Reflections on the Poland Habitat experience

What better way to take a final look back at my Habitat for Humanity experience in Poland than to interview myself? Let's see what I have to say...
(questions stolen from a totally different interview with a different person about a different trip) 

Why did you decide to travel to Poland with Habitat for Humanity? 

This was my fourth Global Village trip with Habitat. It's funny--I was initially looking at going to Poland when I first ever applied for a Habitat trip back in 2005, but a variety of things led to me not doing that trip and moving to Korea at that time instead. Then and now, I was into the idea of traveling to Poland, the land of one-fourth of my heritage and, specifically, my last name's origin, as it's a heritage my sister, dad, aunts, et. al. and I have always been aware and yet not aware enough of. My Polish great-grandparents came to the U.S. a little before World War I. Of course, since 2005 I have now traveled to Honduras, Tajikistan, and Cambodia for Habitat builds, and I have set a goal for myself to do more Habitat projects and to do them in different regions of the world. So, I've now done Central America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. My next volunteer trip will be in a new (to me) region.

What things did you like? 

Practically everything! Poland was such a pleasant place to be. Cool people, intense history, beautiful sights, EU progress, sooooo  much delicious food, stuff to see and do, cheap beer, I could go on... but I adored Warsaw, and I liked Krakow and Poznan, too, in their own ways, and the experience of visiting Auschwitz was mind-altering. And those were just my side travels; the actual build experience and the time spent with fellow volunteers and the Barka community were inspirational. I also liked the Palac Wasowo manor estate/hotel where we stayed and the wonderful Polish cats. 

What didn't you like? 
Thinking about where the outdoor cats spend the cold Poland winters. I suppose the hardy ones I saw are the ones who have survived thus far...it's such a tough world we live in, not that some of us humans would know. 

What was your favorite experience? 

Of the Habitat build, probably the opening night barbecue at which the Barka community hosted us and we shared life stories and grilled kielbasa over the fire and learned about this inspiring organization's work (previously discussed here). Of Poland, it's hard to say, partly because it's weird to call Auschwitz my "favorite," but that was definitely a hugely meaningful life experience, visiting there.

Did you have any problems traveling in Poland? 

Hmmm... I'd say no. There were a few OK-let's-figure-this-out moments when initially using Warsaw's train transport, or buying bus tickets in broken-Polish-broken-English conversations, that kind of thing, but I found traveling in Poland to be really smooth and great.

What other countries did you visit and how does Poland compare?

On this trip, I just did a day in Berlin on the way and then a layover at Heathrow on the way out. I suppose we could discuss the needless complexities of Heathrow here, but let's leave that for another day! Comparing Poland to the other three countries where I've done Habitat builds, let's see... Poland is obviously less hot-and-steamy than Honduras and Cambodia, and less remote than Tajikistan. Unlike Honduras (and, to some extent, Cambodia), you aren't bombarded with what seems like wall-to-wall poverty and devastation at every turn. Poland and Cambodia have both been the site of recent genocides, and it is sobering to visit the sites and grapple with that history. Poland and Tajikistan are both relatively recently de-occupied by Russia/Soviets, and it's interesting to discuss that, although we were much more able to discuss that in Poland, for language reasons.

What image did you have of Poland before traveling there, and how did your image change? 
Gosh, it's hard to remember and conjure up my pre-trip visuals, now. I mean, the old notion of the Warsaw/Eastern Europe/gray-urban-landscape image isn't exactly what I would have predicted, but there was definitely something a little bit more sleek and gritty to urban Warsaw as opposed to arty/touristy areas of Krakow or the brightly colored almost sing-songy feel to the old market square in Poznan. I think I pictured some open spaces of farmland, and the reality of the countryside matched my image of that. Next time I go to a new country, I suppose I should write down in advance what I envision/predict and then compare it upon my return.

Would you like to come back? 

And how!!  I totally considered my trip reconnaissance and spent a bunch of the time plotting return trips with Brian and with my sister/Napikoski family. 

What would you recommend to someone considering traveling to Poland or doing a Habitat for Humanity build?
First of all, I totally recommend doing a Habitat build in Poland, as the organization there is totally helpful and great. Secondly, I do recommend doing a Habitat build, and my recommendation for those in general is that you have an open mind, get lots of sleep, work slowly and steadily, and talk to people, even with only a word or two of a foreign language. And I absolutely recommend Poland as a travel destination. It's affordable and easy, and there's so  much interesting history. Definitely do Warsaw and Krakow, but don't just do Warsaw and Krakow. Include other cities on your itinerary, like Poznan, Wroclaw, Bialystok, etc. See the countryside and national parks. And don't rush in and out of Auschwitz--stay the night in Oświęcem, so you can take all the hours you want visiting, and you don't have to do the end-of-afternoon bus scramble. The Hotel Olecki, which is right across the parking lot, is great and it was a good place to be able to sit and reflect on all you've just learned and experienced. 

Any final thoughts? 

Regarding World War II and the devastation Poland and Poles endured, just the usual: "When will we ever learn?"  At any rate, let's try to keep traveling and learning.
Also! I loved that everywhere I went in Poland, people love Chicago and basically consider it a Polish city (ha ha, but kind of true) and they also all said the same thing when I mentioned the city where my great-grandparents were born: "Ahh, Lomza? There's a famous beer made there..."

And it was all yellow...or some of it was yellow

Yesterday one of my (adult, Chinese) students in a group lesson checked with me to be sure she had the word "yellow" correct -- to describe her skin, she explained, motioning to her arm and then touching the skin there. Yellow skin, right? I explained that although she was right, we probably wouldn't say that anymore because it sounds derogatory. Now, before all you I'm-too-good-for-political-correctness people start rehearsing the pithy comment you're going to make about this post, please read the whole thing and realize I'm still setting up the context. Just pay attention for two seconds; it won't kill ya.

Well, the table of curious students asked me, how would you describe it, then? I told them, realizing even before the words were out of my mouth that it was going to sound weird, that someone in the U.S. might say "Asian." Sure enough, a few of them laughed. Asian? That certainly wouldn't tell them anything. What about the color?

I said we had really moved away from describing skin color, and moved toward describing various ethnic groups, usually based on geography, e.g. of Asian heritage, of African heritage, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, etc. in place of describing skin color. OK, she said, but just Asian? Well, I said, no, I mean, I might describe someone with more detail, like, "She's short, Chinese, with long black hair and dark round eyes" or something like that.  And to be fair, ye PC naysayer, is it really so much better to describe Han Chinese and Japanese and Koreans and Vietnamese as "yellow" without having any clue about their ethnic and national origins, than it would be to say "Asian" without having a clue about their ethnic and national origins?

But here's the rub, about "yellow":  Well, they asked me, then what if someone is Chinese but has white skin? Because some of us have white skin, they pointed out.

THIS, my naysayers, is getting to the point. Now you can start firing those comment cylinders. What this student means by white skin is not what you mean by white skin in the good ol' U.S.A.  When you see someone of Asian heritage that is first and foremost what you see. You aren't going to describe her skin as white, even if she is a porcelain geisha. So don't get too high and mighty. I was reminded of discussions in Cuba with my friends about the "blancos" and "negros" there, and how in a fierce discussion about racism one night, I was fascinated to discover that people were "white" in Cuba who would be checking a different box in the U.S.A.

