There was something in the air...

I was awakened to the jackhammer hum of helicopters circling in the air... but that's not what I mean at all.

I slid some dirty jeans on over my pajamas and dashed out into the frosty morning prompted by hunger into the staff cafeteria and I sniffed, I could smell again... but that's not what I mean either.

I didn't know what had changed until I went out to the school gate to meet some students for lunch later that frigid afternoon. Right next to the school gate was what appeared to be a newly posted bus route map. Not that I believe anything posted or have the ability to read what's posted anyway. So I turned my attention to the street where a row of huge blue buses was lined up and packed like human sardine cans on wheels... my jaw dropped... the days of chatting with bus drivers on tiny little puttering affairs while I temporarily became the bus cashier were over. I shrugged, I have lived that dream probably more frequently than any white girl ever would.

The cities promise/threat to buy new one yuan buses and change the number and routes was fulfilled this day. Mark it on your calendars, gone are the leisurely, stop anywhere you want on the unmarked route, carry your half a frozen yak with you days. A new era of public transportation in Lhasa has dawned... and let me tell you, it looks remarkably like chaos.

According to the signs all of the buses go to the same places. Hmmm. So I took my chances with the first one that stopped at our school gate. Already packed even at our lonely end of the route was a bad sign. I squeezed on. The buses were so new they still had plastic on the ceilings and doors and so crowded the harassed bus cashier was hoarse from yelling the stops and pushed her way to a window to lean out of it exhausted. I grabbed a shiny plastic handrail next to an old man whose milky eyes glinted in the sun and who couldn't stop giggling at the madness of it all. He was probably lost. I nearly fell into his lap when I was shoved from behind by some extra friendly passangers. Every time the air brakes hissed my eyes widened as more people somehow managed to get on... when the woman with a baby stroller holding what looked like an eight year old child nudged her way to the door I nearly swooned. Grandmothers gave me helpless looks of agony, nomads swore as their fingers got crushed in the new doors, small children gasped for breath like fish out of water, and I, recently on the up and up from a ferocious cold, shuddered every time someone coughed...the bus could barely handle the weight of way too many passengers so when a reckless pedicab dared to cut in front of it I was touched by at least a dozen people with long fingernails... I closed my eyes lest I notice how dirty the fingernails were.

Getting off the bus was a little like winning a marathon, or bursting triumphantly from a nasty bubble in the bitter cold. I took a second to get my balance and breathe in the sweetest air Lhasa had to offer near the Trumpsicon aka run down kmart esque shopping center complete with rancid butter, raw yak strips, and crunchy cheese.

At the tea house where I slurpped butter tea with one of my dearest friends the man next to us made quite a spectacle of pulling a long black hair out of his noodles. My friend nearly gagged. I nearly laughed myself out of all four layers of clothing I had on.

The bus stop I returned to was less of a stop and more of a wad of people milling about in the street. When the same bus I had arrived on screeched to a stop I was comforted only by the fact that I was at least marginally less clueless than nearly everyone else as people fought tooth and nail to get on the bus then, realizing that it didn't go where they wanted to, fought tooth and nail to get off.  I managed to avoid a black eye as I ducked behind a slightly taller man and lept on as the doors nearly caught the hood of my jacket.

The magic was gone by the return trip. Frazzled Chinese mothers began cussing at anyone who would catch their eye as they pushed their bug eyed children suffocatingly close to everyone else, touchy teens literally shoved the storming crowds off the bus at every available chance, three men who surrounded me discussed if they could get away with touching my hair, the weary bus cashier wished aloud for another job, and a middle school girl with watery eyes stared up at me and mouthed it's nice to meet you. I responded with a smile knowing that she was perhaps the only person on the bus who maintained her humanity... everyone else had become biting eels by all other appearances. I gulped and tried to avoid holding hands with the grinning nomad man who was trying desperately to hold hands with me. By the time it stopped at the Teacher's College I nearly wept for joy.

I ran to the school gate and grabbed the gate grandfather's hand and told him I'm scared. He laughed through gapped teeth and said where did you go? obviously not understanding that it was the how did I go that scared me, though the hairy noodles may return to haunt me.

Back at school the three chapped and filthy beggar children I have befriended were silding across the frozen lawn. After a few turns of their matted jump rope we filed over to a shop to buy some snacks. The time that they took to deliberate over what to buy was reminescent of a UN meeting for its seriousness and length. Two packs of chicken and a milk tea later we parted but not before the eldest boy confessed I saw you and said hello hello but you didn't see me I think your ears are bad. And we four burst out laughing in the quickly dimming evening light.

