People are strange

Oh, the things you hear about on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!. I guess maybe it's kind of sad, in a way, that she's that concerned about being attacked. Maybe she was traumatized or something.

...but it's still pretty funny.

iTunes U

iTunes now offers free lectures and courses from all sorts of universities on all sorts of subjects in their iTunes U store. Maybe this isn't new and I had just never noticed, but it's nifty.

(By the way, I haven't died, I just haven't been blogging. Partially because I'm aesthetically unhappy with my page right now and don't like to look at it. I need to fix that.)

The roof

I've lived here, what, ten months? And today for the first time I discovered that we have a rooftop terrace. With tables, and cushy benches, and a view of the city and the water. And wireless. Hello, new place to work when it's nice outside...

Haydn

I think we're often missing out with music these days. I just listened to Haydn's "Nelsonmesse" ("Lord Nelson's Mass"), and it's freaking amazing. I looked up the background to the mass--partially because it's in German, and partially because I often end up enjoying the music more when I know what to "listen for" within it (maybe someday I'll learn to hear it on my own, but for now I "cheat")--and... Man. It's hard to summarize music in words. Basically he's able to musically express this progression from chaotic terror and despair, with people frantically crying out for mercy, into this swelling Gloria chorus praising God for who He is and remains in the midst of the chaos, then into a declaration and affirmation of the Incarnation (God made flesh!) and triumphant Resurrection, which moves into a soloists-only expression of the intimacy we can now experience with God, and culminates in a joyful choral Dona Nobis Pacem ("give us peace"): certain peace and joy replace the original fear because the triumphant work of Christ has freed His people.

You should go listen to it. Seriously. The narrative Haydn can create with sound: it's like listening to an illuminated manuscript. The words and music both have such beauty and significance on their own, but then together they augment and infuse each other to create this...whole. Bah. I can't describe it. Just go listen.

That said, I think I'll also throw out there that I hate it when people go on and on about how amazing something is and I just don't get it. I listen, or read, or look, and hear pretty music, or read big words, or see a nice painting, but it doesn't move me. So I hope I haven't caused that "what am I missing?!" feeling if you've now gone and listened to Lord Nelson's Mass and shrugged. Or even yawned. (Perhaps I'm the only one insecure enough to wonder what's wrong with me when I seem to be missing what others are enjoying. Or arrogant enough to to think I could cause that reaction in other people, I guess... Hm. But now I'm rambling.)

Anyway. I hope you go listen to some Haydn, and that you like it. Or look at a Caravaggio painting, or a Bernini sculpture, or something. Because there's a lot of beauty even in this messed up world of ours.

So, yeah. Every time I try to end this post it sounds super saccharine or cliche or contrived or just dumb. So I guess I'll just stop.

Bah. This is an extremely unsatisfying way to end a post about something so lovely.

Psychosophy

So, I found out this morning that "psychosophy" was a word before I invented it. I'm not exactly certain what it means to all those other people who think they own it (because I'm lazy and haven't looked it up in detail), but I did see the words "esoteric" and "experimental psychology" being thrown around on the snippets that came up when I googled it.

Please note: I'm not affiliating myself with a specific brand of psychology or philosophy or anything of the kind.

But I was thinking of changing my blog name anyway, just to mix things up. Perhaps this was the sign I didn't know I was waiting for... (Gah! I can't do it: "the sign for which I didnt' know I was waiting..."?)

World Refugee Day

Today is World Refugee Day.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are now more than 42 million people worldwide who have been uprooted from their homes due to wars, conflicts and disasters. Some of them are refugees, languishing in camps that were meant as temporary shelter but have now seen new generations of children grow to adulthood within their confines. Some of them are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), stuck in their own countries--by fear or force or lack of resources to get out--with no place to live or work or take care of their families. Some have been relocated to other continents and told to begin their lives over again. Many of them have seen their family members abused or starved or killed or tortured. All of them spend days into weeks into years battling hopelessness and wondering where to go next.