I told my student that if we were specifying, we would probably say "light-skinned Chinese" or "dark-skinned Chinese" person, that people often talk about light-skinned and dark-skined Latinos, too. Of course, that's still only two options, but it would definitely sound more polite and acceptable, I think, in our usage than "yellow." Then they asked me, doesn't "dark-skinned" mean "black"? And by the way, they asked, can you say "black"?  I told them that dark-skinned doesn't always mean black, and that they could say black, usually, and that there are some who have made the term into a proper identifier, Black, to be capitalized, and so forth. Black, I said, sounds different in our accepted societal discourse than yellow and red, with regard to skin color. I can't think of any modern situation in which someone randomly says "yellow" or "red" in a non-pejorative way.  There are just so many other and more precise ways to describe people, so as a lover of language and words I have a lot of better choices. But what do you call the American Indian/not red person, they asked?  Indian is OK, I said, in a lot of tribal and American Indian Movement (AIM)-type activist circles, especially.  You could also say Native American. My students know what "native" means because we expats are sold to them as "native speakers" of English. They thought about this term. "You know," I said, "native - because, well, they were in America first."  And so we were back to heritage.

Obviously, skin color intertwines with heritage in so many ways ... but I think we would do well to divorce the color from the ethnicity if we want to be able to precisely describe people. But the question is, why do we need to be able to precisely describe people's skin color? Does it matter, really? What if there were a box on our driver licenses, next to hair color, eye color, and weight? Did there used to be?

I think it is foolishly naive and really wishful thinking to make the whole "we're color blind and racism doesn't exist unless you make it exist" argument. That's just hogwash. We all think about race and have ideas about race embedded in our minds--it matters what we choose to do with those ideas, though. But what I'm specifically interested in and curious about lately are the blurring, overlapping lines among skin colors and ethnic identities and nations. Why do we in the U.S. tie so many ethnicities to geographic locations and boundary lines drawn in the sand?  This causes so many problems. I recently finished reading David K. Shipler's book Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land and through all the messed up messed-up-ness of that conflict, I kept coming back to thinking about how fixated the Israeli Jews were/are on making a nation state for their "people." Why? That seems to be the crux of the problem, no? Why does an ethnic group of people have to have a state only for them?  Don't we see this same idea in raging conflicts in the Balkans, Rwanda, Sudan, etc.? Sure, you can argue that colonial terrorist imperialists drawing the lines in the sand to form nations didn't help things any, either, but why?  Athenian, Spartan, Abyssinian, Khmer, Cham, Navajo, Inuit... Greek? Cambodian?  Why not have an ethnicity and a nationality? Why do we blur them? And how  many years will it take until United States-ian can become an ethnic identity? 1,000? More? Less? Will it ever do so? I need the biologists to weigh in, here.

So if you think being an English teacher is all fun and games, well...OK, never mind, maybe you actually didn't think that.

In which I interview myself about 2011

Time for a 2011 recap as we head into 2012!  What do you mean, January 31st doesn't still count as "heading into 2012"? Whatever. It's still January, that's all I have to say. Oooh, not true! I also have to say, in my defense, that I have for the last three weeks been hanging out in places decidedly more concerned with the Chinese New Year than the January 1st new year. So I am entitled to only get around to doing this questionnaire, which I got from multiple bloggers, now. All right, let's look back:

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
A whole lot! I visited new places and flew around the world with Brian - I'd been alone on most of my previous long-haul flights in life (symbolism intended in that statement). Also, I finally won NaNoWriMo.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Apparently my resolutions for 2011 were to acquire the Southern belle ability to speak my mind or tell people off without "being angry," and to read more books and travel to more countries than I did in 2011. Well. I did in fact make my Goodreads goal of reading 44 books in 2011, check! I traveled to the same number of countries in 2011 as 2010 - four, but one of those I moved to (Korea), and I took two trips to another (Japan), so on the whole I think we can say I traveled more, since two of the 2010s (England and Ireland) were just stopovers anyway. (My other two 2011 countries were China and at the end there Cambodia.) As for the Southern belle ability, I still covet it, but there were multiple times -multiple!- in 2011 that I successfully bit my tongue when listening to someone and responded diplomatically instead of arguing. It's a start. 

Duh, of course I will make resolutions for 2012! Writing and exercising more, as usual. Four books per month.  Visit four more countries. And one more that I'm forgetting now. I'll think of it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?


My sister welcomed #4, Kristen, so of course that is the closest. Some friends gave birth, too! It was a good year for babies.  (I suppose that's what happens when the previous four years have all been spent attending multiple weddings…)

4. Did anyone close to you die?
In 2011, no, although my family and I were still reeling in some ways from Grandpa’s late 2010 death.  Aaron, a good friend of Brian’s from Michigan, whom I got to know a little bit through Brian and his crew during the last couple years, also passed away.

5. What countries did you visit?
Well, Korea again, as we moved there on Jan 1, 2011. Japan (twice), China, and Cambodia.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Willpower, the ability to set boundaries and convey my sense of urgency without starting quarrels, and a way for full-time freelancers and independent contractors and unmarried people (i.e., me and thousands like me) to have health insurance that the rest of the U.S. has through their employers or spouses’ employers.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
January 1 because Brian and I moved to Korea together. My birthday because it was a Friday the 13^th, and those are my favorites! June 27^th because my aforementioned niece was born on my friend Mo’s birthday. August 18th because we climbed Mt. Fuji. Actually, to be honest, that is more etched in my head as the Thursday of our week in Japan and I had to double check the date.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Mt. Fuji? Completing my teaching contract? Making myself act in a play again? Learning some Korean? Creating a book swap for Andong? I guess just coming back to live in Korea and having it work out really well. 

9. What was your biggest failure?
Demand Studios. I don’t want to talk about it.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was barely ever sick at all - one or two colds. Nothing at all like the first time I was in Korea! A few little minor injuries that would make me skip working out for a couple days.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My Nike indoor exercise shoes for kickboxing class. I adore them with all of my being.

12. Where did most of your money go?
China. But not the way people in the U.S. funnel it to China, through WalMart. I mean directly on site! Well, and all the plane tickets I bought to various Chinese cities. 

13. What did you get really excited about?

China. And Japan. And galmegi.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?
"Like a G6," "Please Be My Baby" (Britney), Rihanna's stupid sex in the air song, and anything else that played over and over and over at kickboxing. And I.U.!

 

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

Happier or sadder?  I think about the same. Thinner or fatter?  Unfortunately, about the same. I lost weight when we got to Korea, then gained it back. Brian cooks too much, too well. :)
Richer or poorer?
Just the eensiest bit richer. Only because I went from freelancing to having the teaching job, but really, just the teeniest little bit so don't get too excited, folks. (That means you, income-based student loan repayment.)

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?


Write.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Drink. 


18. How did you spend Christmas?
On a plane. Seoul - Hong Kong - Bangkok - Phnom Penh, ending with a delightful Merry Christmas nightcap in a riverfront bar.  I love Phnom Penh, and I love Cambodia.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

Cuh-rim-i-nal Ma-eend-dz. That's how it's announced on Korean SkyHD TV, where Brian and I discovered it, learned to love it, and began craving it during 2011. We are so excited that there are still many more episodes for us to see!