The buses may have changed, but little else has.

And to beat that change, I've enlisted a student to ride every single one with me tomorrow to see where they go. Take that Lhasa and your scary new buses. You will be tamed.

'I forgot you were lao wai' and other tales of mayhem...

I sat silently at a stained plastic table in the corner of my latest favorite Chinese restaurant and eyed the discolored jars of floating vegetable matter hoping that I would never make the mistake of ordering something that would require the waitresses to go fishing in them. I stomped my feet to keep the chill away found myself looking straight into the face of a befuddled Chinese man in raggedy clothes. He shook his fist of wadded money at me and asked impatiently for change... I raised my eyebrows... he immediately realized that I wasn't the cashier or even the same ethnicity as the cashier and mumbled an apology as he backed away the same way I would if I was presented with a plate of the jar innards.

In the taxi cab we reclined, so full of a hastily eaten meal that all three of us wished out loud for stretchier pants. Having taken the initiative to order the food, despite my childish grasp of Chinese, I was of course blamed for the overindulgence. As the cab careened in and out of the sludgy traffic and useless lights, my friend leaned across the backseat, patted my thigh, and asked me something. When I just stared blankly at her she burst into giggles and declared oh I forgot you were lao wai (foreign). It was my turn to burst into laugher so raucous she immediately defended herself you just fit here, this isn't my wrong...

I marched my icy self into the trashy cramped copy shop I always go to and nudged past the throng of people who all seemed to have no urgent business but only needed to push each other for the warmth. The copy shop man immediately paused whatever he was doing to accept my usb and print out what I needed. As I instructed him on what to print and how many copies to make the beehiveesque activity came to a standstill and one man asked who is she? To which the copy shop man, not missing a beat, explained she is an English teacher and our friend. I nodded in affirmation, pressed the warm copies to my body, and paid the heavily discounted price before squeezing back out the door to the filthy frozen street outside.

The bus doors slammed squeaked open and I jumped up and was greeted by a driver who I had met earlier that day. He ushered me into the front seat reserved for friends of the driver and we began chatting about where I was going and why Tibetan people have good English pronunciation and ten reasons why tsampa was the most delicious food on earth. An elderly woman piped in every now though she faced the back of the bus and never looked at us. Eventually we rolled up to her stop and she turned to pay her bus fare and gasped but she sounds just like a Tibetan girl! The driver grinned like a proud father and said oh but she is an American girl. The woman stumbled off the bus in disbelief and the driver promised to bring me some tsampa the next day.

And these were just a few happenings from this past week... you can only imagine a semester's, or two and a half years, worth of the like...  total mayhem.

My face betrays me. If I weren't so white I'd be invisible.

Maybe I'll just mouth it...

When I was in fifth grade I came home with a progress report which was straight A's except for the B marking in the behavior column next to which my harried teacher had scrawled: "She won't stop talking." My mother, ever the endless wit, signed the report, gave me a stern lesson on respect for teachers, and attached a sweet little note saying, "Don't worry, we have discussed our daughter's verbal diarrhea." The teacher, appreciative of my mother's creative support, decided to remind me of my illness every time I piped up just a tad too much... embarrassing.

Little to our knowledge at the time verbal diarrhea is more of a genetic disorder than an illness.

So occasionally, the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, allows me to contract some viral strain of nasty that directly attacks my vocal abilities. A divine dose of verbal pepto.

This past week I have had barely a croak and a whisper for a voice. When some students came to drop off their assignments at my house I thanked them with the breezy whisper I had and they, though perfectly capable of speaking normally, whispered back that I should take care of my body. When I picked up the phone and rasped a few answers to my colleague she complained about the phone static and then, understanding that it was my voice making those noises, she gasped and declared how bad it sounded. When I came across some other students out in the street as I was buying oranges in a desperate attempt to vitamin the cold away I smiled broadly hoping that they wouldn't prompt me to speak, but they did and I tried and they leaned in close and told me to drink more hot water. Bus drivers have given me double glances at the scratchy mess issuing out of my mouth, the grocery family expressed what I'm sure was real concern had I been able to understand Chinese, the tiny little five year old guest I often have literally stepped back away from my door in what appeared to be fear when I tried to answer her. 

