The least athletic days of the year

All my life I grew up hating sports with the fixed determination of the overweight kid who could never make a free throw. Until China. Until sports day.

Sports day: Two to three days of collective lounging on the football field, complete with various events which the participating students never bothered to train for and usually with the limply thrown javelin for effect, the national anthem basically nonstop, Chinese teachers wearing goofy hats, and the consumption of your annual quota of sunflower seeds.

People, I love it. I love it almost as much as the staff cafeteria.

Cause when I walked out of my house Friday morning in time to watch all of the students I've ever taught wearing an array of at least mostly black colored clothing and marching around the track to easily the worst middle school marching band on earth complete with plastic drums, and I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of some of the hats my colleagues were wearing... I knew it was going to be a good couple of days.

Sports day is where things happen. Things like cheering like crazy for some students barely able to stand up after twelve laps around the track, like drinking the nastiest combination of butter tea, coke, and juice imaginable to engage the hospitality of students past and current, like joining teachers forced to spend the day holding stopwatches to their utter disbelief that anyone would want to, like taking pictures with the nice man who helped you in the cafeteria and always is so kind only to find out that he is the vice chairman of the school, like getting to see your boss wear a baseball cap and gleefully use a megaphone, like getting invited to eat noodles with some teachers by simply being at the right place at the right time, like taking nearly a thousand pictures, like accepting invitations to learn to cook dumplings from students who you only began to teach, like making announcements over the intercom for the whole school to hear, like seeing neighbors and students that you thought had transferred or just disappeared... things.

Sports day is a chance for me to pretend like I actually belong here, and get more excited about the opportunity than the people who actually belong here do.

And this year's closing ceremonies: dinner and tea with the boys from a class I taught last year. A chance I'd never had to be with them all together and hear about their dreams and their families and their past year's experiences. A chance I'd never had to figure out who they are and what is important to them. A chance to get a cramp in my stomach laughing because Yes Suoguo's bed is clean Ms. Kelly... but his socks...

I can't wait till next year. Shukeyup!

From zoo to classroom...

It's not the leap you might imagine.

Lhasa has a zoo. Of course, if it were up to environmental and animal protection societies, it wouldn't. I don't know any foreigner who has ever paid the ten kuai admittance fee into the zoo and, after having the experience for free, I know why.

There's just something morbidly amusing about watching grandfathers throw cookies into tiny concrete cages containing bears which barely cast a sideways glance at the cookie, instead displaying expressions of total depression. Or wandering amidst overflowing water pipes to a small pen holding rams which have somehow grown three to five horns to their obvious discomfort. Or leaning against a thin railing to get a better look at a hiccuping lion. In a zoo like this one, one has the distinct impression that the animals themselves are ashamed and would turn away from the crowds less from the normal course of animal activity than from total lack of dignity.

While there, I remarked to my student, who had a bewildering amount of pride in and fascination with the zoo, that it seemed like the animals had forgotten how to be animals, if they ever knew.

He wanted to throw a bottle of coke into the monkeys to watch them drink it.

Enter the classroom. We have spent the past month learning different activities that teachers can use to teach English to primary school students. Today the students were given an opportunity to teach one of the activities in pairs for the class. The topic that they had to teach on was animals, which only heightened the morbid amusement.

In some ways class today was like a flashback to the zoo. Hand drawn pictures of deformed animals littered the board and their desks. Crippling shyness overtook the tallest boy in the class and all he could manage was to stand in a corner with his face covered while his partner did the activity. Some students apologized for their mistakes in advance of the lesson. A few girls were slightly reminiscent of the hiccuping lion. One girl misspoke and disappeared behind the teacher's desk for a few minutes. Their classmates repeated mispronounced and random words, activities were more like nonsense than teaching, and confusion pretty much reigned for the two hours.

At one point I felt like handing out bottles of coke...

