"Guys! Guys! Everyone's WHITE!!"

 - us, going through passport control in Chicago. 

Shortly after this was chorused, we realized everyone also spoke English and thus we sounded like horrible, horrible people - particularly Ian, who added "I LOVE white people!" to the end of his wonderings. 

I'm back in Cedar Rapids at this point, am almost over jet-lag, and am generally adjusting just fine to being back in the states.  It really is wonderful to see all of my sorority sisters and other friends around campus.  It is still strange and novel to wander around a college campus instead of a city block; to smell fresh air, with a hint of various blossoms, rather than tropical heat and car exhaust.  I'm always cold, which is very strange to this Minnesota girl.  Makes North Carolina a more welcome idea in my life.  :) I actually had to borrow a pair of flats from a friend here to keep my toes from freezing off. 

Some culture-shock-ish moments to report:

1. My second or third night back in the states, I went with a friend to the store.  I didn't break down while pondering carbohydrates, as I was warned I might.  Rather I was confused as to why all the swimsuits were so numerous.  After all that season was over, most of the suits should be sold already; soon it would be too cold to swim.  Then I remembered that although, that was how the seasons felt to me, it is indeed the start of summer here, not the end of it. Whitney and I had a good laugh about that thought process, when I shared it.

2. My phone fascinates me. I LOVE sending text messages and calling people.  Friday evening I just sat and stared at it for a while, trying to think of people to message or call. Text messages don't always come out right the first time around though.  Gonna need to redevelop some of that muscle memory. 

3. I am getting over this, but for the first week or so being back, I had a very low "people quota" meaning, I could only deal with seeing so many people per day.  I want to say last Thursday, I had lunch and coffee with two people and that was about all the socializing I could deal with.  I knew that I should go see other friends, but I just couldn't, so I spent the evening as a hermit with one or two other people I was staying with, watching movies.  This is so so weird for me.  I normally love people and being around others. It's kind of a bummer I was a hermit during the week before finals and now want to socialize when everyone has tests. Oh well. Only two more days of tests, and then it's all social until graduation.  

Countdowns:

5 days until I see my family!

6 days until graduation

8 days until I officially have a place to live...

49 days until Teach for America

"But, uh, it's like ten in the morning Acomb."

"Yeah, but I already finished my beer. It's whiskey time!"

- one of us, and one of our Thai profs, during a northern thai Songkran festival at CMU.

This confirms, if nothing else does, that Flunk Day does exist in the real world. You just have to live in Northern Thailand. 

I knew 19 of 23 letters I was told to write today.  And I was really close on a couple of others.  I just can't tell the difference between the way Ajaan Acomb says "f" and "p".  Oops. Or the difference between "tong" and "toong" when said by natives. 

Also found out today that one of our language profs was let out of the hospital the other day.  Yay Ajaan Jang!  Very glad she's well and back to good health. 

It's been a productive past few days, with all three "chapters" of my independent study started, and my final reflection for HR class half done.  I think.  I may need to start over. I think it works, but I need a second pair of eyes. The internet in Chiang Mai has been in and out, though which is ANNOYING!!  The internet cafe has been sans internet since they reopened post songkran.  So sad. Emily and I are sitting at a cafe down the block with the cheapest menu items possible so we can use their wifi.  I wish they sold wifi cards at 7-eleven like they sell water and phone cards (public wifi exsists - I can see it, I just don't know how to log in!).  

We have a week left in Thailand.  Each day I go out to do something I think about those things that are going to be so different very soon.  For example, right now I'm sitting in a full cafe and I can hear my keys click over the sound of all the other customers talking, over the kitchen, the wait staff, the music.  That would never happen back home - we talk too loud.  I would still be aware of the keys clicking, but thru my fingers rather than my ears.  

I will soon have to wait for crosswalks in order to cross the street, because traffic will more likely run me over than stop (unlike Thailand and the opposite of Vietnam, where you just have to go, because otherwise they DON'T stop).  I'll have to drive again.  And not drive the way Khun Ahn (our Thai song-taow driver) or the VN taxis drove.  That might, maybe work in Chi-town... but no where else in the states. :) And when I get home, I won't be going back to college (or at least not for long), or the midwest... I'm moving and teaching and stuff.  Old balls (yeah Liz, me too now). Wow.  