Divine verbal pepto. Don't need to be talking with those reactions... anything I need to communicate can just be mouthed. Or texted... text me. (as a side note, the least encouraging text message I've ever gotten while being sick in my entire life: go to the doctor, staying at home is useless.)

But when you can't say much, you'd be stunned at what all you hear... ahhh the blessing (curse?) of ears.

My voice is returning, but I think in the future I'm just going to take days where I'll just mouth things... or just whisper... or just say nothing at all... and in so doing, I'm going to learn a great deal more.

My mother and fifth grade teacher would be proud.

Contagious...

Contagious: adj: capable of being transmitted by bodily contact with an infected person or object... used, in English, to reference only two things: disease and laughter.

I rubbed my chilled hands together in vain before I stuffed them between my legs and the soiled bus cushion. The only seat remaining on the bus when I hopped on that frigid morning was the one where you must sit back to the windshield, face to everyone else on the crowded bus. The two middle school students wrestling in the seat and stretching their oft worn uniforms to the limit. The chain smoker who paused only to hack a thick wad of discolored spit onto the bus floor. The butter-smelling nomad grandmother with long braids tied at the back of her head whose wrinkled hands gripped the seat in front of her like the bus was a terrifying roller coaster. The teen girl next to her plugged in to her mp3 player and tuned out to the rest of the world. The grandfather with lopsided hat and one likely loose tooth sitting directly opposite me at the back of the bus and grinning as though he had been waiting all this time to catch my eye... his eyes sparkled, and I nearly burst out laughing.

I arrived at my student's room only to find her in a drowsy haze due to too much medicine and a ferocious cold. In the bitter chill that was her room I, at her request and against my better sense, decided to stay and peeled and chopped potatoes with the cheerful neighbor grandmother who had offered to whip up a bowl of cabbage and dried yak soup for lunch. While my student rested and puttered around I chatted with the grandmother, not a small feat for someone who is only familiar with the Lhasa dialect of Tibetan. At one point she said "ketsahla ribe?" (_______ isn't it?) knowing only that she had asked a question I replied "ketsah nga ngo shinkimendu" (ketsah I don't know) at which she nearly fell off the tiny wooden stool laughing... turns out "ketsah" means "strange" in Tibetan... which was funny because I know exactly what strange is, being so strange myself. The grandmother was so delighted at what she was sure was a joke she stuffed my pockets full of walnuts when I headed out the door.

Later I stood at another crowded bus stop cautiously eying the old man wheezing some mucusy substance into his glove and hoping that he wouldn't be on my same bus. Just then I was greeted by a Tibetan girl that I recognized but couldn't place, we chattered on in Tibetan a while and discovered that we were waiting for the same bus. Relieved to have company while riding on a human sardine can I offered her some walnuts which she received from my pockets as though it were the most natural thing in the world to walk around with lumpy pockets full of walnuts.

When I arrived at the dusty edge of town to visit my friend I felt that chill that creeps into your feet when Lhasa winter sets in. Soon forgotten, as we spent the next few hours in her tiny room, making noodles, singing Tibetan and English Christmas songs, trying on her clothes to both of our wild amusement. When I slipped into her Tibetan coat that smelled exactly like the sheep it was made out of I couldn't help but burst into giggles which we both shared until the walls themselves were practically shaking. Come more she said as we parted.

At home the, now becoming quite familiar, tap tap at the door signaled my tiny five year old neighbor had dropped by for a visit. I let her in to my house and noted immediately that she carried with her a tiny plastic bag of all the drawings she had ever made at my house which was considerable as she unfolded each of them to remind me, coughing in my face all the while. I let her draw some more and we watched 'The Emperor's New Groove' together, a movie which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if you can't understand what they're saying. She made the movie funnier than ever in her endless imitations of the characters' expressions and continued to cough so hard that her tiny body shook and I wondered about her health and the movie went off and I took her back to her house.

The classroom the next day felt more like a meat freezer to me than a classroom where nearly fifty live human being sat waiting to be taught. I walked into it anyway and was greeted by a sniffle and cough from my co-teacher who handed me the lesson for the day. I made the wise decision to keep my jacket on and buttoned up which made writing notes on the board a little awkward to say the least. Needing more room on the board, I reached for the eraser which promptly fell apart in my hands. Escaping from my mouth was a Tibetan phrase 'kadre chenson?' (what happened?) which caused riotous laugher from the students and one plucky boy piped up and said You know it's made in China Ms. Kelly. I almost had to cancel class I was laughing so hard.