Yesterday my Karen boys showed me photos and video footage of their homeland in the Karen State (an area of Burma...a sad and complicated history of land-ownership which I won't share here, but if you contact me I'd be happy to explain what I understand about it). Families with children working in fields were shot at without warning. Two beautiful little girls displayed their gunshot scars. A sixteen-year-old civilian had his leg blown off by one of the landmines the Burmese soldiers have scattered throughout the jungles where the Karen and Karreni minorities have fled for "safety" from the attacks on their villages. Chemical bombs were dropped on a resistant faction's outpost. Two thousand people--farmers, basket-weavers, fishermen, children, pregnant women--congregated in a small valley wondering why the soldiers had burned down their houses and stolen their food, and wondering when they would eat again. People were collapsing from untreated injuries and malaria and malnutrition and exhaustion from endless walking with no place to go.

My boys showed this to me, and then we played a cardgame. We goofed off and laughed and practiced English as usual. Two of their friends came over and my boys proudly helped them with their English pronunciation. It was relaxed and normal and fun. It was weird.

At the end of the night, people from the pictures I had seen walked into the living room. My Karen family's new neighbors--a family who arrived from Thailand only eight days ago--came over. It was the dad and his four beautiful children aged maybe two to ten, all still sporting their short lice-resistant haircuts and expressions of excitement and exhaustion and joy. The kids smiled and played with the colorful cards I had brought and looked at my books, and while we were laughing together part of me could still see these children running in terror from soldiers and gunfire towards landmines and starvation, or facing endless days in the squalid boredom and violence of a refugee camp, or being frantically shoved on a raft across a river to safety while their parents held off the soldiers on the near bank.

There are bright spots. There are hundreds of people giving their lives in service to feed and clothe and provide medical attention to uprooted peoples. There are teachers who sneak through dangerous jungles to train new teachers in remote hide-outs so that children can be educated. There are people in North America and Europe and Australia who are opening their doors and hearts to welcome displaced people from all over the world, to help them adjust to their unfamiliar new home and language and life. And there are thousands of refugees who are struggling to maintain their dignity and hope, to smile and learn and love and survive through it all. But sometimes these bright spots seem rather feeble to me in the desperation of these circumstances.

God is a God of hope. His heart is breaking for the hungry and and homeless, whether they're in Burma or Sudan or Afghanistan or downtown Portland. And sometimes--often--I have to remind myself that ultimately He is their savior, not I. But I hope that maybe He can use me somehow to help. There is always so much need, everywhere. It can be overwhelming.

So, as an ending to this quite long and not-so-perky post: May we each be listening to where He is calling us--whether it's a refugee camp or an urban center or a rural airstrip or the suburbs--and spread His peace and hope in the hopelessness of this broken world.

Please pray for the world's refugees today.

--------------
Here's some more information, if you're interested:
UNHCR - the global refugee situation
Burma Issues - the current Burmese situation
Drum Publications - Karen culture

Today's Adventure

It was like a movie: I walk up the nondescript staircase, clean, but ingrained with decades of grime and cigarette smoke, down the hall to the apparently-empty office.

"Hello?"

"Come in," the clipped disembodied voice calls from behind the half-open door with the frosted-glass window. I enter. He sits behind his untidy desk, shuffling papers before a wall covered in laser-printed certificates and diplomas, his beret clashing jauntily with his yellow bowtie. "Kevin LastName," he says, gesturing to a chair for me to sit. "Private Eye."

I was merely getting fingerprinted in order to work as a volunteer with youth at my church, so it wasn't quite as exciting as it could have been, I suppose. But it's good to know there's a bonafied PI down the street from me, just in case.

I'm not dead

I promise you will not be deprived of my amazing-ness as a blogger much longer. I will start writing here again. Just not right at this moment. But--in case you were wondering--I am alive and everything, so you needn't worry.

Week #Something (I've lost count) - Español

My Karen boys are amazing. Can I just say?

Last night we talked about "dream jobs" (the classic ESL assignment), art, hip hop music, the Karen script(s), copyright laws, bridges, American patriotic songs, bamboo, Thailand, the phrase "what else," Karen pop stars, and cows. Then I taught them some Spanish.

Really--lest you think I'm being an irresponsible English-teaching volunteer--the Spanish-teaching helped with English. They are voracious language-sponges, and the middle-schooler wanted to learn a few Spanish words so he could talk to one of the other students in his ESL class at school. They had to use English phrases in order to ask me what they were in Spanish, and it kept them talking, which is really "my job" anyway: keeping them practicing. (And, okay, I admit, it was way interesting to hear Spanish spoken with a Karen accent.)

