Well, hello, to my possibly two readers, if I'm lucky.

So, I haven't updated in a while. And a lot has happened since I have.

The most important of those being the fact that I'm no longer in the Peace Corps.

Another one is that I've changed the layout of this blog! Mostly because my former layout was very Peace Corps-centric, but still. New blog design! Neat!

I'm now back in the good old US of A, and am in that place I understand is very common to those in their early mid twenties of having NO IDEA what my next step is.

I've been living at my parents' house in Philadelphia, but in this coming week I'm going to Pittsburgh to move in with a friend of mine, Nick. I've known Nick since I was 16, so for me that's a pretty darned old friend. He's also one of my best friends, along with his fiancée, Katie.

Sadly, Katie won't be living with us. She got an actual job (?! HOW?!) up in Connecticut, so for the first time since they were sixteen, Nick and Katie are living apart. This is a very sad thing. I met Nick and Katie and became friends with them the first week of college at Simon's Rock, which is, incidentally, the same week they met each other and started dating. So I'm actually equally good friends with both, and in fact in some ways I think of myself as close friends with the *couple*, NickandKatie (they refer to themselves in couple-form as "Lemur") rather than with individual people.

Anyway, they're getting married in late April, and I'm going to be one of the bridesmaids! I've already been up to CT to do wedding-planning stuff with Katie. It was kind of like a sitcom (besides when my aunt got married when I was 10, pretty much the only experience I have with weddings has been them happening on sitcoms).

So right now I'm packing and starting the Pittsburgh job search. Also trying to get back into writing. I need to actually FINISH a novel... I actually still have never done that. I've written like 40,000 words of like 3 different novels and 20-30k of several more, but I've never actually FINISHED one. So, after getting a job so I can actually pay rent and buy groceries and stuff, that's my main goal for the next, say, half-year.

Well, it's certainly been a while since I've updated this blog. I'm sorry about that.

I think a lot of the problem is that I don't feel pride in my blog entries; actually they make me feel faintly embarrassed, and so why would I continue to produce them? As a writer I ought to have a more entertaining blog. I guess that creative nonfiction has never really been my genre, but still, I approach blogging way too much like I'm just writing in my journal, interspersed with the occasional essay, and that's not good. I just have trouble approaching the blog as an art form, or at least as a creative outlet, no matter how much I'd like to.

I'm sure there's a How-To on this very topic somewhere online. Probably it is in a blog, with an entry titled Top 10 Rules for Writing an Interesting Blog. Bonus points if it's a boring blog.

This would be the place for a transition from my talking about how I struggle with writing satisfactory blog posts to actually writing something about my life. However, I can't think of how to do it, so I'm going to do it by not doing it. Thus I suppose this entire paragraph is one long apophasis, a transition by saying I'm not transitioning.

Except it didn't work, because it really wasn't a good transition into talking about my life.

Oh well.

I have actually, finally started a Secondary Project. For those of you who don't know, Peace Corps Volunteers are supposed to have a Primary Project and a Secondary Project. For education volunteers like me, the primary project is obvious: we teach. At the school that has requested us. Pretty straightforward.

It's quite convenient, the way we Ed Volunteers have actual jobs. For other volunteers, finding a primary project can be much more difficult. The Health and Environment Volunteers in Tanzania are sort of plopped somewhere and told to find a good way to help people. They have a whole lot more flexibility and get to set their own schedule, it's true, but they also have to be extremely self-motivated to actually find a primary project, let alone a secondary one.

I'm pretty sure if I were given a house in a tiny village and told to go out and help people without much more direction than that, it wouldn't be pretty. I'd probably sit in my house all day fretting about the fact that I'm supposed to find some kind of work but I'm not. And I'd get so stressed about the fact that I'm supposed to be doing something but am not that I'd get crippling anxiety and never leave my house. I'd be like,“I'm so stressed that I'm not doing anything that I can't go out and do anything because I'm too stressed!”

Yeah, I'm really glad I'm an education volunteer, and have a full-time teaching schedule. I have mad respect for all those Health and Environment people who actually do stuff.

But besides teaching I'm also supposed to have a secondary project. I don't really have a stress issue about this, because it's okay for that to be a bit nebulous and for it to take a while to create. Plus, there are plenty of secondary projects to do right at school, so it still feels like part of my teaching job.

The one I just started last week, in fact, is a Health Club at my school. I think I've mentioned before that five girls from my school went to a Girls' Conference organized by the Health and Environment volunteers in my district? Well, my counterpart and I rounded them up, and asked them what they wanted to do with the things they learned. They gave pretty stock answers-- basically just said they wanted to do the things they were taught about at the conference. But that's okay-- the students here aren't used to being asked to think for themselves very much. This is something I really hope that being leaders of the Health Club will help to foster.

Anyway, they agreed to form a club, and then went from classroom to classroom explaining that they're creating a Health Club and telling other students when it would be meeting. Then we had them come up with and write down rules for the club and goals of the club.

I really, really want to make this as student-directed as possible. That is not a very Tanzanian concept, but the other teachers who are working with me on this are being very open-minded. There are several teachers at my school who really are great, who really take a leap of faith that this foreigner's weird ideas are worth trying out, at least.

When the students went around from class to class, they told the students who were interested in joining to tell the Class Monitor or Monitress, and for the Class Monitor/ress to give the lists to my counterpart or myself. I was kind of confused by this, so I asked my counterpart what the point of those lists was.

“Well,” he said, “we go through the names and decide who will be in the Health Club.”

“Um,” I said. “Why would we do that?”

“We will choose the students we think will be good members,” he answered.

I must admit, I was pretty baffled by this line of thought.

“Why don't we let everyone come?” I asked.

“Many people will sign up. We only want fifteen or twenty students. If there are many, they won't be organized.”

Well, okay, but: “Do you really think that all the students who sign up will actually come to the club every week?”

“No, many of them will say they will come, but they do not.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So how about we let everyone come, and take roll call, like in class. Then, after a month or two, the students who have come to most of the meetings are the club members.”

Apparently this was a novel idea. To be fair, there aren't really any clubs at school, and I bet there weren't any clubs in the schools my fellow teachers attended when they were students, either. So there's no real reason that they'd have thought about the mechanics of a student club at all.

Still, I think the original idea-- that the teachers would select the club members-- really highlights how, in Tanzanian schools, teachers are in charge of everything. Students don't really have much chance to show initiative and try to put their own ideas into action. Yes, there are Prefects, and a Head Boy and a Head Girl, but from what I've seen their roles seem mostly predefined and mostly to do with keeping order and doing what the teachers say.

Last week, the teachers were interviewing the students to decide who would be the school leaders next year. I was a little surprised, and asked, “So the students don't vote on their leaders?”

I was told, “Yes, the teachers choose who will run and then the students will vote.”

I'm not sure if this is true, or if the other teacher was humoring me. Either way I think the process is a bit telling.

I would like to note that both of the teachers helping with the health club (my counterparts) agreed to my idea immediately. I think it hadn't occurred to them, not that they thought it was a bad idea. It's an attitude I hope to help change, at least a little; we teachers really need to give students the opportunity to prove themselves. The club members are the students who actually attend meetings and are involved in the events and activities; it only seems basic to us because that's how it's always worked (or, at least, usually). If students have no control over anything, then how can they ever shine?

It comes with a risk. As I said, I want this club to be as student-run as possible. I know it'll take time, because the girls* are not comfortable in leadership roles, but eventually I want my role as supervisor to be about on par with an American teacher who is supervising a club. I'll be there to help them write grants or get permission for them to put on events and work with the leaders to make things happen, but I want the momentum to come from them. I want them to have the ideas, and for them to form the plan, and for me to be there as a resource to help them make those ideas and plans become reality.

The risk, of course, is that while I have a lot of hope that the girls will rise to the challenge, all I can do is hope. When we let students take the lead, we can only hope that they'll have good ideas, that they'll work hard, find themselves as leaders, push themselves to succeed. But there's also the chance they'll flounder, at a loss for what to do and how to go about it, and just sort of fizzle out.

As I said, I know it will have to be a transition, and that at first I'll probably have to take charge and tell them what to do more than I'd like. Am I a little scared that they'll stay in their boxes of doing what they're told and when I try to step back and let the students take the lead, everything will fall flat? Yeah. But just a little. These students really need someone to believe in them, and I do believe that, given the chance, they can be great, and do great things.

Looking back on my post, I find myself surprised at where I've focused. I helped students found a Health Club; the point of the club is to teach other students, as well as the community in general, about issues like HIV/AIDS, other STDs, family planning, goal planning, nutrition, and so on. And all of these are really important issues, and teaching students and community members about these things could make a huge difference in their lives. Yet my thoughts, and my words, are tending more towards empowering the students, towards how to get them to a place where they know how to put their thoughts and ideas into action.

You know what, I think that's just as well. I could teach students about all those issues, and it would help them. Then in a little over a year I'll leave, and the students who learned about health issues will have better lives, but the new students who come through school won't be any better off. The students I taught would probably have healthier families. It would help the community a little. There would be some families whose living situation might be improved.

But if the students in the health club teach other students all about those topics, and then also teach the younger club members how to do the same thing, then it can last long after I'm gone. The older club members will not only teach the new club members about HIV/AIDS and nutrition and family planning, they'll teach them methods of spreading that information. And hopefully, if the club ends up really student-run, they'll teach them how to take charge of an organization. So all the students I would have helped by teaching them about health still have those benefits, but now the students who come after get that advantage, too.

Plus, then there would be students, who then graduate and become adults, who have experience running an organization. Who have learned how to be a leader and take charge and organize events and who know that they can change the world around them. And with a whole heaping of luck, they'll have passed on that lesson, too. Not to the entire school, but to a few students, enough for there to be a next group of Health Club leaders, and a next, and a next.

I know, I sound way too hopeful. I'm sounding totally utopian right now, aren't I? But it's as I said. These kids need someone to believe in them; if nobody believes they can succeed... well, it's still possible, but it's awfully hard. If I don't believe in them, if I doubt their abilities, then I'll be pulling them down, I'll just make it that much more likely they'll fail. I'd rather put a whole lot of faith in them, and then if they don't go as far as I'd hoped, all that happens is that I'm disappointed; the only one who gets hurt is me.

But they've got it inside them. I know they do.

*Since the founders are the five students who attended the Girls' Conference, all of the leaders are girls. I'm really hoping the Health Club will be fairly balanced, gender-wise, but the students who said they were interested are around 75% girls at this point. Right before next term (which starts in January) I hope to have an election, so that the leaders are student-chosen, and hopefully both genders will be represented. But right now, the President, Vice-President, Secretary, and two Leadership Council members are all girls.

For some good stuff to counteract my last post:

It rained a decent amount today! This was exciting and surprising because the rainy season is supposed to be over by now, rain at the end of May is very unusual in this part of Tanzania. I love when it rains here, mostly because it's a source of water. You see, I don't have running water in my house, so all my water has to be hauled from a tap about a three minute walk away. Well, three minutes the way there. Lugging 20 liters of water makes the way back take quite a bit more time, and really makes my hands hurt. It's not the weight so much as the fact that all the weight is pressed across my hand on the same spot, since I have to hold the buckets by the handle. Tanzanian women can carry the buckets on their heads, but I don't know how to do that, and anyway apparently it's really bad for your back long-term.

So when it rains, I can just catch the run-off from the roof, and don't have to carry water, or get someone else to carry it for me. (I either do this by paying someone or making a student do it as punishment. But finding someone to carry it is also a hassle.)

Also, of course, rain water is extremely pure (Tanzania's not developed enough to have enough pollution for any sort of smog problems, especially since I live in a rural area). Theoretically I could drink it straight without boiling it first, but since I am catching the run-off from the roof, I boil the rain water before drinking it, in case anything from my roof got into it.

But the rain water's still a lot better, because the water that comes from the tap is very hard. It's temporarily hard, which means that when I boil it, the deposits separate from the water. So a lot of yellow-white stuff settles at the bottom of the bucket, and also builds up on my water boiler. (I have this little coil I can put into a bucket that boils the water-- which I need to do now, but can't, because it requires electricity. Another reason to be annoyed by that.) Anyway, the tap water leaves a buildup on my water boiler coil that's really hard to clean off, while rain water leaves it nice and clean (and even tends to chip the buildup so that I can easily pull chunks of it off).

So the rain was a very good thing that happened today!

Also, I'm very glad I have two computers, because the other one I was using is out of charge (well, I don't let it get completely out of charge, I turn it off when it gets around 15%). Now I'm using the bigger one, whose battery doesn't last quite as long. But I still get a lot more computer use during electricity problems than if I'd been a reasonable person who doesn't take two computers with her to rural Africa! (Though by now, when I've finished this post and am about to publish it, this computer's almost out of batteries as well. Oh, well. I might actually be able to sleep soon, and if I can, it'll help me get on a reasonable schedule for Monday.)

Yesterday (or I guess, as of about 20 minutes ago, the day before yesterday) was my students' last day of finals. So next week, I'll be grading their finals (they call them “terminal examinations”) and compiling the data, as well as choosing five girls for the Girls' Empowerment Conference that will be happening in this town in late June. (Sadly, I won't be able to be there because the dates conflict with my visit to America, but I'll be doing everything I can to help organize it until I leave.) I also have to find a female teacher who will be willing to chaperone without being paid. After that, school's out until mid-July!

Oh, wow, I haven't mentioned my trip to America here on the blog yet, have I? Well, I'm going to visit my parents in the USA from mid June to early July. Trust me, nobody was more surprised by this development than I was! We made the decision mid-April, while I was at Peace Corps In-Service Training. Literally, about two days after I found out that there was even the slightest, tiniest possibility it could happen sometime in my two years here, it was decided that it would be happening in two months. I was on the phone with my mom, and I just mentioned-- I swear to the gods I wasn't even attempting to hint at anything-- that I was surprised by how many Peace Corps Volunteers visit home during their service. (As I said, I was at training, so saw and talked to a bunch of PCVs I hadn't seen since November.) And my mom was like, “Well, would you want to do that?”

To which I was like “...well, yes, of course, but isn't it just way too expensive?”