So this week I've had an abundance of merriment, I've also come down with a cold you wouldn't wish on your worst enemies... it's just contagious.

Every scene...

I see You in every scene... I bet You are thinking about me... I have such a short memory... So You'll keep reminding me of You... 

I was withdrawn. 

The bus whined as it jolted down the street and I sat with a Chinese volunteer teacher rubbing my cold hands together and wishing that it would just hurry up and get there so we could hurry up and leave. Perhaps it was his gossipy way of chatting at me, or the exclamations of totally hyperbolic awe at the Tibet University campus, or his giggles when the other foreign teacher we were with was accosted by his female students, or the general atmosphere of just something different and at least slightly amusing, or the massive old leaf-less trees, or the sun warm on my back... at any rate by the end of the afternoon the two of us were practically skipping back through our school gate.

I was lonely. 

I glanced at the pile of student work in disarray on table in front of me, then around at my perpetually dusty, and for some reason particularly lonesome, little room and sighed. I fidgeted a little, hoping in vain that a change of posture would have an effect on my mood. Then a knock at the door. I started. Maybe I had imagined it. But then again, a clear little knock. I bounded towards the door and opened it right into neighbor's five year old daughter. Ecstatic for the company I welcomed the tiny little Tibetan girl in, stuffed her pockets with m&m's, bid her wipe her nose thick with snot, and proceeded to spend the next forty minutes or so being entertained by her stories and expressions which I could hardly understand but which were amusing nonetheless. When the hour got late, I realized, sadly, that it was time to return her to her family.   

I was hungry. 

The weather here has finally started to have that bite to it that means the worst is yet to come and as I stared out the chilled windows onto the bleak scene outside I realized I hadn't had much of an appetite for the past two weeks. My stomach gurgled with what might have been nausea and what might have been hunger...the only certain thing was emptiness. My phone bleeped underneath scattered belongings. Within moments I was on a bus, headed to a steak house to eat what easily counts as the best meal in weeks with a monk friend I haven't seen in longer. When we were so stuffed we could barely move he shuffled over to pay the bill... then insisted we go to see a 4-D short film about dinosaurs, which I didn't believe existed until I was being sprayed with fake snow while a pterodactyl from the screen leapt out at me. As I waved goodbye to my friend from the bus I slid down into the lumpy seat, full.

I was forgotten. 

I stomped my feet on the hard ground to warm them as I marched over to the mail office where the lady takes an obscene pleasure in telling me that there isn't any mail for me. I slid the door open without my characteristic expectancy, took a short breath before forcing myself inside. No less than five package slips lay in the otherwise empty desk drawer, all with my name. With glee I signed off on them all and later opened the boxes to reveal a truly exciting amount of Christmas gifts to give to students, staff, and friends, generosity which reached across the world... not to mention a wealth of things for myself. I baked a box of pumpkin bread and wished only to be closer to the delicious scent... or closer to the home from which it all came.

I was hollow. 

Feeling like my insides had been scraped out with a rusty spoon I walked out to the school gate to pay a phone bill that was as bare as old mother hubbard's cupboard. There at the gate four filthy beggar children who had been conspicuously absent of late wrestled, giggled, went about the seemingly carefree task of creating dirt. When they saw me they immediately jumped to their feet, stood in order by height, and asked as politely as beggars can if I would go shopping with them today. So we filed over to a nearby vendor and I laughed as they deliberated amongst themselves over which item they should ask to buy, the process looked as serious as a United Nations meeting. A piece of chicken, bowl of jello, pack of fruit roll ups, and box of cakes later and we parted ways. I grinned at the baffled shopkeeper and marveled at how much can come out of nothing.

I was despondent. 

Class can become not only frustrating but tedious quickly when the students spend more effort on looking bored than on whatever task has been placed before them. I trudged away letting the door swing wildly behind me as I left the empty room. One student waited for me in the dimming sun. He rushed to my side and sputtered I have a secret, did you get my letter? I sent you a letter, it is I went to English corner and we wrote thank you letters on thanksgiving and we could only write one and I wrote it to you so many things and I read it to all the English corner because you are my so good teacher, I want it to be a so big surprise but now I told you but it doesn't matter... I stopped, transformed by the news, it was my turn to be grateful.