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

Reasonable Creatures by Katha Pollitt. Everyone should read this book. Everyone. Yes, you too. If you are reading my blog, you should read that book. Your friends who aren't reading my blog should read it as well, so buy an extra copy for one of them. Also, I loved Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, W. Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up and Jose Saramago's Blindness. Do I need to note that none of these came out in 2011? 
.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?


Anything and everything, as long as we were singing it in the no-rae-bang!

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

If these count because I saw them in 2011: True Grit, Eat Pray Love, and The Green Zone.  Out of movies that came out in 2011, it would have to be Moneyball, because I don't think it's Super 8. I definitely didn't see enough movies this year.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

It was a Friday the 13th, that's all that matters!  And I had a one-track mind: noraebang. 

 

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

More noraebang, Less of the b.s. noraebang resistance among the expat English teachers. It really bugs me when they do that. 

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

 Outsourced! I finally accomplished my lifelong dream of getting a personal shopper to go buy clothes for me. Actually, it was just once, but Jody and Brian totally went around Seoul and scored me some shirts, dresses, skirts, etc. and all I had to do was pay them. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this all the time. I definitely want to repeat this in 2012. I am interested in having more/different/cuter clothes, but I am not interested in making the effort to pick them out. If I ever move to within striking distance of your city, do let me know if you are interested in my personal shopper position.

26. What kept you sane?

N/A

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.


We need to bring back protective tariffs in place of income taxes, and stop this love affair with free trade. I have learned an incredible lot about this from reading my prez bios (I'm now on #18, Grant.)  I wish Michael Moore, the #Occupy peeps, and other people who care about the disaster that is the U.S. would listen to my reason and start promoting this idea far and wide. National boundaries as jingoistic lines in the sand are stupid, but as a place to collect tariffs they are genius, because economically-tax wise we are all divided up by country, for convenience. If we have tariffs, then we can stop blabbering about tax cuts and increases all the time (freeing our government to actually get some work done), and greedy corporations can stop f***ing everyone up by taking all their jobs out of the country, because it would no longer be cheaper for the companies to do that, because they would have to actually fairly pay to bring all the stuff in. NO MORE FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS! I watched with interest as some in Korea tried to stop the Korea-U.S. FTA. Sigh. 

All righty then, so that's 2011. On to 2012! Or, you know. The rest of it. How was January for you? I missed a bunch of it on this blog because I was in China. 

All the TP in China Day 23 of our (kind of southeast) Asia odyssey

So, one thing about China is that you have to bring tissue along with you to a lot of public bathrooms. Not all, but, you know, it's better to be safe than sorry. This isn't really that big a deal, in the traveling scheme of things (for example, there are multiple other China bathroom issues I would address long before plentiful toilet paper restocking) but it's something to keep in mind, and widely known/advised among travelers. Carry toilet tissue with you everywhere.

Well, there we were in Chongqing (aka as Chungking back in the day) and I headed to the post office to ship off to Arizona some t-shirts I had purchased in Cambodia for my nieces and nephews but didn't have time to mail from Siem Reap. The people in the Chongqing post office were very helpful and nice despite my terrible language barrier and everything went off without a hitch. But here's the funny part: first, I took my t-shirts over to the packing table where a postal worker found an appropriate-sized box and packing materials. And there she was, stuffing the remaining space in the box  -- with toilet paper! 

She just busted a roll of it out from under her little packing counter and pulled off wads to pack them into the box. You know the drill; you've probably seen it done with newspaper or plastic in the U.S. But in Chongqing? Toilet paper.  There's never any toilet paper to be had IN THE BATHROOMS...because apparently it is all at the post office.

Angkorage Days 15-16 of our Southeast Asia Odyssey

After our fine feathered Habitat friends flew away to their various homes and/or next destinations (mostly Thailand, and a few Korea layovers), Brian and I still had time in Siem Reap. There was an official group visit to Angkor Wat and a few other temples on Saturday, and then on Sunday and Monday, Brian and I rented bikes for two glorious days of riding around seeing even more Angkor stuff. I LOVED THIS.

Granted, I like bicycling anyway, but Angkor is perfect for it! It's just a few minutes from where we were staying in Siem Reap, and the roads are flat, and paved. It's too much to see multiple temples walking, so without a tour bus, guide, or paying for an all-day tuk-tuk, biking is the way to go! Tattoo this on your brain now, just in case you ever end up in Cambodia: if you go to Siem Reap, bike Angkor!

Even though we were incredibly sad to leave Siem Reap and Cambodia, we were happy to have had such a glorious time there and to thoroughly enjoy our Angkor days -- and, I might add, to get some wonderful exercise amid all the food we ate during our two weeks + in Cambodia.

Maybe one day I will even post some pictures...

Habitat Awesomeness in Siem Reap Days 8-14 of our Southeast Asian Odyssey

What an amazing Habitat for Humanity project! Brian and I joined a team led by Carla and Surayyah, two fantastic Global Village trip leaders who did a lot to facilitate a great trip, group bonding, hard work, flexibility, interesting cultural experiences...it was all kinds of fabulous.

Our 20 or so fellow team members made up one of the greatest Habitat groups or any hard-working team I've ever joined! The volunteers were "the usual" in some ways for a Habitat trip, as I have started to notice certain recurring character types on my Habitat builds: the thirtysomething professional single woman, the married/partnered couple with previous building experience back home, the bubbly one who is friendly to everyone, the single Canadian guy, the middle aged or slightly older hilarious man with interesting world experiences, etc. On my previous Habitat trips, I have been part of 12-member teams, but this group was bigger (22, I think?), so there was definitely variety. Everyone really worked and played well together. 

Our local Siem Reap Habitat affiliate people were great, too. The rep who worked with us was helpful and on the ball, and the two translators were nice and fun and friendly. As I mentioned, we were split into two basic groups, wood house and brick house, for the week, but we were walking distance from the other work site in the village. At the end of the week we also had a chance to visit the temple and the school in the village, and we pitched in together and bought a swingset to donate to the school. That was a highlight of the trip. The kids are just awesome. Seriously, like every Cambodian kid we encountered was awesome.

That includes, by the way, the kids for whom you feel pity and on whose behalf you feel anger: the ones who are hawking books, postcards, scarves, and whatever else can be sold on the streets, beaches, temple entrance steps, etc. It's one thing to feel sorry for them and buy something because they are charming, but working on the streets keeps them out of school and while it may seem like a necessary quick fix (i.e., they have no money/food) it is actually worse for the long run if they don't get educated (i.e., child sex trafficking is the all-too-common fate in Cambodia). So, don't buy from the kids in Cambodia, even when they count to ten for you in ten different languages or surprise you with their wit.

