First Report Card: Smyrna West

Kindergarten. I went to a small kindergarten all by itself on a hill. There was a playground to the left of the building and a steep green hill out front that we weren't allowed to go all the way down. There were a few trees and shrubs down close to the road and this was forbidden territory.

I think kindergarten was when I started loving school and boys. Although the order sometimes rearranged itself. I remember our class getting checked for lice, our class lying down every day on our blue and red mats for nap time, and our alphabet circle. During the alphabet circle, we listened to a song about each letter and then Mrs. Easley passed around an inflatable letter character. I loved those guys. They smelled like pool floats and I always held it a little too long and a little too close to my face.

We usually began our days with a coloring sheet. It wasn't a creative coloring sheet. It was a follow-the-directions coloring sheet. The teacher had already colored a sample and taped it to the board for us to copy. I was a serious colorer. But one day, we got a new girl. And she sat at my little group of desks. And she got her coloring sheet and started boldly coloring her horse fuchsia. It was the most beautiful horse I had ever seen, so I picked up a fuchsia crayon and started coloring that bad boy a serious shade of magenta. But then, I had my first crisis of conscience. I remembered we were supposed to color the sheet the same as the example on the board. I turned and looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, that guy was brown up there. No fuchsia horses. And so, I ditched the pinkish crayon, picked up a brown one, and drove it into the paper. I colored so hard, my hand was hurting and crayon wax was crumbled across my paper. It didn't help. Now my horse didn't look fuchsia or brown. It looked like a white horse covered in throw up. It was a mess.

After a while, Mrs. Easley asked us to bring our coloring pages to her. We always turned them in one at a time. I usually skipped to her desk, but that day I was slow poking it up there. My stomach was all knotty. I handed her my paper and she looked at me with angry eyebrows. She told me she was disappointed in me. The new girl made her mistake honestly, but I made mine knowing the rules. And as I turned around in shame to return to my seat, she swatted me. She swatted my behind. It was my one and only "corporeal punishment" of my entire educational career. I was crushed.

This may or may not have been the same day I was swinging on the playground and Daniel Graham dared me to jump off. And because he was a boy and cute and I loved him, I did it. And I did it well. Except that I landed on my feet too hard, fell to my knees in the dirt, and continued falling forward until my face met a perfectly placed grey rock sticking out of the dirt. My precision was amazing. I went home with a black eye. Also, my only black eye of my entire educational career.

Plus also, we made shrinky dinks. Mine was a picture of a rainbow with a tree and some grass and a cloud. I still have that old thing taped in my closet. It was a magnet that lived on our fridge. But then Dad got tired of all the junk on it and he bought a stainless steel front fridge, and magnets do not stick to that guy.

Now, my kindergarten is, according to the website, an alternative school for kids in 6th-12th grade. However, the reputation it has now is as a minimum security school for those kids with behavioral issues. Sounds like fuchsia horses are still not allowed.

*This post was inspired by Writing to Reach You's Ashley, who is currently blogging through her school years. As if I didn't have enough little series to keep up with. Anyway, it's what came out today. Feel free to start your own and make sure you leave me a link so I can get to it!

* In case you're wondering about the word kindergarten, here's some etymology: 1852, from German, literally "children's garden," from Kinder "children" (plural of Kind "child") + Garten "garden"). Coined in 1840 by Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) in reference to his method of developing intelligence in young children, the first one in English established in 1850 by Johannes Ronge, a German Catholic priest.

Journal Week: In the slum

April 4, 2009

Kolkata, India

"Walk to Work"

To get to Mother Teresa's house, we leave our hostel and walk down a long lane for close to 15 minutes. The street is lined with shops of all kinds and intersected by many dirt lanes and one large paved road that the tram rides up and down in its grooves on its line. It is always busy, even at seven in the morning. The taxi drivers are all lined up washing their cars, the cows are already busy on the sidewalks chewing their cud.

