suck it up, make it fun!

Life has been hectic lately. We're more than halfway through our squished and shortened semester, and packing all of our curriculum into a small space has been challenging. Woodstock has also scheduled seemingly thousands of events / activities into March and April, which means we're often on campus late for extracurriculars or performances or study halls or whatnot. I reach each weekend at a dead sprint, then fall exhausted into Saturday and Sunday.

Don't worry -- the rest of this post is not a list of complaints, but the opposite. Here's my point: Our work schedule often makes me want to sit alone and zone out over the weekends or any breaks, but what I've tried to do this semester is resist this impulse and take advantage of every opportunity at my disposal. For instance...

More coffees in the buzz with my best friend, the amazing Julia! She's leaving at the end of this semester, and I'm sad. So it's no more lazing at home alone, but finding ways to spend some non-work time together.

Finally chaperoning a weekend hike! At the beginning of every semester, I would tentatively agree to be on the female chaperone list, but then I'd demur whenever Zach or Pants actually asked me if I'd volunteer. Weekend hike during this chaos? I'm too busy, I'd reply! A few weekends ago, I finally agreed to go - to ignore my pile of work - and it was a blast!

how can i resist views like these?

Going somewhere fun for Quarter Break! We contemplated having a peaceful break at home in early April, but that would mean missing out on our last chance to travel with Julia, so we went to two new cities: Amritsar and Dharamsala. It was an exhausting trip, for sure, with many long hours on nausea-inducing bus rides, and my own tango with a horrible stomach virus, but in the end it was worth it. The week was packed full of tun times with friends (and some awesome students) exploring some new locales.

looking awesome at one of the "7 wonders of india" - the golden temple

Of all my resolutions for the year 2014, this is one I hope I make my new philosophy on life.

(If these photos interest you, I've posted plenty more on my facebook page...)

a typical vacation day

We <3 Malaysia, and it's not because of these awesome ads we see all the time on Indian TV. Tomorrow, we leave for our final country -- Singapore -- and it'll be a sad farewell.

I'm feeling pretty lazy lately, so I'll keep this post photo-based and focused on Pulau Pangkor, a cheap tropical island off Malaysia's western coast. We enjoyed our time in Penang and KL, especially because of the delicious eats, but we had a long and relaxing stay on PP. Here's a typical day, in photos.

getting ready for the day -- late, of course. it's vacation!

from the cool bungalow to the hot sun

we always start the day with coffee. always.

one of the many PP street kitties.

we stopped at this "convenient" store at least 3 times per day.

morning language study and general work time.

off to the beach, for some reading...
(can you tell i find posing for photos awkward?)

and reading... we like to read.

post-swim tiger beer and crosswords = mel's paradise.

one of the many hornbills we encountered in PP

our favorite hang.

late afternoon, insanity work out,
resulting in .... this.

cornettos and 30 rock, the perfect way to end the day.

thailand

Now that we’ve made it to Malaysia, country 4/5, it’s time to reflect back on Thailand.

Overall, we enjoyed our time in a beautiful country. We saw many gilded temples and Buddhas, continued to eat amazing things, and had our first tropical beach vacation in the South. We also need to shout out to Fuse Chiraphisit and family; Fuse is one of our students at WS, and he and his family very kindly took us to dinner while we visited. Thanks!!

Since I’m getting tired of the typical “this is what we did” blog post, however, I’ll keep this one short and speak via words/images in a pseudo poem on our time Bangkok. The photos on FB should speak to the rest of our time in Thailand – a quick stop in Phetchaburi and a few days on a beach in Koh Lanta.  

Consuming Bangkok

Steamy sidewalks push sunlight everywhere.

We break into the frigid AC of a 7-Eleven,

those ubiquitous pockets of temporary winter that dot the city.

We consult our map, buy water and ice cream, succumb again to the street heat.

We are lost in Chinatown, its twisting streets and tangy covered markets,

our map defenseless against Mandarin signs.

Few landmarks guide us, and we spit venomous sighs

at each other and the city.