We talked a little bit, mostly theoretically, about when I could visit-- this June during school break just seemed so soon, and my parents are coming in December so it couldn't be then, so maybe for a week during spring break next year? Or maybe June next year? But that will be so near to the time that I'll end my service, it doesn't seem that worth it, does it? And so on. Then I just checked up on some plane ticket prices for this June and emailed them to my mom, just for information's sake-- I wrote in the email that I figured that there was about a 2% chance that it would actually happen. Mom emailed back to say that she'd consider it based on the flight costs, and that she hadn't even talked to Dad about it yet at all. We didn't really figure it would happen.

Ten hours later, there was an email in my inbox that said, “We think you should could come visit this June, and we're happy to pay for the plane ticket.”

And suddenly, in two months I'd be visiting America.

I'm trying not to get too excited yet, because I don't like to be really excited about something for longer than the event will actually take place-- I find that makes it more disappointing when it's over. So I'm not going to let myself get excited until about two weeks before I leave, and right now it's about three and a half weeks.

But it will be really great to see my parents and get to spend time with them. I really haven't gotten to do that, especially with Dad (I've spent a tiny bit more time with Mom, since she visited me in Korea and we went to China together). Since the beginning of January, 2009, I've only been at my parents' house for about three weeks total, and those three weeks were some of the most stressful of my life. It was right after my extremely traumatic experience in China where my everything important was stolen and I was basically trapped there until the Chinese government granted me a new temporary visa, and I missed all my flights, and had to buy new flights not only back to Korea but then back to America. And then, once I got to Korea I had a week to pack everything and run around trying to get everything wrapped up. Once I was FINALLY home in America, I had 3 weeks to prepare everything for Peace Corps, so I didn't even get that much of a chance to breathe. I was so busy and filled with anxiety that I wasn't really able to enjoy my parents' company as much as I otherwise would.

So in the past 20 months, the only time I've spent with my parents (minus the few weeks Mom was in Korea and China with me) was 3 super-stressed weeks. So this really is a pretty big deal.

I'm actually visiting home for two and a half weeks, which is a very long time for this kind of trip. It's actually more vacation days than I've earned from Peace Corps, even taking into account the three month advance that PCVs are usually allowed to take (six extra days). There are some other circumstances about my visiting, nothing major, but enough that I was able to talk to the higher-ups in Peace Corps Tanzania and they agreed to give me five months' advance instead of three.

So really I'm visiting my parents for about as long as the total time I've seen them in 21 months.

I won't lie: I'm looking forward to a bit of first-world luxury too, and picking up some things that will make life in Tanzania easier.

People have been asking if I'll come back-- apparently it's fairly common for a Peace Corps Volunteer who is visiting home to decide just not to return. I am 100% planning to return to my site at Tanzania. I've had some troubles here, but I really do like the work and my students and school. I feel like I'm actually helping my students learn math more fully, and can possibly make some of their lives genuinely better. I really like most Tanzanians as well, for that matter; they really are incredibly friendly.

Plus, if I don't return, it will seriously jeopardize my ability to achieve my future career plans. After cutting short my year in Korea and graduating college with decent but not stellar grades and no close relationships with my professors and thus no shining references, the difference between finishing my two years in Peace Corps and leaving after 7 months could be huge. Staying in America would cause so much legitimate anxiety about my life and future that I highly doubt it would seem worth it.

So yes: I am going to visit America and my parents, and then I am returning to Tanzania.

Well, there we go. A positive, happy post to go right after my rant. I guess a lot of it is about my visit to America, thus leaving Tanzania... hmm. Well, it is a hard life here sometimes, but ultimately I do feel like it's worth it.

There's been a problem for a while with the electricity in my house. At least once a day, and sometimes more often, the breaker for the whole house (as well as the house next door) just switches off, for no discernible reason. I've had fundis (kind of like electricians) come to the house, and they can't find any shorts in my house, so it's almost certainly my next door neighbors' house. (We share the same breaker, but I'm the only one who can control it, since it's in my house.)

The problem is, my neighbors don't really understand this concept, that it's something they've plugged in that is probably causing the problem, and my Swahili isn't good enough to explain it. Why the fundis didn't explain it to them, I cannot imagine.

Now, sometimes when the breaker switches off, I can switch it back on. But sometimes it just flips right back down and the electricity won't come back on for hours. I'll keep trying, and it will keep not working. My neighbors also have this really annoying habit of knocking on my door and asking me to turn the electricity back on, like, do you really think I haven't been trying five times an hour since it turned off?!?!?! Honestly? Do you really, honestly not understand that I am in the dark too, I would like the electricity back on too, and I try the switch as often as makes any sort of logical sense?

Today one of them insisted on barging into my house to try for himself, even though he didn't even know which switch was which. Like, this has been a problem for months, and I've been turning it back on as soon as it would work for months. You have never done this once, and you insist on coming into my house to try just in case I'm suddenly doing it wrong? Then you note to me that on the switch that actually has nothing to do with the problem, it says “On.” Yes. Thank you. I noticed that, especially since it actually literally says “On” in English. Besides, that is not the switch that matters (although I have learned a trick using that switch that sometimes works, and I try that every time I try to get the electricity back on. Any anyway, that trick is just a way of trying to get the OTHER switch to stay up).

Not to mention that according to the man who came to check the electricity, the problem is almost CERTAINLY something YOU HAVE PLUGGED IN inside your house, and if you want to solve the problem, UNPLUG YOUR APPLIANCES!! They don't even turn off their sound system when the electricity goes off. I know this because the very exact moment I manage to make it switch back on, I hear the music start up next door. Like, the instant, way too quickly for one of them to have turned it on themselves.

I try to explain the parts of this I can, but I don't know if it's my Swahili or what, but this man seems to absolutely never understand me. He insists on speaking English to me, but his English is horrible-- way worse than my Swahili-- and never makes any sense. It is beyond frustrating, because he won't even speak a word of Swahili to me, and when I speak it he just looks at me blankly. Other people understand me when I speak Swahili, so why can't he? I don't think it's possible that he doesn't speak it.

Sigh. It's been going on for several months, and usually it doesn't really bother me that much. I mean, I can understand the impulse-- they're pretty powerless in the situation (no pun intended), and if I were in their shoes, I know that I would have the urge to go and check that the person has tried the lights, even if I know that logically they probably have. Of course, at this point, when the electricity obviously keeps coming back on week after week, I'd have managed to suppress that impulse so as not to annoy my neighbor, but I can still understand why they do it.

It's still annoying that they seem to think that I don't try the electricity often to turn it back on, and it was SUPER annoying the way that man thought that I didn't know how to do it (when he didn't know) even though that's the most illogical thing ever. But I'd mostly gotten over the annoyance and just accepted the whole thing pretty calmly. Usually I don't care much.

It's just that right now, the electricity still won't come back on, even though it's been at least seven hours. The batteries on my head lamp are running low-- rechargeable batteries lose their charge super quickly, did you know that? Even if you're not using them. If you charge your rechargeable batteries all the way up, and then a month later put them into a flashlight, they will not work at all. They only work, like, right after you charge them. So I basically have no source of light except this really weak (and getting weaker) headlamp. I've searched all over my house for batteries that might work in some sort of light source, and now have one other thing sort of going, but it's also really dim. So I'm really just annoyed as hell right now.

Normally I'd just go to bed in this situation, but since I've had some trouble sleeping the past few days, my sleep schedule is all out of whack, and I woke up at like 5 pm today. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep if I went to bed now, and my only sleep med-- Benedryl-- takes at least two hours to make me drowsy.

I've also talked to my school several times, and they did send those fundis to my house twice, but I've kept asking because the problem hasn't stopped, and they haven't done anything else.

Really, it's my neighbors' time to take over trying to fix things at this point, since it's been established that there's no short in my house. But they just WON'T DO IT! I don't get why they don't take some action themselves-- what would they have done seven months ago, when nobody lived in my house? Obviously they'd have called someone and tried to get it fixed.

You know, I don't even think I'm going to feel guilty at this point leaving them without electricity for three weeks when I visit America. I'm warning them that it's going to happen, and it's up to them to call people in to fix the problem before June 14. I've talked to the school like five times and gotten an “electrician” to come twice. They have done nothing at all, except come over to my house to bug me.

Sorry about this post that was almost entirely just an annoyed rant... I just really needed to get that off my chest. As I said in my post before last, "On the Nature, Criticism, and Attempt to Change Culture," sometimes you really do need to rage about stuff like this somewhere you can at least pretend someone is reading and understanding, so that when you're actually dealing with the people, you can manage to remain polite. I say all this stuff angrily here so that I can be calm and culturally sensitive when actually dealing with the neighbors.

So, first off, my mother (who, yes, should absolutely write her comments on the blog as well as in an email! Let's get a dialogue going people!) let me know that the links in my previous post didn't work. I think I've solved this problem, but if they still don't work, please tell me.

Talking to her about my post and her comments/criticisms actually really helped me clarify some thoughts that I hadn't even realized were jumbled. You may have noticed that the beginning of my post was only tangentially related to the, well, purpose of my post. Partially it was because I wanted to mention the funny International Workers' Day story, but mostly it was because the eagerness to spread American companies to other countries was a problem with my assertion that Americans/Westerners are ultra shy of the concept of changing, or even criticizing, a different culture.

What my Mom made me realize is that I was trying to lump everybody into the same group, when really, there are two. Well, okay, obviously there are way more than just two groups of people in the Western world, there's something approaching infinite, but there are two that are relevant to my argument. Even that is, of course, an oversimplification, but as this is a blog post and not a dissertation, that's just how it's gotta be. I will state that, of course, these two groups I will list are the extremes, and most people fall in a continuum somewhere in between, but verging more towards one side or the other.

Basically, there are the people who care about preserving other cultures, and there are the people who don't.

The people who care about other cultures, who are inclined to want to preserve it and see it as something important, are generally not comfortable or happy with the McDonaldization of the world. These are the people about whom I was talking in my post, but there was no real reason to have the first few paragraphs trying to rationalize why these people are okay with the corporate invasion of non-Western societies, because generally, they aren't okay with it.

The people who are spreading McDonald's or Starbucks or Seven-Eleven all over the world would probably not flinch and get uncomfortable with talk about changing those cultures. They would see nothing wrong with the idea, and thus really had very little to do with the argument in my post in the first place.

As I said, there's a continuum, and most people are somewhere in the middle, but most people also are more inclined one way or the other.

What I was really trying to get at with my last post, I guess, is that many people in the first group generally have this cognitive dissonance, these contradictory beliefs, of which they're not even aware.

Because it's the people in the first group who tend to be in groups like Amnesty International, who tend to feel outrage when they hear about atrocities happening all over the world, who tend to care when they hear about human suffering in far away places. Yet much of that human suffering is a direct result of the accepted culture in those far away places. And it's the same people, that first group, who are also inclined to hold culture up as something sacred and holy, and have a knee-jerk reaction against criticism of other cultures, let alone attempts to change them.

(Then, of course, there are people like Rachel, who commented on my last post, who appears to agree more with the second group than the first, yet cares about morality and human suffering.)

My post was really about pointing out the contradiction between the two ideals in that first group. The second group, while they're not generally the type of people with whom I usually agree or even the type of people whom I see as caring much about morality, at least appear, at first glance, to have internally coherent attitudes.

Is culture sacred?

Nowadays, in these 'enlightened' times, people get pretty spooked at the idea of interfering with a different culture. Sure, American capitalism, McDonalds and Starbucks and 7-Eleven and a hundred other corporations I could name are spreading all over the world. American movies and media also spread throughout the world. Most of those things actually don't exist here in Tanzania, Africa, but they've still spread far and wide, and people's levels of comfort with that do vary. But at least, we can say, the people in those other cultures are supporting it, to a certain extent. If at any given location, McDonalds didn't sell any burgers, or Baskin Robbins didn't sell any ice cream, you can sure as hell bet that they wouldn't stay for very long. None of these businesses would stay somewhere they didn't make money, so the locals must be at least implicitly supporting their existence.

(I've recently been told by the British woman who lives in my town here in Tanzania that the British have a very interesting way of celebrating International Workers' Day. They very reasonably celebrate it the first Monday after May 1st, the way we in America treat things like Presidents' Day and Labor Day, so that they can have a holiday from work or school.

(Anyway, that first Monday after May 1st, they celebrate International Workers' Day by smashing the windows of all the McDonalds and Starbucks in protest of American capitalism. The other 364 days of the year they're quite happy to buy delicious but over-priced coffee and kind of gross but low-priced burgers, but on International Workers' Day, they smash up all the windows. We imagine that all the McDonaldses and Starbuckses in the UK must just figure the cost of replacing windows at the beginning of each May into their budget.)

So that's one thing. As I said, some people aren't comfortable with American capitalism spreading all over the world, but most of us don't lose that much sleep over it. It's interfering with a culture, sure, but we can tell ourselves that it's at least, you know, in a collateral damage sort of way. (Because that's... comforting.) And a lot of the people who really care are more angry about the corporation, economic angle than the cultural.

It's an issue in itself, to be sure. But while it's the issue that people are most aware of, it's actually not the issue that I really want to discuss in this blog post. I want to discuss a more direct focus on culture, what it means, and what it doesn't.

Basically, I want to discuss my first line: Is culture sacred?

--

So... is it?

People tend to be really uncomfortable with the idea of judging a culture (especially a non-Western culture). The idea of actually purposefully trying to CHANGE a culture... now there's something that will get people up in arms, or super uncomfortable, or in some incarnation of “Eep!!,” “Danger, danger!,” and so on. In some ways, fair enough. Europe has certainly had a history of going in and changing cultures and, in the process, causing damage (if they didn't, America would be a very, very, very different place), and once America was so largely settled with Europeans, we followed suit. There are a lot of mistakes in the past that involved destroying culture that we don't want to repeat-- and well we shouldn't.

But this guilt, and the lessons we've taken away from those mistakes (often rightfully), have led a lot of people to consider all aspects of other cultures to be completely untouchable, something about which we have no right to any sort of opinion.

I mentioned a while back that a friend of mine decided to go teach English in Korea, with the idea that we'd be there together. But then, thanks to an invitation from Peace Corps that arrived many months before I expected, she ended up arriving in Korea the same week I left.

