Preparing to go on approximately two months of travel around South Asia with nothing but a borrowed backpack full of semi-dirty clothes leaves me with only one sentiment:
here we go again.
8 cities, 3 countries, 2 months... insane.
Honestly, despite the fact that I know it will be fun and I know it will be a chance of a lifetime to visit so many interesting places with friends, I'm dreading it. Can I please be settled for longer than three months? Can I please be settled at all? How much more culture shock can my body handle? Is it really wise to go from unfamiliar to extremely unfamiliar?
Tomorrow morning at 11am when the first train of many pulls away from the platform I guess I'll find out... sigh. Learning to trust is so difficult.
**************************************************
On another note: here are some great quotes from the past few days, I can't resist putting them up...
"We give you Tibetan name 'Dan Zeng Sang Mo" meaning girl with a good heart."
-Students from class 4
"I know nothing about cow gestation."
-Christiane
"If it is my birthday will you say 'Merry Soba-mas'?"
-Soba
The harvest is here...
The kingdom is near...
Friday, December 26, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
How many monks does it take to put up a shelf and other questions...
How many monks does it take to put up a shelf?
Well, considering that wall shelves are almost unheard of (due to the fact that all the walls here are concrete) and considering the fact that your average Tibetan does not have enough stuff to need additional shelves anyway... it takes two monks, one meteorologist, and about half a dozen day laborers... and one white girl with an odd request.
How many butter lamps does it take to honor the death of the founder of the Yellow Sect of Buddhism?
More than I could count, not that I had a chance to count last night in the midst of great crowds of all manner of humanity shuffling around the Jokhang Temple to the low, haunting blasts of Buddhist temple horns and through clouds of incense smoke thick enough to block out the sky and choke the careless breather.
How many times must we come face to face with the movement of Him who is invisible before we stop being amazed?
???
Well, considering that wall shelves are almost unheard of (due to the fact that all the walls here are concrete) and considering the fact that your average Tibetan does not have enough stuff to need additional shelves anyway... it takes two monks, one meteorologist, and about half a dozen day laborers... and one white girl with an odd request.
How many butter lamps does it take to honor the death of the founder of the Yellow Sect of Buddhism?
More than I could count, not that I had a chance to count last night in the midst of great crowds of all manner of humanity shuffling around the Jokhang Temple to the low, haunting blasts of Buddhist temple horns and through clouds of incense smoke thick enough to block out the sky and choke the careless breather.
How many times must we come face to face with the movement of Him who is invisible before we stop being amazed?
???
Friday, December 19, 2008
"How to cause a scene" A play of yesterdays's adventures in two acts....
Act One: "How to cause a scene" in a tea house.
Set: Enter a somewhat dingy, smoky tea house. In a corner next to some yak hair curtains sit some uncomfortable wooden benches covered in only slightly more comfortable fabric and animal fur. Surrounded by the benches is a square table painted every color of the rainbow except orange.
Scene 1:
Me: sip some warm sweet milk tea from an orange cup that has just been poured from an orange thermos. "How do you say 'orange' in Tibetan?"
Drolker: "orange color?" exchange some unintelligible conversation with Wangmo. "We need look in dictionary."
Scene 2:
Wangmo: removes from bag an impossibly large and tattered dictionary, searches through entries. "Orange color is not here, only orange food."
Drolker: "I ask this nun." points at a lady not too far away.
Scene 3:
Drolker: Walks over to nun. Some heated discussion, shaking of head, and finger pointing. Waitresses, and various bystanders join in... more shaking of heads, more finger pointing, the whole crowd turns to stare at the foreigner who asked the question... Drolker walks back to table, whole tea house involved now... "They don't know."
Me: stunned silence
Act 2: "How to cause a scene" in your apartment building
Set: Enter the front of an old concrete apartment building on the edge of campus. Crumbly stairs, dirty smell wafting in from the bathroom building nearby, bike rattling crazily over the tore up pavement. Home.
Scene 1:
Me: breathing heavily from the long bike ride back up the hill...
A dozen or more of my students: appear out of nowhere "Ms Kelly, we have waiting for you a long time!"
Me: Why?
A dozen or more of my students: "To celebrate with you Christmas!"
Me: mildly confused
ADOMOMS: "We have gift for you! We come to your home!"