Around a corner, we find the lost temple,

beautiful against the dropping sun, golden arms stretched to the sky.

We stroll around the Buddha, disturbing the faithful for our photo ops.

We leave quickly.

Next day, lost again –

this time among millions of cell phone covers,

fluorescent lights and neon colors, patterned over with eager hands,

reaching always for the next deal.

We wander with wide eyes through these malls,

monuments to a different god.

Ferried across the brown Chao Phayra River,

we lose ourselves in scientific oddities

in a dusty, quiet room at a bustling hospital.

We peer into glass bottles holding parts of limbs, cross-sections

of preserved bodies,

of fragmented selves

held captive for science’s sake.

Candy bars rest near jars of malformed babies,

strange tokens of unlived childhoods.

We are uncomfortable with this intimacy:

the body torn apart.

In between moments of loss, we seek sustenance,

greedily slurp down noodles,

soak our rotis with curry,

sip iced mochas between bites of grilled meat.

We always find space for one more bite. 

cambodia

In some ways, Cambodia felt a bit like a homecoming after Vietnam. It was much closer to the India experience, but we weren’t as enamored with the country as we had hoped to be. We talked through this, trying to figure out what it was. Part of it was our crappy guesthouse area, which was lackluster but also much, much more expensive than India or Vietnam. But overall we felt that the food wasn’t as good as other places, and that places like Delhi or Hanoi were much more vibrant and engaging.

Still, we discovered some amazing places during our short time in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.

Cambodian history is bloody and disturbing, something neither of us learned about in U.S. schools. I won’t spend a ton of time summarizing it, but in the 1970s, a communist dictator – Pol Pot – came to power for a handful of years. He and his cronies purged Cambodia of ethnic minorities and any people suspected of being political dissidents. A lot of people. The Khmer Rouge (KR), in other words, committed genocide, killing over a million of their own people (though estimates vary greatly from 1-3 million).

One of the benefits of visiting Phnom Penh is learning about this tragedy. It’s hard to stomach, but we saw two exhibitions on the genocide. One was a school that became a prison for people suspected of being against the communist government. The classrooms were eerie. On the walls of several rooms were wooden boards painted green, some still imprinted with the remnants of chalk writing. The only other items in those rooms were empty bed frames and a photo of the final prisoner’s corpse – which was found when the KR left. Other rooms held photos of the prisoners, row upon row of eyes staring back at you. Some exhibits detailed the torture techniques, and displayed whips and cuffs.

The killing fields lie on the city’s outskirts, about a 30-minute rickshaw ride away. An audio tour took us through the area. We learned that prisoners were shipped to the killing fields every week to be executed. To save money, the KR didn’t shoot victims; instead, they had prisoners lean over mass graves and then hit them on the skull with garden tools. Even more disturbing was learning how they would execute children by slamming them against tree trunks. Over 20,000 people were killed at this particular field, with hundreds of similar sites all over the country. This, again, was a difficult site to visit, and I have no photos. It felt disrespectful to capture it on film.

On a happier note, Siem Reap (about 5-7 hours away) holds the country’s pride and joy: Angkor Wat, a host of temple complexes built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries by very wealthy kings. We only had a day there, and in that time we managed to zoom through about four temples. The temples were beautiful, crumbling  testaments to the ancient kings’ power. They included Hindu and Buddhist imagery, depending on when they were built and what the king’s religious predilections were. Photos will be better than words in this case, though the photos do not in any way capture how cool it was to traipse through these enormous structures. Let’s try anyhow.

a hazy angkor wat, the biggest temple

bayon - lots of smiles

ta prohm, overrun by trees

intricate carvings at banteay srei

sunset over another temple - name forgotten

Another fun experience was stopping (amid temple explorations) at our rickshaw driver’s house en route. He introduced us to his beautiful daughter and wife, and his father. We watched, awed, as he sent a neighbor up a palm tree to cut down some coconuts… The man was incredibly strong and agile, and made hauling up and down that tree look really easy. The coconut milk was delicious!