Next week: tongue twisters. (Bwa ha ha.)

Who does that?

I've so been looking forward to my Canterbury Tales class at the library: finally a chance to have someone knowledgeable point out the key features and themes and historical references so I can understand and enjoy it better. I knew the class was coming up soon, but I hadn't paid much attention when I wrote down the date.

It's on Easter afternoon. Really, who does that? Sigh. No class for me.

I mean, celebrating the whole ridiculously-important and unprecedented act of God taking on flesh, living sinlessly, willingly dying with the weight of humanity's sin on Him, and coming back to life in a death-conquering, undeserved-life-and-grace-giving act of glorious power is a bit cooler than explicating Chaucer. Not to mention we'll be having wicked good food.

But still.

Cheeriness

Aw, my apartment feels so homey right now. We have flowers! Lovely cut daffodils scattered in mason jars throughout the rooms, and three potted plants on the kitchen windowsill: red primroses, orange gerber daises, and a perky little strawberry plant. It's just so...cheerful.
-happy sigh-
Yay for living, growing things being on sale for spring.

Um, really?

So, I've never really thought planning a wedding sounded very fun. (Not that it's something super relevant in my life right now, anyway, but you know, should it come up in the future.) Well, no more worries. All I have to do is sit back and let Disney do it for me! Phew. Glad that's worked out.

...right.

Sadness

I found out yesterday that one of my favorite profs from university died this week. It made me unexpectedly sad. Unexpectedly, I suppose, partially because I knew she had cancer and didn't have long to live, but mostly because I haven't kept in touch with her, so it doesn't really change anything about my daily life that she's gone. But even while I knew she was dying, I never saw her sick...

The last time I saw her she was still flitting around the front of my English classroom, talking 500 words a minute about the "powerful feeling" of the romantic writers and the marriage foils in Pride and Prejudice and leaving all of us as full as if we'd just sat through three or four lecture/discussions instead of only one.

That last day I saw her, she stopped near the end of class, announced she had cancer and probably not too long to live, told us she'd found a great substitute prof so we would still be very taken care of in our studies, and left the room before any of us (or she) could get all emotional. That was almost two years ago.

The last I'd heard, she and her husband were skiing in the Alps, and she was still running around and being all crazyily and energetically herself-ish.

And now I hear that she died, and somehow--even though I knew it was coming--it doesn't seem to be possible that she's not scaring and inspiring and enlightening the next batch of students. It is a great comfort to know that she is finally at peace, and no longer ravaged by cancer, and that she and her grieving husband and so many of her friends and students are ultimately united in the eternal body of Christ. But it's still just sort of sad.

Another life-long dream fulfilled

I had my first pottery class tonight.

You know how people say that throwing pottery is a lot more difficult than it looks? Those people are right. Even going into this assuming that it would be harder than it looked I was struck with its difficulty. Very fun, though. I'm assuming I'll get better at some point, and it will be even more fun, because when I'm finished I'll have pretty things instead of supposed-to-be-a-cylinder-but-looks-like-a-misshapen-bowl things. But hey, to quote my instructor: "If it has walls, and could hold water, then consider it a success." So, success!

And it's only the first night. Plenty of time for improvement.

A bittersweet parting

Well, Mobius moved to a foster home yesterday. The shelter waiting list to put a cat up for re-adoption is two months. (That's a long time to deal with a cat who at any moment may fling herself out the window.) Apparently, though, my flatmate has a co-worker who has been wanting a cat for a long time, but couldn't get one because she's a student and will be leaving in the summer. She was thrilled to hear she could take Mo until the shelter is able to take her back. Last night she came over and met the cat, and decided to give it a try.