There are a bazillion NGO people helping out there, and we had up close encounters with two: the Land Mine Museum, and Green Star restaurant. We dined one night as a team at Green Star, where the profits go to an organization that helps get the kids off the streets, addresses the abuse in their family situations, and employs said people at a living wage, as well as assisting with training and education. The Australian man who runs the place talked to us about it before our delicious dinner. (By the way, dinner in Cambodia was always delicious. I absolutely loved eating there.) The museum had a U.S. man, of similar age (baby boomer) and manner as the Aussie, who got intrigued, came to Cambodia , and isn't leaving any time soon. This guy was from California (in fact, his cell phone played the USC fight song for its ring tone! Fight on! and kudos to Brian for hearing it first before we had even entered the place), ex-military, now working with an amazing ex-military-ex-child-soldier Cambodian man whose life work is now de-mining the country, including some mines he himself was forced to help place back in the Khmer Rouge day. This museum also helps educate kids, and provides an orphange-home for some, plus education.

Well, those are some of the basics about our experience. I will try to get some pictures of the village and houses posted here right away!

Building in Siem Reap The Southeast Asia Odyssey Continues

I apologize for not blogging often during this week as we build in Cambodia with Habitat for Humanity on our Global Village trip. I want to again thank the wonderful friends and family who donated to Habitat to help make our trip possible. I have not been online much at all this week, but here is the basic situation: Our team of volunteers is divided into two groups. My group works on a house made of wood, so there is lots of sawing, hammering, nailing, and painting, much of it done while precariously perched on makeshift scaffolding. Brian's team works on the brick house, a five or so minute walk away through the village. We all meet together at "our" house for lunch. The team leaders are great and do creative things to help us get to know one another. It is surprisingly not that hot while we are working, and our hotel is rather nice. Because the cost of living is so cheap in Cambodia, and because there are many many many hotels for the on-the-rise tourism industry in Siem Reap, we are able to stay at a good place, a bit more comfortable (and bigger) than my accommodations on previous Habitat builds. There are massively cute children at our worksite who are all smiles, like many people in Cambodia. All in all, it is shaping up to be a great experience.

New Year in Siem Reap Day 8 of our Southeast Asia odyssey

Happy New Year! Do you know where Siem Reap's biggest party is? Well, I do now. It is on Pub Street, in a restaurant/market/nightlife area just across the cutest little river bridge ever from our hotel, and boy did we do it up to ring in 2012. Brian and I saw a little bit of the street party set-up while we ate lunch earlier on Saturday, and then after our first dinner with fellow Habitat for Humanity build team members, a few of us headed out to celebrate New Year's Eve with the masses. The entire city of Siem Reap must have been there, plus foreigners galore. There were crowds, dancing, packed streets, pubs, balconies, beer for $1, kegs, random flashback tunes, shots of something pink to drink, dancing to Khmer songs in an electric slide-like group movement, fireworks above the river, lit up bridges, lanterns in the water, illegal fireworks shot from the crowd, smoke, more tunes, more beer, all kinds of good stuff, and it was all just lively and fun.

January 1 was a great day. I approve of 2012!  Our Habitat for Humanity team is a great group of 21 people (I think) plus our leaders and the local affiliate employee and volunteers. I am so excited about this project and about everything I have been learning about Cambodia, its history, its people, the Khmer culture, the language, the history and historical influences...it's all so wonderful. I think I should have regular enough wi-fi this week to keep you updated as our build progresses.

I love new years and starting new projects and new good things!

A Fond Farewell to 2011 Days 4.5 - 7 of our Southeast Asia Odyssey

And now here we are in Siem Reap, ready to kick off 2012 with our Habitat for Humanity Global Village Build. I love New Year's Eve. I like resolutions, festivity, out-with-the-old-in-with-the-newness, and party hats. I'm less fond of amateur hour in the bars, but I actually do like crowds and pubs and street parties and the like. From the looks of things, the market/restaurant area just across the little bridge from our hotel here in Siem Reap is getting ready for one big shindig tonight. I will definitely be shindigging!

A recap of the second half of this week:

Day 4.5: Wednesday night in Sihanoukville post-baguette, we mostly relaxed our sunburned tired selves. It was wine Wednesday in our Beach Road Hotel bar, and we enjoyed our glasses on one of the wicker/cushioned couches near the bookshelves, from which I plucked Heart of Darkness and finally read it. (Totally a Book You Should Have Read in College that I never did.) I finished it the next day and can't say I entirely understand it.

Day 5:  The last full day in Sihanoukville...sigh. I enjoyed breakfast and iced coffee on the second floor of the restaurant in a hanging cushioned/wicker swinging chair that overlooks the Beach Road activity. The day consisted of sun, the refreshing hotel swimming pool, good eats, and of course a sizable chunk of beach time. Have I mentioned that the beach in Sihanoukville is lined with restaurants and bars and you can either sit under the roofed part of them or in beach chairs on the sand where they will bring you menus, food, and drinks? It's really quite fantastic. As were the barbecued prawns we ate there on Thursday. In the evening we relaxed, had some more food and drink (falafel at a Middle Eastern place on cushions, rum/pineapple mixers while we packed) and then saw live music, a band of three middle-aged guys playing all sorts of classic rock. I am fascinated by these Sihanoukville long-termers, I tell you. Fascinated.

Day 6: Friday the 30th, we returned to Sihanoukville and we had air conditioning for the first third of the bus ride. Yes, that means we did NOT have air conditioning for several hours, including the crawling-through-traffic-on-the-approach-to Pnomh Penh part. But that's OK because they left the bus front door open for air flow as we sped down the highway. (For the record, I think that was the right choice.)  It was fun to come back to Phnom Penh - I like that city! - and back to our same guesthouse from last weekend.  In the afternoon we visited the Tuol Sleng museum, which is a building that was used as a prison and torture chamber for 20,000 people during the evil Khmer Rouge reign. It was simple, sparse, and haunting. The evil people who ran the place took photos of every incoming person they subsequently tortured and slaughtered, so the museum displays just row after row of mug-shot-like photos. You just walk up and down these rooms staring into the eyes whose fate you unfortunately know. There were seven prisoners who survived Tuol Sleng (seven! out of 20,000+!) and the paintings of one of them are displayed, depicting torture that happened there. It's all pretty grisly, and important.

After that we had another delicious, cheap dinner and a drink at the Foreign Correspondents Club, or the FCC as they say in Phnom Penh. Have I mentioned the lizards? I am overly fond of the lizards on the walls of these airy tropical courtyard restaurants (mostly because they eat bugs, but also because lizards are fun). The FCC, our guesthouse, and a ton of other eateries and watering holes are along the riverfront, and it was a lively gathering spot on Friday evening. We enjoyed our stroll past soccer-like games, break dancing, other group dancing, and the like. Later on we met up with another member of our Habitat for Humanity team who was also in Phnom Penh on Friday.

Day 7: The boat to Siem Reap is a marvelous thing. I mean marvelous in that there-are-no-U.S.-tort-lawyers-in-sight way. A bit cramped inside with no sign of emergency exit procedures (or even emergency exits), the boat was a little stuffy. But were we sealed in? Oh no! As the high-speed -- keep that in mind, that's an important detail -- boat travels from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap in five or so hours, passengers are free to stroll outside on the foot-wide ledge and clamber up on top of the long, tube-like speeding vessel. Railing? Seats? No, no, don't be silly. Just twenty or thirty travelers splayed on top, sprayed by waves if you lean too far over, and not inhibited by anything so mundane as safety precautions. It was a great way to breathe fresh air and watch the country pass by. And, you get to wave and be waved at with all the people in fishing boats along the way. A bit of a wild ride, but communal, convenient, and kind of awesome. Brian took a video so we can share our peril fun with you.