Well, sadly, there were a lot of aspects of Korea that she didn't like (and as promised in the post I just linked, I do feel super guilty). So on her blog, Curiosity Killed the Kat, she mentioned some of the things that she didn't like (as well as the ones she did). Well, apparently her posts criticizing aspects of Korean culture angered a Canadian teaching in Korea, because about a month ago, she posted this entry: Friendly Fire: Waygook-on-Waygook Flaming, or Why I Talk About the Bad Stuff.

For those of you who don't feel like clicking links to other blogs (though she is a good writer and I highly recommend hers), basically, this man sent her a flame about what she said. I'm going to copy and paste a part of the flame, because a lot of what I have to say directly references it:

Korea is NOT the United States. You complain about the work culture here. That's how it is here. It's your fault for thinking it is "wrong." Principals sleep, teachers in hagwans go months unpaid, and some female teachers get harassed by their superiors. This doesn't happen in every case, but it does exist. I'm a hagwan graduate and made my way to an international school. I would have left otherwise.

What your doing is similar to this: A person from Florida choosing to live in Alaska and then complaining about the cold weather.

Actually, you have three choices:

1) GET OUT.

2) Stay and be more culturally sensitive.

3) Stay and have a miserable year.

The choice is yours.

'It's your fault for thinking it is “wrong.”'

It's a common attitude that Westerners have. While South Korea is a first world country and ought to be way, way past the point where we're tempted by the Noble Savage concept, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it played a part in this kind of thinking.

Even just this little block of text says a whole lot of things. For one, that it's culturally insensitive to disapprove of any aspect of a culture that isn't your own. Look at the example he references: 'female teachers get harassed by their superiors.' That's on his list of things of which it's culturally inappropriate to disapprove? Sexual harassment? Really?

I knew a girl in Korea who worked at a hagwon, and yeah, they didn't pay her for months. Then, after not paying her for months, they suddenly fired her right before the end of her year, so that they wouldn't have to pay for her plane ticket back to America. This after not having paid her, so she certainly didn't have the money to get home herself. She had $100 to her name, nowhere to live, and no way to get home.

It's culturally insensitive to disapprove of this treatment of a person-- a human being? The mere fact that they're from a different culture gives them the license to treat people like shit?

His comment is disturbing enough to me. What I don't think he realizes-- what I don't think people realize when they say things like this-- is what happens when you follow that thought through to its logical conclusion.

These are the relevant premises that I see stated, explicitly or implicitly, in that comment:

1.If a culture is not your culture, then you don't have a right to judge that culture. It is your fault for thinking that an aspect of that culture is “wrong,” even one that seems repugnant to anyone from your own culture.

2.It is culturally insensitive to talk about aspects of a culture of which you disapprove. I'm going to split this one into (a) and (b)-

(a) is talking about those aspects either to members of that culture or in a forum where they're likely to see it, and

(b) is talking about those aspects in a forum that is largely aimed at people from your own culture.

Since Curiosity Killed the Kat is pretty clearly aimed at Westerners, the Flamer clearly thinks that 2b is wrong, but I'm going to want to discuss 2a as well, and thought I should make a distinction. I'm going to take a leap and say that that if someone things that 1 and 2b are bad, then they'd say 2a is bad as well.

So let's take those premises, shall we? Let's start with Premise 1. As I've said, South Korea is a first-world country. But if we're following these premises to their logical conclusion, we can bring in other cultures as well.

As you know, I'm a teacher in Tanzania. I have students who are the victims of female genital mutilation. That's the culture. That's how it is here. So it's our fault for thinking that it's wrong?

(True, Tanzania is trying to discourage this practice. Many Tanzanians have realized that it's not good, and they're trying to get rid of it. So it's Tanzanians changing their own practices; that's not interfering with another culture! Not quite. Whether they're trying to discourage it or not, it is at this point still a part of the culture. By Premise 1, it would still be my fault for thinking it's “wrong,” especially considering that Korean women are certainly trying to get their superiors to stop harassing them.)

In the Middle East (and parts of Africa, for that matter), women are stoned to death for adultery. Even if they were raped, and it was totally against their will, they have still been called whores and killed. That's the culture. That's how it is there. So it's our fault for thinking that it's wrong?

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Burma, and I'm sure in many other places, rape is used as a military weapon against their own citizens. That's the culture. That's how it is there. So it's our fault for thinking that it's wrong?

In Somalia, thieves' hands are cut off at the first offense. Many of these thieves are poor and have no other way to eat, and don't have the skills to get a job. (Without hands, that will be a whole lot harder.) That's the culture. That's how it is there. So it's our fault for thinking that it's wrong?

I'm sorry. I couldn't keep up the quotation marks around the word “wrong” when I was listing those aspects of culture. We all know the quotation marks are there to negate the word, to belittle the sentiment behind it. And I do believe that each of those things are wrong, with all of my heart.

If you follow what he's said to its logical conclusion, it's not only disgusting, but one of the most destructive attitudes it is possible to have and, frankly, a menace to the attempt to improve the world. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have a huge commitment to improving the world, and feel insulted not only on behalf of myself and my colleagues (who have enough to worry about trying to help Africa without having to deal with this kind of shit from people who should know better), but much, much more importantly, on behalf of everyone in the world who is being oppressed, beaten, abused, or neglected because it's "culturally acceptable" where they happened to have been born.

There is a reason that the international community has written “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” There is a reason they called it “universal,” and that is because too often people's fundamental rights are trampled, ignored, deemed unimportant, etc, because “that's the culture there.” That's why the international community has declared them UNIVERSAL. That means that it applies to all countries on the planet, and that “it's the culture” is not an excuse to violate a person's fundamental rights as human beings.

I've now taught in three cultures that are very different from my own. If another teacher harassed me, I WOULD NOT FUCKING stand for it. No, that is NOT okay. The fact that Flamer used that as something that is okay because "that's how it is here" is disgusting, misogynist, and downright sexist. (Incidentally, the "right to just and favorable conditions of work" is enshrined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 23, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, articles 6 and 7. Obviously, women being harassed by a superior would violate this.)

This man should understand that by saying what he has said, he is by direct logical continuation saying that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be considered void.

–

When I first arrived in Tanzania, fresh off the plane, bright-faced Peace Corps Trainee, I hadn't really thought about a lot of this stuff. I mean, when I was younger I was involved in Amnesty International, so I knew some pretty horrible things happened in parts of the world. But even just 6 or 7 months ago, I flinched at the idea of trying to change a culture. That's not what I'm here to do! (I'd have said.) They invited us! (True.) We're just teaching students math and science... helping people with income generation projects, making jam or clothes or wine or whatever else we can think of to help them make a living... teach them how to eat healthily, how to put together a nutritious meal that gives a family all the nutrients they need... trying to introduce positive reinforcement in schools and cut down on corporal punishment... running girls' empowerment programs, so that girls can go out into their community and take some power for themselves... teaching new methods of farming and gardening that take less labor and yield more food...

But what is education, what is a person's method of making a living, what is the kind of food they eat and how they cook it, what is how teachers and parents guide and discipline their students and children, what is the relationship between the genders and whether girls and women stand up for themselves, what is the method by which people grow their crops...

...but aspects of culture?

All of those things make up a culture, and some of them are a very fundamental part of culture. All of those things we Peace Corps Volunteers are attempting to change.

My experience as an aid worker has really taught me that we have to strike a balance. We don't want to destroy a culture, there are many important aspects that it would be a tragedy if they were lost. The world is just a complex place, and change is such a loaded concept. I won't say it's perfect, but Peace Corps has a method we try to use.

We Peace Corps Volunteers work with what we call “Counterparts.” A counterpart is basically just a friend of yours, who is a native of the country you were placed (HCNs-- “Host Country Nationals”). This is where we get into my Premise 2a: talking about what you see as wrong with a culture to a member of that culture. What makes this counterpart more than just a friend-- and you can have more than one-- is that whenever we do any of these projects, we do it with a counterpart. We don't jump in here, trying to impose our views on the locals. We collaborate with the citizens of the country, agree on a goal, on a positive change, and work towards it together.

While Flamer has the concept all wrong, cultural sensitivity is very real, very important, and something I must practice in order to live day-to-day here. It can be really difficult, because it's just not second nature yet-- sometimes I have to think beforehand about the right way to say that I disapprove of something. No matter how hard it can be, though, it's necessary.

If we never talked to any Tanzanians about the problems here, the things that we and they would both like to change-- well then, it would be pretty impossible to start any projects to change them, wouldn't it?

I have no problem telling the other teachers at my school that I disapprove of hitting the students. Cultural sensitivity isn't never criticizing anything about a culture-- it's about saying it in a way that doesn't insult people. It's exactly the way being polite isn't about never saying anything unpleasant-- sometimes you have to. It's about saying it in a way that doesn't insult people. Cultural sensitivity is really just knowing how to be polite within the framework of another society, and practicing it as best you can. As far as 2a goes, if you believe you can never, ever tell the friends you've made in a new country the parts of the culture that bother you... they're never going to become very good friends. We become close to people by being honest—which does not mean insensitive—about what we're thinking, feeling, and experiencing.

All I have to say about 2b is that if you can't talk about the things that are bothering you to people who are coming from the same place culturally and can really understand how you're feeling, you're going to explode. At least, from a Western (especially American-- and for that matter, Canadian) perspective. Westerners, and this is unlike many other cultures, believe we need to let our feelings out, and that it's healthy. Because that's how we've been raised, for us at least, it really is healthy. Sometimes you have to vent. Living in a really different environment is hard, and getting it out of your system somewhere people will understand is sometimes just the only way you're going to be able to get up the next morning and have the patience and strength to practice that cultural sensitivity.

There is absolutely nothing wrong-- and a lot of things right-- with changing aspects of a country's culture (in, again, a cooperative, collaborative effort with the people whose culture it will affect) in order to improve the quality of life of its citizens. Again, in Tanzania, as well as in a lot of places, education isn't usually a priority, especially for girls. That's the culture. But the only way that Tanzania is going to progress as a country, the only way that they will be able to work towards and attain a better life, is by making education a priority. By changing the culture. Because if they don't change some aspects of their culture, they will remain stuck in poverty.

As far as African countries go, Tanzania is not exactly the biggest violator of human rights. Generally the opposite, in the scheme of African nations. There are so, so many more horrible, cruel, torturous, INHUMAN practices throughout the world that are "part of the culture." Anyone who thinks that just by virtue of being part of the culture, we have no right to call an atrocious act wrong... well... that person is implicitly condoning all the things I mentioned above (female genital mutilation, stoning women to death for being raped, rape as a military weapon, cutting off thieves' hands), as well as so many more things, hundreds if not thousands, that I could list.

So... no. My answer is no. Culture is not this sacred, holy, untouchable thing. Culture is important, and there are parts of it that are well, well worth preserving. (There's a reason that the international community has also declared many World Cultural Heritage Sites.) There are many things about Korean culture and about Tanzanian culture that I really like, and it would be a true shame if those things were changed or lost. I don't believe that all the countries in the world should become just like each other, that we should all just be homogeneous.

Every culture has aspects that are good and aspects that are bad, but when we get right down to it, we are all human beings. I'm not denying culture shapes a person in an enormous way. It affects perception hugely-- two people from two different cultures can see the same situation so entirely differently that it's amazing. Yet, all of us have our humanity in common, and I truly believe that there are things-- like the rights listed in the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights-- to which every human is entitled. That every human being deserves.

Keep the good. Heck, keep the neutral too. But things that hurt people, damage them, deprive them of their health and their dignity and their safety, of their ability to, well, I'll be American here, to pursue happiness... those are also a part of culture. They are a part of culture we have every right to not only criticize, to not only call “wrong,” but to do our best to eradicate from the face of this planet.

In fact, I consider it part of my duty as a human being.

What am I up to?

Teaching Form 2-ers the very beginnings of Algebra and what a variable is. Thus far (knock woods), they seem to be pretty good kids. I haven't had any major problems with the students so far. At first they were rally really resistant to coming up to the board to do problems, but I think they're getting more and more comfortable with the idea, which is great. One class on Thursday, I actually had some of the kids jumping out of their seats as they raised their hands to come up. That was a great feeling. They were also so good at solving for x that if they hadn't been struggling to understand variables the week before, I'd have thought they'd done it before. (And if the other math teachers hadn't assured me exactly where the students had left off in the Form One syllabus-- about halfway through.)

Last week I cut my finger so badly that after putting pressure on it the entire night, it was *still* bleeding. Now over a week later, the area between the tip of my finger and my fingernail is still numb. Does that mean it will be forever? I have no idea. Anyway, that was Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning (when I'd been up all night putting pressure on it) when it was still bleeding, it turned out that I couldn't teach that way. Something about when you walk around your heart beating faster and lot letting the cut close. So I actually had to miss out on my first real day of teaching, which was a bummer. Luckily my headmistress was really understanding. And I will admit: I was more OK with missing class than I would have been if I weren't tired as all heck.

There are two American Baptist missionaries who live just a 20 minute walk from my house. I've been hanging out with them a lot. Their house is incredibly nice; when I'm sitting in their living room or kitchen, I can't see a single thing that would suggest that I'm not currently in America (well, there are some carvings of Africa on the walls, but still). Plus they make delicious meals, things like pizza and hamburgers and enchiladas and all those things that I normally could never, ever get in Tanzania. They're way more all-American than my family has ever been, so it's nice to have somewhere to go where it's like I'm in America for an afternoon. And they're very sweet people as well. In fact, one of them came to my house and fixed my electrical problems, then caulked the gap between my wall and my ceiling-- the entirety of my bedroom and half the living room. The upshot? NO MORE LIZARD POOP FALLING FROM MY BEDROOM CEILING! That's right, I'm LIZARD POOP FREE!!!

Well, we're on our way out of the internet cafe now, so I should wrap this up. ALL OF YOU SHOULD WRITE!! Email me at melknapp@gmail.com and I'll send you my address!

Did you know that lizards chirp?

I had no idea until this week, when I was at first convinced that there were mice living in my ceiling, and I was wondering, How on Earth do they get into and out of my ceiling?! Then I thought it was birds, but birds do not leave tons of little pellet-like turds in my bed and on my mosquito net and next to my door and in various other corners of the house. (Their poop tends to SPLAT! a bit more. That would be worse.)