Now we’re in Bangkok, just about to leave for the beach. Look for more photos on FB, and a new installment sometime early next week.

hue / hoi an / saigon

The second half of our Vietnam trip continued much like the first. Some interesting sight-seeing, and lots of beautiful, delicious food. (I should take more photos of the food, but then I’d turn into a food-picture-taker and annoy myself.)

Hue was the most disappointing place on our trip through Vietnam. We were there near Christmas, I think, and much of the night was spent trying to sleep through weird techno versions of Christmas classics like “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…” Not a fun way to spend an evening when you’re old and tire easily like us.

moody skies and old palaces

Still, we had fun walking all over the city, and exploring the crumbling ruins of the old imperial palace. I only have a few moody photos from this place, including this one.

Hoi An hosted some of our best eating experiences. Sweet vegetarian Vietnamese food, delicious banh mi (a cross between French baguettes and Vietnamese flavors), and cheap/yummy street food like cao lao (noodles and pork dish).

The city was super walkable, so we meandered all over the place. The whole downtown area is a UNESCO heritage site full of restored buildings from Hoi An’s time as a major trade port. Of course, one of the most fun things we found was a table full of foreign money. Why? We are nerds, and went through the whole table, row by row, determining which country each bill represented.

Still, there were some beautiful examples of old Vietnamese architecture, too, which we enjoyed between friend bananas and coconut and cheap beers. We were sad to leave Hoi An when it was time to go.

After a 14-hour train ride (and we felt every single hour!), we made it to our last stop in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City… perhaps better known as Saigon.

I have no photos from Saigon, but it is a bustling and chaotic place. I likened Saigon to Manhattan, and Hanoi to Brooklyn. We preferred Brooklynesque Hanoi, but like Manhattan, Saigon had its charms.

Our few days in Saigon were filled with Starbucks, lots of walking, and some interesting history museum exhibits. The most horrible was the War Remnants Museum, which is focused on the Vietnam War. The exhibits were brutal and graphic, very anti-American, and pretty unsettling. The language and photos were very one-sided. I’m not saying that the Vietnam War was a good decision or that American troops behaved well, but war is brutal on both sides, and the museum did not represent this at all. I think it’d make an interesting area of study for a rhetoric or history class. There’s the teacher in me – can’t turn her off!

In the end, we were sad to leave Vietnam. The country had been easy to navigate, full of friendly people, and one of the best eating periods of my life. We’ll definitely be back.

Our next stop was Cambodia… Will post on this soon. Happy new year, everyone!

Note: most of the photos are posted on facebook

SE asia, here we come: hanoi, vietnam

It’s official: Vietnam is the best. Here’s why:

1. The people are super friendly, and it seems real, not just contrived to take your money. (Although also contrived to take your money.)

2. Everything’s “easy.” This one has subpoints…

a. We showed up in Hanoi with an itinerary and no train tickets, something that worried us. We mentioned this to our hotel, and voila – two days later and we had all the tickets we needed, without having to stop at the train station or deal with an online booking system.

b. All the streets are labeled, as well as the individual houses/businesses. Though we got lost a bunch, it was always a quick fix, not a ohmygodiamsolostdangitwe’regoingtoneedtohailacab lost.

c. Our hotel was happy to store our big bags for us while we went to Halong Bay. When we returned, they hailed us a cab and sent someone with us to show us right to our train berth. Now that’s service.

d. Hanoi was very walk-able. The only time we took a cab was when we left for the train station. We love cities like this.

3. It’s pretty clean, but still fun and chaotic in ways many American cities are not.

4. Women come up to you on the streets and sell you donuts.

5. Freshly brewed beer is only $0.50 per glass, and you can while away your time drinking it along the street and people watching (and eating donuts from the women in point 4).

don't let this photo mislead you - chris
is really enjoying this beer! 