Either way, I'm almost more concerned about culture shock coming home than I was going abroad.  Weird, right?  Who does that? Other than crazy old me... Either way, it's a back-of-the-mind kind of thing right now.  More worried about finishing my papers and taking the praxis within the next seven days.  

See some of you soon!

Non-Sequiter

Okay. This has nothing to do with Asia, and everything to do with my life after Asia. But I'm kinda freaking out and need advice from older, wiser folk, or others who are also graduating and moving and such.

AAAHHHHH! (Whew... now that that's out...)

How does one find housing, when one moves to a new city? Or roomates? How does one live and pay rent and phone and internets, and food and stuff... with minimal income? Or make a deposit on said housing? In essence, how does one live in the real world?

I will be graduating upon my return from these Asian Ambulations, (which is getting a little too close for comfort!), and once that ordeal is over, I'll be joining Teach for America and moving to North Carolina. And Craigslist intimidated me earlier today. As did my pre-TFA planning checklists I was provided with... *whimper*

I never thought graduating would be scarier than traveling halfway around the world.

"I realize that it was a bitchy and self-serving thing to do... but I have no regrets."

- fellow asia-termer

Today two of our number decided they were too cool for school, and ditched as soon as our taxi arrived at VNU.  At least one of their cooperating teachers (and possibly both) then ran around A2 looking for them all morning and we, the remainder, got to feel like shit all afternoon as our culture teachers asked repeatedly where they were and if they were okay and all we could do was look around awkwardly and tell them, essentially, that we can't respect our hosts and classmates and students enough to honor our commitments.  

I am thoroughly disappointed. 

But also pleasantly surprised by others who were just as upset by the sitch' as I was, which (let's be honest) doesn't happen very often, because I apparently have an odd sense of politeness.  

Group drama aside, today was a good day.  Andy and I worked with a third year honor's interpreting class for our morning.  I knew this must be true to some extent before, but this class showed just how much like a GIANT game of telephone translation and interpretation can be. There are simply too many nuances that get added or left behind from one language to another for it to work perfectly. 

The basic premise of this class was someone would tell a story in Vietnamese, then someone would translate it for us, then Andy and I would tell it to another student who had been outside when the story was first told (so our English was their first hearing) and finally that student would retranslate the story back into Vietnamese.  So, yeah, giant game of telephone. Most of the time it came out okay, there was one story in particular that Andy and I had a lot of trouble remembering some details - particularly numbers - because it was very long and we were not always told everything in a logical order.  When the student retelling our English story in Vietnamese finished, the original story teller was like "... Uh... No..." The teacher, who had just been listening, then explained where the mistakes had happened and what they could do better next time.  It was a very interesting experience to be there. 

They also make a distinction between "translating" (which is taught as a separate class) and "interpreting" (the class we attended).  Translating is where you have a document and you translate word by word, or sentence by sentence, where as interpreting is when you are taking in spoken information in one language, processing it and saying the same information (or story) again in a different language. I think we choose not to make this distinction as often, because we like to imagine that an interpreter is just a translation conduit, but in reality, this is not the case. How can they be?  It's the same as a 100% unbiased reporter; just not gonna happen. And I had never thought about or realized this until today when I saw the two used side by side. 

This afternoon we gave reports on our three field trips during our culture class.  The way the class was organized was very different than I had hoped/planned for, but really it was probably as much as I should have expected.  Hopefully that will make more sense when I post my report, but in short, I'm having a bit more culture shock (culture confusion?) in Vietnam than I did in Thailand.  It's not anything that disrupts my day, or makes it overly difficult to live here; it's more cultural differences that make me dislike studying here. While I'm sure some of this is me reading more into situations than I should, trying to observe and take in a foreign culture, I feel that some of my observations are valid.  I also realize I'm being vague, but I'm still working on my paper where I'm exploring this idea. I'll post it soon though, (because I have to turn it in soon) and hopefully I will be better able to express this at that time. 

This evening we are leaving for Sapa, the French-built and founded resort town. Excited. Must go pack!

Today I watched the Superbowl, surrounded by foreigners, served by Thais.

