like they can sense that I want to show them attention. I don't approach them, I let them come to me. For the most part you walk through town and the dogs (there are dozens) just sort of hang out and do their own thing, but so many times I can see in their eyes that they just want a little bit of attention. Most people ignore them; the dogs get fed, I guess, and it's rare that I see anyone behave negatively toward them. If I may be so nerdy, I find myself thinking “I see you,” like in Avatar, because that's just what seems to be appropriate. I see that they're there, and that they're living beings just the same as any of the people, and that just like everyone else here they're just trying to survive. Everyone needs a little love now and then. 

Some mornings we wake up to find Tashi guarding our room.

Paula hangs out at Tibet Charity and looooooooooves attention.

Black & brown doggles, just chillin', as they tend to do here.