6. The food. We haven’t had one “bad” dish, and we’ve had some seriously incredible dishes. Namely, bun cha (vermicelli noodles and pork), a seafood “hot pot” (sweet/sour soup with noodles, fish, shrimp, squid, etc.), and cha ca (this awesome fish flavored with dill and who knows what else). Vietnamese cuisine has become our favorite very quickly. We’re just glad we have another week to experience it.

This is only a preliminary list – I’m sure we’ll add more as we continue our journey down the coast. We started with Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital. Much of our time was spent drinking coffee, eating great food, and drinking a few beers. But we did have a chance to see some cool places.

classic shot of the back of chris's head...
in the temple of literature

Temple of Literature

This beautiful compound held several temples devoted to Confucius and other Confucian teachers. The architecture was in a traditional Vietnamese style, and I couldn’t stop taking photos of the intricate carvings. While we were visiting, some sort of graduation ceremony was happening. It was cute to watch the young students frolic around the campus and take photos.

Hoa La Prison

This was a pretty small museum, but we did get to learn all about the American pilots’ stay during the Vietnam War. (This is where John McCain was holed up after capture.) According to the museum, the American pilots enjoyed religious freedom, excellent American-style food, and lots of fun and leisure. They even got souvenirs! As Chris said, I’m sure it was more like “Now play chess and smile for camera. Now torture time.”

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Unfortunately we couldn’t get anywhere near Uncle Ho’s actual tomb, but we were excited to see his house and collection of Soviet/French cars. We also wandered into a weird museum that was half communist propaganda and half strange, socialist art installations. 

yup. there it is.

Halong Bay

We took an overnight cruise through Halong Bay, a few hours away from Hanoi. The bay holds 1,969 islands, big chunks of rock and trees that push out of the water. It was gorgeous. We went to the “surprising” cave, which was appropriately surprising; climbed to the top of one of the rocks; and saw a pearl farm. It was a relaxing two days in an exotic place.

geological dreams!

me in the surprising cave - near a
surprising stop sign.

(We'll post the other photos on facebook.) Now we’re en route to Hue and Hoi An, where we’ll spend Christmas. Happy holidays to you all!  

TREKTAKULAR: activity week 2013

We finished quarter 1 in early October, and since then, WS staff and students have enjoyed 1) Activity Week (AW) and 2) Quarter Break. This post is devoted to AW. You'll notice immediately that I don't have photos. I gave the camera to Chris, who went to Austria and hopefully took *some* photos. I'll just need to dazzle you with word pictures. Here follows a meandering travelogue of some experiences...

Grade 11 Advanced Trek: 5-13 October

Rupin Supin Pass / Baradsar Lake, Himalayas

The bus is late. The chaperones -- Pants, Titu, and I -- make ourselves comfortable on the steps leading from dorms to school. The hours slide slowly by, students drifting to and from Cozy Corner or Chardukan for bun omelets and chocolate. Not an auspicious start to our adventure.

*

Several hours into our eight-hour bus ride, we make a welcome dinner stop. On a restaurant's cool porch, we stuff ourselves full of thali: endless spicy dal (a split lentil concoction), simple subzi (cooked veg), and chapati (flatbread) -- and chalwa (rice), once we're full. Delicious!

*

I roll out my sleeping mat next to three students: Khyati, Shreya, and Chloe. They are stuck with me for the week, but gracious and welcoming -- and thankfully, not night owls. Minutes after lying down, all is quiet. 

*

After hours of uphill walking (and ensuing student dehydrating / stopping), we're greeted by a beautiful, bucolic camp site. Soft, green grass, rolling hills, and a view of a huge valley. We take a welcome rest, with fresh pakora and chai and laughter. The students revive quickly after wilting on the trail.

*

My favorite hike, hands down. We start with an hour of steep uphill but are rewarded with a walk through rambling woods. The trees are losing their leaves, and the crunch of my boots brings me back to autumn in the U.S. It makes me nostalgic for apple-picking and cider donuts, for runs through Hickory Hill Park and carving pumpkins. I reminisce with students from New Hampshire as we stumble through the forest.

