Recent Travels

It’s an amazing country, the one I recently visited at the end of March. For two weeks I lived in a kind of 1984 world, where DoubleSpeak is an important element to every day life, propaganda is rife and cars with steering wheels on the left side share the road with cars with steering wheels on the right side.

In two weeks I filled an entire journal with my thoughts, observations and feelings, with detailed descriptions and a thousand words trying to capture a fraction of the million things happening all around me. I wrote more than I would normally write in two months and yet was unable to put to the page most of the things that made the deepest impression on me for security’s sake: conversations with people, meetings, chance encounters even, names, dates, anything too specific.

The picture of apartment buildings in the capital sums up the majority of the experience for me. Every inch of space is packed with detail. You can walk as slowly as possible down the streets and still be unable to take it all in. In addition to the imagery, there are the noises: inevitably traffic, horns, screeching tires, but also people talking, shouting hello, chatting over tea tables on the sidewalk, a baby crying, someone yelling down from an apartment above, the tinkle of a bell on the wheel that crushes sugar cane to make juice.

The country is full of things crumbling: roads that were never built properly, buildings that were never maintained. Colonial ruins stand beside ancient rubble and Chinese concrete constructions tower above them all.

The scenery everywhere is spectacular, enchanting, almost magical, but it is nothing compared to the people there. I can’t speak highly enough of those I was fortunate enough to encounter. Waiting for a bus on the streets of another city, I practice my local language skills with a woman selling betel nut. We talk about our homes, our families, simple things, big smiles. Everywhere the taxi drivers, the fruit sellers, people on the street, teachers, parents, young people and old people are dealing with some of the worst economic conditions on earth and getting through each day with a smile.

I saw simple acts of kindness which are committed with a kind of routine nonchalance that inspired me. I found all kinds of examples of people with very little sharing with they had with others who had less. I’m under no idyllic impression that the humanity residing in this one particular country are somehow ideal or blessed, but I saw in my short experience there echoes of what I see in many people here in my work: a charity which truly comes from the heart.

It was amazing to explore ancient temples, to walk sun soaked stones amidst the ruins, to stroll the streets and explore the pagodas of the capital, but it was a blessing to meet and speak with the people I did, to find inspiration in their lives and words and most of all in their smiles.

Room to Grow Foundation

Despite making it my goal to blog more this year, the days keep slipping by without me writing anything. One reason is that I have been quite busy: travels and work and having fun on hot afternoons.

The other reason is that I have been blogging for the new organization I helped set up and now work for: Room to Grow Foundation. So if anyone is interested in what I'm doing with my time, they should check out our blog.

And anyone interested in learning more about our work can check out our website, which is still a work in progress but which is happily up and running and online.

As for Buddhist new year celebrations and travels abroad, I promise to post more pictures and adventures soon... really!!

Rat babies, rats and corpse disposal

On the first day of this week, the cat I rescued from starvation in a refugee camp gave to me:

One tiny rat baby...

On the second day of this week, the cat I rescued from starvation in a refugee camp gave to me:

Two mice a meesing,

and one tiny rat baby...

On the third day of this week, the cat I rescued from starvation in a refugee camp gave to me:

A BIG ASS RAT!!

Seriously. My cat, Frankie, is always bringing in geckos and leaving lizard parts all over the floor. She eats cockroaches and even once brought a live snake into the house. But this week was the first time she caught a mouse. I was all proud of her but a little worried because unless she ate the whole thing, I can't find the body and she's always leaving bodies around in gross places...

I spoke with my brother on the weekend and he teased me.

"Seen any rat babies lately?" he asked, referring to a story I told him recently about my friend and her strangely numerous encounters with baby rats.

I hadn't ever seen a rat baby myself, actually. Not until Frankie brought one in the next day. She left the body near the kitchen door so I scooped it up and threw it out the back window.

But last night I'm sitting in my indoor hammock reading a book and Frankie walks in with this thing in her mouth that's half her size. She starts playing with it on the floor near my computer, which is her favorite place to play with the animals she brings in and all I could think of is how I need to get this thing out of my house, now!

It was so big I couldn't' even sweep it or scoop it. This, my friends, is a task for a loving boyfriend to handle, as much as I'd like to say otherwise. But the loving boyfriend is in Bangkok all week at some conference at the four seasons, having cocktails while I dispose of rat bodies.

And all the while that I'm thinking "what the hell do i do?" Frankie is having the time of her life and I can hear the rat body thumping on the ground as she throws it up in the air and it hits the floor and rat blood is getting everywhere.

Finally I pluck up my courage and grab a plastic thing and the broom and i make it work, carrying the body out to the balcony. Frankie goes crazy manic "Wheresmyrat?wheresmyrat?wheresmyrat?" running around in circles meowing. I take her out to the balcony and close the door so she can't get back in with the rat. But i can still hear the thumping. Then I can hear the cat fight as some other cat tries to come over and steal the juicy prize.

About an hour later, I open the door to let the cat in, hoping she disposed of the copse. Nope. She's sitting there with it in her mouth, looking so happy and she starts trying to drag it back in again. I close the door for another hour.

When I go back out, Frankie has decapitated the giant rat, leaving it in two pieces on the balcony and she's happy to leave it there and come in for the night. But i am not happy to leave a rat corpse on my balcony so i have to screw up my courage again and push it into the plastic thing and fling it off the balcony. Unfortunately, I didn't fling it too far, but hopefully some dog smelled it, came and took it off to his lair.

I'm through with rat bodies! ...I hope

Singapore

Photographs from my recent weekend birthday adventure in Singapore. One of these days I'll write something again but for now, I spent my birthday wandering the city streets in large sunglasses made in the 70's and the evening dining on a feast of food at Newton Circus.





Yes, I am now 26 years old.

Paw Yu Lee & Mickey Goggin

Photos from the wedding of good friends Paw Yu Lee and Mickey Goggin

Burma's Waiting Game

I began planning my trip into Burma sometime in April this year. At first I thought I would take a month off writing and go in mid-September. I found a monastic school in Mandalay where I could stay and made contact. I planned to teach for July and August, spend a few weeks getting ready, then take off.

For a number of reasons, I ended up pushing back my travel date to October 22nd and now it seems like I may not go at all. I haven’t heard any word from the monastery where I had planned to stay but the monasteries in Rangoon are emptying. Monks are disappearing and being arrested. Bodies of robed men float in rivers and photographs come out of empty monk’s quarters where nothing is left of the monks save the pools of their blood.

We sit in front of our computers, just 6 kilometers from the border crossing into a country that is exploding, hoping for news. For anyone doing the same, some of the best news is coming from amazing people blogging from Burma and getting news out of a country which is increasingly tightening controls on internet and phone lines.

