Music PSA

uI probably should change the title of this blog to "Heidi posts lots of music videos and sometimes writes about Thailand." But here, as per request from Laura, is my favorite of Etta James' recordings. This would have been a more appropriate Valentine's Day post. Better late than never.

It never rains but it pours

After roughly a month and a half of, for me, disappointing unproductivity I now find myself with almost no time to breathe. I feel like it's partly my fault. I was sick of feeling like an unnecessary addition to the nursing dorm and I probably became a little too squeaky of a wheel. But it's partly due to murphy's law, as always. so now we're faced with the end of the semester and we need to complete 20 hours of conversational English classes, plus 9 hours of remedial English help, plus tutoring and chapel and intensive Thai and planning for the fast approaching summer work camps and international baccalaureate and preparing the Christian group for a Founder's Day performance... Yep, it's pretty busy. Of course that means that it's all coming at exactly the wrong time. My roommate's sister is coming to visit and I have been semi-unwell due to a bad case of cellulitis. 

Last weekend was the senior quest camp for the international college's graduating seniors. We all helped organize the camp and facilitated activities. It took place at Doi Khun Tan, a "mountain" campsite not too far from Chiang Mai. The site actually belongs to Payap and going there reminded me (for some reason) of going to my uncle's cabin on priest river. Probably because the facilities were similar. Anyhow, it went well and I had a pretty good time. It's always nice to get away from the city. But I think that's where I got the infection. I don't know how it started, but I must have picked up some bacteria or something because I developed what looked like a bite from the world's largest mosquito on my leg. But this is Thailand, so I really didn't think much of it. I assumed it would go away in time. But when it didn't and I started feeling feverish I decided maybe I should get it checked. I was given some antibiotics and told it should go away in 24 hours. 

Which brings us to yesterday, when I woke up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed. I hadn't slept well and I was in a very bad mood, for various reasons. And from then on, it was another one of those days where everything goes wrong. I ran out of cereal, which means I didn't get a proper breakfast. Then I discovered that I'd accidentally left my bike in the no-parking zone overnight. That meant it was chained up and I had to pay 50 baht to get the chain unlocked. Unfortunately this has happened to me a couple times before now. You'd think I would learn. 

so I was extremely late to Thai class and couldn't focus because of all the negative thoughts I had in my head. It had been 48 hours and while I told myself that my leg felt better, everyone insisted that it looked worse. I really didn't want to go back to the hospital because I haven't received my insurance card yet and was already feeling a bit strapped for cash. But I went to ask my boss at the nursing dorm about the insurance card and when she saw my infection she told me not to wait but to go to the hospital. Unfortunately it was also my first day of a new conversation class, this time with theology students. I was excited to teach again, especially since I feel like I have a better idea of how to teach and what I need to work on. But by this point I was feeling very tired and put out and no longer able to convince myself that my leg felt any better. 

The thing about the first day of class is that it is full of unknowns. I can prepare all I want to, I have no idea how things are actually going to go. Because teaching means working with people. Individual people who have their own personalities and wills and whose personalities and wills will all be playing off of each other in a group setting. You can't "script" your lesson. You have to be spontaneous. You have to be flexible. Because it's not just a one-way street. You aren't just giving knowledge, especially not in a conversation class. No, each moment depends on how the students respond, or even more terrifying, how they don't respond.

But I'm learning, and what's more, I'm teaching independently this time. I'm sorry, but it's so much easier. I don't have to accommodate someone else's style this way and I'm free to test out my own ideas. I arrived a few minutes early to get oriented. There's something about feeling comfortable in the space you're teaching in. I hated the rooms we were in last time. They were intimidatingly huge for such a small class size and not very welcoming. I was glad to have the extra time to get settled, especially as the desks were stacked in a way that resembled modern art. After getting things arranged, I was feeling like at least something was going right when I realized I'd left half of my materials back at the nursing dorm. Crap. And so I got to scurry back to my room, up all four flights of stairs, to retrieve the stuff. Go me. 

In spite of it all, I was pretty pleased with this first class. It wasn't nearly the disaster my first day of teaching was, although being at the front of a classroom still makes me feel like I'm five years old. It was, however, completely different from what I expected. The students were not anything like the paralyzingly shy accounting students I had before. Oh no. Apparently theology students have charisma and this group was pretty boisterous. Luckily they were also reasonably respectful, so if I can just manage to project my voice better I think everyone will stay on task. 