I hope to find a good home for Mobius between now and her turn on the shelter list, so she doesn't have to go live in a little cage again. I'm glad I don't have to worry about her falling to her death every ten minutes, but I miss her. She's such a sweet and affectionate and quirky cat. Sigh. If only we didn't have these windows. :(

La iglesia (church)

I went to Spanish church today. It was fantastic. I think this might be the new Sunday routine: English service at 9, Sunday school at 10, Spanish service at 11, Cambodian lunch at 12. I was excited to find that I understood the sermon, and didn't even have to concentrate so hard to understand it that I missed the content. The pastor speaks extremely clearly, and apparently Spanish had soaked into me pretty well, even given the four-year French-only environment I suffered in Canada. The people there, too, were happy and friendly and glad I came, and say I'm welcome to come worship with them and practice Spanish any time. Oh, and the music was mariachi. Perfecto.

My nephews are cute

'Nuff said.

Week #4 - Talking (Finally)

Yesterday went really well. At least, as far as I can tell it did.

I had been feeling somewhat discouraged, just that I wasn't helping them as well as I could, you know? All their homework is reading and writing, which--while good--doesn't help at all with pronunciation or daily language use. Especially since they do their homework the way I did mine: skim for keywords to fill in the right answer as quickly as possible, without necessary bothering to read and figure out every word.

But I was at a loss as to how I could get them to practice talking more. Talking is intimidating. Even if you have the language in your head, getting it to come out of your mouth can be a huge struggle. I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to have that war within yourself: recognizing and wanting that advantage of native-speaker help that comes only when you actually talk and take language risks with them, yet fearing to be misunderstood or offensive or look stupid by using the language "wrong" ("wrongly"?). Even with non-scary native speakers, the intimidation is there.

The only time I've had that intimidation lessen was during my own Karen-learning in school, actually, where it was just my friend and I hanging out with two native speakers and talking and playing simple games and trying language experiments and goofing off. We had structure, but it was organic and relaxed. And relationship-oriented. And fun.

So, anyway, with the help of my brilliant-at-planning flatmate, I went in yesterday with some simple maybe-this-will-start-us-talking supplies: storybooks, a stack of cards with simple pictures on them, and a mini whiteboard. Success!

We read the storybooks. Great pronunciation and reading practice, even if they didn't necessarily know what they were saying. But the best was the picture cards. I pulled out two at random--"tree" and "flowers"--and said "The flowers grow near the tree." They immediately started trying their own: "The flowers are in the forest with the tree." "The flowers are under the tree." The next pair: "book" and "television." "The book is on the television." "The book watches television" (tee hee hee). The more ridiculous the pairs, the more relaxed and fun we had making sentences. "Fish" and "chair": "The fish sits on the chair." "The fish sits on the chair and watches TV!" Lots of laughing and making jokes. And lots of talking. Yay! (And man, do they know more English than they let on before.)

Then they suggested another game: one person pulls a card, then has to describe it to the other people while they guess. Great language use. Even Karen Dad jumped in and guessed some, and Karen Mom would laugh at the jokes and practice saying the words she heard. We used the white-board to double-check spelling, and write new words to describe and guess. The neighbors came over--six of them at one point--and watched and laughed and joined in a bit. One of the neighbor boys in Junior-High-Son's class plans to come every Thursday he can: "To practice talking. It is very good." Aw. Good times.

Wrong Number

Real text message conversation I had today:

Unknown number to me: Hey, it's Steve. So, when are you officially back on?
Confused me: I'm sorry, who is this? I think you have the wrong number...
Steve: Are you an actress?
Me: No.
Steve: Oh. Sorry 'bout that.

Can't say that's a question I often get with the "I think you have the wrong number" thing.

Week #3 - Fu! Fingra! Ni!

Hm. I still have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I'm learning. (Oh, and by the way, after all that trouble of giving my people Karen-ish pseudonyms, I keep forgetting what they are. So I'm reverting to the tried and true descriptive-words-as-names method: Karen Dad, Karen Mom, Oldest Son, etc.)

So, yesterday, for the first time Senior-in-Highschool and Sophmore-in-Highschool greeted me with an English greeting: "Hi, how are you?" They're getting more confident, and that makes me happy. I must not be too scary.

However, about halfway through my time there, there was a lull. A borderline-painful stretch of silence during which I felt like I should have something to say, some sort of lesson or plan to help get things going again. Bah. The last half hour was great; I had to interrupt them to gather my books and catch my bus. Now I just need to find some way to move that enthusiasm and involvement up a half hour or so, so I won't have to leave just as things are picking up. Junior-High-Son asked me to bring him some picture storybooks next week, so he can try to read them. Maybe that will keep conversation going.