Which is how I discovered that the squeaking/chirping racket that blares from my ceiling is actually lizards. And yes, they poop on my bed while I sleep (and during the day, too). And chirp a lot. What's even worse is that sometimes the bugs get so bad that I wish there were more lizards, because lizards eat bugs. Those are not such good nights.

But things are getting easier. I never expected that the first few weeks would be easy, and I really am so, so thrilled to have gotten to site (that scare where I thought I'd be sent home really put things in perspective!). I don't have anywhere to put my stuff-- while there are a couple of very welcome padded chairs in my house, so that for once I actually hang out in the living room and not in my bed all the time, there is not so much as a single drawer or shelf. So I just have to live out of my suitcases, for the time being. I think furniture, so that I can finally unpack, will have to be my Christmas present for my parents. (And man, was I excited when my mom reminded me that I have that coming. I'd thought that I would have to just live out of suitcases in a mostly-empty house for two years!)

They can send me the money easily, because there is a Western Union a mere 10-minute walk from my house. Yes, really. I don't have any running water and I use a pit latrine that is outside of my house, but there is a Western Union right next to my house. And internet on my phone. Africa is weird sometimes, y'all.

I won't start teaching until sometime in January, so right now all I really have to do is settle in and try not to make too bad an impression. It's been a bit of a rocky start, but I'm determined to be a great, dedicated teacher. Once I get more used to Tanzanian social customs and expectations, I'll do my best to start making friends and fitting in. The other math teacher at my school is a woman just one year older than me, so I'm hoping that a friendship will come of that.

One disheartening thing about getting here, though, is that I've realized how crappy my Swahili really is. I can form sentences sort of decently, as long as I go super slowly, and read and write OK, but I can't catch like a single thing other people say to me. And for some reason, even when I do understand, people think I didn't and translate into English. (This mostly applies to the other teachers at my school, of course.)

Anyway... this has been my first week. Does anyone know how to chase lizards out of one's ceiling?

I was supposed to be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer this past Wednesday, and go to my site (and finally see where I'll be living and working for the next 2 years) this past Thursday.

Instead, I am sitting here in the city, in... a very nice hotel, actually. You can tell from the way I have wireless internet, see.

I actually feel pretty bad about that bit as well. I mean, the hotel is nice, but that makes me feel even worse, because Peace Corps could be spending its money in such better ways, but instead they're stuck spending it on me. They don't normally put Peace Corps people here, but (a) I couldn't handle stairs so I needed a hotel that had rooms on the bottom floor, and (b) I had to be near to the physical therapist and to headquarters.

So you might have caught on that I've been injured.

Well, I don't know if "injured" is the right word. I don't have any idea what I did that caused the back pain, but man, was it awful. I couldn't really walk for a lot of the week-- I could for short periods of time with shuffling steps, but I never knew when my back would just rebel and I'd be standing there, unable to take an other step.

Last Monday was really horrible, actually. That's when it started. So then I was lying in the infirmary, all alone, terrified because I couldn't walk and convinced that Peace Corps would send me back to the US. Then some of the staff came and said it was time to go home (to my Tanzanian family I mean). They had me sit up on the bed (which was, at that time, VERY painful), picked up my purse and then put it down on the other side of the room, and told me that they'd be back in five minutes. Then, they didn't come back. Not even to tell me that it'd be another couple of hours, or even to tell me I could lie down again.

I ended up having to sort of fall out of the bed and crawl across the room to go to the bathroom, and then crawl to where they put my purse (which had my phone in it) in order to, still sprawled on the floor, call people to figure out what was going on.

It was truly miserable.

Eventually, after a couple hours, I made some calls and finally got people to come and help me home.

On the other hand, the staff driver who drove me to the city (3 hours away; everyone was going, not just me, but I was in a separate car) was *wonderful*. He heard me squeak in pain once when he went over bumps, and after that, without my having to say anything, he went super slowly whenever there were bumps of any kind-- even though sometimes some of the other cars honked at him. I was so grateful-- that car ride could have been torturous, but instead it wasn't bad.

So now I'm in physical therapy. I really started feeling better Friday, and now I can pretty much do most regular activities with, well, there's still a little bit of pain, but it's manageable. The only things I can't really do now are leaning over and lifting heavy things.

They're moving me out of the nice hotel today (it was supposed to be tomorrow, but I really don't want Peace Corps to spend the money here when there are SUCH better places it could go), and will move to one with stairs and without room service. I'm REALLY hoping that I'll be able to go to my site sometime this coming week, though. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Habari za leo?

Well, considering that training is almost over now, I figure I should tell you a little bit of what Peace Corps Training was like.

I live in a home with my Tanzanian family. I've got a Bibi (grandmother) and a host brother and-- sorta-sister, sorta-aunt? She's two years younger than me, but she's my Bibi's daughter. (She also has the same name as my American aunt: Joyce. Weird, huh?)

Anyway, my Bibi is pretty awesome. A couple of weeks ago she won an election, and now she's the Women's Rights council member for our ward. She's basically fluent in English, so we have to try pretty hard to only speak Swahili (Trainees aren't supposed to speak any English at all in home stay). She used to be a primary school teacher, but she's retired and now has a little duka (shop) in front of my house where she sells all sorts of useful little odds and ends.

As I think I've mentioned, our house has electricity (though it's out at least a few nights a week). We've only had running water once. My host family used the opportunity to stock up on water, but the only way it affected me was that the shower started dripping during my bucket bath. I tried to turn the knob (didn't care if I was turning it on or off, I just didn't want it dripping on me). But the knob came off in my hand and water started spraying at me horizontally from the spot where the knob used to be. So, overall, I was pretty content when I found out last week that the house where I'll be living for the next two years will have electricity, but won't have indoor plumbing. But more on that soon.

We had class all day, Monday-Thursday and Saturday, at our CBT (Community-Based Training). It's a secondary school, so for the last three weeks we also taught our subject there; but mostly, it was lots and lots of Swahili training. Then on Fridays, all the trainees meet up for training in Tanzanian culture, safety/security, teaching techniques, health issues, and so on. Then on Sunday we get a "day off," which generally involves doing chores.

My school was a 30-40 minute walk from my house, so most days I biked to school, exchanging greetings with locals as I passed.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, we recently found out where we're headed to for the next two years. My site is basically the opposite of what I requested, so in other words, exactly what we've all come to expect from Peace Corps. ;) (Okay, seriously now, I'm sure I don't even know enough about any of the regions to have any clue where I'll be happiest and most well-adjusted. It's just funny because at every single point in this process, Peace Corps gave me exactly what I said I didn't want. But that led me to Tanzania, which is awesome, so I'm fairly happy to just lean back and let these things happen.)

I'm not allowed to say publicly where I'm going-- though there's a very interested, largely undocumented UNESCO site I'd like to, well, document photographically, so I don't know how that will work in regards to this secret-location thing. Eh, there'll be plenty of time to figure that out.

What I think I can tell you is that I'm in an actual town, so I'll be right by an internet cafe. Thus I'll be able to update a lot; probably more than I have been now, as training is hella busy and you have to go downtown to get to internet. I've been so exhausted from every day and my brain is rebelling from too much Swahili jammed in there. (I get internet on my phone so you can email me, but I'm not good at typing on a normal phone pad yet, so I rarely respond, lol.)

So now, we've all gone to stay with a current volunteer. This way we get a taste of how Volunteers live, what it's like, etc. Right now we're in a fairly big city; we're going to the village today, and staying there for a few days. I'll try to let you know how that goes in my next post!

Until next time!

Kwa Heri!

Well, I've been in Peace Corps for a month now, and Tanzania almost that long. I'm only just starting to get a feel for the culture, but that's okay, I have a long time I can learn. :)

My homestay house is much snazzier than I'd expected. I didn't think I'd have electricity, but in fact not only do they have electricity, but also a television, and satellite TV. (No, it doesn't get American channels. But STILL.) There's no running water, but I think that's just because it's the dry season.

I've been learning lots of Swahili, and this week I started teaching math at my CBT (Community-Based Training) school.

I'm sure there's tons of interesting things I could mention-- I'll have to start jotting down the funny/bizarre things that happen so that next time I'm at the internet cafe, I'll have a list right there to jog my memory.

Oh, you should know: I have internet on my phone! I know, wild, right? I didn't have that in Korea or America. It's very cheap here, and by the information sent through, not by minutes or whatever. So if you email me, I'll receive it! I can answer too, but generally short answers, as I have to type them into a regular keypad-- I don't have a super fancy phone, the cheapest kind that can get internet actually.

Also, since Tanzania is south of the border (barely), I arrived right at the beginning of spring, and it's steadily getting hotter. Man! I can't wait for the rainy season to start, because it's very dry now, and I've just been parched all the time.

Well, this was probably not as informative and interesting a blog entry as I could've written, but I figured I should put up something. I promise to try to be wittier next time and to write down the anecdotes I want to remember!

Well, one week from now, I will have registered at Peace Corps Staging. (Registration is 1:30 PM, Monday, September 21st.) I'll be at the hotel with all the other new Trainees.

It'll feel a little silly, almost, since Staging will take place in the city I've been staying for the past two weeks, in the city where my parents live, in the city in whose suburbs I was raised. The hotel we'll be in is right down the street from where my dad works. We were even considering grabbing dinner downtown that evening-- Orientation is 3-7 according to my Reporting Instructions, and it doesn't mention any activities after 7 pm. But ultimately, we decided not to meet up-- once I've registered at Staging, I should stay there, get to know the other PCVs who will be with me in Tanzania, and so on. It makes sense, but I'll feel a little guilty that I've already said goodbye when my parents are actually still in the same city.

One week.

Considering my circumstances (you all remember, or if you don't you can check my recent archives, how my passport was stolen in Shanghai, I had to go through all this red tape to be allowed to leave China, then I had all this stuff to wrap up in Korea, and only have 3 weeks in America total before I leave again?), I haven't procrastinated that much. I've been going around, buying stuff I'll need, packing stuff, getting things together. Learning Swahili on the Rosetta Stone they sent me. There's a lot to do this week, to finish everything up, but I don't feel particularly behind or anything.

I'm meeting with a Brownie Girl Scout troop tomorrow. Trying to come up with cool cultural exchange things for them to do. Hopefully the leaders will have some good ideas in mind, being in possession of the Badge Book and all of that. Still, I'm having trouble coming up with coherent things to say to them. Peace Corps is just so unpredictable that I have no idea what sort of projects might end up making sense to do with the girls, so it's hard to plan in advance. Well, maybe that's what I should say to the leaders.

One week. Wow.

So yeah. Packing. Studying Swahili (still 4 and a half hours from the required time amount). Picking up some last minute things. Waiting for my solar panel to come in the mail. Still need to get my hair cut.

Trying to figure out whether I should just bring my Durabook with me to Peace Corps, buy a netbook and bring BOTH, or buy a netbook and only bring the netbook. There are lots of pros and cons and all that. I know I can only bring things to Tanzania that I accept may be stolen. The Durabook is more expensive, but I've already had it for a year, so it has a lot of my files on it-- files I may want in Tanzania, especially of the media variety. It takes up more power, though, so it will last less time on the same amount of charge as a netbook. And the only internet I'll have will be in regional capitols and larger towns/cities, which means that I'll probably be bringing my computer with me whenever I go to banking town, so for that smaller is better. Aaargh! Decisions.

One week!

Blog

8/17/2009

The receptionist at the youth hostel stopped me as I entered the lobby. (Insofar, anyway, as youth hostels have receptionists or lobbies.)

"I called the doctor*," she told me. She was a very nice Chinese lady whose English was only so-so, but she made up for it with friendliness and an earnest (and often very patient) desire to help. "He say, if you have symptom 6 days, you need transfusion."

"A transfusion," I repeated, in disbelief. "I need a transfusion? For diarrhea?"

She nods, earnestly.

"Um," I reply. "I think that's maybe the wrong word."

I try to mime to her-- as I've mentioned before, I've become an excellent mime, though in this case it's mixed with English as well-- that a transfusion consists of sticking a needle into someone, removing their blood, and putting someone else's blood into them. She probably didn't quite understand the specifics of the procedure I was acting out, but she seemed to understand that I thought it was an awfully drastic measure.

"Oh. No, then," she said. But then she mimed the same gesture as I did before, with putting a needle into someone's arm. "But needle, yes. Stick with needle."

"Oh, an IV. He thinks I need an IV."

This at least made some sense. The doctor thought I was dehydrated. This would probably have been a legitimate concern, were I not possibly one of the best-hydrated people in the world when my health is normal.** Though I was not currently at my most hydrated, I had taken great pains to not only drink tons of water, but drink tons of electrolytes as well, not to mention checking myself for any other symptoms.

"No IV," I tell her, and pick up the shopping bag I'd dropped to the floor in response to the word "transfusion." I pull out the two monster bottles of Gatorade I'd bought a few minutes before and mimed gulping them down. "I drink this. Lots and lots. No IV. I just want antibiotics."

We'd been over this. I'd been asking for antibiotics for days, but something just didn't translate for some reason, which baffled me. The receptionists at the hostel didn't know what they were and didn't seen to be able to find the translation online. The nurses behind the counter at the pharmacy didn't seem to understand what they were. I just didn't get it. Wasn't this likely to be one of the most-asked for medications as far as foreigners in China go? How could I be the first Westerner with diarrhea (or, for that matter, any sort of bacterial infection) in China who wanted antibiotics (at least as far as all the people I'd spoken to were concerned)? I'd have thought that would be one of the first words they'd teach you in tourism school, but apparently not.

I took the pen and post-it note she had in front of her that had the words, both in Chinese and English, "Diarrhea" and "Transfusion" on it. I wrote, again, "Antibiotics (penicillin)." I handed it back to her; she smiled, and said she'd try to figure out what it meant. I trudged back up the stairs to my room.

*Have I mentioned that through this whole thing with the stolen purse and the bureaucratic nightmare, I've had really bad diarrhea? No? Well, I have. Apparently it's not technically "Traveller's Diarrhea" because I don't any other symptoms like headache or nausea (thank GOD), but it's been here a long time and isn't going away, nonetheless. It's been very annoying, and I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to obtain antibiotics.