MizzimaNews has some of the best breaking news but Ko-Htike, Moemaka, and Niknayman have information directly from the inside with disturbing pictures and videos to match.

I am currently in Chiang Mai living at a school for women and teaching there for a few days. Yesterday we practiced reading strategies while looking at the news. I stood beside a woman who cried silently looking at pictures of the dead bodies of monks.

After that, I couldn’t stand the soft, cultured voice on the BBC anymore. We listened to a reporter from Singapore who was in Rangoon for a few days and delivered richly descriptive reports missing several key facts.

“The key difference,” say the BBC voices, “is that, unlike the demonstrations in 1988 when an estimated 3,000 lost their lives, the Burmese protesters today have access to the internet, to blogs, to digital cameras and the media.”

It seems to be doing very little good. Just how many dead bodies do they have to document before someone does anything? Does anyone have any idea what the death toll of this government is since it first slaughtered those 3,000 in the streets of Rangoon in 1988?

So we sit here, on the border waiting for a massacre, wondering just how many bodies have to pile up.

The waiting is driving me crazy.

Update

It’s late Tuesday night and I am on dorm duty at a migrant school in Mae Sot. The students are busy participating in a special ceremony for someone’s daughter’s birthday so things are quiet. One student has remained behind, noisily chatting with her brother in Burmese on a cell phone. Otherwise, the only sounds I can hear are of the crickets and other night creatures humming happily away in the dark, and the occasional murmur of discontent from the ginger cat who has taken to following me around.

I’m not sure how it got to be the end of July but suddenly a month has passed and it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything or even updated anyone about what I’m doing.

This month and next month I am teaching at the Wide Horizons migrant educational project in Mae Sot. I teach every afternoon for three hours from Monday to Friday and I live at the dorm two nights a week helping students with homework and being on call if any emergencies arise. Emergencies occur when students get arrested outside the school compound (which happens a few times a year), when word comes of a police raid (which is rare) or when someone lobs a bomb at a building next door (which happened once last year).

Mostly dorm nights are quiet and are spend in the same way I spent so many nights in the refugee camp, living on a different time frame almost in a different world. So much of my evenings here are spent in conversation, just talking to people, eating together, washing dishes together, chatting about homework, hopes and whatever else people care to share.

Usually sometime after dinner I have a shower but not tonight because our water has been cut off for two day and soon there won’t even be enough to flush the toilets. Showers can be taken in one of two ways. The first way is to get a big bucket, fill it with water from the cistern, go into the bathroom, strip down and use a scoop to wash. The second is to scoop directly from the cistern outside, wearing a sarong the entire time. Although showering outside in public can be quite refreshing and is always very social, I prefer the more private method, personally.

When it gets dark and people get tired, they go to sleep (if their teachers haven’t burdened them with piles of homework) and they get up early to go to the morning market, to light cooking fires or to finish that last minute homework.

I get out of bed at the last possible moment, climb into clothes and find some hot water for a cup of coffee but I wake up fairly early myself. The compound where the school is located is also the home of several families and their various animals which include a large flock of ducks. Ducks, for anyone who doesn’t know this, are loud animals. Much louder than chickens, or even roosters. Every morning, it is the sound of the ducks under the house that wakes me up and I lie in bed drifting in and out of duck influenced dreams.

In the morning I sit at a little desk in the wooden house that is our office and type out the assignments I have for my writing job. Every week I rewrite ten articles about news relating to Iceland. If that seems a little random, it is. But in this fashion I have learned several interesting facts:

• Icelandair flies from Canada and the US to Europe and offers free stops in Iceland. Their prices are right and their business plan is brilliant.
• The government of Iceland recently opened up commercial whaling which is mostly supported by the local population but which draws huge international protests
• A lot of cool music and art comes from Iceland including strange woolen hats with knitted mustaches attached
• Iceland has glaciers as well as huge black sand deserts. It wasn’t always this way. Once it was green. People blame it on the sheep.

I also write a number of travel related articles every week, post a number of comments on my own travel related articles and post a number of articles about travel to various regions in Thailand.

Occasionally, I also plan lessons and correct homework, of course.

I was hired to teach two things: tools for critical thinking and teaching skills. This week marks the end of the first phase and today we started the unit on teaching. For the last two weeks of August I won’t be teaching at all, but rather observing my students as they take up two-week teaching positions in migrant schools around town and offering them feedback.

I’m living in the same house I’ve lived in since October 2005, a Thai style house made of wood with lots of windows high up on stilts. The house is shared with a beautiful cat named Frankie Baby who recently developed hereby unprecedented abilities to cuddle, a development which I am rather enjoying. Around the corner lives my boyfriend, a charming Australian whose wit, insight and general company I also enjoy.

Frankie Baby’s three kittens live at the school and one of them is currently curled up at my feet, mother of four newborn kittens herself. She follows me around everywhere meowing loudly whether she is fed or not. When I’m teaching, she often curls up at the edge of the classroom, if the dogs don’t chase her away. Chickens wander through the class as well and, of course, the ducks make up a lovely symphony in the background.

I have a ticket home to Calgary, Canada on December 18th 2007 and I plan to return from those cold climes sometime in January. Beyond that, plans for the future are rather thin on the ground, but when has it been otherwise?

Just another day... in paradise.

Some days you wake up and it’s just another ordinary day. And then, sometimes, there are these mornings when you wake up and it’s like the first day you ever lived. As if your eyes had opened for the first time, as if you were wearing a new skin that could feel everything, as if you were a child again, suffused with wonder and drinking it all in.

The other day I took an overnight bus back to Mae Sot from Bangkok. It arrived around 4:30am and I hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi to go back home. The sky was still dark, but I could see stars in the sky and there was enough moonlight to show my surroundings. We went through fields of green, with palm trees silhouetted against the sky. Perhaps more than anything it was the texture of the air that stirred my soul: the cool freshness that comes after a rain, the pre-dawn stillness that is full of the excitement of a whole blank day still to come, the heaviness of the tropical moisture in the air…

Flying through the night, with the wind in my hair, it wasn’t long before I had a broad smile on my face. I have been here for so long, but it just suddenly occurred to me with a wonderful thrill: Oh my God! I’m in South East Asia!

And I laughed out loud under the stars at the remarkable joy in it. How on earth did I end up here? It’s still a mystery to me, but on that wonderful morning, I was reveling in the mystery instead of sunk in it, skipping along the surface of the glorious waves that bear us places in life so that we wake up one morning and finally open our eyes and notice that where we are is truly remarkable.