I think, actually, that the key is Karen Dad. He loves the picture dictionaries, but I have three of varying levels. When he gets stuck with the "advanced" one, he seems to get bogged down and doesn't even know what to ask. When he has one of the simpler ones, though, he has no shortage of pronunciation questions. I wish I knew what the parents were learning at their English classes during the day, so I could reinforce those lessons. Maybe I can find that information somehow. They're definitely very genuine beginner beginners. Even the boys--who all "know" quite a bit of English when it comes to rules and grammar--have such thick accents that it's hard to understand them (it makes me wonder what I must sound like when I try to speak Karen).

Karen Mom is great, though. She likes repeating words she hears me teaching to Karen Dad from the dictionary. Yesterday we were going over basic parts of the body, and I could hear her repeating to herself : "Fu. Fingra. Ni." ("Foot. Finger. Knee." The Karen language doesn't have words that end with consonants, so words like "foot" and "finger" are really hard to say.) When I was leaving, she grinned at me: "I have three English! Fu! Fingra! Ni!", pointing at each. We cheered, and laughed, and I found myself loving them all even more than I already did. They have such grace and good humor even with all the challenges they're facing. Crazy. Crazy and beautiful.

Pixiliation

I learned a new word: pixilated. Tipsy. Given to whimsy. Etymology: being influenced by pixie dust.

Pixilation.

Tee hee hee.

Kiva

I joined Kiva yesterday, and I'm excited. It's sort of like Opportunity International's micro-financing meets World Vision's sponsor-a-child. I loaned a few dollars to a group of entrepreneurs in Cambodia, who will be paying me back over the next eleven months. It was started by some people who wanted to fight poverty by empowering business-owners in developing countries, but who were having trouble funding the process. Their idea: get lots of people involved with small person-to-person loans. I'll be getting updates on how these businesses in which I've invested are doing, and--since it's a loan--it eliminates the worry that I'm undermining anyone's self-sufficiency by giving them handouts. I get to fight poverty with the abundant resources God has given me, by helping people help themselves. I'm an investor, not a donor. I like that. It seems less patronizing somehow.

Anyway, it's cool. You should check it out.

I think it could get addicting.

Kings of Britain

I had my Kings of Britain class yesterday. It was fun, although it was hard to decide whether the material or the people-watching was more fascinating. There were thirty of us--probably three of us under age forty--sitting in a big circle of tables, discussing fact versus truth and the historical merit of "legendary histories" and whether the book was exciting or boring and why the heck ancient Britain and the King Arthur story is so well-beloved in the first place. Good English-classy stuff to discuss.

But the people: the guy who knew everything and pompously threw in dates and names extraneous to our text just because he could, the couple who was about to make a visit to Roman England and wanted some solid background, the sweet elderly lady next to me who seemed happy that I too got quite lost in the myriad names and battles throughout the book, the twenty-something girl who looked like she had wandered away from a medieval festival somewhere, the eager-but-timid woman who found the courage to say she in fact didn't like King Arthur (so there)...very entertaining. Apparently many of them are coming back next time for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Bring it on.

Umm...

Burger King now has a cologne, called Flame. In their words: "The WHOPPER sandwich is America's Favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat."

Am I the only person very disturbed by this?

Annoyance

Bah to online forms. I spent an hour applying for health insurance, and one mis-click erased the whole thing. Grr.

Adventures in So-Cal

Overall, my business trip went really well. It was fun to finally meet all these co-workers I email every day, and we had some good let's-improve-office-efficiency brainstorming sessions. Everyone there is as nice and good-humored as they seemed to be long-distance, which is always good, and the two ladies I roomed with were as hysterical as expected.