And then we were in Siem Reap. Such a different feel from Phnom Penh but already charming with its small river, our incredibly friendly hotel staff, and a slew of restaurants all packed together and clearly getting ready for the big New Year's wingding hullabaloo this evening. And now I will also go get ready for said whoop-te-do. Off I go, then.

Let's make those resolutions. Until 2012, y'all!

Christmas in Cambodia Days 1-4 of our Southeast Asia Odyssey

Brian and I departed Korea on Christmas Day after a year of teaching in Andong. As I have previously mentioned, the time flew and we can't believe it's over, or that we aren't exactly sure where we'll be working next year (although it is likely to be teaching English in Asia again). Unfortunately, my laptop has been having some persnickety issue in connecting to certain wi-fi networks, namely those in our guesthouse and hotel, so I have been unable to blog for my adoring fans before today. I will have to give a brief summary. Just to set the scene, Brian and I are sitting on the second floor of a French restaurant on the Beach Road in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, enjoying free wi-fi and about to enjoy some fromage, salade, pain, and so forth.


Day 1: Incheon-Hong Kong?-Bangkok-Phnom Penh...Christmas mostly consisted of flying. We didn't realize until we were at the gate in Seoul that we were going to be stopping in Hong Kong. We did have to deplane there, but despite the free internet I was unable to post an update from there because the browser did not satisfy Google/Blogspot. Then it was on to Bangkok where we walked a LOT around the airport, and then finally to Phnom Penh for a most wondrous evening welcoming us to Cambodia. Lots of people were wearing Santa hats, like in the airport in Thailand and in the bars in Phnom Penh. Good festive times. We stayed in the Waterview Guesthouse on the river in Phnom Penh (including a balcony!), walked around the night market, and sample a few watering holes, including one where Brian could watch a bit of the NBA Christmas day game.

Day 2: After another spell walking around Phnom Penh and sampling its delights, including cheap breakfast and iced coffee and crowds and street crossing (the trick is to saunter, not try to dash through the motos), we headed in a van with other traveling types from various guesthouses to the bus station to catch our bus to Sihanoukville. After a long wait at the bus station ON the bus, and a several hour bus ride, we pulled into this ridiculous tourist beach town, found our hotel, and found the beach. My initial impression of Sihanoukville is one of just being generally startled that it exists. I mean, two months ago I had never even heard of it. I know that some of you have heard of it, but most of you have not. And yet, here I sit gazing out over throngs of travelers from all the Western world, strolling to their hotels, beach bungalows, restaurants (French, Greek, Indian), used bookstores, massage parlors, bars-a-plenty....bars with, like, 75-cent beer, I might add. Cambodia is cheap, including this developed, backpacker-laden tourist beach area. We got in some beach time, some food-in-one-of-the-many-restaurants-on-the-beach time, some hotel bar time, and some DJ party-in-a-bar-on-the-beach time on that first night.

Day 3: Tuesday I got to sleep in with no alarm for the first time in ages, and after several nights in a row of few hours of sleep, thanks to leaving Korea, packing, final noraebang night, etc. Tuesday was relaxing. We sat on the beach for a long time. That is, after all, the main event here. We sat on beach chairs, ordered lunch, read, splashed, sunned, and watched scores of other travelers do the same, comfortably, with chairs and beach umbrellas and open patio establishments stretching in both directions. Night consisted of the fabulous Beach Road Hotel bar again, then dinner at a wonderful guesthouse bar called Monkey Republic across the street, where we had delicious burgers. Mine was of the vegetarian variety. I have already declared that I am so happy, these past 72 hours, to be back among the vegetarians, and the acknowledgement of vegetarians, after Korea. We ended the night a few doors down at The Big Easy, another guesthouse with bar, this one showing Brian's Arsenal game on the big screen, and several small screens.

Day 4: Wednesday was boat trip day. For $15, you get a boat ride to nearby islands, snorkeling, and breakfast and lunch included. We boarded the small boat with 20 other people - and mind you, this is not your typical ferry, but rather a long fishing-type boat that looks like this, very Cambodian/Vietnamese, and wooden. And small. But, nice breeze! - and set "sail" with the outboard motor chugging in my face since I was lucky enough to land in the back row. We stopped for brief snorkeling off one of the islands, where you couldn't see much but I did get to see a bunch of black sea urchins nestling on the rocks, and one of our boatmates stepped on one, getting a spiky part embedded in his foot - ouch! We spent the midday on the main island where there are some "services" (bungalows, a kind-of bathroom, and a kind of bar, at which Brian could order what I think was a green coconut to drink - for real, a straw in the top), and where our crew cooked our delicious lunch while we lay around on the beach chairs reading and relaxing, occasionally getting up to swim or snorkel. On the way back to Sihanoukville we stopped off of the third island for some more subpar snorkeling (but yes, with sea urchins).  Now we are back in Sihanoukville, where we just ate wonderful baguettes and fromage, thanks to those awesome French for colonizing the place.

I wonder if anyone who doesn't get my sense of sarcasm is reading this? At any rate, today on the island I finished the book I started reading on the plane to Phnom Penh, First They Killed My Father  by Loung Ung, which details the horrible things she and millions of others experienced under the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. I highly recommend it to any of you who are grappling with the concept of Linda in Cambodia, trying to work out what is this place and what happened here and why have we been so scared of it since the 1970s - it's an interesting look at a history that has been pretty much ignored in the U.S., as far as I can tell.


Sihanokville trips me out by its very existence. Also, I feel like I could be anywhere. There's nothing paticularly Cambodian about it, other than that it's here. It's one of those places that would make Julia Sugarbaker say she wants to see "the real Cambodia," with Suzanne replying that she was perfectly content to stay on Serendipity Beach. Part of me is looking forward to going back to Phonm Penh and then on to Siem Reap so I can remember what country I am in. But there is a small part of me excited to lie on the beach and do nothing again tomorrow.

And then there were two...

...days left of teaching in Andong! Can you believe it? Can I believe it? Furnishings have been sold, final gatherings have been somewhat organized, favorite restaurants have been frequented, glasses have been raised, clothes have been piled neatly for packing purposes.  Perhaps most importantly, I only have to have two more showers-that-don't-stay-hot-very-long in the coldest bathroom ever. I think I have concluded that it is preferable to have a cold shower in a hot bathroom (hot, i.e., the tropics) than a hot-two-minutes-warm-one-minute-cool-cold-hurry-out in an ice cold bathroom. In fact, even a hot hot piping hot shower that would stay hot long enough to actually, say, wash and condition one's hair is still totally negated when the bathroom is ice. Two more mornings of this! I am sorry, new people who are coming to teach at Avalon, whoever you are, but you will be taking short showers for January and probably most of February. But hey, it's Korea, which means the sa-u-na and jimjjilbangs are just down the street.

I know the biggest news this week has nothing to do with our impending departure from Korea, but rather Kim Jong Il's departure from this mortal coil. (Granted, he did most of the coiling...) I talked about it with my students who were of a certain age/fluency, and they all mentioned economic worries before war worries. There is a little war worry, though. Sigh. Seriously, people, how many deaths will it take 'til you know that too many people have died? (as a certain wise troubadour once wrote)

Come to think of it, as long as I'm quoting wise troubadours: "And so this is Christmas..."