I just wanted to share that with you. It’s a cool, wet day here in Thailand and I am spending a quiet Saturday morning with my coffee on the balcony, listening to the sound of the rain falling on the roof, watching the water slide down the sides of the green banana leaves in the garden and I am so happy to be here. So happy to be here.

Misadventures in Malaysia

I flew out of the new airport in Bangkok on an Air Asia budget flight that cost me around $60 and took no-frill flying to a whole new level. You pay for everything on the flight from water to a pillow.



It's always struck me as odd how people line up to board their flights at the first opportunity. I've even seen pushing and shoving. Why bother when you have an assigned seat? I've always wondered. I'm not in a hurry to get packed onto a small space for a few hours, so I hang back and consequentially end up sandwiched in between two guys who chat over me the whole flight. Air Asia doesn't have assigned seats. It's a free for all. Delightful.



I arrived in the early hours of the morning. The airport was smaller than I had expected and there was only one ATM machine. It was out of order. I gave up on travellers cheques and changing money when I was about 18 and rely on airport ATMs for my in country cash entirely. I had Thai baht as a back up, but it seemed like I was stuck. Woops.



I convinced a bus company heading for "Sentral KL" to take the Thai money and give me a ticket. My guidebook told me that the buses heading for downtown will drop you pretty much anywhere and certainly at the guesthouses in China Town, which is where I wanted to stay. Had I been just a little more attentive, I would have realised that Sentral is not a synonym for downtown, but rather the name of the main train station, just north of the city centre. I was dropped there at 1:30am with no local currency on me.



Luckily, the station was open and I wandered past the security guards into the dark hall. I was in luck. I quickly located a bank of three ATMs. One had a large sign proclaiming no international service. The other had an out-of-service message blinking on the screen and the third, although initially promising, spat out my card with a message that the international banking link was down. So sorry.



It was 2am. I contemplated my options. I realised I hadn't eaten in a long time. I had no money for food. Finally I found a cab and asked the driver to take me to a big bank with ATM machines. It took me about ten minutes of wrestling with the machine to get it to give me a pitiful amount. I don't know why I was having so many problems. The taxi driver dropped me at the hotel and I handed him the cash. In my mind I was trying to convert to Thai money. The driver looked at me strangely.



"Is it ok?" I asked him, thinking perhaps I had messed it up.



He smiled and nodded and drove off. I checked into the hotel and fell onto the bed, sweaty and tired, just wanting to sleep. That's when it hit me. I had just given the taxi driver 10 times the amount I was supposed to. I thought about it further. If my banking troubles continued, I wouldn't be able to withdraw enough to pay for the visa I had come there for.


It took me a long time to get to sleep. I just lay there feeling stupid and embarrassed and stupid again. I swore a lot, tossed and turned and swore some more.



The next morning, determined to shake my bad mood, I wandered the streets of China Town, looking for breakfast. I settled on a small Malay restaurant with a menu that I could point to and ordered something. I ended up with a plate of fried rice and breathed in relief. Safe food. What can go wrong eating fried rice? The rice was yellow, spiced and delicious. Big chunks of vegetables littered the plate along with tender morsels of chicken, but suddenly I paused. It didn't taste good, it didn't taste very good at all.



Malaysian food is famous for satay and it seems I was not safe, even eating fried rice. The chicken chunks I had been enjoying were going to be the death of me, if I wasn't careful. I swallowed some pills quickly and left, trying to ignore to man at the counter glaring at the plate full of food I had left behind.



I have to admit, the two incidents weakened my sense of adventure considerably. As did my ongoing problems applying for the visa I had come for. I spent the rest of my time in Kuala Lumpur trying to salvage the trip.



The first day, I just walked. I walked to the old train station and admired the white minarets and architecture. I wandered under the palms past gorgeous mosques, listening to the call to prayer. I felt the heat of the streets and sat in the shade to watch all the people pass. If I could show you the map of the city and where I walked, I walked clear across the place in a day, getting sore and sunburned.



I walked past the famous KL Towers, the largest in the world (sorry Toronto) and out to the Thai embassy.



I walked around the bourgeois refurbished Central Market crammed with its tourist goods and all the way out to Chow Kit where people really buy things. No matter where I am in the world, I have yet to find a market I haven't liked. I love the crowded rows between stalls, the shout of vendors touting their wares, the smells that sneak up on you unaware, wafts of dried ginger and chili and pungent dried fish.



The next day was just more problems at the embassy, so I spent the afternoon getting out of the city. I took a bus to the Bantu Caves, a Hindu sacred site in some picturesque limestone mountains. It was nice just to get out of the city for a while.



There are almost three hundred steps leading up to the main cave, watched over by a large golden statue. Each step is numbered and I intended to make a thoughtful climb, aware of each step as I made it.


I was quickly distracted by the monkeys, however. I hope I am never in such a black pit of despair that monkeys and their antics can't make me smile. I know they are pests and they bring endless annoyance to people, but I'm a tourist and monkeys never cease to make me laugh and bring me joy.


In addition, the caves were spectacular. Particularly when I lay on my back on the marble floor of one of the Hindu shrines in the back and stared up the shapes hanging from the ceiling, getting the tacky paintings and litter on the floor out of my field of view. In the very back, the roof opened up to the sky and there were monkeys up there too, swinging from vines in the jungle far above, and petals drifting down in the breeze.

I got out of the city the next day and headed North to an island near the border with Thailand. I went to a number of guesthouses looking for a nice one and on the way seeing some very dodgy establishments. In one little house tucked in the back of a lovely garden courtyard, a very large man sat behind a counter, looking exactly like Jabba the Hut, the younger version. Not only did the man have a round shiny belly which could not be confined by his shirt, he also had this strange triangular tongue which continually flicked around outside his mouth as he talked with me. I didn't stay there.

Actually the island of Penang doesn't have much to recommend it. It's a quiet little town whose main attraction is the ease in getting visas into Thailand. I enjoyed it though. The cultural influences are more Chinese and Indian than Malay. There are Chinese temples and clan houses and a whole section of town with Indian tea and clothes and music. On my own, I loved exploring the book shops and cafes. But the main draw is, of course, the food.

My partner joined me the next day and we proceeded to gorge ourselves silly. He had recently been to India, and I Sri Lanka, so we both fell upon the Indian food with a vengeance. The tandoori chicken was especially fantastic but another night we ate at a small place with big vats of chicken masala, honey chicken, fragrant rice and roasting nan bread.

Then there was the Chinese cuisine. We settled into a round table at a busy dim sum restaurant, drinking pot after pot of green tea and grabbing treats off the cart every time it went by. I don't even know the names of all the things we ate there.