However, Monday night didn't go so well. For me, anyway. So, I hadn't been feeling particularly well all day: perhaps a combination of being a bit sleep-deprived and having my eating schedule thrown off by traveling. By dinner, though, I was starting to feel nauseous; I almost tried to skip out on going, but this was where I was going to meet my boss for the first time, and I thought maybe food would help. I thought wrong. It was an Italian restaurant--normally one of my favorites--and thus filled with the smell of baked cheese and rich spices. Long story short, when we'd been there more than an hour and hadn't even started on hor d'ouevres yet, I decided I wouldn't be able to last much longer in that room. My traveling companion suggested I go sit outside in the fresh air or lay down in the car, and I was going to do so, but my boss--who is probably one of the nicest people I've ever met (fortunately)--hated the thought of me sitting around feeling sick and offered to take me back to my hotel. Which was really close. Or really close, anyway, if you turn the right way down the main street. Which we didn't. Thirty minutes and several stomach-tossing U-turns later, we were finally pulling into the hotel parking lot, and I had a moment I was convinced that we were too late. But it all turned out okay. I ended up only suffering the embarrassment of interrupting a nice dinner and forcing my boss to leave mid-conversation, mid-meal, not of actually being sick in the car. Phew. Although I guess it's not as exciting that way.

I felt much better the next day. And, really, the trip was good. But business meetings aren't as exciting to write about as embarrassing first impressions. So, there you go. My first-ever business trip. Memorable.

Home again

Well, I'm home safe and sound from my first-ever business trip. My favorite part, I think, was almost throwing up in my boss' car less than an hour after meeting him. Great first impression, eh?

More on that later, though. Now, to bed. :)

Week #2 - Continuing to figure this out...

I'd say that this week went even better than last. This time, when I arrived, they greeted me happily and invited me in, but everyone kept doing what they were doing when I arrived instead of gathering around and staring at me. The third son, ThaSah*, ran and got his homework, and I pulled out the picture dictionaries, and we settled down into a relaxed couple hours of distinguishing "do" from "does" and learning the names of vegetables. Basically, I would alternate helping ThahSah with school and helping the dad (ThaPwi) pronounce words from the pictures. ThahPwi would painstakingly write down the words in English, their Karen equivalent, and then would have me say each of them so he could write it down phonetically (which was pretty darn cool to watch him do in the Karen script, which is beautiful). He would say it back a few times, then he and his wife (PaLi) and other sons would all say it and laugh at one another's pronunciations and "correct" one another and all look back at me and have me say it again. Very entertaining (for all of us, I think).

Of course, it took ThaSah only about twenty minutes to finish his homework (he's a smart kid), and I'm there for two hours, so the pronunciation lessons formed a large part of the time together. The second son, NaHu (formerly known as ThuWah, in my last post), started taking a lot more language risks as the afternoon went on, and showed me that he knows a lot more English than he thinks he does.

I'm so impressed with all of them. Seriously, they're amazing. And I'm starting to plot: When I was learning the Karen language by immersion, I had a big box of stuff--household items and food and nature and whatever else seemed relevant--and we would manipulate the items and names them and name what we did with them and talk and mime and ask questions, and it was ridiculously helpful (not to mention, fun). So, I'm thinking of preparing such a box (on a small enough scale to bring it on the bus), so we can add a tactile dimension to the language learning. And I think, come summer, I might be bringing some food. Because experiential learning sounds a lot easier than continuing to try to explain what a raspberry is.

-----------------------------------------
*Like I mentioned in my first post, I can't use their real names, so I've given them all pseudonyms which are vaguely Karen-ish. I decided to change the second son's name, because I like the new one better. And, you know, just to be confusing. But I hope to keep them all consistent from here on out.

Snow

I awoke to another dusting of snow. So lovely.

Week #1 - (continued)

So, Thursday.

I took the quite-crowded bus across the river (which is always itself full of interesting stores...there are quirky people on our buses) and arrived at their apartment. The whole family was there this time, so I was able to meet the parents and the oldest son, and to re-meet the three younger boys. I'm having a lot of trouble with their names, which makes me feel bad. Karen names have a general pattern of two syllables (e.g. ThuWah or KweeLah), and I keep mixing up the sounds among all their names. Of course, I was trying to learn the six family members' names simultaneously, along with three or four names of the Karen neighbors who kept popping in and out. But I'll get them. Or at least some sadly-anglicized approximation of them.