Boys and men are wrapped in their dhoti at the waterspouts, rubbing their bodies into a white froth of soap that seems not to clean anything. Old men are already lined up at the shop counters for their daily betel leaf smeared with paan, which will ensure a red smile all day long.

We walk down this dusty lane, avoiding the motorcycles, bicycles, and cars that zoom by. There is a butcher section where large sides of meat hang, dazzlingly red and white in the early morning sun. The smell is already overwhelming, the insides of animals being unceremoniously exposed

to the outside world, then hacked, chopped, and ground. I try not to look too closely because I can't stand the thought of the animals that used to be whole, healthy, wearing their guts inside their skins. I also don't want to feel sick. The smell is almost too much.

There are too many dogs. They are almost as numerous as the beggars, lying alongside them in the gutters and digging with them through the piles of trash swept out of the street. Today, one dog had stopped on the side of the lane. He was brown, with perky ears and his tongue interminably hanging out the side of his mouth trying to find some relief in the Indian heat. He was simply standing, alert. Perhaps he, too, couldn't escape the smell of fresh meat, blood still dripping off knives into drains. He was facing us as we picked our way through the lane.

A young man wearing a white tank top on top of his blue dhoti came walking in our direction, swinging a long thick chain. The links were close to 2 inches long and were round, thicker than a pencil. Both ends of the chain were in this man's hand as he walked down the street. He came up behind the dog- the frozen, all-alert dog. He first brought the chain up, his hand reaching back toward his ear, and then down onto the back of the dog, the long graceful curve of his spine breaking the chain into a squiggle. the dog jumped up and let out the most heart-rending squeal, a plea for mercy and a cry of confusion.

The man who hit the dog was amused by the pain he inflicted. I immediately yelled, "Why?" and turned around to look at the man who had just passed us seconds after his crime. I looked at him as if he were the devil and Kenny also watched him. He was laughing, a full open-mouthed smile on his face, truly filled with glee at his power.

The moment I turned back to continue walking to work, I was undone. could not stop thinking about how unprovoked and senseless the act of brutality was. I cried almost the entire way to Mother's House, unable to stop imagining the way the dog's back must still be stinging from that metal kiss. Everything else was thrown under the bus of this impression- this completely colored my day. Kenny says that my compassion for animals far exceeds my compassion for the people here. And perhaps that is true. I have always felt that as humans, we can understand and rationalize our pain, a gift that dogs don't have.

When the bottom of society are treated as less than our pets back home in America, when the poorest of the poor have less property than my sister's dogs, and the babies sleep on a sidewalk I wouldn't let my cat nap on, how do I expect these people to treat animals well? The dogs are competition. They compete for food and for attention from foreigners. And maybe the dog had won and the chain empowered a man to feel like more than an animal.

Journal Week: At Mother Teresa's House

April 3, 2009

Kolkata, India

Modern Lodge Room 21, aka The Sauna

I was nervous about my first day @ Shanti Dan. I picked a home for mentally challenged women because I wanted to love them. And it was very easy to love them. When I walked in the door with 2 other workers, we were smothered by hugs and kisses and "Good morning, auntie!" coming from all directions of the courtyard. There was one woman with her hair very short, sticking out in small tufts all over her head. Her face was severely disfigured, most likely by fire, her left eye wide open without the protection of an eyelid. Her bottom lip was turned down and melted into her chin giving her a baby's line of drool running down her front. But she showed her teeth and her wrinkled, scarred skin became even more creased and pulled taut across her cheek bones as she gave us her own sort of smile. She came straight to me and wrapped her arms about my waist. I hugged her to me as she lay her head on my shoulder and stared up at me with her eternally open eye. What a warm and lovely greeting. I felt that these women were taking care of me. What could I possibly do to take care of them?

My morning assignment was to clip nails. I was given a super-duper large pair of clippers and one of those hospital issue half-moon bowls you throw up in. When I walked out the door of the Sister's office, there was already a line of women waiting on me. I felt awful cutting their nails. I was overwhelmed by my inability to do it well, something so simple as clipping nails! I can't even clip my own nails without making a mess. But I kept at it, sometimes clipping just for clipping's sake because some of the women had recently had their nails trimmed.