*

"Hakuna Matata, what a wonderful phrase..." Some students are singing again, cycling through a mix of Lion King, Mulan, and Wicked. I join -- a jazzy, "ain't no passing craze!" I love these girls. 

*

Some students chop veg on any surface they can find, some watch as water slowly boils. It is our night to cook, and despite heroic efforts, the sauce is bitter and the pasta overdone. Still, whether from effort or sheer exhaustion, the food is tasty! We chow down late in the evening.

*

Before breakfast, Titu tells us that a shepherd's donkey was killed by a leopard last night. I don't believe him, because he always teases, but we follow him down a shallow valley anyhow. He isn't lying. We spot the donkey about 30 meters away, notice the slit throat. Titu explains that leopards only drink blood right after they kill, and return to eat flesh later on. The shepherd's dog stands guard against the vultures above. Later, Titu hears from the shepherd that that the dog is ashamed he didn't protect the donkey, and will stay with the donkey indefinitely. 

*

10km day: a haiku

always walking on,

slow like ants, we make our way.

mountains scrape blue sky.

*

Straight up, we press, for several hours. We climb through a field of boulders and over the ridge. At the top, 14,500 feet above sea level, we can see far down in both directions, the wide valley on one side, and the always breathtaking snows on the other. We lunch atop an outcrop, and eat snow flavored with iced tea. 

After an hour, we descend. I hold Shreya's hand to boost her confidence, but she still trembles with each stop, squealing any time her foot slips on the small rocks. We make slow progress down the mountainside, and by the time we reach our camp after 10 hours of hiking, we are exhausted from head to to. 

It was the BIG day, the summit day. Because our group is large, and varied in ability, we split students into three groups. Some stayed at camp, some climbed to the ridge, and some went all the way to Baradsar Lake. When we told them the groups, some were thrilled and some cried. Others were mad, saying the trek advertised going to the lake and that we should all try. It was a tough decision that probably hurt our group dynamic some. But it worked. For the first time, a group of WS students made it all the way to the lake. 

*

We sit outside sipping chai when it starts to sprinkle, then rain, then hail and pour. My tent is stuffed full of girls, so I crawl into a two-man tent with Setse and Lulu. It is cramped, but we pass the time with our chai and countless chatter. They want to hear about how Chris and I met (about love), about English, about being an adult. In return, I learn of their families, their friendships, and their view of school life. Despite the wet all around, it is a lovely way to spend a few hours.

*

Friday night is always pizza night! Again, students chop. They grate. They make sticky dough. They manipulate camp stoves. Altogether, they transform our camp into a dirty pizzeria. Rain again drives us under makeshift shelters and some students back into tents for the night. The students make so many pizzas, and we must eat them all... Our favorite concoction includes wrapping a snickers bar in pizza dough and pan frying it until the chocolate melts. So. Yum.

*

After many miles, we reach Sankri. Our afternoon consists of trips to eat bun omelets, Lays, chocolates and to drink many cups of chai. One of our guides, Trepan, invites us up to his house. It's a beautiful mountain house, painted wood, slate roof, a porch that overlooks a valley. "Sundar hai," I muster in my broken Hindi. 

*

The last night. We sit in a guest house's common room, lit only by some candles and a few headlamps. We play "Hotel," a game that involves languages and acting -- a brilliant choice for our multilingual students. We laugh, laugh, laugh as YounJung explains in Korean that a cow peed on her bed to Setse, who replies in confused Burmese. Even I'm forced to play, speaking crazy kindergarten German about a cat demanding a beer. 

*

In my first bed for days, I drift off to sleep as students play truth or dare, and my memories return to my childhood -- "truth, dare, double dare, promise to repeat" on the cracked driveways of Jamestown Terrace. To be young. The students constantly remind me of their age, about how vital and hopeful we are in our teens, but also how awkward and searching. 

After a long quarter, with frustrations building at the end, this trek is a great reminder of why I teach. My students bring me so much joy -- especially when we're not bothered by the regular business of school, the lessons, assessments, grades, complaints. Instead, we can just be human together. 

Thanks, Woodstock, for a brilliant week.