Scene 2:
Set: Inside my tiny apartment littered with tests to grade, half finished projects, cups etc. And now a dozen or more of my students crammed onto the sparse furniture.
ADOMOMS: Get up one at a time to wrap my neck with the traditional honorary Tibetan white scarves called Kadas... each one saying as they do it "Mary Kisstmas"
Me: sweating under a pile of scarves, inwardly stunned and outwardly breathless "Thank you! thank you!"
ADOMOMS: "And Ms. Kelly, we have this gift..." open large bag that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, place in my lap and on table two faux yaks. "This one boy yak, this one girl yak."
Me: totally confused but ecstatic "I LOVE THEM!"
Set: Enter a somewhat dingy, smoky tea house. In a corner next to some yak hair curtains sit some uncomfortable wooden benches covered in only slightly more comfortable fabric and animal fur. Surrounded by the benches is a square table painted every color of the rainbow except orange.
Scene 1:
Me: sip some warm sweet milk tea from an orange cup that has just been poured from an orange thermos. "How do you say 'orange' in Tibetan?"
Drolker: "orange color?" exchange some unintelligible conversation with Wangmo. "We need look in dictionary."
Scene 2:
Wangmo: removes from bag an impossibly large and tattered dictionary, searches through entries. "Orange color is not here, only orange food."
Drolker: "I ask this nun." points at a lady not too far away.
Scene 3:
Drolker: Walks over to nun. Some heated discussion, shaking of head, and finger pointing. Waitresses, and various bystanders join in... more shaking of heads, more finger pointing, the whole crowd turns to stare at the foreigner who asked the question... Drolker walks back to table, whole tea house involved now... "They don't know."
Me: stunned silence
Act 2: "How to cause a scene" in your apartment building
Set: Enter the front of an old concrete apartment building on the edge of campus. Crumbly stairs, dirty smell wafting in from the bathroom building nearby, bike rattling crazily over the tore up pavement. Home.
Scene 1:
Me: breathing heavily from the long bike ride back up the hill...
A dozen or more of my students: appear out of nowhere "Ms Kelly, we have waiting for you a long time!"
Me: Why?
A dozen or more of my students: "To celebrate with you Christmas!"
Me: mildly confused
ADOMOMS: "We have gift for you! We come to your home!"
Scene 2:
Set: Inside my tiny apartment littered with tests to grade, half finished projects, cups etc. And now a dozen or more of my students crammed onto the sparse furniture.
ADOMOMS: Get up one at a time to wrap my neck with the traditional honorary Tibetan white scarves called Kadas... each one saying as they do it "Mary Kisstmas"
Me: sweating under a pile of scarves, inwardly stunned and outwardly breathless "Thank you! thank you!"
ADOMOMS: "And Ms. Kelly, we have this gift..." open large bag that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, place in my lap and on table two faux yaks. "This one boy yak, this one girl yak."
Me: totally confused but ecstatic "I LOVE THEM!"
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Things that just blow the mind...
No, friends it's not just the fact that today I walked by a man blow torching a dozen legs of some large beast as they rested in the muck and mire of the street. Remind me not to eat there.
And it's not just the phenomenon that I can look out my window at what appears to be a tropical paradise for the intensity of the sunlight, only to open my door to the blistering cold.
Or how about the way that an old women peeing on the corner of a busy intersection attracts zero attention but the white girl who almost trips over her cannot seem to get out of the spotlight.
And it's not even the incident after giving the final exam to some students in class two where myself and two boys (one of whom was the class monitor) were locked in the classroom on the second floor of a building which was basically deserted at that time in the evening and which the only window looked down a frightening two stories to remnants of some long forgotten construction project and shards of glass. Of course not a single one of the other thrity-eight students in the class would answer their phones and every single one of the teachers (aside from me of course) was in a very important meeting and would call me back later. A hair-raising 20 minutes later the benevolence of some stranger, who heard our shouts from the window, freed us to continue our lives. If I ever find out who locked us in...
Nor is it the reality that twists of fate prompt deeper relationships almost within a heartbeat. Today after the exam there was a meeting in the teacher's lounge, no rest for a foreign teacher there, so having nothing to do I headed towards my home past the football field where, low and behold, half of the students that I teach were resting. They, sheepishly, called me to come and sit with them, which I gladly did and had an extremely interesting conversation with about a dozen of my students who I have not had the opportunity to speak to much. Opportunities here seem to lie in wait around every corner, but don't blink or you'll miss them.