Despite the vague feelings that all the classes that had been taught on how to actually do these activities had been wasted, I am proud of them. This was literally their first time ever teaching anything to anyone. It's not that they forgot how to be teachers, they never knew, and this was their fledgling attempt. I don't plan to go back to the zoo, but this experience we will try again.

A resurrection story

Many people cannot believe that He became alive again.

I can believe this Miss Kelly. I think this is easy for Tibetan people to believe. Many of our Buddhas do the same thing.

Not exactly.

The last day that I pressed the start button on my computer and it actually started was Tuesday. It was the day after I had walked across the street to visit some sisters and had been bruised by the shattering weight of a failing business as it appeared on their weary shy faces. The students know who we believe. They are angry. They don't come here anymore. Business is so bad. So we clasped hands together over a cold table in a deserted restaurant and petitioned the One who stretched out the heavens and the One whom before every knee bows for protection and blessing. Tuesday I walked over to offer some encouragement to the girls and couldn't find a seat there were so many people in there. There are so many people! Yes sister, this is because we asked Yesu. Tuesday I shut down my computer and lay down to sleep with the awe and satisfaction of requests granted as my pillow.

Wednesday no amount of pressing the start button would get the thing to start. Thursday all attempts of taking the battery out, starting it any other way, or checking different outlets resulted in a screen as black as death, however I did get a new meal card for April. Friday I didn't even bother trying to start it. Saturday I decided to send it back to America the following week. The computer was, like every other piece of electronics this year (lost Ipod, lost cell phone...), done for. I was preparing to watch my TV sprout legs and walk out the door and warm my hands when my DVD player spontaneously burst into flames.

But then there was pizza.

Rumor had it that foreign teachers can cook a pizza. Of the other teachers at our school invited, only one of them had ever eaten pizza before and that was pizza that I had made, so we know where the rumor started. A pizza party planned, four pizzas cooked, devoured, and an evening spent laughing and marveling in the magic of bacon bits and pepperoni shipped from America. Then one of the teachers who I had mentioned the death of my computer to demanded to see it. With a shrug I handed it over, I had nothing to lose since he couldn't mess it up. After all, it wouldn't even turn on.

Friends, I wasn't in the dewy garden that cool morning to see a stone rolled away from a tomb but what I did see was a little Chinese man with a contagious laugh and a working knowledge of English slang press the start button... and my computer started.

A computer dies and I spend three days contemplating how things were going to change for me with dreams of scuzzy internet bars invading my mind. A Man died and his closet friends go into hiding for three grief flooded days contemplating how things were going to change for them... change that they would never have guessed at, new life and eternal victory that they would never have received, until that Man walked back into their midst the third day.

He died and was buried. People started to forget Him, they gave up. And He came back.

And He's coming back again.

That's not Buddha's story.

Rice porridge hot, rice porridge cold...

Rice porridge in the pot nine days old.

So it's official: I am a teacher. I can prove it because now I have a meal card for the staff cafeteria, okay so I could be a janitor, or the mail lady. Anyway, I've had it for nine days now.

Nine rice filled days.

Picture a tiny room at the back of a large building with about five huge round tables in it (all complete will massive lazy susans). Picture it stuffed full of chopsticks, metal trays, dishes buzzing with MSG, and free rice porridge. Picture the only foreigner whose ever walked in there leaning through the window into the kitchen, grinning about as big as her face can allow, handing over her meal card, and asking in the most rudimentary Chinese four meat buns and one egg boiled in tea to the astonishment of the entire cooking staff all of whom pause to witness the event. Picture her filling a small bowl with tasteless warm soy milk and sliding into a nearby seat.

If you can picture that then you have seen my breakfasts. All nine of them.