One day we took a bus out to the beach. The bus was slow and the trip to the Northern part of the island seemed to take forever. We ended up in a fishing village, walking along a grey beach lined with little boats and nets and restaurants serving seafood. We walked out along a long pier to look at the boats and stared down at the jellyfish in the water.

The beach was far from spectacular. The sand was somewhat grey and the water not at all enticing. Despite the incredible heat and our constant sweating, there was no question of going for a swim. A few families hid in the shade by no one approached the water.

The way back to Thailand was long. We caught the ferry back to the Malaysian mainland and then caught a train. The train ride was perhaps 20 hours to Bangkok. The seats and sleeping berths were very comfortable and the hours passed comfortably, rubber trees flying by outside the window, drinking beer, reading the newspaper, playing cards.

For a while, after coming back, Thailand seemed less hot. Unfortunately it didn't take long to catch up, and we are now in the middle of hot season. I'm writing from my wooden house, under the fan, sweating like crazy. It'll be a while before I get another beach vacation, but I think it's the perfect time for myself to go jump in the reservoir.

Map of Happiness

In looking for a map today to show some Canadians where the country of Burma, sometimes known as Myanmar, is located, I came across the Map of Happiness.





The map was made by Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at Leicester University's School of Psychology in the UK and it attempts, according to him, to measure "subjective well-being."


It is unclear, and somewhat doubtful to me if he actually talked to anyone in any location in the world. But the map is apparently derived from data from the following sources: UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the World Health Organisation, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer and the UNHDR. Supposedly this information comes from 100 some studies interviewing over 80,000 people worldwide.

So, how does one statistically measure happiness? Well this guy proposes that the national level of joy is related to health predominately, followed by indicators of wealth and education. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that Denmark and Switzerland come out on top of the rankings. Or that beloved Burma is almost at the bottom.

Alternatively, this study could just be telling us that Denmark and Sweeden are rich and have great social services, whereas people in Burma are poor, with little access to health and education. But wait, we knew that already.

Its kind of crude, by my thought is to look at suicide rates to see who's happy. It's not an exact measure. A great many people live with unhappiness who would never kill themselves for a great many reasons. Anyways, the Map of Happiness tells us that Canada and the US are pretty happy. Yet I'm noticing that for countries where World Heath Organization statistics about suicide are available, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are pulling in at positions 26, 27, 28 and 29 respectively in list of the top 81 countries where people comit sucide. (Australia:21.5 per 100,000 people; Canada: 21.5 per 100,000 people; New Zealand: 20.5 per 100,000 people; Sweden: 20 per 100,000 people; United States: 19.8 per 100,000 people)


It seems like although people may be less happy (according to the map) in Tajikistan (#63/81), they tend to kill themselves a lot less often there.

And then there are those poor people trapped in the distant north. They are always committing suicide. Why? Because they are unhappy? They tend to be unhappy because they don't get enough sunlight in their brains. I wonder if the Map of Happiness took that into account. What kind of equation is balancing out all these correllations: the relationship between happiness, health, wealth, education and access to sunlight?

What kind of person funded this research anyways? I can think of ways to make a lot of people happy that wouldn't take nearly so much money, I bet. Sheesh!

Muay Thai: Boxing on the Border

Someone very close to my heart, with whom I spent a great deal of my time during my first weeks back in Mae Sot, read my blog, Back in the Saddle and indignantly demanded to know just what was so dull about it all.
It’s true. I can’t believe I could have forgotten about the highlight of my first week back, of which my friend so kindly reminded me.

I had only been back in town a few days with my friend and former neighbor, an Australian journalist, gave me a call early one morning. "Jen," he said, sounding desperate. "I need your help."

Actually, he didn’t really need me that badly. He needed my Australian neighbor and wanted my help in convincing him to go along with his crazy escapade. When I heard the plan, I was highly enthusiastic. Given that I hadn’t even had a coffee and it wasn’t even 8am yet, that’s quite a feat.

When I lived next door to the Australian journalist, I often tagged along after him, like he was my big brother, or like I was some kind of caped side-kick. We had a lot of fun together, often sharing one last beer in the early hours of the morning as the monks in the monastery across from our house were beginning their day and we were ending ours.

I don’t remember how it was that he first got interested in Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing, but there are lots of events in our area. Kickboxing on the border takes on a particular flavor, as there are often highly emotive fights between Thai fighters and fighters from across the border (in which, more often than not the Thais win) and also between Muslim and Buddhist fighters. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed going to the fights. For one thing, it was a chance to see some of the Thai soul laid bare. It’s like looking into an animal’s mouth while it’s roaring, staring at the crowd at a fight. There are housewives in middle-class attire, with their children propped up against the ropes sweating in the heat and screaming their hearts out for one man to beat another man. It’s easy to lose yourself in the press of the crowd, let your sweat become your neighbor’s sweat, your voice become the voice of the crowd. It’s dark and the only light are the fluorescent lights strung up around the ring, all the people in the crowd like moths to the flame. As my neighbor went off to photograph, I never felt alone. It was too easy to get lost in the experience.

The more I went, the more I learned. My friend was following the story of certain boxers affiliated with a local school. At first we didn’t know their names. We called one "Pink Shorts," and another, "Ali." Sometimes we got right up close next to the ropes, other times we hung back on the fringe, betting beers on the fights and taking in the big picture. I got to recognize not only the fighters, but also the muscians who play the traditional music before the fight, and the announcers who wore huge aviator glasses and never hesitated to say annoying, embarrassing things about the white foreigners attending the match. One night, with a female friend, the announcer, who sounded quite drunk, made a point of calling the audience’s attention to the fact that I had left my seat and was proceeding to the bathroom. That’s right folks, the white girl is going to pee. "Good luck with that!" he called to me in Thai while I gritted my teeth and made my way through the seated crowd.

Someone from the boxing school called my journalist friend up early on my first Tuesday morning back in Mae Sot. What he understood from the conversation in Thai was that there was a big fight coming to Mae Sot and it was going to involve some foreign fighters from Canada and the Phillipines. There was some kind of press event going on and the white fighter wasn’t going to be able to make it, did he know anyone who could possibly put on a kit and stand it? He made it sound like some kind of photo shoot with my neighbour taking the photos. The problem was that he couldn’t think of anyone to do it. Apparently all the boys we know in town are terribly scrawny. So he called me, to enlist my help in convincing my new Aussie neighbour to be the poster boy for some white kickboxer from Canada.