**I drink a shitload of water. Sometimes when I'm on a long journey, by train or whatever, I try to limit how much water I drink. Anything less than 4 liters a day drives me insane. I drink, in fact, so much water that doctors have cautioned me that I might unbalance my electrolytes, and so I have even when in perfect health taken up the habit of making my every third bottle of water an ion drink of some kind. To most Westerners' disgust, I drank about a liter of Pocari Sweat a day in Korea. Yes, it's called "Sweat", but it's like Gatorade without being as sweet and with, I think anyway (it's hard for me to be 100% positive about labels in Korean), fewer calories.

Blog

8/15/2009

Well, my purse was stolen yesterday.

It was my fault. It was totally my fault. I had my backpack on my back. I'd been trying to be so careful all trip, keeping my backpack on my front or by my side, but just then, it was on my back.

I felt a gentle tug, turned around, and found that my purse was missing. I didn't even see anyone running away with it, although several witnesses saw three men, and the witnesses pointed my mom and I in the right direction. We ran two blocks, but never spotted them. My mom dug out her little translation pamphlet and yelled "Police, police!" so some Chinese girls called the police on their phones. A couple of them hung around to translate for us. We were creating quite a spectacle, but I didn't even really notice. I was REALLY torn up about losing my purse. Here is what was in my purse:

-my PASSPORT

-my American debit card

-my Korean bank card

-my IPOD

-my driver's license

-my Korean Alien Registration Card (without this I can't get my pension, worth over $1000)

-all other forms of ID I have

-jewelry I bought for Katie

-some other things too. About 650 yuan--a little less than $100. I care about that a lot less than most of the rest of it.

So. Yeah. Very not good.

We went to the police station, wrote down the report of what happened twice, drove to the scene, had some witnesses confirm that, yes, three men opened my bag and ran away with my purse. The police don't seem like they're acting like they're expecting to find the purse again. Lovely.

We called and canceled my American debit card. Luckily no activity has been seen on that. Can't figure out yet how to cancel my Korean card. And it's Saturday now which will make it harder.

We were planning to leave China tomorrow. My mom to America, me to Korea for 5 days then America. Without my passport (and, subsequently, without my Chinese visa as well), that's not happening.

The information on the US Consulate website is not encouraging. Can't go in without an appointment, can't see them without a report from the exit-entry bureau on the theft (apparently just the local police report doesn't count). We went to the exit-entry bureau today, they say the report won't be ready until Tuesday. Can't get an appointment with the Consulate until Wednesday. Website says that, barring life or death emergency, it can take 10-15 days for a new passport to be issued.

So... that could actually prevent me from going to Peace Corps.

Well, I'm going to take my Peace Corps invitation letter to that appointment. Hopefully that'll have some sway for them to expedite the process-- I want to get this passport and get to America so that I can SERVE our country, damnit!

I really hope I'm not stuck in China for weeks and weeks. I really want to do Tanzania. Brett says he'll make sure the school in Korea doesn't throw out my stuff. Worst comes to worst I'll tell him which stuff to grab (important papers and items and medications) and I don't care that much if they throw out the rest. I'm lucky he's so willing to help out.

I am kind of a mess. Especially last night after everything was done with the police, I just curled up in bed and cried.

9/2/2009 NOTE: Don't worry, I'm back in America, everything worked out. I even managed to get my pension.

Blog

8/06/2009

Mom and I went to see the Great Wall of China! In fact, we not only saw it, but hiked five miles of it!

This was... I'd say about as easy as it sounds, but I'm not sure how easy you think it sounds. It was in the blazing sun, and oh my god, are there a ton of steps on that thing or WHAT. We went through 26 watchtowers. We hiked from Jin Shan Ling to Si Ma Tai, which is considered a less-touristy part of the Great Wall (that still has tour groups from hostels going there). We could definitely see why; parts of it were in disrepair, falling apart, and so on. I didn't mind, though, because that certainly made it more authentic. The views from either side were AMAZING, too. I imagine that once I post this on my blog, here is where I will put the pictures that my mother and I took.

Once we got farther along from the Jin Shan Ling side and towards the Si Ma Tai side, there were lots of work crews there, replacing crumbling stones and stairs and whatnot. So I guess in a few years, this are of the Great Wall will be fixed up as well, so that it too can be overloaded with massive amounts of tourists. While there were a lot of tourists here, it wasn't like packed or anything. We could hike the thing without feeling claustrophobic or anything, sometimes we couldn't really see many people around.

Though I mostly liked the disrepair, one part was pretty terrifying! Look what I had to navigate:

You maybe can't quite tell, but you can't just jump *down* from there-- you have to sort of jump to the side. If you go to the wrong side, you could very easily slip, fall, and die. At least, that's what my mom had to say. But what's life without a little adventure? I jumped face forward, with a Chinese lady grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the side I needed to go. I banged my knee, but it was just a surface bruise, it didn't hurt as I walked. My mom couldn't look down as she went, so she went backwards, legs (and backside) first. The Chinese lady, old and tiny though she was, somehow managed to heave my mom to the side, too. There was a lot of strength in that little body! I wish I'd gotten a picture, but alas.

This lady had a pretty clever setup, truth to tell. See, there are people (mostly women) selling things all along the Great Wall. Some souvenirs, fans and t-shirts and knick-nacks, and also some very useful things (like cold water [we always checked to make sure it was sealed], Coca-cola, etc).

Anyway, mostly these salesladies just have to compete with each other as you pass. This one, however, very cleverly set up her station right after that jump. So she helped you out and you're really grateful to her because, while you PROBABLY would have lived without her help, your chances of being very harmed would have been greatly increased. So when she-- a bit less pushily than the other salesladies-- offers you things to buy-- well, you want to. She helped you out, dude. Buying a t-shirt-- especially when the price doesn't seem inflated compared to the other ladies-- kind of seems like the least you can do.

So yes, this was a very clever lady (and also, as I said, a deceptively strong one, physically speaking). Which is how I ended up with my "I Climbed the Great Wall" t-shirt!

(Most of the pictures of me were taken on my mom's camera. I'll add one of the t-shirt, soon, I promise!)

It's actually very comfy-- certainly feels like cotton-- and is miraculously good at not absorbing smells. And reminds me of my adrenaline-rushing jump every time I see it. All in all, definitely a good purchase.

So, back to the fact that it's a five mile hike. In the burning sun. China, especially that area, is HOT in the summer. Plus, we started our hike around 11 am, and were told that we had to be at the end point by 2:30 pm for the van to take us home-- a many-hour drive to Beijing, incidentally. For the latter half of the trip, my mom and I took them at their word, and were convinced we weren't going to make it. How were we ever going to make it back to Beijing? We pushed ourselves faster up those stairs. So, so many stairs.

But then you get to the bridge, across the lake, and you know that's close to the end. One more watchtower. We've done it... right?

Except that you're only at the 28th watchtower. There are two more. So you stagger into the second to last one, sit down for a moment, stagger out again, and then...

The stairs.

Oh, those stairs. Those long, those steep, those unexpected and arduous stairs.

How can I possibly express the despair, the hopelessness, the disbelief upon seeing that to finish, we had to go up THOSE STAIRS?

I really wish that I took a picture from the bottom of those stairs, looking up. That might capture some of the essence. Alas, the best I have is a picture from afar, from across the lake, before we knew that it was, in fact, not the tower at the bottom we had to reach, but the one half-way up:

By this time it was, like, 2:15. My mom didn't think she could do it, so I said I'd climb the stairs and try to race to the van to tell them to wait, not to take off without her.

I crawled up those stairs. I couldn't climb them like a human being, I had to go on all fours, like an animal. But I got up them.

And at the end was a zip line! That was fun. Wish I could've gotten a picture, but since my mom wasn't with me, the mechanics didn't work out. Anyway, I put on the harness, they strapped me to a wire, and I slid across the lake and down to the bottom.

This was supposed to be the fastest way to get down. Easy for me to do, since I have no problem with heights*. Not, however, something that my mother would do. It would have been the fastest way to get to the van, except that just as I got to the bottom, the boat to take us across the lake was pulling away. There was only one boat, so I had to wait the full 15 minutes for it to come back.

My mother, who, having rested 10 minutes in the 29th tower slowly climbed the stairs and then, very sensibly, walked down the mountain to the van... actually arrived before me.

Whoops.

And of course, as we should have realized all along but we are too apt to take people at their word, we were far from the last people to arrive. The van waited until everyone was there, at 3 pm, before it left. Apparently last time the trip happened, they waited until 3:30. There was never any danger.

Anyway, tiring as it was, it was definitely a good day. Though I may forever refer to The Great Wall of China as, instead, The World's Biggest Stairmaster.

*There's a family story about a time my family and I visited, I believe, Martha's Vineyard when I was, oh, maybe 4 or 5 years old. We climbed to the top of the lighthouse, and my mom, who has a phobia of heights, was sitting on the floor, clutching the bars, rocking back and forth in terror. I, on the other hand, was eagerly bouncing all around the observation deck** exclaiming, "I want to order a pizza!! Can we order a pizza?!?"***

**which terrified her further, of course.

***luckily, I don't remember the disappointment of realizing that they didn't deliver to the top of lighthouses. I'm sure it was a traumatic realization, however.

Blog

8/05/2009

My plans to blog my trip to China are thwarted by the fact that not only has China blocked Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, they've also blocked Blogspot. I got a computer geek with an SSH to an American computer (despite the fact that he's a Kiwi, go fig) to let me post notes to this effect on Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes I really wish I had some practical skills, so that I could do this SSH thing (or other cool geek get-around-filters things) during the rest of the trip. Well, practical skills besides analytical thinking, but you know what, sometimes that's not actually that practical when you're dealing with people.

Well, they haven't blocked google documents, so I'm still going to jot my thoughts down as we go. I'll hopefully post them (and some awesome pictures!) when I get back somewhere that doesn't try to strangle the Internet.

As my mother and I were wandering through Insa-dong today (a little shopping district in Seoul), we were delighted to see a demonstration of an ancient and revered tradition in Korea:

Street and building construction is a deeply spiritual and illustrious cultural custom here in Korea, so we were fascinated to see it in action right there on the street!

Of course, Insadong is a very touristy part of Seoul-- there's a Tourist Information booth right at the entrance to the street. It has little souvenir shops-- oh, not ones with crappy little plastic replicas or anything (at least, not all of them), not THOSE kinds of souvenirs. It's a genuinely nice place to shop, with lots of little crafts stores and art galleries all over the place, and if you're visiting Seoul it's definitely worth a visit. Nevertheless, it's a tourist spot. So Mom and I have the suspicion that in this particular case, the traditional culture street construction is there more as a novelty for tourists to observe than as a genuine expression of the custom. As you can see, some people even gathered around to cheer them on:

So to be honest we kind of wondering if these were actual laborers, or performers, possibly college students majoring in tourism. But either way we enjoyed the demonstration!

Traditional Cultural Construction has actually had far-reaching effects on the religion, values, and economy of South Korea. The practice here is known as "Reconstructionism" and it has become an important aspect of several sects of Korean Buddhism. Here's how it works:

Through the cities and towns of Korea, several buildings are known as Reconstruction Buildings. Some of these are inconsequential buildings, small homes or stores or whatever, while some are very important, such as city halls, opera halls, pretty much halls of all persuasions. Throughout the year, laborers and carpenters erect these establishments, setting the foundations, construction the frames, and so on, with engineers and craftsmen making sure that they are all built to the highest standards. Ideally it should take exactly one year, though for the smaller projects this is not strictly followed.

Then, right before the building is completed-- say there's one more board that needs to be put in place, or one more nail that needs to be hammered in, or one more stripe to be painted on a tiger demanding persimmons of passing maidens-- the building is destroyed!

There's a great celebration surrounding it. I've heard it's an awesome party, but sadly I haven't had the opportunity to experience it myself. I'd have gotten to if I'd stayed in Korea for the whole year, but alas, that's life.

The building demolition can happen in a variety of ways, depending on the type of building, the particular sect of Buddhist Reconstructionism to which the smashers adhere, and the aims of the ceremonial smashing. (Often prayers and requests from the ancestors are involved, particularly in the old days-- it's much like the sacrificial bull, really. Prayers for a plentiful cabbage harvest are common.) Sometimes dynamite is involved. In the grandest and most elaborate destructions, fireworks double as demolition bombs. They both destroy the building, and create very attractive patterns in the sky above! Apparently it's quite a sight to see, with spectators having no idea which way to look!

But of course it's very hard to set up. The juxtaposition of:

1. dynamite

2. fireworks

3. the flying slabs of wood, stone, and painted tiles, the flying components of ondols, known for regularly lighting palaces on fire even without the assistance of bombs, and, in the case of European-influenced construction, flying flying buttresses

and

4. large amounts of spectators who have often already consumed large amounts of soju

combine to make this otherwise awesome spectacle a public safety nightmare. (Although, shockingly, there has been only one known injury resulting from this method, back in 1873 when a 38-year-old cabbage farmer was hit in the head with a flying phoenix sculpture (ironically on fire) and was knocked out. When he awoke, he was convinced that he was a 23-year-old, prodigiously accomplished musician named Stan. Though he actually had no more musical knowledge or talent than one would expect from a 38-year-old cabbage farmer, he made a very comfortable living as a musician, owing to the fact that Koreans from all over the country wanted to see whether or not he had, during this holy ceremony, miraculously learned to play the gayageum. Apparently word of mouth was not a sufficient deterrent, as he had an audience for the rest of his life.)

Since the dynamite variety is dangerous there are other demolition ceremonies. Almost as much fun (so I've heard) are the versions where everyone just grabs a sledgehammer and goes crazy!

The next day, after all the parties on the rubble (as noted above, lots of soju is involved), everyone clears away the debris, and the process begins anew.

Many palaces have a designated hall specifically for this purpose, so that traditional construction is in progress within palace walls all year round. In some palaces, such as Gyeongbuk Palace, the practice is so revered that it is the Main Hall which serves this purpose. At the National Palace Museum of Korea, we saw scrolls preserved that were lists of all the Construction Managers who worked on the Reconstruction of the Main Hall of Gyeongbuk. It was a very honorable position (obviously, or else it wouldn't be immortalized in such a famous museum!).

