Life droplets

Mr Wu: I am not good at telling stories. I will go on telling stories.
Me: Jai oh!

The breeze felt cool even as my face prickled with heat foreshadowing probable sunburn. My plodding walk down the nearly deserted backstreet away from the monastery shuffled dust on the asphalt. I paused to watch half a dozen small boys with their pants rolled up to their thighs, yet still wearing socks, wading through the mucky runoff of a nearby pipe. My mind jostled with the discouraging deadlock I had just reached with a friend over lunch...

Soba: The problem is that we are both decided about two different things.
Me: The real problem is that only one of us decided correctly.

I walked on.

Arriving at my friend's room in a house in an alley in the middle of nowhere a little early I was welcomed as if I couldn't have come at a better time. Tea was immediately poured and after an hour of Tibetan lessons to the amusement of a relative whom no one could remember the name of the room cleared out and I was left to sit with only her. Tender after the hollow week I'd had before it didn't unsettle me in the slightest to find myself mirroring her tears as she recounted her life's misfortunes, the stream of which ended with the death of her mother last term and included harrowing accounts of years and entire villages' incomes in hospitals, the loss of opportunities as a result of poverty, the loss of hope as a result of debt, concluding only that her family has so much tsampa but never enough money...

Tsomo: my sister says I should never cry in front of you.
Me: your sister is wrong.

We finished the tea.

The evening still light I walk with my student back to the school. It could have been a long walk with the dappled shadows of the newly green leaves of the trees caressing the silence between us. Instead, the soft spoken mumblings of far too shy English gushed forth from a student who I've spent countless hours with but never had what amounted to more than ten minutes of actual conversation with. Tales of her studies, her observations of the past week, her time with annoying nephews, her hopes that I would continue to teach them new words, her frequent desires to talk to me thwarted by her crippling shyness, and her cure for homesickness. The littered road was too short, the evening light too dim, the time escaping like a kite through clumsy hands and we arrived back at the school...

Qamju: I hope teacher can every day be happy, never sick at heart.
Me: Thank you.

I turned towards my building.

Mr. Wu: In the end the boy dies and the girl lives. The meaning is love can never without pain.
Me: That's a horrible story.

The tin man

In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy comes across a man so dry and stiff that he can barely ask for the oil he needs. Nevermind that he's completely hollow, even lacking a heart.

Shiny on the outside; empty within.

He turns out to be the second of her most loyal companions. Through a series of misadventures it becomes obvious that the reason the Tin man is perpetually dry and stiff is that he is perpetually heartbroken. He cries himself stiff. If it weren't for his fragile heart, which he claims he doesn't have, he would never get into such a mess.

In the end, the wizard graciously gives him a new one.

************************************************************

This week my defining emotion has been hollowness. Empty. You would never know it. I look healthy. There's nothing wrong with my body, but look again, tap me, there's nothing inside.

This is my tin man week.

The truth is I have so much to rejoice in (opportunities with the staff, encouragement from friends, advancement in language learning, improvement in my students, hilarity from my boss...) just no ability to do it. It's like some part of me gave up. Like all the small things that I count as triumphs weren't enough, like the never ending stream of blessing that has been promised to me missed the cup and spilled all over the floor instead. It's like all the hurt, all the lostness, all the darkness, all the confusion, all the inability, and all the smallness of every moment of daily life here suddenly rose up to greet me... and I cried myself stiff and dry and am no longer able to ask for the oil I need.

But you're going to ask for me right?

Because truly there's too much to do, too many chances for the kingdom to break through, too much need, too many opportunities to let light and love come rushing through the door for me to stand stiff in a corner with my back to it all pleading through dried up lips for oil. Where is that fragile heart of mine?

This week I'm the tin man... but I know what it is to be the scarecrow and the cowardly lion too... and it's not too rare that I find myself as Dorothy wishing for some magic ruby slippers.

A true story

Ms. Kelly you believe Yesu. Yes. I tell you story.
This is a true story Ms. Kelly.

I know a boy he is not a monk... one day will be monk... one day his monk teacher called me said to me that this boy is lost. First I don't believe he is lost... then his teacher said this boy call me I right away call him. I scared this boy. Maybe one day past this lost boy called me. He isn't from Lhasa. He doesn't know how to get back to the monastery. I go to find this boy... he is live with Chinese family. Ms. Kelly, they take him buy him new math book, new tibetan book, new shoes. They ask me the boy no family they will take care him send him to good school no problem. I told them he has family he will be monk... so they let him go back to monastery. I ask Chinese people why they do all this and these people tell me about Yesu. They believe him really.

So before I never can't believe in Yesu. But if Yesu does this. Now I think maybe Yesu is so good.

He really is so good.

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.