It's no single one of those things that blow my mind... it's the combination. And what a combination it is.
And it's not just the phenomenon that I can look out my window at what appears to be a tropical paradise for the intensity of the sunlight, only to open my door to the blistering cold.
Or how about the way that an old women peeing on the corner of a busy intersection attracts zero attention but the white girl who almost trips over her cannot seem to get out of the spotlight.
And it's not even the incident after giving the final exam to some students in class two where myself and two boys (one of whom was the class monitor) were locked in the classroom on the second floor of a building which was basically deserted at that time in the evening and which the only window looked down a frightening two stories to remnants of some long forgotten construction project and shards of glass. Of course not a single one of the other thrity-eight students in the class would answer their phones and every single one of the teachers (aside from me of course) was in a very important meeting and would call me back later. A hair-raising 20 minutes later the benevolence of some stranger, who heard our shouts from the window, freed us to continue our lives. If I ever find out who locked us in...
Nor is it the reality that twists of fate prompt deeper relationships almost within a heartbeat. Today after the exam there was a meeting in the teacher's lounge, no rest for a foreign teacher there, so having nothing to do I headed towards my home past the football field where, low and behold, half of the students that I teach were resting. They, sheepishly, called me to come and sit with them, which I gladly did and had an extremely interesting conversation with about a dozen of my students who I have not had the opportunity to speak to much. Opportunities here seem to lie in wait around every corner, but don't blink or you'll miss them.
It's no single one of those things that blow my mind... it's the combination. And what a combination it is.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Extreme Trial and Error...
It's high time I informed you of my Tibetan language skills. I have lived in Lhasa for only two and a half months; just long enough to clean the apartment, begin to buy vegetables with ease, learn to ride a bike, memorize 160 student names, and get a slight grasp of a few Tibetan phrases and words.
My friend, Drolker, works tirelessly with me to increase my ever short supply of correctly pronounced Tibetan phrases, despite the fact that I am a horrible, and easily distracted, student.
So when I speak of my Tibetan language skills, I should really speak of my lack there of.
But then I got on the bus this afternoon.
Little did I know it, but this bus ride would be language learning in the extreme.
The bus was empty when I got on, but after a few minutes every seat was taken. Indeed the fact that there were no seats left did not stop the bus driver for stopping for a group of pilgrims which consisted of one man and about a dozen women of varying ages on their way to Sera Monastery. Each of the women was wearing a bright scarf over her hair and the long traditional dress and multi-colored apron. They, with their coral and silver jingling over the swish of skirts, packed themselves into the narrow isle of the bus as the squeaky door slammed shut and it sputtered off to the next stop.
I was the most interesting thing they'd seen all day. I am sure of this because the woman who was squished next to me never took her eyes off me as she muttered to the other women and everyone else on the bus "chigye... chigye" (foreigner... foreigner). So with her eyes burning holes in my skin I decided to try out one phrase that I was fairly sure of and choking back my pride and wracking my brain for everything Drolker had ever said to me, I turned to her and slowly asked "keran debuimbeay?" (how are you?)
Well this produced ripples of reaction all over the bus long before I got an answer from the girl I had spoken to. The student sitting behind me suddenly leaned forward and the bus helper (the girl employed to take money and open the door) shouted over the crowd to the driver what I had just said, repeatedly... just to make sure that no one missed it, the chigye had said "how are you?"
If this pilgrim girl, not to mention the rest of the bus, had been interested in me before, now they were all spellbound. She replied "debuyi" (fine) and the conversation continued as follows:
Me: "ran mingla kade sigkeeu?" (what is your name)
Girl: "Lhamdra... ran mingla?" (Lhamdra... what about your name?)
Me: "Kelly"
Lhamdra: something I didn't understand but I thought it was: what do you do?
Me: "nga gela" (I am a teacher)
Lhamdra: "lhogba... ran lho catsire?" (age... how old are you?)
Me: "nga... nee... nee shoo sum" (I'm... two... twenty-three)
Lhamdra: something else I didn't understand but pointing to the boxes of candy in my lap that I had just bought for my students.