The photo shoot was in the afternoon and since I was still unemployed, I joined them, hopping in the back of a pick up truck with some Burmese fighters and flying down the highway with the wind in my hair. The truck took us, to of all incomprehensible places, the Mae Sot Central Hill Hotel, a luxury resort at the end of town. "Perhaps it’s a pool side photo shoot," I thought to myself smiling. "Maybe all these muscled boys are going to get all oiled up and we can all jump in the water afterwards…"

But we were taken inside and lead downstairs to the conference room. The room was filled with long tables covered in white and staff were filling up water glasses with iced water. We were given chairs in the back corner and left to wonder what was going on. At the front of the room, behind to podium was a large poster in Thai and we worked out it was advertising the fights, which were to be telecast on the World Boxing Channel. This is rather a big deal, especially for a small town like Mae Sot.

Several other clues soon led us to believe that this press event was not some private photo shoot, but rather a somewhat large-scale press conference. And before anyone could have any second thoughts, the boxing coach was giving my friend a pair of tiny satin boxing shorts and taping up his hands.

He came out of the changing room wearing nothing but the little boxing shorts and looking a little shy. To make things worse, one of the boxers decided he wasn’t wearing the shorts properly and proceeded to hike them up even further, revealing more leg and looking decidedly uncomfortable. By that time, though, they had already put boxing gloves on him, so he was unable to adjust and I’m afraid I was too busy hiding behind a pillar laughing to be much help. I think you can see in the picture just how much fun I was having.

Before things got rolling, he posed with one of the fighters and one of the biggest boxing promoters in Thailand. Then he got up on stage with the rest of the boys and with the panel of delegates slated to speak at the conference, including the governor of the province. For the next hour, while they all made comments about the upcoming fight, he had to stand there, holding his hands up, trying to look fierce.

I took some pictures and tried not to giggle too loudly during the entire event, but it was somewhat difficult, particularly when the speeches were finished and the journalists swamped the stage with their cameras, microphones and video cameras.

And it’s true, it was the highlight of my week. That’s one of the great things about life in Mae Sot. So often dull, but now and again so wildly, weirdly unexpected.

An Experiment

I'm curious. Who are you? Why are you reading this?

I'm always surprised to hear of people reading my blog. I started out writing in order to keep in touch with my family mostly. But I noticed the other day that my profile has 410 views and I run into people now and again who tell me they've read me. No one leaves comments though, so it's hard to know that you're there.

So the experiment:
If you have a moment, whoever you are, I'd love to hear from you. Get in touch. Leave a comment saying hi. Or better yet, send me a postcard. I promise if you put your address on it, you'll most likely get a reply. What kind of person are you? What do you do? How did you find me? Why do you read this? I'm especially interested if you're someone I've never met before.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Jenny
PO Box 27
Mae Sot, Tak.
Thailand. 63110

Back in the Saddle

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am seated at a desk in front of an open window. Jack Johnson is playing and I spend more time looking out at the view than I do at the work I am supposed to be editing.

The last few weeks have been rather calm, perhaps even a little dull, certainly nothing particularly blog worthy. Perhaps that’s why I have this smile on my face. What, after all, could be much better than a day of luxurious laziness in a wooden house that gets the breeze in the middle of a warm, tropical country?

I returned to Thailand and landed on January 12th. Everyone keeps asking how it felt to be back and it’s been a rather mixed bag. For one thing, it’s always difficult to leave the warm embrace of family, with our lively meals, good conversation and abundance of hugs. Usually this feeling is offset by the feeling of setting off towards the unknown, towards adventure. This time, however, I wasn’t exactly setting off towards the unknown. I’ve been living in Mae Sot for roughly two years now.

What is unknown, however, is what exactly I was going to do here anyway, another question I get asked quite frequently. I’m generally a woman with few plans. If I had them, in the past, they tended to be in four month blocks. Last year I managed to plan ahead for a whole year. I was rather proud of myself, until I felt the end of that year approaching and still had yet to make another plan.

I left Calgary just as a blizzard had begun rolling through. Overnight, the temperature dropped to –27 degrees celsius. By nighttime however, I had landed in Bangkok and the heat of the night (+27) was intense. It’s cold season here and at night I sleep with a blanket on, but I’m still getting used to the afternoons again. The heat makes me sleepy.

My first week back in Mae Sot was more difficult than I had thought. My old house was still occupied by the person who was subletting from me, so I continued to live out of a backpack in someone else’s home. The old friends I had were busy with work and often out of town, so I didn’t see much of them. The town was full of new people. I went out for dinner one night and only knew one other person at the table. It’s not because I went away; it’s just life in Mae Sot. If you don’t make an effort to get out and meet new people almost constantly, eventually you will find yourself alone. Everyone’s stay in Mae Sot is temporary. There is a leave date floating over everyone’s head and it’s just a matter of time before you have to say goodbye.

My days were full of errands and chores, like looking for a new mattress and getting the internet set up in my house. Eventually I moved back in and unpacked, decorating my walls with Hindu pictures and batik from Sri Lanka. I met with people, talked about work, tried to get work, tried to get a long term visa.

It’s strange to be in Mae Sot without work. Work is what brings people here. Nobody comes for any other reason. And here I was in Mae Sot, a foreigner without a job, a fish without fins. One of the first questions people here ask, often before even, "Where are you from?" is: "What do you do?" or alternatively, "Who are you working for?" It was quite fun to reply (at a party where I only knew 20% of the guests): "I’m unaffiliated."

If I were to print a business card for myself right now, I would be tempted for it to read: "Independent Operator." Because at the moment, I am operating. I’m unaffiliated, but I’m not unemployed. I have some well-paid part-time work and a small part-time contract at the moment. It would be nice, in the future, to continue to get such contracts. It’s certainly a lifestyle I am enjoying.

My part time work is with a company called Virtual Travel Guides, based out of Chiang Mai. I write short, low-grade travel guides for websites. Often the guides are being used as filler, to bulk up sites and increase their ratings on search engines like Google. There are currently about 20 of us working for the company, and it seems as if business is good and they will be expanding. I completed my first assignment last week, writing five short guides to Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan and Bahrain. In case you’re wondering, I have never been to any of those countries and at no time will the company pay for me to travel anywhere. It’s all internet research and rewriting.

I haven’t done very much work for them yet, but the work I have done has been highly enjoyable. It’s a significant change of pace from working with refugees in a protracted conflict zone. It gets me writing, even if it isn’t the most quality work and I get to learn things about all kinds of places in the world. There are never too many hours of work a week, so I have plenty of time to take up other work and volunteer in the community, something that is very important to me.

The short term contract I have at the moment is to edit an English-language text book for an educational project involving refugees. Unit Three is sitting open beside the computer at the moment. I was just working on it when the urge to blog came over me.

This week I’ll also start working with the English Immersion Program again, as a part-time volunteer. The goal is to set up some kind of graduate program with targeted workplace trainings. I’m looking forward to working with lots of my old students on that.