The idea behind Buddhist Korean Reconstructionism is, I suppose, that the journey is more important than the destination, and that the work itself should be joyful, rather than for material gain. Tibetan monks practice sandpainting (you may have heard of this practice among Native Americans as well), where they create beautiful, intricate designs with sand, and then wipe them out of existence when they are done. As this practice has migrated its way across China, and then down through North Korea, this has evolved from sandpainting to building and street construction-- but the basic philosophy remains the same.

Buddhist Korean Reconstructionism has also been great for the economy, because people always have jobs! Construction and construction-related jobs are extremely easy to get because it's never ending! Carpenters, building contractors, architects-- it's considered a sign of wealth and class if the buildings have a new design each time you build them--painters, roofers, people who construct tiles, people who refurbish the destroyed buildings so that the materials can be recycled... the list goes on and on, and this is a huge fuel for the economy.

North Korea's destitution is largely considered to be due to the fact that they disavowed Reconstructionism when they became communist.

So, anyone who has been reading this blog knows the story now: I meant to stay in Korea for a year, but because of Peace Corps difficulties and technicalities, I am leaving after only 7 and a half months.

What I haven't mentioned is that during this whole time, I've been in the process of convincing a very good friend of mine to move to Korea. (I won't say her name, just in case things change and she doesn't want her employers to know about this. Let's call her K.)

Since, uh, well, since almost a year ago, when I visited her in DC while I was living in Philly, I've been trying to convince her to move abroad, because she even admitted it's what she probably wants and just wasn't giving into. In my defense, I wasn't devoting all my energies to convincing her to come to Korea, in particular. I mean, once K expressed an interest, whenever I was joking around, I would tell her "Come to Korea!" But really I was pushing a foreign country, any foreign country, and when she was focusing on Greece, or the Czech Republic, I didn't try to steer her away from those and towards Korea; I supported her going anywhere abroad.

But yeah. Ultimately, K settled on Korea, and I'm not just flattering myself that the fact that I lived here was a large factor in that decision; she admitted it readily. Especially considering that she also requested my particular province.

Fast forward to, well, now. When it turns out that if I want to do Peace Corps, it'll be in September, and when K finally gets her job acceptance to EPIK-- in Gangwon-do (my province).

The long and short of it?

She's decided she's probably taking it.

I'm leaving Korea August 21st.

She's coming to Korea around August 17th.

Yeah.

As my (wonderful and wonderfully supportive) supervisor, Sarah, put it: "Wow, you're a bitch."

Whoops!

As we've comforted ourselves: It makes a good story! After all that, K's arriving in Korea the very week I'm leaving.

But still. If she doesn't like Korea, I am going to feel soooooo guilty... (And I'm, technically, Jewish. I know guilt!)

That (the title) means "Hello" in Swahili!

I've officially accepted my Peace Corps invitation! My place in the Tanzania Secondary Education program has been confirmed! Squee!

As you can see, I've changed the layout and format of my blog, and added a picture of Mt Kilimanjaro! Yes, Mount Kilimanjaro is located in Tanzania, to the north! Know what else is in Tanzania? The Serengeti (well, northwestern Tanzania and southwestern Kenya). You know, what's probably the best-known wildlife sanctuary in the world? Where The Lion King took place? (Though it's pretty dangerous to visit, and not just because of the lions and such, but rather because of the tsetse fly. God, I am going to be neurotically terrified that I have African Sleeping Sickness while I'm in Tanzania, I'm sure of it.)

Also, Zanzibar is in Tanzania! In fact, did you know that Tanzania didn't used to be called Tanzania? It was called Tanganyika until it merged with Zanzibar in 1964 and combined the two names to get Tanzania. My mom is sillily (I'm pretending that's a word, deal with it) excited that she'll get to "stand on Zanzibar" (also the title of a favorite book of hers) when she comes to visit me.

Plus, Jane Goodall's chimp research all happened in Tanzania, as well! Very few of you knew me when I was very young, but I used to be obsessed with chimpanzees, after a read a Zoobooks magazine about them. So this piece of information is also exciting to me.

In summation, Tanzania sounds a bit like Quintessential Africa, at least while I'm viewing it from afar. Who knows what it'll be like up close, but I can't wait to find out!

There have been some complications with my documentation, mostly because I'm living in a small town in a foreign country right now, far away from the embassy, and also because I don't currently have my passport (I had to give it to my travel agent so I could get my Chinese visa). But the Peace Corps office has been pretty good about helping me out and extending deadlines and stuff to make sure it can all get done. Right now, unless my passport gets held up and doesn't arrive in the mail early next week, it should be okay. I'm just going to keep doing whatever I can to make things happen! And if something COMPLETELY unavoidable happens (and I do mean COMPLETELY unavoidable... I'll even skip my trip to China if necessary to make Peace Corps happen), then I'll just try as hard as I can to get a second invitation as an "extraordinary" circumstance. Of course, I've started to get my heart set on Tanzania, but any Peace Corps is better than no Peace Corps.

When I woke up this morning, my free Peace Corps online subscription to Rosetta Stone: Swahili was there!! I have to complete 40 hours before staging. I've already done 37 minutes this morning before work (plus 15 minutes on the phone with customer support first since it said I needed a plug-in that wouldn't install). Watch out Swahili, Mel's learning ya!

I'm also trying to convince all my friends to visit me in Africa! One friend is trying to make it happen already, but I want tons of visits! Barring that, let me know when/where we can meet while I'm in America from August 21-September 21. I miss you!

I went to Seoul today just for a few hours, just to hand my passport and money to a travel agent so that I can get my visa for China. (My mother and I are going to China together August 3rd-August 16th.) They told me that I should get my passport in the mail by next Tuesday, so that's cool.

Actually, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. In order for the next bit to make sense, I'll have to fill you in on what's been going on in my life for the past couple of weeks.

I was medically cleared by Peace Corps in early June. I told them then that I didn't want to enter Peace Corps until February 2010, and I expected this to be just fine. Well, I get on the phone with my Placement Officer, and no, that is actually not fine. My application is no longer active starting April 2010, and all of the education programs leave June-September. All those nice February-leaving programs are non-education.

So I gotta go in September.

I got notice on Monday that my invitation packet was in the mail, for Math Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (but that was the extent of my knowledge). On the strength of that bit of info, I gave my one month's notice at school. And proceeded to go CRAZY waiting for my invitation packet to arrive so that I'd know where I was headed in two months!

So I got home from Seoul this afternoon, and my heart fell to see that there was nothing in my mailbox. Then I went up to my apartment and discovered my package waiting inside!!! I was too excited to even be annoyed at my landlady for going into my apartment when I wasn't there. (As this problem will not go away in Peace Corps, I am learning to deal with it.)

So, here's the news:

I'm going to Tanzania, as a Secondary School Mathematics Teacher!! Staging is September 21st, and we get to Tanzania September 23rd!

I'm very happy with this placement. Tanzania is supposed to be an amazing place-- it's Eastern Africa, directly south of Kenya. I'm going to learn Kiswahili! That will certainly be a useful language to know, especially if I work for the UN or a human rights NGO. It got very high scores for volunteer survey about how personally rewarding the experience was. I've also been reading some blogs of Tanzania volunteers, and it sounds like they're having some insane but very, well, amazing times.

So here is my schedule for the next couple of months:

July 28th: My mom arrives in Korea.

August 3rd: She and I go to China together*.

August 16th: We leave China. She returns to Philadelphia, I go back to Korea.

August 21st: I leave Korea and go to Philadelphia.

September 21st: I go to Peace Corps staging (also in Philadelphia, I'm pretty sure).

September 23rd: Get on the plane to Tanzania!

So this is going to be a little bit crazy! I'm very glad I'll have a whole month to just chill with my parents (and prepare for Peace Corps, of course!). I'm going to be darting all over the world in the next couple of months, aren't I? A breather will be very welcome.

I am just so excited! I am a Peace Corps Invitee! Woooooo!

*Mom and I planned the China trip well before I had any inkling I would be leaving Korea early. So we thought that after this trip, I wouldn't see her again for six months. As it happens, I will see her again five days after she leaves.

I think this speaks for itself?

Taken at the beach in Gangneung. Korea has some beautiful beaches, but almost all of them are also military zones, especially in the Gangwon-do province, which is in northern South Korea. At least this beach didn't have barbed wire fences!

...has bitten me. Hard.

(Yes, that is my real passport. Yes, the white spots are mold. I spent monsoon season in Thailand in 2006, give me a break!)

I mean, I've been planning to do an RTW for a long time. Ever since I did my backpacking trip through Europe almost 4 years ago. But at this point, I'd been thinking it would happen years in the future; I have to finish my time in Korea first, and then there would be 2 years in Peace Corps. I was thinking that maybe, instead of going all around the world in a year or two, I could circumnavigate the globe in more like 7 or 8 years, taking teaching jobs for a year in different countries on different continents.

This still isn't a bad idea, but... once Kat and I started talking about it, I really want to do the full, backpack-on-my-back, sleeping in hostels or couchsurfing (or in train stations), each-week-in-a-different-city Round the World Trip.

If my dreams come true and Peace Corps medically clears me next month, then it will be almost three years before I can seriously consider this trip.

I don't want it just to be something I yearn for my whole life... I want it to happen.

I'm putting it down in my Life Plan. In ink, not pencil.

Winter 2009-Winter 2010: Teaching in Korea

Winter/Spring 2010-Spring 2012: Peace Corps

Spring 2012: Begin RTW!

Sound good, Kat?

If the international aid thing doesn't work out (and if the interstellar diplomacy thing doesn't either), then at least my time in Korea is excellent for preparing me to make my living as a mime.

And in casual life, I shall rock at charades.

I've gotten quite adept at expressing to salesmen in local stores exactly what I want without using a single spoken word. (Though, I'm pretty sure that one thing I want-- soap for my floor-- doesn't actually exist in Korea.) I just walk into a store and start gesturing, and most of the time, they take me to exactly what I need.

So when I walked into the kitchen supply store, and I rounded my arms like a huge bowl, then made mixing motions...

...the woman behind the counter asked "Mixing bowl?" and I nearly fell over.

It was such an extreme revelation that the person behind the counter actually knew the word in English of what I was looking for (and, as an aside, honestly: why should they?). I was giddy, like, "Yes! Yes! Mixing bowl! Yes!" and was in general waaaaaay too enthusiastic. It kind of made my evening.

I suppose when your evening is made happy by the fact that a store clerk knew what a "mixing bowl" is, you are truly learning to appreciate the small pleasures of life.

Short story written at the request and prompt of Kat.

Danielle didn't tell anybody before she left, because after all, she was trying to disappear. And it's not very well a disappearance if everybody already knows, now, is it?

When the idea had first occurred to her, she'd wanted to take off now, now, now. But then she'd probably have to just come back after a month or two, because she hadn't planned; and returning from a mysterious disappearance after anything less than a year behind her seemed a bitter defeat, slinking back with her tail between her legs. No, this was going to be a triumph, and for that she had to plan. No, to scheme.

Soon the wait had become fun, because she was keeping this delicious secret, adding all the time to her strategy. First she decided, in order to get to that all-important one year mark, to get a job, so she did not find herself running out of funds. Of course, moving to another country just to start more monotonous work wasn't quite the idea, even if doing so when nobody knew you were leaving and nobody knew where you were did have a certain charm to it. But mostly it was a start, a warm-up, and it was insurance.

She'd taken almost a full year to work everything out. She wasn't sure how she felt about this. On the one hand, it took away much of the whimsy, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants spontaneity.

On the other hand, she'd kept the secret all that time, letting on to nobody, not to her brother, not to her best friend, that she would soon dissolve into thin air.

And now she was boarding the plane.

.

Four weeks ago she'd taken a little trip to the airport and bought a ticket with cash. At 10 o'clock that morning, her lease had been up, though nobody else knew it besides her landlord, as they'd all assumed she'd renewed. And thirty minutes ago, as she sat in the terminal waiting for the plane to come, munching on the McDonald's which she bought only when she was in an airport, but every single time that happened, she sent an email to everybody in her address book:

Hi everyone.

I'm safe. I'm just taking off for a while. Don't worry about me.

I'll see you when I see you!

--Danielle

It would satisfy nobody, but nonetheless they would not be panicky. She'd have rather not tell anybody she was leaving, but she also didn't want anybody to worry too much, so she had to strike some sort of compromise between the two.

And now, she was standing in line, waiting for her seat (section B, row 37) to be called over the loudspeaker.

Excitement welled up within her. It was happening! She had been planning this moment for nearly a year, and finally, finally it was here!

It took most of her willpower to keep herself from skipping to her seat when it was called.

She had a window seat, which she loved. She stowed her backpack (filled with everything she would need; she had a suitcase in checked luggage as well, but it held nothing essential, for she knew eventually she would be leaving it behind, somewhere or other) in the overhead compartment, and sat back in her seat, watching everybody else file in and get situated.

"I'm free," she whispered, and in that moment she truly felt it. Years of anxiety, of expectations, of monotony and domestication, felt as though they were just falling away from her, and she was shedding the weight of her stressful life and all that was left, as she lifted into the air, was herself, pure and unburdened.

The plane lifted, and her heart lifted, and the way she felt, she was not inside of a man-made metal contraption, able to fly through the application of science and engineering.

No, she had been so filled with joy that the buoyancy lifted her right into the air, and twirling and laughing in sheer exhilaration, she was now dancing her way across the sky.

A couple of weeks ago, I was given a camera, and was set the task of taking pictures of the Bong-Rae English Experience Center (which is where I work) for our brochure. BREEC, as we call it, is still very new-- just opened up December 2008-- and our hope is that in the future other elementary schools in the Yeongwol area will send their students to our facility for a one or two day intensive.

So I thought, who knows, maybe some of you out there are interested to see where an English teacher in Korea is working. Maybe even some of you would get a kick out of seeing where I work. So I decided to post a few of the pictures for you!

First, the outside of the building (inside which, in fact, I am at this very moment):

Come up the stairs:

To our front door!

Inside, we've got a lot of goodies for visiting students (and for the students at Bong-Rae elementary, for that matter). First there's the library:

Then we've got tons of stations where students can, in essence, play make-believe in English. We give them dialogues, and they pretend to be doing many different everyday things, in semi-realistic surroundings. This could be, for instance, a hospital:

Or maybe airport security:

A produce store:

Or a hotel:

There are plenty of other stations, as well. We hand out realistic-looking passports (for the Republic of BREEC) to each class who comes through, which come complete with suggested dialogue. Once a student completes the dialogue (or, for younger grades, a simplified version) in the mock-up, we give them a stamp on that page of their passport.