Some days, being here is so disconcerting. I go about my day, and minus the heat, could almost forget that I am not at home, or even on my side of the planet. Then something, anything, jolts me, and I remember that I am rich, privileged, and spending my time wasting money on ideas and traveling halfway around the world, just because I can. Oh. Yeah. There's reality, welcoming me back via smack in the face. And we can sit around and tell ourselves that tourism is a viable and necessary part of the economy, but this has only grown to be because there are people who have such flourishing excesses as to make it a possibility.

Political scientists call this guilt I'm feeling "the white man's burden." Other travelers refer to it as culture shock. I'm just sitting here wondering what to do about it and how to reconcile it, in awe of the knowledge that I haven't even seen anything actually horrible yet (and probably won't during this entire trip).

I spent my weekend learning how to cook Thai food and (consequently) stuffing myself full of more food than I could ever want to eat in one sitting. It seems we find ourselves at a local bar almost every night of the week, blowing 3-5 meals worth of baht on a round of cocktails. And when we're not at the bar, we're at the market again eating more and buying more stuff than we really need or can use.

Then, we get up the next morning and go to Thai culture class, or Human Rights class, or to an NGO visit, and hear about people dying of AIDS for lack of retro-virals, or even simple anti-biotics to cure an opportunistic infection. About people being killed or chased out of their homeland by their own government. About how they have no rights or protections when they resettle afterward. We come back from class or the visit and read about people massacred by their government for being educated, wearing glasses, living in a city, playing an instrument, or writing a poem. And above all we hear about how neighboring countries and, more often, Western countries (who, honestly, are the ones with the resources) fail to care and fail to act. And some days it makes me a little sick.

I don't know if Asian culture has it completely right with the community over the individual (versus Western culture that places the individual over the community), but I feel like, at some point, you have to at least consider the disparity and do something to try to rectify it, at least partially. Like the Japanese idea that the CEO can't make so much more than the lowest paid employee. People shouldn't need to turn to child prostitution as a way to provide for their family. People shouldn't need to spend just as much money on water per day as they do on food, just because their government can't afford proper sewage treatment facilities. Someone's country of birth shouldn't so wholly determine if their basic needs are met. Should it?

the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

- imogen heap, "hide and seek"

I want to explain more about why I decided to travel to south east asia and study human rights rather than staying at Coe, fulfilling my term as newspaper EiC, finishing my sociology degree, (being on flunk day committee) and other related experiences that I have been looking forward to for a while. Many people seem to not understand why I have decided to forego all of this to go to Thailand, and I never seem to be able to fully explain. Perhaps the following will provide more insight.

This morning I (miraculously) woke up to my first alarm at 7:30. Mom was also just getting up and starting to get ready to go to church. I fed our ridiculous cat, so she would stop pacing and trilling, washed my hair in the kitchen sink, and got myself ready for church too, even though I was not planning to go to the early service with my mom. I decided that a week and a half away from school and another week before that away from news outlets (due to finals' time constraints) was long enough and I would have a cup of coffee and read through the BBC website, and maybe the New York Times site before church. It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but I don't think I'll indulge next time - it made me too cranky.

The front page of the BBC can be a lot of information (at least to me), so I always click through the headlines by region using the world map links. This morning I started with Africa, where I read about cholera and failed leadership in Zimbabwe, more violence during military and rebel attacks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR), Uganda, and Sudan; Then I moved to Europe where I read about violent riots in Greece and warrantless arrests in Russia; I even made it to the Middle East before I became too frustrated. That third region did me in though. As I read how a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Gaza had been allowed to lapse, how conditions in Gaza had become worse during and after the ceasefire (it is now being declared a humanitarian crisis by the UN aid mission there, because the Israelis are letting in so few supplies that people are becoming malnourished), and read the vows of Israeli officials and citizens to "crush" or "destroy" their "Palestinian enemies" and read firsthand accounts of conditions and wonderment at the behavior of both sides, I began to weep. Such a deep sense of sorrow, pity, helplessness, anger, frustration overtake me when I read or hear updates of that region in particular (because it hangs so precariously on the edge of extreme violence and probably genocide), I can't hold back those emotions and I weep and rant and want to tear at my clothes or grab those leaders by the shoulders and shake them - anything to change the situation, or barring that, outwardly express the pain held therein. The immense capacity for hatred that we hold is a frightful thing to behold, at least that's the way I see it.