With the exception of a couple of meetings once in a while, most of the work I have set up is based out of my home, which is why I have this desk set up in front of this window in my little wooden house that gets all the breeze. I can get up whenever I want, take coffee breaks whenever I want, and take a break to go for a jog whenever I want. Hopefully I have the self discipline to get all the work done by the time my employers want.

Still, it’s a pleasure to be in my pajamas at noon, listening to Cat Stevens and staring out the window with the breeze in my hair.

Sigiriya

The afternoon I spent exploring the ancient rock fortress of Sigiriya was an afternoon spent in a living fairytale. The lower grounds and garderns were enchatingly green, full of open spaces, crumbling bricks, twisted trees and bubbling fountains. Little paths wound here and there amoung the ruins and one long, red road runs straight towards the rock. It feels like the kind of place where wandering knights are likley to encounter damsels in distress, enchantresses, or dragons in the moat. There is, in fact, a moat, that one must cross over in order to enter. The stone stairs are full of moss and vines drip from the trees. This is a place one might come to while searching for the Holy Grail. Here, hidden amopung the stones, is a cave with a seat carved into the rock and ancient paintings on the wall. Would the orange-robed monk I imagine meditating there, with the rain dripping off the stone, speak and guide the knight on his quest, or has he taken a vow of silence?

There is a man waiting for me along the path, wanting to sell me a wooden box with four secret compartments and more men in the trees who want to be my guide. I ignore them. I have read a little about the history of the stone and I don't want to know any more. Another day I would be terribly curious about all this, hungry, even, to know more, but today I am not in the mood for facts or for history. I just want to enjoy the moment, at my own pace. I am sick of people talking to me, sick of having my experiences turned into transactions where I pull out my wallet at the end of it all and hand out the cash, and I am not particularly in the mood for company.

I slowly wander upwards, climbing upon ancient stones, stooping under archways in the rock, following old old paths. The rock itself is a fairytale to me and this is my version of the true historical tale:

Once upon a time there was a king who ruled over the central portion of one of the islands of paradise. With the primary wife in his harem he had a son, and later another woman in his harem gave birth to a son, also. The younger son, fearing that he would never inherit the kingdom and urged on by his counsellors, killed his father, the king and took power, exiling his half brother to India.

The younger son lived in fear that the rightful inheritor of the kingdom would raise and army and return so he began building a fortress on the summit of a large rock. The rock stands high in the middle of a large central plain. None may appproach without the army seeing them with plenty of warning. The rock itself is high, and siege of the castle would be almost impossible.

It took the new king seven years to build the fortress, which in those days was both an incredible feat of engineering and of speed. The fountains that were built in the pleasure gardens at the foot of the rock function on anicent principles of gravity and pressure and as such, they still function today, bubbling out into the ancient stone pools.

Although it took the king seven years to build the amazing castle on the rock, it took his half brother ten years to raise an army in southern India and return to Sri Lanka. When the king saw the army approaching across the plain, he seemingly lost all sense of reason and caution, and in a fit of honor, descended from the rock to meet his half brother in battle on the plain. The two armies clashed and fought, but they did not fight for long. The king rode upon an elephant and the elephant took fright. The king lost control of the elephant. The king's army, seeing this, thought that the king was ordering a retreat. They retreated to safely, losing many on the way and leaving the king behind, surrounded by the enemy. When the king saw this and realised that he would be captured by his half brother, he fell on his sword and killed himself.

The new king conquered but distained the palace on the rock, prefering to live elsewhere. The rock became the home, once again, of the monks who used to retreat there to meditate and pray and the castle fell to ruin.

What a glorious thing it must have been to rule the land from that castle on the rock. Even at its base, the view was spectacuilar - all the world stretched out before you in one long smoky plain: the rice paddies and fields, the lakes with water buffalos wallowing in the mud, the symmetry of the fountain gardens and the moat.

There was a spiral staircase to climb in order to get to a wall full of gorgeous paintings. As I climb the iron staircase, I am conscious of each foot upon the stair and of the huge space all around me - the terrible drop and the terrific view. Climbing upswards on that perlious stair, I thought, "This is an adventure."

There is an old man in the picture chamber who takes me past a barricade onto a narrow ledge where there are more crumbling paintings. He is like the caretaker of some hidden tample where knights pass the night to recieve visions. The paintings are all buxom ladies, beautifully depicted, and so often reproduced for tourists that they have become a symbol of Sri Lanka.

Next, I walk along the Mirror Wall. It is about half way up the rock, with a wall between me and the view. The wall is made to shine and reflect through a mixture involving egg whites. The wall is a long sinuous curve, still shining but now etched with graffitti. "What a lot of eggs," I think.

There are monkeys on the stairway ahead of me and so I climb quickly trying to catch up with them and ignore the pain in my muscles (it is only a day since I climbed Sri Pada.) The path opens onto an open plaza before the final stair. A sign reads, "Noise may provoke hornet attacks," and there is a metal cage in which one can hide in the event of an angry swarm. The monkeys have continued climbing. They are now upon the narrow iron stiarcase that leads up to the top of the rock. Two giant lion paws are on either side of the stair. In the past, it is said one had to path through the mouth of the lion at the top to gain entrance to the castle.

I wish I'd had a picnic with me, to spread out on a blanket at the top of the rock and enjoy while I took in the view. As it was, I found myself a comfortable spot on the rocks and looked down at the plain below. I'm not sure how long I stayed there, perhaps half an hour or more. There weren't many tourists. I have heard that there are times when the staircases are choked with people. Perhaps five groups came up to the top while I was there. None walked around the entire summit of the rock. None stayed longer than five minutes.

My muscles trembled as I came down the many stairs, remembering the mountains I had recently climbed. I wandered slowly through the last of the green gardens before crossing the moat and returning to the modern world. I spent the afternoon in the garden of my guesthouse, watching monkies in the trees and dreaming of fairytales.

Sri Pada

During "the season" people traditionally make pilgrimages from all over Sri Lanka, walking slowly towards the great mountain where it is said that the footprint of the Lord Buddha is preserved. In English the mountain is named "Adam's Peak" and Christians are said to find it holy as the earthly location where God deposited Adam (and one presumes Eve as well, although she is never mentioned) when he was banished from Eden. Signs along the way say that Hindus and Muslims also find the mountain holy, but I have found no evidence of their reasons.