Next is the Multimedia Room, where students can be on big-screen TV, and actually, by waving their hands around in the air, interact with the things on the screen!

I can't figure out how to convert the format of those pictures (which I didn't take, as they involve students actually interacting with the system). If there is any interest whatsoever expressed, I'll try harder to post some of these. :)

And there you have it: the workplace of a foreign English teacher at a small English Experience Center in rural Korea. I'm in Gangwon-do, the least developed province of South Korea... imagine how snazzy these places must be in other areas!

I didn't get to do much this weekend, as I've been sick. Mostly just resting and cleaning my apartment (it's actually presentable now! Yay!). But last weekend I took the train to Gangneung, a city on the shores of the Sea of Japan, or as it is known in South Korea, the East Sea. The train ride is 3 1/2 hours long but oh, so scenic; the train ride itself was an adventure, a joy, as opposed to something you just try to get through. I took some shots out the window:

I was in Gangneung partially for the Cherry Blossom Festival, and partially to visit a friend of mine, Carolyn, who I met at Orientation. The cherry blossoms, while not yet fully in blossom, were nonetheless breathtaking.

There was one road we walked around, it's quite famous, both sides are lined with cherry trees. Apparently people come from all over to see that street, and I was no different.

As well as seeing the cherry blossoms, there were plenty of other festivities. Plus, of course, there was a beach. It was only about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so we didn't get into the sea deeper than our ankles (and even that was so cold that it made my feet ache!). Still, relaxing on the beach with friends was a welcome chance from isolated, mountainous Yeongwol.

Then we went out clubbing-- Western alcohol! Rum and coke! Vodka and cranberry! You have no idea what this means to me. Soju, the liquor of choice in Korea, is vile. Disgusting. But it's the only thing available in Yeongwol. That, and bad beer, and if you go to the supermarket, inexplicably, 15 different kinds of Scotch. (However, you can't get the scotch at the bar.) Meeting people from Western countries whom I don't know is getting to be quite a thrill for me. In Yeongwol, if I see a Westerner I know him or her. Period. So meeting some new native English speakers was quite nice.

We also got to see a few Korean pop concerts, which was an adventure in itself. If I tell you about that, though, it would merit its own blog post. Well, we'll see. :)

Today I went to a Buddhist temple, or rather a temple complex, because there wasn't just one, there were tons of them, all over the place. It was labyrinthine paths and Escher-esque staircases nestled into the mountains, going up, up, up.

Each section seemed like the whole, because you couldn't see anything else but the buildings towering above you almost as much as the mountains were. But then you glimpse this little hidden staircase and keep climbing and discover yet another level of the complex, brightly painted temples and footbridges all around.

Next you find a little courtyard balcony: it's below everything yet to come, but offers a view from above of everything through which you've just walked. So you look back, and discover that hidden staircase was one of many, a myriad of winding routes all leading to the same place... eventually.

Words truly cannot describe what it felt like, or the aching beauty of it.

You're in a small underground bar in Insadong, Seoul, South Korea. Throbbing music pulsates so forcefully that it replaces your heartbeat. Hooka smoke fills the air, lit bright blue by the floor lights. And you sip a mixed drink, savoring the taste and the buzz in this lush atmosphere. Lean back and chill with some friends-- it's hard to find a feeling like this one.

This past weekend I visited the DMZ-- that is, the demilitarized zone, the two kilometers on either side of the border between North and South Korea. The videos they showed and the signs giving information were talking about how relations were getting better and better between North and South Korea... obviously they were all made before the past few months!!

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of any of the cool stuff, I guess because they're afraid of spies or something? Who knows. But I did get to see the border itself; you could see the South Korean flag flying on one side, and the North Korean flag on the other. (To tell exactly which flags they were you'd have to view it through those coin-operated binoculars, but I could definitely see each of the flagpoles with my naked eye.) Also, North Korea built these villages with very affluent-looking houses right on their side of the border. The idea is to make it seem like conditions in North Korea are good, but they're *very* obviously fake. We also toured these tunnels that the North Koreans dug between North and South Korea, in an attempt to invade Seoul directly. The North Koreans claim that they were mining coal, and even painted (yes, *painted*) the ceiling and walls of the tunnels black. However, it is clearly rock painted black, and not coal, so we are pretty confident it was actually an intended invasion tool.

I probably shouldn't do much more traveling this month, though, as the trip to Seoul and the DMZ pretty much wiped me out. I need to start saving some money!

Last night I ate dinner and watched baseball with Brett and the Korean teachers; it was very fun. The game was Korea versus Japan, and I imagine it must be quite a grudge match-- the Koreans *hate* the Japanese (considering the Japanese occupied them for decades in the early 20th century, can you really blame them?). I explained the rules of baseball to Brett-- did you know there's this big worldwide baseball tournament going on right now, World Cup-style? Because I sure didn't, although apparently America's participating too.

I tried to explain to Koreans how patriotic we get about baseball-- you know, the whole "As American as baseball and apple pie" thing. It was hard to express using very simple language; the closest I got was to say it was like kimchee for Koreans. This isn't quite true, but the Koreans were for some reason *very* impressed with this explanation. Mr. Gim was also impressed (or something) with my cheering for the game. He called me a "passionable" woman. (Okay.)

It was actually a rather boring game-- there was only one run the whole game, and it came right at the beginning. But KOREA WON!!! YAAY!!

So, Koreans and Americans (or people from any English-speaking country as far as I know) answer negative questions differently. Specifically, Koreans answer them logically, while we answer them illogically. So if you say "Don't you want to go to the movies?" and you did, then you would say "Yes," right? But Koreans say "No." Technically Koreans are right-- No, I don't not want to go to the movies. But it makes for a lot of misunderstandings-- if you think how often we ask negative questions, there is a lot of the time that a person is actually answering exactly the opposite of what it sounds like. Last night, this general source of confusion led to the other teachers believing that I have a secret husband. ("You are not married?" "No." *look of shock* "WHAT?!") I fear this may become a running joke.

There's another cultural difference, and this one I just discovered last night: Koreans make a habit of feeding their friends (particularly after they've taken a big gulp of alcohol). Like, Mr. Gim picked up a strawberry, and after I took a sip of beer, fed it to me. Luckily I'd been prepared for this a few minutes earlier when Brett fed Mrs. Song a strawberry. This is a completely friendly thing to them, with no implication of romantic interest or the like.

It's strange that something so intimate in one culture is so commonplace in another, isn't it?

Last weekend was EPIK Orientation. Even though I'd been here a month and a half, they still wanted me to go. It was fun-- got to meet some English teachers from other parts of Gangwon-do Province, and we got to visit Mt. Seorak National Park. The view was breathtaking:

So, in the seven weeks since I've moved to Korea, I've gotten several emails/messages from people asking for advice on how to go about getting a teaching job abroad. The economy's tanking and people are nervous about the state of the world, but the ability to speak English fluently is still a very, VERY valuable skill in the global market.

I'm considering forming a web site or something, to help people get teaching jobs (or any jobs, really) in a foreign country. It seems a bit presumptuous to me, given that I've only done it twice, once for a couple of months (and that was unpaid) and now this one, but... I just seem to enjoy helping people get out here into the rest of the world. I spent a couple hours on the phone with Kat, and I loved thinking of ways to get her to another continent.

I think I know why, too. It occurred to me when Chris said that he could get me a job in Greece and was surprised I hadn't asked him when I was looking into jobs abroad this past fall. And I thought "Oh, wow, I should have done that! I could be in GREECE right now!"

And then I wasn't sure why I thought that. I'm in Korea. That's way more of a different culture, and there's no reason I'd think that a job in Greece was better than a job in Korea. So why am I like "Oh, I should have gone to Greece!"? Because I have such strong wanderlust that, no matter where I am, I'm imagining what it would be like to live somewhere else. Which is not to say that there's no point to my traveling, or that I'd be just as restless in Korea as in Philadelphia. I'm happy to be here. I love the fact that I'm becoming friends with Koreans who have never left South Korea, or the fact that the people who I consider actually from my culture includes Brits, Australians, and South Africans.

That I got to toast to Obama with Brits and Australians!

But I have wanderlust. I'm restless. So now I'm thinking of all the other places I could be visiting, and I want to go there.

So really, even though I'm already living abroad, I want to live vicariously through people who are going to other places.* And I LOVE making plans for travel (even though I know that often I won't follow through and will do something different instead-- that's half the fun, as long as you're seeing new things!). So I get to plan someone else's new life abroad and live vicariously through that. It's great!

I'd love to do that for way more people. Maybe I don't have enough experience to start up a website now, but maybe in a few years. I think I'd really, REALLY enjoy it.

*Which does NOT mean you shouldn't come to Korea, Kat. I would WAY rather have you here than live vicariously through your Germany experience.

So I discovered something interesting on my block: a pizza-parlor-slash-comic-book-store.

For realz. It's totally the same store. Of course, all the books are in Korean, so I can't read them while I wait for the pizza. (I can't call ahead to order 'cause, again, don't speak Korean [yet]. Which is a shame, because there is no such thing as a tip OR a delivery charge here.)

I think this discovery is even more interesting that the boxing gym next door to my apartment that blasts "YMCA" as the manly men inside beat each other to a pulp.

Or you know, actually, maybe it's not.

So, yeah, I'm settling down into Korea OK.

Especially since they took down that sign that was hanging on the wall of the elementary school, that proclaimed "Spare the rod, spoil the child." with a backdrop of a pretty flower-covered field and a blue sky.

Of course, they only took it down because the hanger broke when the water pipe burst on the second story of the English Experience Center, the morning of my first classes ever. We had to have the class in a different building, which considering the fact that our classes were entirely built around the new technology and little mock-kitchens and mock-stores and mock-hospitals in the Experience Center, and thus had to come up with 5 hours of new material off the tops of our heads, is quite substantial.

There were several inches of water. Some teachers were standing on the bottom floor with snow shovels, pushing the water (streaming down the stairs) out the door. All day.

Shockingly, despite the fact that there were tons of COMPUTERS on that floor that had several inches of water on it, nothing was damaged.

Except those picture hangers. They also took down "Eagles don't catch files.", which is a shame.

Also, I recently got a memory card for my camera, and discovered that it takes video with sound. Like, I can fit three and a half hours of video with sound on that thing. It's quite exciting. My dad also figured out how to make the camera in my built-in computer take in sound, too. So mayhap you will soon see some video entries from me?

Hi all!

I have accepted a position teaching English at Bong-Rae Elementary School, a public school in Yeongwol, South Korea. It's in the Gangwon-do province, and the scenery is supposed to be beautiful.

I'm really happy with this decision; I've been talking to an Aussie guy who currently works at the school, Brett, and he really likes it. The town itself is very rural, which actually means there are all kinds of perks associated with the position (most Western English teachers want to go to a city, so there are mad incentives to get them to go to the rural or provincial teaching posts). Personally, I wanted to go somewhere rural, so all the perks are just cool bonuses. I get 200,000 won extra per month (about $150), 35 paid days off instead of 14 (!), and that's not including the national holidays I have off. I also get 15 sick days. The benefits are really good too, pension payments matched by the school district, medical insurance, and so on. Also, I don't have to pay rent; I get my own apartment, which Brett says includes "everything you need, stove, fridge, computer and desk, Internet, TV with western channels..." I do have to pay utilities, but getting about $1400 a month, with utilities and food as my only expense... yowsa!

As far as the town itself goes, it sounds awesome. It's an actual town, with restaurants, a supermarket, shops, doctors, pharmacists, etc, but it's also in the middle of the countryside. The area is known for its great skiing, and Brett says there's great hiking, mountain climbing, rafting, caving (they've got gorgeous limestone caves), and para-gliding.

The elementary school is about to finish building an English Learning Centre, classrooms with fake restaurant and bank, airport etc, to learn situational dialog. Pretty much I'll get to role play a lot with cute Korean elementary schoolers. Sounds good to me!

In order to get my visa I have to get a notarized Criminal Background Check then get an apostille on it. The background check is being a pain in my ass. Apparently there's a three-week backlog of background checks at the state police headquarters. Three weeks! Keep in mind that when I leave is ENTIRELY determined by when I get that background check, apostille, and thus my teacher's visa. Like, if I got my visa tomorrow, I'd be on a plane the day after tomorrow. So this really affects me in a really tangible way.

Luckily, my recruiter says that even though Yeongwol was looking for a teacher sooner than this, he thinks they'll be just fine as long as we do everything we can on our end (ie, as long as it's just the government dragging its feet, not me). His exact words were "The school is looking forward to you arriving, so I guess it’s set in stone." That was definitely a load off of my mind. I was worried that I was annoying them by depriving them of an English teacher for several weeks.

The feeling I get is that, since as I mentioned earlier, rural areas have trouble getting teachers, a teacher reeaally wanting to come to their town to teach at their school is somewhat unusual, and quite welcome. Brett said he didn't even know where in Korea he was teaching until he arrived, so there are probably a fair amount of Western teachers who are fairly reluctantly in the area. So my genuinely wanting to be there, in that particular place, probably does outweigh the fact that my government is making me wait a few weeks. That's just the feeling I get, anyway.

It does sound like a great town and a great place to live, though, doesn't it?

Today's my last day of work, here in Philadelphia. After this I guess I'll be preparing for Korea full-time. My parents are buying me a Korean Rosetta Stone for an early Christmahanukkwanzyuleka present, so I'll spend a lot of the time using that to get at least a basic grasp of Korean.

I figure I'll show up, smile, say "Sorry I'm late, but I really really wanted to come to your town, and look, I even started to learn Korean!" and bat my eyelashes and hopefully they'll like me. And be really nice to the kids and teach them lots of English and make it fun, of course.

...besides having no Kat, no Lemur, no Andrew, no Space City of a Thousand Teas, no Rocky Horror cast, and no decent kink community...

1.) The local Walgreens does not have any alcohol, and more importantly,

2.) The local Walgreens does not have any Barack Obama books.