I am off to Cambodia this Christmas day. For those who didn't get the memo, Brian and I are ringing in 2012 with a Habitat for Humanity trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to be followed by a sojourn in southern China and the Yangtze River, and then a month in Thailand doing our CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). Knowing we will be spending the bulk of this winter on the beach and in tropical climate cities has made it impossible for me to really settle into this freezing-bathroom, poorly insulated apartment that we were moved into on November 1st, or to happily hunker down in coat and scarves the way I would if I were actually spending the winter here. I am just ready to go be warm. And so we shall...after a few more slightly terrible Korean beers, and noraebang tunes, and one fine train ride from Andong to Seoul...and maybe even some farewell Outback cheese fries.

My second Korea stint draws to a close! And, I spent another year living out of the U.S. -- I'm allowed to move back to California now.

Oh hello there, December

"J'ai souvent constaté chez d'autres cette espèce d'instantanéité dans l'emploi d'une langue étrangère, après un travail inconscient d'incubation préparatoire ; il est remarquable d'ailleurs combien peu de mots suffisent pour exprimer les pensées les plus usuelles." - Arnauld d'Abbadie, Douze Ans de Sejour dans la Haute-Ethiopie

December! What!  And I have not even learned Korean yet, or sung nearly enough songs at the noraebang. And yet, here we are, with only three weeks more in Andong, Korea. I have to pack!

Today, I read the passage quoted above and it rang true.  Roughly translated, he says that he is always telling people that there's a revelatory moment when you can all of a sudden sort of use a foreign language that you have been working at learning, and that it's amazing how few words you really need to express the most common thoughts. Naturally this resonates with me the most from my Spanish, which I learned a-travelin' just as this author was learning Arabic on the road back in the day. I totally remember observing my brain make rapid progress in Spanish; in fact, it was almost as if I could note the physical occurrence and see my brain improve from Sunday morning to Monday night. There was a sudden moment where I just understood more. I totally get what my boy Arnauld is saying here. As for Korea - sigh. If only we used the language at all in our daily lives here! This is the same problem I ran into in 2005-06. All day I am paid to specifically not speak Korean. Then I go home to my apartment. Really, restaurants and stores are the only places I use the Korean language, unless I make an effort to set out to do so, and even in the shops and such people English us a lot. I've learned a bit - I learned to read and say a few phrases last time I lived here, and I've learned a bit more this time, but it's just crazy how little Korean the expat English teachers get away with knowing. I mean, even in Daegu many teachers don't read 한글 (hangeul - the Korean script), and in Seoul? Those people could probably get away with not even learning 맥주 (maekchu - beer) and 감사합니다 (kamsa hamnida - thank you)! Although everyone should always learn "thank you" in every language wherever they go even if they are just there for a day. I even learned it for my brief (wonderful!) stint in Turkey - then promptly forgot. (Ahh, right, teşekkür ederim - thanks for the refresher, Google translate!)

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes. December. It's beginning to feel a lot like winter, especially inside my classroom. Yes, I said inside. I have been teaching class in a coat/jacket for three weeks. We have heat now and everything in our newly "renovated" building but I have windows that are maybe like the thickness of a Ziploc bag...one of them doesn't even shut all the way...lots of my students just wear their jackets in my classroom. Our apartment upstairs has some draft/insulation issues, too. But have I mentioned we have only three more weeks here?

There will always be more things to do in Korea, but for now it is time to wrap it up and focus on our upcoming trip to Cambodia where we will see many wondrous things and help to build a house.

In other news, let's see.. my artistic endeavors in Daegu have ended (for now), I'm still picking up a few scraps of the Korean language here and there, I'm still managing to drag my cold self out from the blanket under which I huddle to make it to kickboxing once in a while, I'm reading about my boy Andrew Johnson and really digging his plebian, common man, pro-labor self. Let me just tell you that if Andy Johnson were alive today he would totes be #Occupying. And he is so not a fan of the organized religion in the USofA, circa 1850. It's pretty awesome. I remain fascinated by the prez bios I read.

Oh, also?  I could use some new music recommendations. What are you listening to?

Hurrah for December!  I love Christmas! I will be on a plane this Christmas Day but I still love it.

Post-Thanksgiving Post

First of all, I am pleased to report that my Andong, Korea Thanksgiving went well, and the Sam Adams-drinking plan was a success! Although we spent the equivalent of $30 each to have a night out instead of the approximately $10 we would ordinarily spend if we drank cheap Korean beer, I felt justified celebrating in Sam Adams style because it was a U.S. holiday, and the Adams family lived just down the road a piece from ol' Plymouth Rock, you know. There happened to be a big concert event at Andong University last night, which a few of our foreigner teacher friends attended; afterward they also stopped by the "world beers" bar and together we watched some of the replay of the concert. We tried to spot our friends in the crowd and gazed admiringly at the soju ad lady (famous/popular/beautiful) who hosted the event, and so on. It reminded me of something that would happen at a Thanksgiving at home in the States, with the end-of-the-evening group of people who haven't yet dozed off finding something random on television to watch, with whoever is left at the gathering offering (not-so)witty commentary.

As for today, I couldn't be happier to not be shopping, but I wouldn't be shopping if I were back home in the States, anyway. I would, however, be making fun of shoppers from either place, and losing respect for anyone who actually went shopping on Thanksgiving Day. I truly hope that was a bust. Shame on any of you who participated in Thursday shopping! Meanwhile, I really hate the phrase "Black Friday." It's stupid. It's not as offensive as, say, "family values" or one of those other phrases tossed around in political rhetoric that not only doesn't mean anything but is actually used to obfuscate what the talking head is really saying while manipulating voters and/or public discourse. But it's still stupid. I think people use the phrase "Black Friday" to try to sound and feel like they are a part of something, in this case, the day-after-Thanksgiving media-promulgated shopping day. Gaaargh.

I did manage to talk about Thanksgiving in each of my four Thursday classes. In a couple of them, we did a Thanksgiving crossword or USA puzzle. I had my more advanced speakers go around the room to say one thing they are thankful for, turkey-day-dinner style. All in all, it was another decent day at my decent job, apart from the fact that our new building is freezing cold and my classroom is the most  freezingest coldest.

And so November winds down.  I have been doing NaNoWriMo, churning out a spectacularly crappy quantity-not-quality of words, and although I fell behind mid-month, I just might finish/"win." I am starting to get into the pack-up-my-life state of mind. I can feel Cambodia getting closer and closer! We will be there so soon! Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our Habitat for Humanity trip. What a wonderful cause.

I love the holiday season!  I'm so excited to start thinking all sorts of Christmasy thoughts now!

And nothing lasts forever...

...even cold November showers! Or, I should say, our November showers most certainly do not last forever because there is not enough hot water in our apartment. So frustrating. For those of you who don't know, Avalon moved on Halloween, both the school and the teachers' apartments. We are now closer to bustling downtown Andong, not that we were that far to begin with (Andong is not that big). Avalon entered into a partnership with MBC, one of the Korean news networks, and we don't really know the details of it except that it means we moved into a new building, expanded our academy's size, increased the number of classrooms and  teachers and subjects, and did all this in a former (small) hotel that has now "been renovated." I say "been renovated" in quotes because I would not exactly say the work was done when we moved in, or even now, three weeks later.