But what is going to be harder for you to picture is the way that the mail lady dips out a bowl of the free soup for me because, though she speaks no English, she was the only person I recognized in the cafeteria and thus she ended up with my presence at her table. Or the way that some school official, you can tell by his suit, whom I've never been introduced to always looks stunned when he walks in and sees me sitting there and yet manages to overcome his surprise to ask me if I like the food in English. Or the way that a teacher who insists that he's not my friend pulls up a chair next to me to chat over lunch. Or the way that another teacher stuffs steamed buns into his face every morning like he's never eaten anything before. Or the way that the kitchen staff grins and giggles when I walk in. Or the way that my boss comes over to my table to ask to see my meal card and shakes his head in dispair that I haven't used it enough.

I love the staff cafeteria. I don't care that the food is mediocre and the room is too small. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that I walk out of there smelling like burnt oil. I am not phased by the fact that at any given moment I am not able to speak to nine out of every ten people in there. I love it.

I love it because it's life. All the teachers eat there. All the administrators eat there. All the people who do anything at the school at all eat there. It's their life and now... I'm a part of it.

Some like it hot, some like it cold... I'm fine with it in the pot nine days old.

the exchange

For a daily appearance in the dumpy teacher's office of random furniture and disgruntled staff... a cheerful "Kelly, desho cha dungkee" (Kelly, come drink tea) and a twisted paper cup of sweet milk tea from the hand of the grandfatherly head of the language department.

For a haphazard glance at the computer screen on which my boss browses 'Left Behind' computer games... a brief chance to explain the rapture.

For an invitation to a meal and a bench inside a tea house staffed by friendly giggling sisters... an unashamed peal of laughter from the weary chapped handed junk seller and a daily phone call from her small sweet voice in a language I barely understand.

For learning the name of the girl at the stationary store... free pens every time I enter.

For a casual comment about the beauty of plants... a ride across town with a fellow teacher to a random flower market and an afternoon spent viewing strange flora and picking out plant arrangements and pots for our homes with no expense questioned until the back of the jeep could hold no more.

For a smile... the linguistically impossible overflowing adoration of the grocery store family.

For a friendly acquiescence to the demand to empty my package of all its contents... a ten minute conversation about baking and teaching and a rush of compliments from the heretofore hateful customs postal worker.

For returning to a noodle restaurant and gushing with compliments about the food... warm attention from the exhausted owner and a red plastic bucket of too chewy sweets.

For listening to the halting, broken, nearly verbless English of a shy, self abasing student... the confession, over cups of sweet tea and bowls of yaky noodles, that "teacher you my best friend."

For being a conspicuous white girl using hand cream while waiting for a friend... a chance to share the Bert's Bees luxury with a beautiful, ancient, milky eyed, nearly toothless, demanding grandmother and compare my white splitting hands with her brown knobby ones.

For nothing whatsoever... grace.

The exchange isn't exactly an even one. It was never meant to be.

A portrait of a girl

Because I want you to see what I see...

"The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion."
-William M. Dixon

She is carefully dressed in the only pair of clothes she ever wears complete with purple sneakers. Her shoulder length, straight, dark hair is pulled back revealing a face so open it makes one's conscience ache. She leans against a dirty tile wall watching a hyperactive four year old bounce around. Her dark eyes flash and deep dimples appear as she grabs the arm of her strange pale friend with poor Tibetan. Her manner is as old as the sea or the mountains, timelessly patient, yet her visage betrays her severe youth. In her elder sister's home, she clicks her tongue as the four year old dips chocolate chip cookies into a glass of coke and though he is an absolute terror she hardly blinks in frustration.

She is small, gentle, and selfless. She poses in her Tibetan dress in such a way that displays her confidence in the beauty of the dress, not herself. She speaks slowly and sweetly, never expecting understanding. Instead, recognizing the limits of her hearer, she repeats even painful statements and tilts her head to the side waiting for recognition.

I made this thermos bag, I think it looks like a flower. It took me a long time. I have lived in Lhasa four years. My parents died four years ago. I like my hometown better. There I am a farmer. I have never gone to school, I work everyday. Work is okay. Am I fat? I only have a few friends here. Here is picture of my father. I don't have one of my mother.