Later, an elderly frail woman whose nails I had clipped, hands and feet, was sitting outside on the concrete balcony that ran round the inside of the 2nd floor of the complex. Many of the women lay out on this balcony instead of their beds. Perhaps it was much cooler in the open air. She was sitting and reached for me as I walked by. Being generally lost as to what my exact task was supposed to be, I sat down next to her. She was wearing a scarf, sari too, over her head. This made her head look even smaller. Her gray hair was pulled back at her neck underneath the scarf. Her blue eyes were sunk very deep into her face, her cheekbones scaring them back into her head. She was weathered.

She began to speak to me, holding my hand. Of course I couldn't understand her, but I felt it was only my duty to listen. I nodded at her and looked into her eyes and hugged her and listened. She began to become quite agitated and began to cry. I felt she was begging me for something. I just hugged her and rocked her tiny frame back and forth. I held her face and her head, feeling how small she had become. She was so tiny.

One of the other volunteers came to fetch me. I unwrapped myself and hugged her once more and squeezed her hand. I told her that everything would be okay. But maybe it will never be okay. I will remember her. It was my only day to work with the women and I was shy and uncertain about what was appropriate behavior. I was terrible. But I listened to her. And maybe she hasn't been listened to in a long time.

Journal Week: At the Planetarium

This week, I've decided to share more of my travel journal with you. Most of the entries for this week are from our time spent in Kolkata. 

April 2, 2009

Kolkata, India

Modern Lodge Room 21

"The Angry Old Woman"

Because Thursday is the day of rest for the volunteers at Mother Teresa's house, we had the day to ourselves. So we decided we'd go to the Planetarium in town to amuse ourselves. The review in the guidebook wasn't great, but it would be indoors with AC, so that was that. I expected some really cheesy light show, but it was an extremely formal affair. We got there just in time for the English show to start. 

We fell back into movie theater-like chairs that reclined way back, but somehow weren't comfortable. A few seats down, a white woman and her 4 or 5 year old son and an Indian man came in together and sat at the end of our row. The ceiling was a big dome with black cut outs of the cityscape around the bottom where the dome met the walls. The seating was circular as well, following the shape of the ceiling. In the center of the room was a large unattractive machine. Balanced on the end of a long arm was what looked like a disco ball.

The lights were dimmed and an aged voice with a hint of a British accent addressed the audience, her R giving away her native Indian tongue. She was first just a voice- the lights were off completely. She made a very stern announcement about turning off your mobile phone and keeping it off until the end of the presentation. The voice was extremely measured and I felt that perhaps the speakers' back was very straight and that maybe she had to fight to keep her shoulders from creeping up in tension around her ears. 

The lights come on as the disco ball in the middle of the room reproduces a sunset. The stars eventually appeared in all their pinpoint glory. Sometimes the voice called forth lines that connected certain stars, making the constellations, turning the ceiling into a grid of lines and dots. The voice patiently tackled each constellation in its turn and in the middle of a sentence the voice immediately grows even more authoritative and suddenly shouts, "Who turned on their mobile?"

She pronounces mobile with all the vowels long so that she chops it in two: mow-bile. The voice continues, firm and righteous: "Did I give you permission to turn it on? Why would you switch on your mow-bile? Who gave you permission to turn the mow-bile on?" 

By this time I am extremely uncomfortable because the voice is direct, instead of being politely neutral and addressing the entire audience. I am embarrassed for this great trespasser of the mow-bile rule but am also annoyed because he has brought the show to a complete halt. I look down the aisle and see the Indian man with the white woman and boy, his face aglow in the green light emitted from his mow-bile screen.