I wasn't particularly excited about living upstairs from work, as I like some personal space, but here we are in the "penthouse" as I very jokingly call it, on the 6th floor, with a two second commute to work on the 4th floor to teach our English classes. The first day here we had no electricity until 8pm, and no hot water, and no stove, and no washing machine and no refrigerator. All of these things slowly but surely trickled in during the first two weeks. Internet has been problematic. There is a wireless network for the whole building, and our computers in our classrooms are fine but up in the apartments there are still continual problems with the internet experience. The other big things are the stove and hot water. The "stove" is a tiny two-burner plug-in hot plate that is about half as big and sturdy as the one in our old apartment (and most other English teacher apartments I've seen in Korea); I really think is the plastic Barbie doll play kitchen version. It takes about 20 minutes to boil some water. Brian the chef is not happy, and I feel sad about this. As for me, I am most miserably because I absolutely cannot take cold showers, so I take 3-minute showers these days. Different tasks get allocated to different days, such as washing hair, conditioning hair, etc. I hate this. I mostly hate it because the bathroom is so cold (no heat in there) that a 3-minute shower isn't enough to get you all warm and toasty anyway, so it is almost as bad as taking a cooler shower. (Almost)

Let the record reflect that I am well aware these are "first-world problems" as they say. But here's my thing about that: you can't expect people to live in a situation that has certain requirements and then not provide them. Maybe everyone doesn't deserve to live in shameless modern luxury. OK, granted. But then, people who lived in previous time periods without hot running water either lived in the desert (the cradles of civilization!) or boiled water, or both. We have a burner that is tiny and doesn't heat up, and no way to make a fire to boil water without burning the building down, and no bathtub anyway. (The shower is a corner of the tile in the Korean bathroom.)  It's one thing to say an airplane or a car is a modern luxury, but you don't send someone up in the air and then say, "Oh, too bad! We're out of fuel! You are so picky and dependent on modern conveniences!" as the plane falls out of the sky.

At least we can work our heat (thankfully it was warm the first day, when we couldn't). I love Korean ondol heating, and I actually come upstairs often when I have break periods between classes because my classoom is FREEZING. While many of the classrooms in the hallway have classrooms on either side and one exposed outside wall, my classroom is on the end of the hallway and I have two exposed outside walls...and more windows than some other classrooms (windows thin as paper)...and a window that doesn't shut...the board I write on in class is ice cold to touch first class of the day. My kids keep their jackets on. We have heat in the classrooms now, which is better than the week before last, now the weather has turned even colder so it's still freeze-ola in there.

The thing about all this is that Brian and I are only five weeks away from leaving!! So part of us has been trying to get settled, and get everything fixed, and all that, and the rest of me is totally in the mindset of "Screw it, only 32 more days!" kind of thing. It's a frustrating way to be thinking. So not living in the moment. Booo!

And it's also so weird that we are leaving so soon!!!!!!!!!!  Can you believe we have finished 46 weeks in Andong? Wow! And we still aren't sure about our plan for next year. But, first things first, we are flying from Seoul to Phnom Penh. We will kick off 2012 volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a kingdom of wonder (that's their slogan, I didn't make it up) that has seen a lot of troubles and danger and floods and problems (although being cold is generally not one of them) but has also got fascinating history, temples, rivers, coast, cities, food, people, and so on to visit.

Meanwhile, in our last five weeks back here at the ranch, we are no longer in the hip, up-and-coming nightlife area called Ok-Dong, so we now live in Dangbuk-dong, near different restaurants and bus routes, farther from the city bus terminal but closer to the city train station, closer to the rows of Andong jjimdak restaurants (the spicy chicken stew specialty) in the downtown market jjimdak stalls, but father from all the fabulous Ok-Dong places we had come to love, farther from E-Mart, closer to the hospital and doctors, farther from two of the three bars where the Westerners mostly hang out, closer to some other bars, closer to downtown shopping and coffee shops, farther from the Tous Les Jours where they love me and Coffee Beach, farther from my kickboxing gym, but still a nice walk home from kickboxing class.

"And so it goes, and so it goes, and so will [we] soon, I suppose..." as Billy Joel sort of sang.

November Holiday Roundupin reverse chronological order

November 24, U.S.: If you go shopping on Thanksgiving night at WalMart or anywhere, you are part of the problem. Forget slippery slopes, this was a total free fall. 7 a.m., 6 a.m., 4 a.m., who needs sleep when we can just go SHOPPING!, Black Black Black Friday, trampling to death, and now this. You know what, retailers of the U.S.? Forget you! (I put it that way because this is, of course, a family blog. Heh.) And you know what, holiday shoppers of the U.S.? Forget you, too! DON'T GO SHOPPING ON THANKSGIVING. And, p.s., don't go shopping at WalMart. We have been over this.

November 11, U.S.: Veterans Day. I posted on Twitter and Facebook the following great idea: in honor of all the veterans, let's not have any more veterans. The first comment I received was a request to explain what that meant. I didn't answer right away; I thought I would give everyone a little time to think about the simplest way to not make any more veterans.


November 11, Korea: Peppero Day (although I feel like Beppero more precisely conveys the pronunciation?) is here again, and what a doozy! 11/11/11! So many sticks! Unfortunately, they have "cancelled" Peppero Day in some of the elementary schools here. (Isn't that just an old joke? "That's it! We're cancelling Christmas!") My students initially told me a few days ago that one of the elementary schools here in Andong was cancelling it, and we talked about bad behavior and troublemakers running riot with the chocolate sticks. Then I heard from some Daegu teachers about Peppero cancellations, allegedly due to unsafe Peppero being imported from China. Where, apparently, Lotte factories are up to no good. Then someone else said the schools just don't wawnt to deal with all the trash a day of the 11-like Peppero sticks produces. Damn it, someone get to the bottom of this!!! (I am allowed to say "damn" on my family blog. I just made that rule.)

November 1, Mexico etc.: All Souls' Day/Day of the Dead. Oops, I forgot to celebrate. I was too busy on the first of the month enjoying my first full day in our new apartment, waiting to see at any given moment whether we would have any of the following: electricity, hot water, a refrigerator, a stove, keys...you know, luxuries like that. I might add that we also don't have a television, which while clearly not essential to life is in fact in our English teacher contract (!) and also at this point hilariously NOT a "first-world problem," as they say.

How will you celebrate this month? Anyone who is thinking of going shopping on Thanksgiving night, tell you what - why don't you donate ten of those dollars to Habitat for Humanity, by clicking here, instead. That's a better thing to do, I promise.

"The rains came down and the floods came up..."

Did you know that Hurricane Irene had a devastating impact on Vermont? Have you been reading daily news updates about the damage, floods, FEMA efforts, people who lost their homes, and years of clean-up work ahead?  Most of us have not been hearing about this at all.