I do not travel by foot, but I travel for over twelve hours, using three different modes of transportation, before arriving at the foot of the mountain. There are faster, and more efficient ways of getting there, but I have other errands to run and things to drop off in Colombo. For the last two months, I had been enjoying the beauty of the Southern Sri Lankan coast, but for the first time, I was traveling the interior. To be honest, beaches to me have a lot in common with other beaches world wide. That's not to say that I didn't absolutely love every inch of the beauty on my beach in Madiha, but after the beaches of Australia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Thailand, they all begin to blur into a wonderful blend of sun and sand and surf.

Away from the beach, though, Sri Lanka is every bit as beautiful as the lore tells it. It wasn't just the train through the mountains, standing by an open door with the wind in my hair and the green scenery whipping by, white birds rising from rice paddies, flashes of gold on temple roofs, clouds on the peaks; it was the misty mystique of the tea plantations as well. I was on a bus traveling through the tea area when night fell and the world melted away into the fog.

After two trains and a bus, I splurged on private transportation: what in Thailand we call a tuk-tuk, or in Sri Lanka, a three-wheeler. There were a few dubious moments when the male driver made his attempts to persuade me to join him at some whiskey drinking jungle "party" but otherwise, I enjoyed the curvey wild ride on the dark road with emptiness on either side and only the occasional glimpses through the fog of floating mountaintops and mystical waterfalls.

When I woke at 4am, there was a flask of tea on the kitchen table, along with a banana and some crackers. The staff at the guesthouse where I was staying at the foot of the mountain also provided me with a vial of salt for the leeches and a small container of balm for sore muscles. If I had read my guidebook, I would have known that 4am, is far too late to be starting the climb in order to reach the summit by sunrise, but I hadn't really read my guidebook in quite a while, so I woke early and began to prepare.

At first, I thought it was raining. In the darkness, I could hear the sound of water, what I thought was the rain on the roof. So I asked myself, having come all this way to the holy mountain, will I climb in the rain, knowing that I will see nothing but clouds at the cold, wet summit? At 4am, a warm bed is always highly enticing, but since I was already awake and dressed and since I had traveled all that way, I decided, view or not, to try for the top.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when I left the guesthouse and found the skies clear and full of stars. In the calm of the night, the sound of all the streams and waterfalls nearby had tricked me. Not only was it not raining, but the clear sky promised a fantastic view.

The guidebook does say that if you are a lone woman walking the trail outside of the season, you should take a guide. I hardly even considered it. When there is a large, well marked trail, and one has a dependable headlamp, why would I want a complete stranger walking beside me on my private pilgrimage? It was somewhat thrilling to be alone in the middle of the night, on a trail through the jungle, hiking upwards towards the unknown under the stars.

I could see nothing and I walked slowly so as to enjoy the amazing brightness of the stars above. Now and again, the trail opened onto strange sights, lit by small lights along the path. The first was a large stone archway, towering out of the night, marking the official beginning of the holy trail. It reminded me of a scene from "The Neverending Story," or some other epic fairy tale where one passes from the known world into fantasy. Further on the trail was a shrine in an alclove. I climbed my first set of stairs to discover a whole monastery waiting for me to walk through, utterly deserted and quiet in the dark.

In "the season", which begins with the first full moon of December, people flock to the mountain. There are shops lined up along the way, little wooden stalls selling sweets and tea, where one can stop to rest. I have heard stories of the stairs to the summit so choked with people that one can't move to get up or down. I wandered the woods in utter silence, completely alone.

Partly because of my late starting time and partly because I was walking in wonder (ie: very slowly), it became clear to me very early that I would not make the summit for sunrise. This hardly distressed me. I suppose I could have made a race for the top, but instead I continued my slow toil upwards at my own pace, enjoying the feeling of the night air on my skin and the sounds of the frogs in the woods and the rushing water, and the sight of the stars overhead. The world seemed wrapped in mystery and I was glad to be a part of it.

By the time the sun began lightening the sky, I was high enough up on the mountain to begin enjoying the spectacular views. Since the stairs were becoming steeper, I took plenty of opportunities to stop and enjoy the way light seeped into the scenery, the way the colors changed on the rock face of the cliff opposite me, the things I could begin to see, like the waterfalls and the lakes of clouds far below. It was a gorgeous sunrise, full of yellows and reds and purples and the most brilliant blues. I felt like I watched it for hours. There is something magical about being awake when the world wakes, to watching the landscape unfold around you, as if it were being created anew for your eyes.

The steps up until that point had been old ones, made of earth and stone. They were steep and uneven and crumbling in places. As I came closer to the summit, the path changed to concrete. The more regular steps allowed me to fall into a slow rhythm and I became more optimistic about the climb. I can only imagine how I must look in moments such as that: red in the face from exertion, alone and scruffy, but with the hugest grin on my face, absolutely intoxicated with all the sensations and with the wonder of the world.

It was very soon after sunrise, surprisingly soon, that I began to encounter other people, tourists who were making their way down the mountain after sunrise. There were perhaps ten in all. The first two were women, I imagined them to be a mother and daughter from some Nordic country. They said something pleasant and continued on their way. Then came a whole string of strangely obnoxious people. The next person I encountered was a stout Germanic man, alone, almost racing down the stairs. He was so surprised to see me slowly toiling upwards that he stopped.

"Why are you climbing now?" he asked me. "You have missed all the beauty."

I, too, stopped in surprise and for a moment, I could only stare at him. There we were on these endless steps surrounded by twisted trees and flowering bushes. The birds, just waking in the trees, were calling sweetly and the morning air was cool and clean. There we were, both standing on the edge of nothingness, with all the world spread out below us. The young sun illuminated the lakes below, the ripples of the hills, the red face of the rocks on the mountains, silver flashes of rising clouds.

"There is always more beauty," I replied and kept climbing.

I was still shaking my head when I encountered the next group.

"Why are you climbing?" they asked. "It's finished."

And the next group was the same.

At last, the concrete stairs became even steeper and three iron railings helped me to climb. I knew this was probably the last section of the climb. I went slowly and paused often. My muscles were burning. I had to catch my breath often. From somewhere, a ragged dog joined me and climbed slowly behind me, looking at me with dog eyes every time I stopped.

Just before the last staircase, I rounded a corner and suddenly the whole world opened up to me. Suddenly, the whole earth seemed full of mountaintops and clouds. With the suddenness of it and my fatigue, the beauty went straight through my heart and I found myself unexpectedly close to tears. The wind was in my hair and cold on my skin and I was terribly tired, but I had made it to the top of the world. I faced those last, steep steps and with the dog behind me, finished my climb.

I came to the summit and everything was white and full of wind. It was terribly cold and fresh. Everything felt scrubbed clean and pure. I felt light. There is not much room on a mountaintop, one is forced to leave the extraneous behind. Flags were flapping in the wind as I walked around the shrine at the top - the footprint of the Lord Buddha.