Anyway, I went in and tried to remember whom I had already met and whom I hadn't, and shook hands with everyone, and the second-oldest son--we'll call him ThuWah--indicated I should sit on the couch. They then proceeded to sit on the floor and various chairs around the room and look expectantly at me. All six of them. I tried small-talk: "How're you doing?" Smiles and shy mumbling. "How was school?" Same. Finally, there was a pause... ThuWah looked at me. "You teach...now?" Teach? Like, a classroom lesson to the family? Um... "Yes, I can teach now. Do you have schoolwork, homework, I can help with?" (This is what I was told I'd be doing.) The three school-aged boys conversed rapidly in Karen for a moment and ThuWah disappeared down the hall.

Five faces looked at me. I smiled. They smiled. We sat.

Finally, ThuWah came back with his grammar workbook from his ESL class at school. We sat down on the floor and began going through what he's learning (simple present and "wh"-interrogatives). And everyone else in the family--plus the neighbor kids who had shown up--continued to sit and watch. I wasn't sure what to do. Were they hoping to listen in and learn as he did his homework? Were they expecting that I would be teaching all of them out of his book? About half an hour into it, ThuWah disappeared again for a minute. I decided to pull out the picture dictionaries I had grabbed at the library before I left.

Good move. They pounced on them, and began looking at all the pictures and sounding out the words and talking with each other. Yay for pictures dictionaries. From that point on, it was much more relaxed (at least for me), because they could all be looking through the books while I helped ThuWah with his homework. He seemed much more willing to try talking to me in English when his whole family wasn't watching him, and I could stop occasionally while he worked and interact with the other family members, pronouncing words for them, having the neighbor kid (who's been here almost a year) interpret some of their questions.

By the time I left, we were all just hanging out, talking as much as we could, laughing, ironing out the pronunciation-differences between "violet" and "violin." It was good.

I must say, though, I'm struggling with the tension (faced by everyone who works with adult beginners in ESL, I think) between speaking simply and being patronizing. These are smart, smart kids. ThuWah almost finished highschool in his camp in Thailand--a rare feat--and the younger boys were on track to do the same. And--for the kids and the parents--I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to come into a new place, having been well-respected and educated in your home country, only to be completely at sea in the new language and customs and weirdness of it all here.

In short, they seem brilliant and funny and kind and eager to learn. I'm excited to get to know them better, and to learn from them as I teach them, and to let God do in all of us whatever He's planning to do through this time together.

This afternoon, though, I think I'm going off to buy a better picture dictionary than those at the library. (And maybe one that has "strollers" and "eggplants" instead of "prams" and "aubergines"...)

Week #1 - Figuring out how this all works...

Well, I've now finished my first "real" evening with my Karen family, and I think it went pretty well. I mean, there are definitely a lot of things to learn and improve, but I think the first steps were good, at least.

But more on how it actually went later. Right now I'm exhausted.

Cooliris

So, Cooliris is just about the freaking coolest thing I've ever seen. I just have to say. Now I can zoom through everything from my own flickr photos to thousands of Caravaggio paintings on google like I'm in Minority Report (only waaaay less icky). The only thing that would make it better would be if I could stand in front of a glass wall and move it all around with my hands...

Reduced rates

I just got an after-the-fact rate-reduction on my renter's insurance. Some crazy person named Margie who doesn't pay her garbage bills had somehow gotten onto my credit report back when I was first buying insurance, and I had received a "bad credit" ding that raised my rates. But now my credit report is fixed, and my rate is back down, and they're giving me the reduced rate.

There's a $27 difference between the two rates (per year). Think of all the things I can do now with this unexpected windfall! (I mean, "a penny saved is a penny got," right?) Okay, maybe not. But hey. A refund's a refund. I'll take it.

Sewing

So, I do this thing, where I have an idea for a sewing project, and I ask my mum if I can come home and "use her sewing machine," when I really mean "can I come home and have you figure out how to execute this idea I have and then have you sew it for me?". But she's amazing, and lets me come even though she knows that's what I mean.

Today, she/I made fingerless-glove-arm-warmer-things out of some knee-high socks I bought. I like them. They keep my arms toasty, and they're spiffy.

I really think I should learn to sew, though. Especially if I keep having these ideas...

A day of whims...

It is a beautiful day today, can I just say?