The voice switches on the house lights, enraged by this person's defiance. She appears, an old woman with her grey hair parted down the middle and clasped tightly into a tense bun at the base of her neck. She glares through severe glasses with eyebrows as crumpled and disapproving as she can manage. With the lights turned on and an usher standing at the end of the row, the man finally becomes intimidated enough to drop the phone into his pocket. He makes eye contact with no one, not even the woman he accompanies. The voice is still very indignant, the dignity of her proper and perfect presentation now disturbed. She shouts, "I think it's a disgrace! Turn. It. Off!"

Lights are switched off and immediately the voice is restored once more as she continues, "This most beautiful nebula here..."

A few minutes later she interrupts herself once more. "Keep your child quiet," she snips to the woman at the end of our row with her son. The little boy had cooed and then spoken out loudly, "Wow! Look at that! Look at that over there. Whoa! What is that?" while jumping out of his seat and pointing wildly at the twinkling presentation above him. Later, while explaining the milky way in detail, she stops again and asks about the mow-bile phone. This time, abusing a patron across the room. She abandons her proper English and begins to shout forcefully in Hindi. She finally resorts once more to turning the house lights on, erasing the stars, planets, and milky way, causing the little boy to groan in disappointment. After a good verbal thrashing, the voice switches back to English and its presenter's tone, continuing on about the marvels of the milky way splashed once more across the hemisphere above us. 

It was impossible to enjoy the show, we were both so nervous about the boy who wouldn't be quiet and the apparent idiocy of the mow-bile toting patrons. And I wonder about that woman, her staunch pride in her work of explicating the mysteries that move above us in the dark. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a constellation without hearing her voice screaming at me to turn off my mow-bile. 

The Happy Hiker

An overview of my time hiking. In retrospect, I'm so glad that we did it. But that comes with perspective and also no longer trekking  4 to 5 hours a day. I'm working on a few posts that are a bit more detailed and give you an idea of what we did in the mountains. I've compiled a few photos for your viewing pleasure! Let me know if you guys like the smilebox thing. Thought I'd try something new and different. 

On vacation in Florida at my Mamaw and Papaw's house in Estero. Spending my days in the pool with the HubbO and stuffing my face. However, I have taken to treading water for a half hour at the time on top of my every-other-day runs. So hopefully the cardio will cancel out all the homemade banana pudding, sausage and biscuits, steak, and other delicious homecooked concoctions my Mamaw keeps throwing my way! 

Make a Smilebox postcard

Our Wedding (Part II: The Pictures)

Many of you may have already seen the pictures posted on Facebook, but I thought for those of you who aren't able to see them there (you can, I invite you to befriend me!) I'd post those plus a few extra freebies here (but only because you're special).

Warning: If you are particularly sensitive in the mush area and prone to throwing up in your mouth a little whenever you are exposed to smiling, gushing, happy people twining their lives together, you may want to skip the following pictures. Or just have your barf bag handy.

The lovely Angie fixing my hair! Ignore the complete mess that is my room.

How Daddy prepares for the wedding.

Coffee Shop Lady! She made breakfast for me and my family.

It really was our coffee shop that day!

The bride registering that she is on her way to be a bride!

Kenny and his good friend Choong Soo.

Hein gives Kenny the royal lip treatment!

Important for the kissing part of the ceremony.

While the Sisda gives me a little eye makeup.

The mumsie with lip balm.

Yep, that was the extent of my makeup: eye stuff and lip gloss!

Daddy making me laugh with his HUGE corsage that was explicitly

prohibited by Kenny, but somehow found it's way onto his jacket anyway.

Walking towards the rest of my life!

Me and Dad competing for Biggest Smile.

Kenny's friends sang an English song for us!

I Will Be There by Steven Curtis Chapman. I did get a little teary...

Bowing to my parents.

Bowing to Kenny's parents. I surprised his mom by doing a full bow.

Usually the ladies bow from the waist down.

But whoever said I was a lady?

Backpacks on. Ready to hike!

All of us.

Already tired from smiling!

My Korean family.

My awesome parents!

The Sisda, who sang me down the aisle. It was beautiful.

The fathers.

The mommas.

The ladies: Angie and Jennifer.