An ABC news report noted that homes, bridges, roads, and the state's emergency operations center were washed away. That's a fine mess to be in. I also read that a dozen or more towns in Vermont and New York were cut off. Like, there you were in your town, with no immediate way to the outside world (short of some far-reaching medieval catapult-like device, maybe?), which is something that I think we all take for granted all the time: that we can just somehow, whether on public transportation or in a car or even on a bicycle or on foot, hit the road and go somewhere else. Oh, and? People died. The governor of Vermont called for "all the help we can get." But within a few days, the media and, as importantly, the public had moved on to other things.

I was here in Korea when Irene did her thing. I was aware of Irene. I read internet updates, scrolled through a gazillion Facebook updates about it on my news feed, and watched tons of live coverage on CNN International -- of the build-up, and of the raging waters. The watching. The waiting. The Anderson Cooper live at the water's edge in New York City. The obligatory reporter clutching a pole to not be blown away. All the breathless excitement with dramatic pictures of crashing waves, with journalists a-plenty dispatched to the scene, for the anticipation and thrill of the event. But reporting the after-effects? Well, that's just maybe too depressing. Naaah, we need to move on and find some nasty, bleeding, volatile coverage of something else to get people riled up, as opposed to a calm, methodical, deep digging report about what people in Vermont and other northeast states are going through after the fact.

The question is not "why don't we see the next several months of devastation and disaster recovery on our TV newscasts?" You know perfectly well  why we don't: because the viewing public would change the channel. The real question you should be asking is why you would change that channel.

Also, I daresay it has become trendy in the years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans to be scornful of FEMA and The Government, in a general, dissatisfied, heckuva-job way. But lambasting any and all public officials is probably not the solution either, because a friend of mine in northern New England reports that it has actually become a political football kind of topic there now. Political candidates are very aware of how they come across on the issue, so the danger is that it becomes all about the stance instead of about the real impact on people, their lands, their homes, their mortgages, and their lives.

My Napikoski family hometown of tiny Millers Falls, Massachusetts is in Western Mass, close enough to the Vermont border that sometimes it was closer to drive to Vermont for dinner or a particular store or event than to the next bigger town in Massachusetts. I am very familiar with the area and have spent quality time in Vermont, both as a child visiting with family, and also on my own when I lived in Boston. Since my grandma died and my dad's generation of siblings sold off the house, I haven't been back to Millers Falls. I'm not sure how the river close by my grandparents' old home fared in the storm. I try to imagine it. I am trying to imagine all of the towns in Vermont and other areas Irene hit. I am wondering if some of the cute covered bridges I remember washed away. I am wondering who the people are that were swept away in the raging waters.

The excitement died after landfall, but the flooding continued for days after that. The story wasn't over. How can we get people to pay attention to the end of these stories?

My thanks to Kamron for inspiring this blog post. You, too, can choose a topic for Linda Without Borders this month when you make a donation to my upcoming Habitat for Humanity trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Interestingly, Cambodia has also recently been hit by devastating floods, with a death toll in the hundreds.

And the world keeps turning and turning...

Grocery Shoppers Need to Get in Line!

What is it about grocery store lines that makes people think they have the right to push, shove, and crowd the person in front of them? I'm talking to - well, most of you people. This isn't one of those things where I think "there are two kinds of people in the world - all my friends and all the stupid people." No, regrettably, I fear many of you are guilty of this one. You are so impatient in grocery store lines and when you hit that conveyor belt and the  little space between the gum/magazine racks, you lose your minds. Not to mention all sense of politeness.

I mean, can you imagine that kind of activity in a line somewhere else -- the bank, or Starbucks, say? Pushing up against the person in front of you, advancing to the counter before they are finished, and all the shifting! The impatient shifting!

To be honest, it cracks me up. And you know what else it does? It slows me down. That's right, you impatient grocery shoppers. You are only making it worse for yourselves. As soon as someone bumps me from behind, which usually happens when the person in front of me (sometimes two in front of me!) is still paying, I plant my feet, and I do not move until it is my turn. That really freaks out some of the line freaks: "Oh my god! Everyone moved up three inches but this lady in front of me is NOT MOVING UP THREE INCHES!! What do I do?"  Shove shove shove. But I remain fixed. I have actually had someone tap me before and say, "Ma'am...?" and gesture to the six inches or whatever of space I had not moved up into. I said, "Oh, are you referring to the few inches of space in front of me?"

Then, when I pay, I usually do so with a debit card but as a Visa purchase, not a PIN purchase. You know what that means? I sign my name. You know what that means? I have a really long name. I can sign it quickly, just kind of do the capital 'N' and then a squiggle for the rest. Or, in cases like these, I can neatly, painstakingly, carefully write in beautiful cursive the a-p-i-k-gotta love those cursive Ks, looped back around, neatly, neatly, -o-s-oooh! here's another k!-i. Aaaand, don't forget to carefully dot the Is! I have had clerks in stores reach for the receipt three or four times before I am actually finished. I love it. The person behind me, meanwhile, is having absolute fits.

They need to chill out. It will be their turn when I am finished, and not before. 

This blog post was written because Karen Curtis, who kindly donated to my upcoming Habitat for Humanity trip to Cambodia, selected the topic of people who crowd her in the checkout lines. But I happen to not only agree with her 100% that crowding in the store checkout line is rude, but also I take it to the next level of actively trying to slow those people down. So, that view is my own, but I had no problem giving you my interpretation of this issue. I think you all need to calm down in the grocery store lines! And don't touch me.

Control my blog for a day!

This month, you get the chance to make Linda Without Borders about whatever you want. How, you ask? When you support my upcoming volunteer trip to Cambodia with Habitat for Humanity, I will blog about any topic you choose. Big or small, you name it. Got a burning political or social issue you feel passionate about? Is there a band/artist/book/company that the blogosphere needs to know? Just want me to talk about your favorite pizza toppings? The choice is yours.I know many of my friends and family are already supportive of the wonderful work of Habitat for Humanity, but I wanted to find a way to "give" you something in return for your donation. And so you get a piece of me - my blog!

Make a donation (any amount) by clicking here.
And then, let me know the topic you choose.

BONUS:  While any donation to my Habitat for Humanity cause will get me to blog (and tweet!) for a day about the topic of your choosing, you can kick it up to the next level with a $75 donation. If you donate $75 to our Cambodia trip, I will blog about your choice of topic AND I pledge to read/watch any one book/movie that you name, between now and when I leave for Cambodia.  We all have that book or movie that we insist our friends/family should read/watch. Or maybe you know of one that I have particularly neglected (genre fiction, anyone?) for some reason. Bring it on! Make a $75 contribution, and I will do your bidding.

Brian and I will finish our year-long contract teaching English in Andong, Korea this December. We have decided to take the Habitat for Humanity trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia as our next step. We will ring in 2012 building homes alongside Habitat partner families and doing our small part as volunteers to make a positive contribution in the world.

Just to recap: 

• Habitat sets a minimum $10 donation, so for $10, my blog will be turned over to your heart's desire for one day.
  
• If you donate $25, I will also include a link to your web site or a site of your choosing to promote. 
• If you give $75 or more, I will not only blog and link to you, but in addition I pledge to read any book or watch any movie of your choosing -- you name it! -- before my Cambodia trip. I will do it, when you make a $75 donation. 

The donation link, one more time:
http://www.habitat.org/cd/gv/participant/participant.aspx?pid=90563082
Thanks to everyone who supports Habitat for Humanity!