This is the same reaction I have to heterosexism, homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia when they appear in US politics. The same reaction I have when I hear accounts of the genocide (yes, genocide) in Darfur, Sudan, or femicide, rape and female genital mutilation (FGM) as tactics of war in the DRC.

I used to cry over the news a lot more. In high school, flood or tornado devastation would set me off - I have a very distinct memory of watching a fly-over video of a very bad Minnesota River flood when I was, like, 10 and crying because those people lost everything and I couldn't find another way to express my empathy for those families. Sometimes discussions in Senior Soc, Service Learning, Theology, or Justice and Ethics would set me off, but those discussions usually served to light a spark and harden my resolve to find a solution to some problem, some non-love in our world. Well, all of those sparks have built into this inferno that I can no longer ignore. I can't sit at Coe, in Cedar Rapids, not doing anything. If I were not traveling to Asia, I would, first off, go crazy, and second, when and if I recovered any sanity, would probably have quit all my activities to go work at Waypoint as a victim advocate while I finished my degree.

I have been fairly complacent the last three and a half years (and fairly ignorant before then), and I'm paying for it now. But I also know that I am still emotionally unable to handle many of the situations I want to impact. I can't just pick up and go to Darfur or Gaza or the DRC, not only because I'm pretty sure my mom would lock me in a room, but also because I would not be able to deal with the slowness of change. I still am idealistic enough to think that change can happen in a matter of weeks or months, when it more often takes years or decades. Which, as a side note, is really is unacceptable, because long-lasting instability creates longer-lasting after effects. For example - the people my age in the internally displaced person (IDP) and refugee camps in Darfur and Chad have grown up almost entirely in camps - that culture of extreme poverty, helplessness, despair and frustration is the only culture they know. How are they to be expected to (God willing) leave the camps and become functioning members of Darfuri, Sudanese, African (dare I say world) society? By and large, they don't stand a real chance. Those that are strong-willed may be able to reintegrate, but many of those refugees and IDPs are lost. They are alive, which means there is a chance, but they're on life support machines with an infection threatening - it doesn't look stellar. And usually its just because some doofus doesn't want to give up whatever power he has and thinks he deserves, or some other related selfish foolishness.

Going to Thailand, studying human rights in another part of the world, working with an NGO or two along the way will help give me some better perspective and allow me to get my hands dirty, but in a safer way. Which in some respects is just as frustrating as staying at Coe, but at least I get to do something. I am at a loss for how to change people's minds and, really, honestly, after explaining my feminism and egalitarianism for three years, explaining that it shouldn't matter if I'm black, white, red, yellow, brown, purple, blue or orange, straight or queer, have 15 inches of hair or 1/4 inch, have pierced eyebrows, ears, nipples, tongue, or tattoos, have a dick or a vag (or anything else for that matter) - after explaining and being on the defensive for the better part of three years, I'm sick of dealing with it, and just want to go focus on working in the trenches, rather than continuing the futile battle of ideas. If I am frustrated with "the sweeping insensitivity of this still life," I need to not just talk about it, but work to interrupt insensitivity's sweep. That's what this semester is about, for me.

first class meeting

Yesterday, (Tuesday Nov. 4) we had our first class meeting.  The main messages that I took away from the experience are that Chiang Mai and Hanoi are physically safer and healthier than Coe.  I cannot say how many times Drex emphasized these points today.  Also, you can't have sex in SE Asia because you will get AIDS. Basically.  And you need to be careful what malaria meds you take.  The cheepies the CDC recommends keep you from getting malaria, but give you a bad case of the crazies instead.  I think I'll take my chances with the dry season mosquitos... or take the less effective, no psychosis drugs.

One of the things I am most excited for at this moment in time is to not be responsible for anyone else.  Not be blamed when someone when someone else screws up.  Not need to fail at saying no, or you should do x or y, not f.  I can't wait to not be in charge of so many things.  (Really, this is just a rant about the newspaper... and some new-old faces reincarnating the mfing back page.  But - I'm so close to being done with all of that.)

In general I'm still psyched to learn thai and I can't wait for registration to be over so we can start lessons!! And I'm very excited to go have an adventure and do something new.  I need change.  :)