The Exeter bunch. The first Koreans who knew us as a couple.

Kenny's amazing friends, including Hein, Hana, and JiEun

who helped keep the ajummas quiet!

MyungSung Presbyterian Group.

They were so supportive and great friends.

Miss you guys and see you soon.

Outside of the church.

At dinner in our hanbok with all the cool people!

The End! The last picture we took with some of Kenny's friends.

If you made it this far, you're a trooper. Grab yourself a donut; you deserve it!

Life of Anonymous Celebrity Part VI: International Edition

I do not travel well. I travel a lot, but I do it by stirring up an insane amount of nervous energy and then letting that explode all over the airport, bus station, husband, you get the idea. It usually ends in tears. Creating this nervousness is easy because all you have to do is imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong and then follow each thing out to its logical conclusion: this makes the domino effect of wrong-going things clear and seem unavoidable. Hence, the nervous energy. All this energy must be stirred up and expelled by the time the first thing has not gone wrong. So, once I am through security, holding my boarding ticket and passport like a meth addict clings to whatever it is meth addicts cling to, I'm pretty much okay. I'm definitely okay once the airplane takes off, and I remain okay even when the plane starts to do that dippy thing that makes your stomach flip. 

But when you're on the ground, off the bus, out of the train, the whole process must begin once more because well, another whole slew of things could go wrong with the transit process. The taxi driver could be a complete bastard and say he's not going to take you to the hotel you wish (check), the train could leave gasp! on time (check), or you could spend the early morning hours before sunset with your baggage on steps in front of the Ganges because no one is awake to admit you to their hostel (and check). 

All this to say: nervous before the plane takes off. (One time I cried because they hadn't yet posted our gate number for the flight. I was completely undone by the little blank in that row of numbers. ) Not nervous in transit at all. Nervous at the end of the journey that marks the beginning of another one. 

So, anylongestintroductioneverway, we left Bangkok and flew to Nepal. The flight was great and as we flew in over Nepal, the sky was incredibly blue and the world beneath us glowed green and grew mountains. I was in a pure state of bliss as we landed, but when we exited the plane, the nervousness hitched up its britches and got serious. After navigating the visa-issuance line and process, we picked up our luggage and headed out of the airport to find the transportation supposed to be provided for us by the hostel we had booked. We didn't change any money at the airport because the rates were ridiculous and we didn't need a taxi. So we walked out to the parking lot and BAM! 

I have not ever been mobbed before. Except in the tens by small non-intimidating and only mildly annoying Korean children under the age of 7. But on February 28, 2009, I was mobbed. By Nepali taxi drivers. There must have been upwards of 100 stationed outside the airport, milling about the parking lot, standing in large groups, and aggressively surrounding every passenger to exit the airport. Kenny had tried to prepare me for this, but there's just no preparing yourself. So, with nervousness at full capacity and our hostel taxi service nowhere to be seen, I panicked. We had walked out into the parking lot in hopes that the hostel transporters were simply lazy and leaning against a car we couldn't see while carelessly flipping a sign with our names on it. We had been followed by 8 or 9 taxi drivers violating all sorts of personal space rules, even the revised ones I had amended in Korea. They all talked at once and I couldn't understand anything they seemed to be saying. Kenny was also talking to me, asking me what I thought we should do. It was so crazy for me I couldn't think. And so, in true Nervous Traveller fashion, I put my hand over my ears, closed my eyes, and screamed.

Not really a scream. More like a sound that happens when a groan and a shriek get married and procreate. It came up through my belly and echoed in my spinning head before exiting my mouth and falling at my feet utterly inefficient. Nothing had changed except that now the taxi drivers were laughing as they attempted to haggle with us. Kenny probably thought his new wife was losing her mind already and we retreated back into the safety of the airport. (We did eventually find the hostel guy holding a sign with other people's names on it, but he took us anyway. Booking online for a place in Nepal that only has electricity in 4 hour increments means that your booking is often futile.)