OMG OH NOES! I'll have to go to the bookstore to buy Dreams from my Father (which I've heard is much better than the one I have, The Audacity of Hope). How bizarre!

(There are also no Obama cutting boards.)

A Rainstorm

He stepped out onto the porch and found her, finally.

Helena was standing there, in the pouring rain, her red hair drenched and her curls matted against her back and cheeks as raindrop after raindrop pelted her face, arms, neck, shoulders, hands, legs. Her eyes were closed, and her arms were spread away from her gently, palms facing up and fingers curled towards the sky.

“Helena?” Kenneth called. Her white cotton blouse was sticking against her like a second skin and her jeans were several shades darker than they were when dry. “You should come inside. You’ll become ill.”

“I won’t become ill,” she told him, her mouth widening into a smile of pure joy as her eyes remained closed.

“You can’t know that,” he told her sternly. “You need to be careful now, remember?”

This had become an old argument by now, and he waited for the usual reply—that she couldn’t live life afraid of everything, that locking herself in a safe little box was worse than any fate that might result from failing to do so—but to his surprise, this time, she simply said nothing.

“What are you doing out there, anyway?” he tried again.

She took several deep, reverent breaths. “Being,” she answered.

He never quite knew what to do when she entered this sort of flight of fancy.

“You can ‘be’ just as well inside,” he offered.

She lifted her eyelashes, and as she looked at him her eyes twinkled, as though she knew some delicious secret that he did not.

“Yes, I can,” she agreed, but she made no move to step out of the rain.

Kenneth wished that he knew how to reason with her.

Helena held out her hand to him invitingly. “Come and join me.”

He shook his head. “I have no intention of getting soaked to the bone. This is madness. Please come inside.”

Helena lowered her voice conspiratorially. “If you let it, the rain will whisper the secrets of life, of love, of pleasure and pain onto your skin, and it will sink into your soul.”

He wondered, with a sudden pang of alarm, if perhaps Helena had lost her tender grip on reality, had finally gone insane.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” he asked.

She laughed a tinkling wind chime in a leisurely summer breeze. “I’m better than okay. I’m better than amazing. I’m not crazy, Kenneth, I promise. I think maybe I’m saner than I’ve ever been before. Everything’s clear now. I can’t believe how simple it is. I understand.”

“What do you understand, then?” he asked.

Her eyes shone and she beckoned to him. “Come here with me and I’ll tell you,” she whispered, so softly that he could barely hear her voice over the roar of the rain on the roof and the wooden deck.

He reluctantly stepped through the doorway into the downpour. She took his hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised him. “We don’t have to worry anymore.”

“So you’ve decided what you’re going to do?” he asked as he suppressed a slight shiver. Even in the tropics, the air was chilly during a storm.

She giggled and shook her head. One of the curls held back in her hairclip fell past her shoulder. For some reason, Kenneth found himself transfixed by that curl, and he focused his eyes on it instead of on the woman in front of him. Despite the heavy rain, the lock of hair was dripping slowly, almost methodically. It reminded him of the hospital room, of the IV.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

His own hair had been thoroughly pounded by the rain by now, and it stuck to his forehead and neck as he felt water trickling down his ear.

“But you said everything was clear,” he reminded her. “You must know what you’re going to do.”

“That’s just it!” she cried, grabbing his other hand as well. “You see now, don’t you? You feel it too. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I’m going to go, or what’s going to happen next. It could be anything. Isn’t it beautiful?”

She leaned in closer to him as she spoke. Her hands tightened around his, and when she looked into his eyes, she was so radiant, her eyes were so filled with the conviction that whatever she felt was the answer, that shining beacon of universal meaning they’d been searching for, that Kenneth did not have the heart to tell her that all he felt was cold, and wet, and rained upon.

I know this is a topic that has been discussed ad nauseum in the traveller community, but I've been thinking about the traveller/tourist distinction lately, and thought that I may as well weigh in on the debate.

As many people on my friends lists are, inexplicably to me, not travel junkies, I'll start by explaining the issue. “Travellers” hate “tourists.” This has been the case for quite some time, actually, as evidenced by quotes from the great minds of bygone eras such as Paul Theroux:

“Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.”

or G. K. Chesterton:

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

It's a distinction that has been very much taken to heart by travellers. But why? Why is it so important to travellers to make this distinction, to try and make it clear that they are most assuredly not tourists?

For one thing, travel is important to travellers. I know this seems like a vacuously true statement, but it needs to be noted nonetheless. Travellers make travel one of the top priorities of their lives; it is a lifestyle, and everything they do relates to it in some way. Even when, like me, they're sitting in some normal American city working a 9-5, Monday-Friday job, they're doing it with one purpose in mind: funding future travel. Do I want to buy that bottle of wine? I could survive for 10 days in Cambodia with that money, so, no thanks. Do I want to go to the movies? That's 15 days in Senegal... I think I'll watch something for free on my computer.

When I'm saving money, greedily watching the number in my checking account tick upward, I am not thinking about buying an iPhone (I'm still using my parents' little phone from 2004), or about a down payment on a house (why would I possibly want something to tie me down to a specific geographical spot?!). I'll admit that I am thinking about paying off my student loans, but only because this is a necessity. What I am really thinking is that it will fund a trip. And when I look into airfare, possible places to visit, there's not even a twinge of guilt at the thought of the amount of money it will cost. I don't think, “Shouldn't I be using it on something more important?”, because there is nothing more important (except, of course, family and close friends). Travel is my priority. That's what the money's there for-- if I don't use it on travel, then what?

When something is that important to you, as to be your passion, your life, well, usually you don't like being equated with a dabbler, a hobbyist. Anyone can be a tourist, and most people from the traveller's home country probably are, at some point in their lives. Nearly everybody in developed countries travels at some point. They call it a vacation, and it's a brief, fun, relaxing diversion from their lives for a week or two.

If a traveller is disdainful of a tourist, it's important to remember that most tourists-- who are tourists for a couple of weeks a year, perhaps, and a local for the rest of it-- are probably equally so of travellers; or rather, they would be, if they ever stopped to think about such people. To them, travellers are just taking an extended vacation, for a year or two or three, almost certainly just trying to dodge real life. To them, travel is a vacation, not a lifestyle.

I think that some of the resistance to tourists is a resistance to the view of travel as diversion. If travellers approached travel the way most tourists do, then they would be drifters wasting their lives away on idleness. Instead, to them, it is the only way to live life to the fullest.

So do I think the tourist/traveller distinction exists? Absolutely. What I don't think is that there is any inherent value judgment attached to either of them-- neither is intrinsically superior or inferior to the other.

I don't think that a tourist necessarily should approach a trip the same way a traveller would. What is everyday life to a traveller is a special treat, and a chance to relax and get away from the pressures of their work for a tourist. And, in more cases than not, I'd wager, the reverse is true: what is everyday life to a tourist is a vacation to the traveller: one of those times when they return home to visit family or friends and take the opportunity of returning to their homeland to relax and catch their breath again.

Everybody treats what they regard to be their “real life” as different from their break. The difference between a tourist and a traveller is only what they consider real life, and what's the breather.

...and even if they're just contingent decisions, it still feels good.

Here's the deal: If I haven't heard from Peace Corps by the middle of December, I am taking off.

Not in December-- in the middle of February/beginning of March. I should have about $5000 saved up by then. I'll get a free plane ticket to Israel and spend 10 days with my room and board paid for. And then... then I go where the world takes me.

I'll have a few possibilities lined up. Probably I'll arrange an English teaching job maybe 6 months in the future, probably in Asia, and travel overland in 6 months to wherever I have the job. I'll probably sign up for the WWOOF network and work on an organic farm in exchange for room and board. I'll carry a copy of my college diploma so that I can get slightly better jobs, even if I probably can't get a visa while I'm in country.

Now, this doesn't actually mean that I'll definitely be leaving the country in February/March. If the Peace Corps sends me an invite for April or May, then I'll stick around until my departure date and do Peace Corps as planned. So I can't tell anyone with complete confidence just when I'll be leaving. I won't be able to tell you until (a) Peace Corps sends me an invitation (or a denial of medical clearance), or (b) the deadline for a refund of my Birthright deposit passes so I'll be going on that trip.

So as I said: a contingent decision. But a decision nonetheless. I am ready to get out of here, and live the life I've wanted for so long.

Between McCain's attacks about funding a $3 million scientific project on grizzly bears, and now attacks about funding a $3 million planetarium projector (or, as McCain would say, "overhead projector"), he's coming off as extremely anti-science and research.

I mean, for one thing, in political and academic terms, $3 million grants? Are nothing. We're giving a $700 billion bailout to banks and corporations, and he's quibbling over $3 million on research and education?

Really?

I admit. I'm biased, both in the fact that I already support Obama, and that academia and research are more important to me than to the average voter. But here's the thing: I was open to a McCain presidency. Ask my friends who knew me a few years ago, before Obama really came out as a prime candidate, around 2004 or 2005. I (though I shudder to think of it now) thought McCain was not a bad choice.

Don't get me wrong. I am thrilled that during the first presidential election in which I am allowed to vote, I am able to vote for a candidate, rather than merely against one. But it would have been nice to be only voting for a candidate, and not revile the opponent. A tall order? Perhaps. But even with with his changes to policy and beliefs to suit his campaign, it could have been in order until he chose Palin as his VP and came across, to me, as extremely anti-science and anti-education. Those things make me shudder to think of him in the White House. He sounds like he'd like to cut every piece of government grant funding that isn't directly related to something "useful" (like military or, so he claims, and I would be much happier if I believed, alternative energy*). Shudder. Shudder.

*Not that funding the latter would be bad in the slightest, in fact, emphatically to the contrary. The problem is that I don't believe him, and, further, that it is not the only thing that should be funded.

If you asked a variety of people on the street which one company of the S&P's 500 Stock Index went up Monday, I think a good third of them would be able to answer correctly.

And 99.99% of them would have learned it from the Colbert Report.

Anyone agree? Disagree?

The good news: I have moved out of my parents' house.

The bad news: For some reason, I feel nauseated by the mere thought of food and haven't had more than a bite or two to eat for several days. I don't seem to have any other symptoms of illness, though the lack of food is causing symptoms of its own.

A suggestion to all of my friends currently in their 4th year at UChicago (or anyone who is coming to an end of their college career):

Go straight to grad school.

Stay in academia. The "real world" is a pretty shitty place, filled with bizarre social restrictions and general unpleasantness and unfriendliness. I wish so much that I had just gone directly to grad school... I was just so hoping that Peace Corps would pan out. I still am, really. But if it looks like Peace Corps isn't going to happen... straight back to university for me. And if Peace Corps does happen, afterwards, I'm going back to university.

I'm not cut out for anything else; academia is the only place where someone like me can succeed: smart, but not a natural leader, not someone who naturally puts herself forward. You need to be aggressive and a leader to make it in the real world; all you need in academia is intelligence and some discipline.

Almost as important are the social differences of the "real world" versus university. As I said earlier, there are so many bizarre social restrictions and "rules" about how you can interact with people in the real world that I don't see how anybody can make close friends there-- and indeed it seems that generally, they don't. On the other hand, when you're in a university setting, all of those codes of conduct are relaxed, and you can just do what you want without people pigeonholing you into one specific mode of behavior. Your action is seen for what it is, not for what it's expected to be. I hadn't really appreciated the degree to which people in university are socially free in a way that the rest of the population just... aren't. (Excepting, of course, one or two specific populations that unfortunately do not have enough of a presence in Philadelphia to solve my problem. You know who you are.)

And so, after my 3 months in the real world, I can say with confidence: I am going to spend my life in that ivory tower. It's where I belong.

Note: This post is cross-posted on both my Writer's Blog and my Travel Blog.

So, I just recently started thinking about trying my hand at blogging for real this time-- partly inspired by Kat, partly by Spider, and partly just because the idea had already been percolating in my head for a little while. I created a Writer's Blog about nine months ago, then a Travel Blog about five months ago, but didn't do much with either of them. With the Travel Blog, it's understandable; I haven't gotten to travel much recently (though I'm still considering transferring my travel posts from Livejournal and backdating them. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff from the Thai/Burmese border can't be publicly posted because it could incriminate people, but at least there'd be SOMETHING travel-y). With the Writer's Blog, I just don't know... maybe if other people were reading it I'd find it useful, but I have to write first, then people will read... shocking, I know.

So mostly what I'm wondering about (and it's not like people will be reading this and answering, because neither of these blogs has been used enough to have readers) is this: How should I work this blogging thing?

I could:

A) Merge the Writer's and Travel Blogs together, and just make it one general blog, meant to relate to all parts of my life and my observations of the world around me.

B) Keep one of the two blogs as it is, and then take the other and make it more of a “general blog.”

C) Create a third blog to have my general rants and observations about the world and the universe, separate from my other two blogs, and try to keep up with all three (or whichever seem the most relevant to my life and interesting to me at the time).

I'm really not sure which one of these to do... I suppose I shall have to continue thinking.

So, I've been stuck in Philadelphia for the past nearly-three months, so I really haven't had anything much to talk about on a travel blog. Considering that originally, my graduation plan was to immediately hitchhike to Miami, then finagle a job as a boat hand on any boat headed to another country, this is something of a disappointment.

Travel is still going to be a huge priority in my life, but I do need to save up some money first, and I'm strongly hoping that the Peace Corps thing will come through-- because that really is what I want to do more than anything. I think I started saying that I wanted to join Peace Corps when I was 12 or 13, and still, at 21, I truly believe that is what will make me the happiest, the most fulfilled.

But I'm still going through the damned medical clearance.

All I have to do, though, is get two more shots, and get a wisdom tooth out, and then I'll be ready to send in all the materials for medical clearance. It'll be in by the end of this month... then I just have to pray they'll clear me, because if they don't, there will be a huge, almost certainly annoying appeals process through which I'll have to go. Eugh.

Anyway, enough with the whining. What I was pondering is this: I still have a lot of entries on Livejournal from my travels. I was wondering if I should transfer them over to this blog, so that it is at least something of a proper travel blog and not just a "this will become a travel blog soon, I promise!"

Is there a way to backdate posts on blogger? I have to admit, I really haven't used it much... was still in that "Livejournal" phase of my life. ;) I'll still have to use Livejournal for now, I'm sure, for my non-work-friendly activities.