There were some Sri Lankan men living up there, working, bundled up in jackets and warm hats. I sat down on some white stone steps, where dogs were lying in the morning sun. One of the men, dressed all in white, came and stood near me, his white robes flapping in the wind. I don't know how long I sat there, enjoying the warmth of the sun, the cold breeze and the amazing view of mountaintops all around me, shrouded in mist. But there, with the sun in my eyes and a dog curled up beside me, I thought, "Silly man, I missed nothing."

Learning Deaf

One of the first things I did at the Rohanna school was go to observe classes. After two years of researching and experimenting with teaching methods, of being observed while teaching and of observing and giving feedback to others teaching, I was interested to see what strategies and styles teachers had developed for the deaf classroom.

All of the secondary classes take place upstairs. I went upstairs for the first time, almost hitting my head and looked out at the long, narrow room. All of the classes are in the same room, each one divided by a small partition.

Adam, the teacher I was to be observing, a volunteer from America, my interpreter and friend, looked at me, as I looked at the room, and he must have seen my expression because he asked, "What are you thinking?"

I felt embarassed because my thoughts were moving quickly, but not quickly enough. My first thought had been: "How aweful to teach here, it must be so noisy with all the classes packed together next to each other like this."

And then, just afterwards, I observed how small the classes were, on average, about five students present at any given time, and how silent. Of course, there is not a lot of speaking going on in a deaf classroom, is there? Well Duh.

That's just one example of my new education. I think like a Speaking Person. But there are other ways to think.

One Friday, I go to the school because the sports teacher has told me that she will be playing volleyball with the girls. There are often sports being played at the school, but I rarely see the girls participating and I would like to help change that. When there is free time, I often get distracted in the yard and then it's time to go and I realise that I haven't even seen many girls.. they are all in the dormitory.

On that occasion, the sports teacher was called home and the girls were in the dormitory as usual, but I joined in the game of volleyball, kicking off my sandals and rolling up my cuffs.

One thing I love about living in South East Asia is being barefoot. In Thailand I loved that I worked all day in an office with no shoes on. Here, I love walking down the street barefoot, feeling the warmth of the sun in the soil and on the black pavement, splashing through puddles. On the volleyball feild, it is mostly mud and small rocks, patches of grass, but I love the feeling of the earth beneath my bare feet.

I remember playing volleyball in high school, mastering the bump, set, spike, wasn't too difficult. What seemed hard for us, as young people, was calling the ball. We all wanted it at first, and then, as it came down out of the air towards our heads, we would close our eyes and back away, letting it fall to the ground. Then we would all look at each other in confusion. How was it no one had even touched the ball?

At the Rohanna school that Friday we were six to a side, but sometimes five, or four or eight, nobody seemed to care much. We had our positions but didn't stick much to them, as you generally don't unless you are some kind of sports person or on a real team or you care too much or something.

Of course, we couldn't call the ball. Well, I could, but no one would hear me so there's not much point in that, is there? I suppose I could sign for it, but that would only be effective if someone was watching me, facing me. And then, they wouldn't be watching the ball, and neither would I, so what good is that? Sometimes we were so busy congratulating each other, or telling a player that they weren't in position or showing them how to better bump the ball, we wouldn't even notice the ball coming over the net.

And in the end, it was just like high school volleyball as I knew it, because no one really calls the ball anyways, and when they do, no one really listens. The best games are the ones infused with a tinge of the chaotic, the mad rushing around for the ball, the uncontrolled volleys, the luck more than the skill. I think our team lost, but I can't remember the score. I may have changed sides at one point, I can't exactly remember. I do recall the feeling of the warm ground between my toes and the signs I learnt - the ones that have no translation but that convey victory and job and frustration. I remember hunkering down near the net, starting at my opponent, laughing as I tried to sign something to convey, "Bring it on punk, i'm going to take you down!"

My quest for specfic teaching strategies oriented towards the deaf classroom has been a little disapointing. For one, Sri Lankan teaching is pretty old school, your generic repeat and memorize style cramming for exams. Teaching methods are the same. Teachers don't really need deaf-specific strategies, they need general teaching strategies, along with an overhaul of the educational system. As usual, I am learning more as I go than I could from a book. My online quest has been frustrating too. Instead, I, as I work one on one with a deaf teacher, observe the classrooms, learn sign language and think about my own experience, I learn how to adapt what I do know to this new context. But I still have a lot to learn...

Itinerary

After many weeks of emails and putting it off, I have finally planned my life for the next few months. Well, more of less. There are still, of course, gaps to fill in, appointments to be made, details, details, details, but some things in life have to be random right?

Thursday Nov. 23rd: I teach my last class in Madiha. Around this time, there will be numerous dinners with various students and people I have worked with. I anticipate eating a lot of delicious curry and even more delicious fresh seafood. After all of these dinners are finished and the teaching is over, I will be leaving Madiha for travels through central Sri Lanka. I anticipate long, hot, bus rides, with blaring Hindi music and crazy high speed turns, tea plantations, rain forests and the quiet contemplation of many Buddihist ruins.

Friday Dec. 1st: I fly on a Sri Lankan airlines flight to London, England. I'm not quite sure why I'm going there or what I'm going to do but the flight was there and it was cheap, so I took it. My good friend from the border will be in Brighton, so a few good times are guanenteed.

Tuesday Dec. 5th: I leave London at 13:30 on Air Transat flight TS123 to Toronto and arrive on my home soil at 16:40. Reunion with old friends ensue. Travel to visit other friends and relatives follows. I will end up at some point in Montreal.

Monday Dec. 11th: Women's Leadership Seminar Series #7: "Life on the Border" (MCRTW Seminar room 3-5pm) The McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women hosts yours truly for a practical talk about life after graduation.

Wednesday Dec. 13th: I say goodbye to the lights and the parties in Montreal and grab West Jet flight 655 home to Calgary at 21:05, landing in Cowtown near midnight. Home sweet home. Cinammon buns, brandy soaked Christmas cake, a cabin encircled by snow and reading books by the fire. Lots of hugs, lots of food, lots of tea and talking.

January 11th: Air Canada flight 207Q to Vancouver (leaving at 10am), followed by Air Canada flight 3Q to Tokoyo/Narita at noon, followed by Thai Airways flight 9556Q to Bangkok at 5:15pm on January 12th. Total airtime, about 19hours and miraculously enough, good connections. I arrive back in Thailand sometime late at night on Friday January 12th, back into the blue gray wharehouse of Bangkok's new international airport, the pollution, the traffic and the general madness of the city. Back to my house, my cat and looking for a job. Happy New Year.