When I had made it through those two hours I limped across the street to the hospital, now fairly concerned about my leg. My boss had said something about "cellulitis" and "bacteria in the bloodstream" which had gotten my attention. As I sat in the waiting room, Ozzie called to remind me that Anisha was hosting a dinner at her parents' house. I told him I was busy and explained my situation. At this point I was too tired to be disappointed at missing the dinner. 

The doctor examined me and told me they would probably have to cut the wound open since the antibiotic couldn't get inside. And so it was that after a brief consultation I found myself on a hospital bed getting my leg sliced open. For some reason they couldn't use a local anesthetic so I had to make do with a sort of numbing spray that sort of almost worked. Basically, it was quite painful. It felt like someone was ripping into my leg with wire prongs. Afterwards I was given more pills and told to return every day to get it redressed. Oh, and I can't get it wet, which makes showering so much fun. 

so I've had better days, but at least I don't have septic shock. My parents are probably about having a heart attack right now, reading this. sorry padres, I do take care of myself, I promise. I really hope every first day of teaching doesn't involve this kind of drama. Otherwise I'm not going to survive the year! 

Random Observations

1. The other day, sarah's boyfriend Kevin was sharing his perplexity over backpackers/tourists. "Why do they always dress like a cross between a pirate and a magician?" he queried. After being surrounded by backpackers in New Zealand, I nearly cried with laughter at this very accurate description. Now we all have a game. Every time we see a backpacker we ask ourselves "pirate? or magician?"

2. During another conversation about the weirdness of Thailand, Ozzie christened it "the island of misfit toys." Once again, so very accurate. His point was that many of the foreigners who end up in Thailand are really misfits in their own countries. I'm inclined to agree. All you have to do is take a look at my Thai class. It makes for an interesting social atmosphere. Everybody sing together "we're a couple of misfits, why don't we fit in!" I think that movie is also the origin of one of my favorite quotes. "We can be independent together!" Okay I'm done with that.

3. Payap is hosting a film festival this weekend featuring films from southeast asia. As someone who loved Dr. smucker's international film class at Whitworth, I'm in heaven. Except instead of a Whitworth faculty member leading the discussion afterwards, as wonderful as that was, we get to have Q&A sessions, often with the director. Unfortunately I'm missing tomorrow because I have to help with the senior retreat. But I will say that my favorite film thus far has been "In the Middle of the Bridge," which is basically a documentary featuring interviews with various Burmese monks involved in the 2007 anti-government protests, aka the "saffron revolution." The Q&A session afterwards was with a Burmese monk who is involved with the fight for political freedom in Burma. It was soooo interesting.

4. I've learned that my name has a meaning in Thai. That is, the sounds "hi" and "di" are Thai words. They mean "give" and "good" respectively. so apparently it sounds like my name is "to give good." Now I understand why sometimes people giggle when I introduce myself. When you think about it, it's
 a bit awkward, but I guess there are worse names to have.

5. I've made my sound recording debut. The Christian Communications Institute, right next door, is putting together a presentation on Thailand and needed a male and female narrator. Everyone else was busy so I got the job. They'll actually be coming to Washington, and probably to Whitworth, sometime this spring I think. so you can go to their performance and also hear my first professional voice recording. It took me about five takes to get it at the right speed without sounding like a robot. It's actually quite a bit harder than you'd think.

You know you're making progress when...

I can hardly believe this myself, but I just gave a bilingual homily in chapel. That's right. I wrote an homily based on the story of the good samaritan and then Ozzie helped me to translate it into Thai. And then this morning I stood in front of a room of 50 Thai college students and spoke to them in English and in Thai. It was a lot of firsts at one time. And it was at 7:30 in the morning.

I know my previous post on chapel wasn't entirely positive and maybe that caused some concern. But I want to make it clear that chapel has been going really well. It really has. I have the unfortunate tendency to take a rather cynical point of view sometimes. But honestly, if I were in the student's shoes, I would not want to be there! Get up early so I can sit through some boring worship service that I don't understand and don't identify with? I mean, let's be real. The nursing students are, thankfully, very respectful. In return, my hope is to make it all as painless as possible. And I am being tentative about it and trying to be culturally sensitive. I think there are a couple of fallacies about religion and culture. 1) That they are synonymous and 2) that they can be completely divorced from one another. I don't think either is true.