Me: "nga gela..." point to the candy, "jeenee... lobto" (I'm a teacher, sugar... student) hey it's the best I could do.
Lhamdra: something else I didn't understand but she was using her hands like she was praying... I was really confused.
Add to my confusion that this whole time the bus helper girl has been yelling out all of my responses with glee to anyone who was interested, and they were, and these pilgrim women had been exchanging comments among each other after my every broken attempt. Not to mention the fact that I thought the student sitting behind me would end up in my lap for how far he was leaning into the conversation.
Luckily my stop was coming right up... I tugged on the sleeve of the bus helper girl and in the best Chinese I could muster (which, if you can believe it, is even sketchier than my Tibetan) said "ting yi sha, shi xiao" (stop the bus at the teacher's college). Candy in hand I jumped off the bus and with a wave and a grin called out "caleshu!!!" (good-bye) and, with what could have been either amusement or relief, at least half the bus called out "pe-oh" (good-bye).
Nga puyi junkee yu (I am learning Tibetan)... and I have a long, long way to go...
My friend, Drolker, works tirelessly with me to increase my ever short supply of correctly pronounced Tibetan phrases, despite the fact that I am a horrible, and easily distracted, student.
So when I speak of my Tibetan language skills, I should really speak of my lack there of.
But then I got on the bus this afternoon.
Little did I know it, but this bus ride would be language learning in the extreme.
The bus was empty when I got on, but after a few minutes every seat was taken. Indeed the fact that there were no seats left did not stop the bus driver for stopping for a group of pilgrims which consisted of one man and about a dozen women of varying ages on their way to Sera Monastery. Each of the women was wearing a bright scarf over her hair and the long traditional dress and multi-colored apron. They, with their coral and silver jingling over the swish of skirts, packed themselves into the narrow isle of the bus as the squeaky door slammed shut and it sputtered off to the next stop.
I was the most interesting thing they'd seen all day. I am sure of this because the woman who was squished next to me never took her eyes off me as she muttered to the other women and everyone else on the bus "chigye... chigye" (foreigner... foreigner). So with her eyes burning holes in my skin I decided to try out one phrase that I was fairly sure of and choking back my pride and wracking my brain for everything Drolker had ever said to me, I turned to her and slowly asked "keran debuimbeay?" (how are you?)
Well this produced ripples of reaction all over the bus long before I got an answer from the girl I had spoken to. The student sitting behind me suddenly leaned forward and the bus helper (the girl employed to take money and open the door) shouted over the crowd to the driver what I had just said, repeatedly... just to make sure that no one missed it, the chigye had said "how are you?"
If this pilgrim girl, not to mention the rest of the bus, had been interested in me before, now they were all spellbound. She replied "debuyi" (fine) and the conversation continued as follows:
Me: "ran mingla kade sigkeeu?" (what is your name)
Girl: "Lhamdra... ran mingla?" (Lhamdra... what about your name?)
Me: "Kelly"
Lhamdra: something I didn't understand but I thought it was: what do you do?
Me: "nga gela" (I am a teacher)
Lhamdra: "lhogba... ran lho catsire?" (age... how old are you?)
Me: "nga... nee... nee shoo sum" (I'm... two... twenty-three)
Lhamdra: something else I didn't understand but pointing to the boxes of candy in my lap that I had just bought for my students.
Me: "nga gela..." point to the candy, "jeenee... lobto" (I'm a teacher, sugar... student) hey it's the best I could do.
Lhamdra: something else I didn't understand but she was using her hands like she was praying... I was really confused.
Add to my confusion that this whole time the bus helper girl has been yelling out all of my responses with glee to anyone who was interested, and they were, and these pilgrim women had been exchanging comments among each other after my every broken attempt. Not to mention the fact that I thought the student sitting behind me would end up in my lap for how far he was leaning into the conversation.
Luckily my stop was coming right up... I tugged on the sleeve of the bus helper girl and in the best Chinese I could muster (which, if you can believe it, is even sketchier than my Tibetan) said "ting yi sha, shi xiao" (stop the bus at the teacher's college). Candy in hand I jumped off the bus and with a wave and a grin called out "caleshu!!!" (good-bye) and, with what could have been either amusement or relief, at least half the bus called out "pe-oh" (good-bye).
Nga puyi junkee yu (I am learning Tibetan)... and I have a long, long way to go...
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