So, I know you're all, "Isn't this supposed to be an LAC post? Will there ever be any anonymity or celebrity?" Yes to both. After making it to the hostel, getting settled, and venturing out into Thamel to explore, a young Nepali man yells across the street at me.

"Hey! I know you! Didn't you just get here today?" 

"Um, yes?" 

"Yeah, I saw you. At the airport. You were yelling a lot."

"Well, I wouldn't say a lot."

"Definitely you. I remember your hair. I like this hair. But you were yelling."

"Overwhelmed. I was simply overwhelmed." 

"Well, it's nice to see you again."

He introduced himself and we did, in fact, see him again. He had a nice smile. He wore a business suit. The jacket showed his wrists, his arms too long. And he proved that when you do stupid stuff in the airport parking lot, people are going to remember you. Especially if you're a white girl walking around with dreadlocks. They won't know your name (anonymous), but they'll know who you are (celebrity). 

Lists from Bangkok

[We only spent a total of 3 days in Bangkok. Here's an entry from my journal.]

February 27, 2009
Bangkok, Thailand
Jasmine Executive Suites, Suite 1112

EATEN:

1.Spring roll on the Floating Market Canal. Delicious.

2.Sip of coconut milk out of an actual coconut, also on the canal. Not delicious.

3.Bit of Kenny's noodles near Wat Po.

4.So-so rice noodles with green curry at a pricey restaurant with an ajumma look-alike singing tunes way too passionately beside a piano. I do not like green curry. Good to know.

5.McDonald's Coffee Float across from pricey restaurant: PERFECT.

6.Crappy spring roll while getting my hair locked in Kao San Road.

7.Fettuccine Pepperoncini, terribly heavy pasta at Little Italy.

8.5 pieces of mozzarella, picked out of a mozzarella and tomato salad, also Little Italy.

9.Tiramisu. Awesome. Desert at Little Italy.

Conclusion: Want to either poop or throw up. But I would totally repeat #5. Who knew?

SEEN/VISITED:

1.  Damnoen Saduak Floating Market: Incredible. We got up so early and still missed the local trading because our taxi driver got lost. Twice. We got a little ripped off with the boat tour for an hour, but had our own boat so that was nice. Probably my favorite part of today. Being on the water was nice and cool. And we saw a big iguana type thing swimming in the canal. 

2. Salt fields. Probably Kenny's favorite.We saw the fields on the way back to Bangkok from the floating market and Kenny made the driver pull over on the side of the road so he could get some pictures. 

3. Thammasat University= Beautiful Campus. A truly lovely walk through the grounds, right on the river. Great relaxed atmosphere.

4. Chao Phraya River. We took a tour boat by mistake trying to get down the river so Kenny could snap some pictures of Wat Aren (Temple of Dawn). Ended up being a really pleasant trip both ways. The weather was much cooler on the water.

5.  Kao San Road. Again, but daytime. Pretty much just sat in a plastic blue chair for 2 hours and had my hair locked. Feels great and so easy to take care of. 

4.  2 Elephants in the Street. It was so cool seeing them up close. They are so large. I mean, you know they're large but you don't really know until you're next to them. One had a reflective light tied around his tail. 

TIME SPENT IN TAXIS:

1.   6:55-9:00: To Floating Market from Sukhumvit. Taxi driver was a mistake. However, I manage to sleep most of the way.

2.   10:15-11:45: Back with the same driver but to Wat Pho. He took a crazy route and the traffic was heavy. I slept some more but felt car sick and had a huge headache when we got out.

3.   5:45-6:30: Back to Sukhumvit from Kao San Road. Traffic was insane and after got far enough we popped out and walked the rest of the way. 

Conclusion: I am already tired of taxis and miss Seoul Metro and the bus system which is easy and so freaking cheap. TOTAL TIME IN TAXIS: 4 hrs 20 minutes!

I am so tired but happy with how the day turned out. It was full and vivid and fun. Now if only I could poooooooop!

[That was pretty much the most exciting day. And then we left Bangkok and headed to Nepal!]