I signed up for a wheel-throwing pottery class this afternoon. I am beyond excited. Ever since seeing the pottery-guy on Reading Rainbow when I was, what, five?, I've wanted to know how it feels to have the wet clay spinning in my hands, and to watch it change shape as I change the pressure. And today I decided, why not now? So I found a nearby class, called them, and enrolled. I start in March.

Then I gave myself a haircut.

Who knows what else this spontaneity could bring...maybe I'll get on the first streetcar I see, and then get off at a random stop just to see where I end up. Or tour the library's eco-friendly roof. Or stop in at the Oregon Historical Society Museum next door. Or open a cookbook and make the first dish I see. Or something.

Hopefully I won't push anything out the window to watch it shatter on the ground, though. That's one of those spontaneous urges I get sometimes that makes me grateful for inhibitions.

Being a Grown-Up

Well, I officially have my first-ever business trip on the calendar: come February, I'll be flown down to California for--excitement of excitement--a meeting. (Lunch will be provided.)

And, even better, I'll be sharing a hotel room with a mischievous septuagenarian and an octogenarian whom I haven't met yet, but sounds like trouble. Good times are ahead. Oh yeah.

Success!

We finally met! Well, at least, I met half the family. The parents and one of the sons were at a DHS meeting (which I'm assuming is a Department of Human services thing, although Homeland Security would be exciting, too), so I haven't met them yet. It turns out it's a family of six, with four sons between the ages of 14 and 21. For confidentiality reasons, I can't give their names (which is fine, anyway, because in all honesty I can't remember them yet), but I'm sure I'll be coming up with fitting pseudonyms once I've spent a bit more time with them.

This particular meeting felt somewhat like a kids-meeting-the-babysitter thing (not meant at all patronizingly): the caseworker and volunteer coordinator put us altogether and then watched expectantly to see how we would interact. As if such interactions could ever be natural. The volunteer coordinator seemed a bit concerned that I was so "quiet", like he thought I was going to run screaming or something (my favorite part of the meeting was when he turned to me and said "So, Marybeth, what do you have that you'd like to say?" Uhh...). But I was quiet because it was weird; I think that next time I go, I'll be more relaxed, and they'll be more relaxed, and we'll find something to laugh about, and we'll have something "to do" together, and it will all be more comfortable. Even though none of them speak really any English. The language barrier isn't nearly as intimidating to me as being stared at by the two supervisor people.

The three sons I met today are all in public school right now (grades 8, 10 and 12), and it looks like my main job--particularly at first--will be to help them with their homework. How they're able to do any of it now, I don't know. Maybe they can't. So, homework help, and practice with conversational English. Then, once we "get to know each other," we might be able to go on "outings" (to the library or grocery store or wherever).

Anyway, it should be fun. I didn't even end up getting nervous. (Weird, it's like people were praying or something.) I'll be sure to let you know how it goes next week...

Sleeplessness

Ever have one of those nights where you're awakened by a strange dream you don't remember, only to begin coughing violently once you're awake, during which time your extremely dry lips crack open and add their bleeding irritation to the discomfort of air-deprivation, all of which movement alerts the cat that you're awake so she leaps on you and meows to demand your attention, which weight and fur of said cat in turn makes you cough harder and begins it all over again, at which time you just give up and get up even though it's only 3am?

Bah to nights like that.

Okay, I think it's true this time...

So, I think I actually--barring unforseen disaster--will be meeting my Karen family tomorrow. (Maybe I just jinxed it, though, by daring to declare it.) Yes. I don't think we're supposed to have any blizzards, and I don't appear to be ill, and there haven't been any catastrophic incidents disrupting the public transportation system...I think it will happen.

Hopefully it will go well. I'm sort of nervous. Mostly because I don't know that the coordinator ever fully appreciated my insistence that I do not speak enough of the Karen language to act as an interpreter (and I'm sure the fact that I'm studying Russian right now will really help with what limited skills I do--or at least did--have). I guess we'll just see how it all unfolds...

Back in Class

I just picked up my book for the class I'll be attending next month: Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. The library here is doing a series of free classes on Medieval literature, one per month, facilitated by a local college English professor. And there are no papers! I didn't register in time to catch Beowulf, but hopefully I'll make it to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales, too. Yay. I miss talking with people about books.