That means that, in my view, Christianity is not "American," or even "Western," although it has certainly helped shape these cultures. But we march in to other cultures with our worship songs and our cultural interpretations of the gospel and end up making people become not just Christian, but our "brand" of Christian. Khao jai mai? And sometimes it's just laughable. For instance, you can't (according to Rob) really translate a lot of the traditional western hymns into Thai because the notes don't follow the Thai tones. I guess some of the translations are pretty painful. But to say that religion has nothing to do with culture, that it doesn't change culture, is ridiculous. I can't convert to another religion and keep my former culture entirely intact. so once again, we have a question of values. Who determines them and how do we apply them to life? If I value cultural diversity over all else, I'm going to have little patience with missionaries and English teachers and "destroyers of culture." If I value my faith over culture, I'm not going to have many scruples about how my actions affect cultural diversity. To say that people with these different sets of values can come to a mutual agreement is completely unrealistic. And that is often the two types of people who rub shoulders in Thailand.

And thus I find myself trying to tread lightly. When we were trying to translate my homily into Thai, Ozzie made the observation that the dictionary had a lot of religious words and also a lot of words related to sex. Basically, the writers know the types of farang who are coming to Thailand. Now, wouldn't it be awful if it was the sex tourists who displayed an interest in Thai culture and made more of an effort to understand it while the Christian missionaries simply ignored it all in their drive to convert people? As an outsider, what would you think? To be clear, I don't consider myself to be here as a "missionary" any more than I consider myself to be "missionary" in the u.s. But I do consider myself a Christian. And as such I am representing something. someone in fact. And so I have to be careful. 

Music PSA

This week's music psa is brought to you by smac, who is a source of many cool things. Thanks for sharing this video. It features some pretty impressive beards, a cello, a banjo and one very stylish hat. These folks seem pretty cool. I especially enjoy the use of "natural" percussion.

I have the best friends in the world...

It's true. I am so blessed to have so many awesome people in my life. I miss every single one of you but it's so great to see what happens with everyone, even when we live in very different parts of the world. Excuse the sappiness but I got the most wonderful package in the mail yesterday. I had to go to Esther's for a meeting and I was immediately accosted by Gax. "Heidi! What's this!?" he yelled "It looks like an LP Record!"

"It says Wall Decoration..." I mumbled, a slow smile spreading across my face as I read who it was from. I opened the envelope to discover this. Thank you sam!!! At first I wasn't going to publicly embarrass you, but it's such a creative gift I couldn't help it.

 You can't really see, but the record is of a Bach cantata, all in German and features Dietrich Fischer-Diskau. For the record (no pun intended), the only reason I know who that is is because of Music History II with Dr. strauch. Anyhow, it is pretty amazing and pretty much made my day. somehow things like this have a way of arriving on the exact days that I need a little extra encouragement. so thank you sam. Everyone was pretty amazed. It's funny because over Christmas Gax and I discovered a mutual love for Bach and he dug out some recordings for me. Plus it gave me an excuse to talk about all of the great people in these pictures. It seems like it is so rare to find solid friends like the ones I have. I have been totally spoiled with so many great relationships! You guys rock my socks.

To do list and a few cultural items

Get motorbike serviced - check. I meant to do this in... oh, November. But going to a mechanic is intimidating enough in the states. I asked Gax where I should go, and he told me to go to the mechanic next to the gas station. I couldn't find it. Today I finally discovered that it is about the width of an elevator and, of course, I can't read the Thai script on the sign. The mechanic didn't speak English, so I had to mime checking the tires and oil and point to my broken mirror while saying things like "check oIL ka, check TIREs ka, check BRAKEs ka." But my bike has now been serviced and feels like a new machine. Yay! I don't have to worry about breaking down anymore.