I see You in every scene... I bet You are thinking about me... I have such a short memory... So You'll keep reminding me of You...

Lost

I knew a girl.

She was gentle with a contagious laugh. She would sit on the street corner selling junk off a blanket. She called me nearly everyday last term. She never seemed upset though her fingers were always swollen and red from hard work. She stressed my Tibetan langauge ability to the breaking point consistenly enough for it to have been her job. She liked sweet tea. Her name was Purbu.

I haven't heard from her in over six months.

Today I walked slowly, nearly drowsy, back from a quickly slurrped bowl of noodles. The sun beat down with its totally uncharacteristic for the season heat. The old woman who possess the keys for nearly every room in our school ran out from the small gate house calling my name. In quick Tibetan she urgently relayed some information to me which I caught none of, all the while grasping my hand the way one would if that hand was their last hope. She paused, sighed, dropped my hand in frustration, surely noting my total lack of comprehension, and slowly walked back to the small house.

I followed her.

She just stared at me. Then she caught the sight of a man a good ways in the distance and started yelling and waving at him to hurry. He arrived at our gathering speaking a quick and breathless Tibetan which I could also not understand. But I could tell by the man's frantic eyes that something was terribly terribly wrong. Finally, in near desperation he reached into his soiled jacket pocket and took out a crinkled picture and forced himself to say slowly: Have you seen Purbu? Where is Purbu? I am her brother, I know you are her friend.

The picture brought tears to my eyes because it had been such a long time since I had seen her and though obviously taken ages ago it was still her, her same chubby smiling face, her same non-imposing posture, Purbu.

I explained that I hadn't seen her for six months, I explained that she didn't have a phone and hadn't called me, I explained where her room was just up the street. Her brother nodded. I know I know he muttered but she is lost. 

Lost.


If she calls you, you must call me he demanded before he rattled off a his phone number so quick in Chinese I was shocked to have gotten even half of the number right before he corrected it, shaky fingers and all.

He then dashed away in search of his little sister leaving me in the blistering sun, open mouthed, damp eyed, and shivering, to take it all in.

I have come to seek and save the Lost... I heard a whisper say...

Purbu is Lost.
But one day, may she be Found.

Curtains open...

I am thanks to ketchup... because is so delicious. 

-Suoguo on what he is most thankful for

Enter Thanksgiving stage right.

The curtains open on this scene: gimpy Christmas tree decorated with an ornament assortment hailing from the 1980's leaned in a corner, apple cider candle lit, tiny kitchen stuffed with thanksgivingesque foods bubbling on the stove and baking in the toaster oven, one white girl with flour handprints on her pants is fussing around the tiny room.

(Tapping at the door) Enter five year old Tibetan neighbor child, stage center.

The white girl's visage is a mixture of surprise, amusement, and mild relief for the company. The Tibetan child stuffs her pockets with m&m's and plants herself in a chair in the sun to flip through the stack of children's books she can't read. The white girl disappears into the kitchen hole. When she returns the Tibetan child has taken all the ornaments off the tree and lined them up on the table, with the exception of two she has chosen to hang on her ears.

Scene over, with the addition of a few more m&m's, exit Tibetan child stage left. Close curtains.

They swish open again to behold a scene with a table covered in quickly cooling dishes, and ornaments back on the tree. The center stage door is left cracked and through it file Chinese and Tibetan coworkers bearing gifts... Apples, grapes (washed and quickly added to the table), a can of tea leaves, a years worth of apple juice... The staff take their seats around the table, filling up the small room and the feast begins.

(Phone ringing) On the line is the tinny voice of Mr. Wu calling from Australia: I miss your thanksgiving.

The friends at the table deliberate much on which dish is the most delicious, decide unanimously, with one exception who is always the exception, that the sweet potato casserole goes home with the gold. Jokes are told, dishes are scrapped clean, stomachs bulge. End scene with the entire party exiting stage center together. The curtains close on dirty dishes left on the ruined table.

They slide open again to reveal another set entirely: another teacher's apartment, long wooden table low to the floor, piles of books and paintings, tiny tea cups, and six friends squatting on cushions on the floor sipping tea and listening to a smoker play chinese pop songs on guitar. Dishes waiting paitiently upstairs force a sleepy white girl to exit stage right. Scene over. Curtains close.

Exit Thanksgiving.

I am thanks to my Father who fixes it so that I never really have to exit thanksgiving...