She is causal about everything and is uncomfortable answering when offered anything. Her very breathing expresses her self estimation of undeserving. She struggles to spell her own name in her own language. She hungrily, though discreetly, scarfs a plastic baggy of fried potatoes and throws back sweet tea like it's running out. Her red, swollen, chapped fingers tell tales of hard work in harsh conditions but her face is as fresh as if she has only picked flowers in spring meadows her whole life. She listens with an obvious and surprising eagerness to other friends entering the teahouse, and as the four year old climbs up the walls, she whispers him down.

In a parting apology for total language inadequacy, her honest hug expresses forgiveness and acceptance in a way makes language unnecessary. She grins, clutches the four year old's hand in her nearly raw one, and turns, walking slowly back down the dusty, windswept street.

Her name is Purbu. She is seventeen. She sells junk from a blanket on the corner near our school.

I wish you could know her. I wish I could better.

Wait for it

One time, when He was eating a meal of gristly meat and curried potatoes with them, He put down His spoon and wiped His mouth with the back of His hand, gulped the last, now cool, swallow of sweet milk tea, and gave them this command: wait for the gift my Father promised.

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The 'expect nothing cause that's probably what you're going to get' attitude pays in China. You're still disappointed, but the element of surprise has been eliminated and so you're not going to be ticked off.

Getting nothing won't ruin your day. Instead, getting anything at all... makes it.

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The cement floors are slick where students have sloshed buckets of water over them in vain attempt to alleviate the encroaching dust. The windows are warped and face a broken migrant workers camp and the towering brown mountains. The shy bumbling Chinese man, who only days before asked for advice on making pizza: You need an oven. Okay I buy one. What else? Flour? Oil?, now stammers different news: Our school has cafeteria for teachers did you know? I knew, I also knew that the foreign teachers were not invited. Really? Where? Near your home, I will tell the leaders, you must come to eat... breakfast is best. As my shock settles like the lazy flies on the window ledge, all I can do is gush with gratitude. An act later repeated when an appearance in the bustling teacher's marketplace-esque lounge fills my hands with cups of tea and free notebooks.

He wipes His mouth with the back of His hand...

The bench near the gate feels like bars of ice through my pants as I sit with the school security guard more like grandfather and read him my children's Tibetan book in a faltering voice. His typical radius of ten feet from me demolished with the turn of a page. Off to the side the two new students in the class that I have taught for a year and a half wait shyly. A smile of acknowledgment brings the girls close and pushes the grandfather off the bench and they murmur their impressions of Lhasa, their desire to learn English, and their pleasure at a future lunch of meat momo's with their foreign teacher...

My own lunch a walk up the hill towards the shockingly rustic nunnery teahouse with two other friends. The walls appear to buckle under the weight of grime as I rush to hug a nun whom I've become familiar with despite zero language overlap. Tea is quickly poured, boxes of stale deep fried bread, dried fruit reminiscent of dirty rocks , and rotten cheese appear and are insistently offered, and before my friends and I can order lunch three bowls of gristly meat and curried potatoes over rice appear... a gift from my nun friend who maybe doesn't realize that the greater gift to me is the way she sits too close and holds my hand and allows me to look into her weary, burdened eyes to see the beautiful sweet smiling woman she once was.

He gulps the last, now cool, swallow of sweet milk tea...

Stomach full and a day mostly spent before the return to the school gate. Hands gingerly grasp a thin plastic bag full of the previously offered goodies and nearly forget their task in the surprise appearance of the corner's junk seller, a girl who's smile consistently puts the glaring Lhasa sun to shame. Her seventeen year old never been to school arms give the most familiar hug and we begin to discuss plans to meet and she promises her sister will make tea for us the following day. The breeze blows grit off the street and somehow I am the only one nervous about my lack of language skill.

He gave them this command: wait for the gift my Father promised.

Back at my home I stand on the blue grungy carpet surrounded by the white flaking walls overwhelmed at the gifts from the day and hear in my ear the whisper of His voice saying: you think this is amazing? just wait for the one my Father promised...