Get a haircut - check. I've been putting this for weeks. Going to a stylist is intimidating enough in the states. I asked around and sarah recommended that I go to a place behind Carrefour. But I couldn't find it at first because I was looking on the wrong side of Carrefour. When I finally did locate it, I tried to explain that I just wanted my bangs trimmed and that they were side bangs. The guy seemed to speak pretty good English, but after listening carefully he proceeded to cut them straight across. Awesome. so I asked one of the students what I should do and she recommended a stylist right across the street from the dorm. Went there today and got my bangs cut again and my hair trimmed. They barely spoke any English but one of the customers did, thankfully, and was able to translate for me. They understood better, but they still didn't do it quite right. Both times I expected there to be spray bottles and clips and lots of measuring and checking length, like at my stylist at home. Nope. Both times they just combed my hair a little bit and eyeballed it. Oh well. I give up. Vanity is a vice, isn't it?

Go to the music department - check! I've wanted to do this since November but between one thing and another, I've never gotten around to it. I did go in a couple times but it was during their lunch hour... and a half. But I can use their practice rooms in the mornings. Time to regain all the music skills I've lost.

On sunday I took one of the students (or rather, she took me) to the walking street market again. Once again, it is pretty cool to have your own personal tour guide and this time we went in a lot of the temples and I asked a lot of questions. There were some cool pictures of Chiang Mai in 1926 in one of them. I tried to picture Chiang Mai alongside spokane at that time.

Going to the market with this student is always an adventure. I almost get to see Chiang Mai through Thai eyes when I am with her. Things that seem odd to me are a part of normal life for her, and having her explain them makes me feel more connected with daily life here and how things work. However, it's a bit overwhelming at times. One of my favorite authors, James Herriot, tells a story about a colleague who practically kills him with generosity. His colleague is so big-hearted and generous that he offers James anything that he shows an interest in or compliments: cigars, shirts, you name it. He won't take 'no' for an answer. Unfortunately this generosity is often smothering, especially when Granville and James go out for drinks... You should read it, it's hilarious, and also a pretty good picture of how I feel when I go to the market with this student. she is so eager to show me things and so generous that she wants me to try everything and offers me half of everything she buys. This means I get to try some rather interesting food items.

The first time she eagerly bought me an omelette with bee eggs and fish stomach soup. "Here Pi' Heidi! Try some fish stomach soup!" she says eagerly, her face all anticipation. "Oh! Okay!" I say, trying channel my fear into forced excitement. Because I can't say no. I certainly can't go "eww! disgusting!" Not with her big brown eyes awaiting my approval. And so I eat fish stomach soup, doing my best not to grimace and to give it an unbiased appraisal.

This week it was chicken fingers. But this time we had company. Ozzie, Glory and Ozzie's friend Eric were with us and were uninitiated with this student's sense of hospitality. As usual she went to buy "her" dinner, of which she would expect us to eat at least half. As soon as she set the food down I plunged right in, preferring to find out what I was eating after the deed was done. "Pi' Ozzie! Pi' Glory! Try some chicken fingers!" she says, taking one for herself. Ozzie and Glory aren't quite as "greng jai" as I am (more on that later) and the fear showed plainly on their faces. I meanwhile was pondering on the fact that part of a chicken's foot was now residing in my stomach. The crunchy bits must have been the tendons. Ozzie and Glory however got to consider the full import of this knowledge prior to the actual experience and from their reactions it dawned on our guide that farang may not be all that fond of eating chicken fingers. Ozzie and Glory were good sports and tried it (and later sprang it on Eric when he joined us) and we had a good laugh about it but I had the weirdest urge to kick all my fellow farang under the table. I should have been relieved to have the burden of eating everything I'm offered lifted from me. But I couldn't help feeling that a barrier had been raised somehow.

This nursing student had simply been showing me her Chiang Mai. Her Thailand. Not Thailand for tourists. Not Thailand for study abroad students. Here we were, the only farang in sight, sitting cross-legged on the ground at a short table. This student hadn't been trying to gross us out or even to test us or stretch us. she'd simply been trying to share. she had no idea that it was weird for us to eat this stuff. But now she'll be more self-conscious. I won't get to marvel at her grabbing a snack of chicken fingers as though they were a plate of french fries and casually offering me one. I feel like I've become one step removed from that window into life here. I guess to me, that was worth having to eat some rather questionable things. If that makes sense.

But in other ways, I don't need that window. Thai culture doesn't always feel that foreign to me. Case in point: greng jai. I don't know the literal translation, but everyone warned me about it when I first came. "There's this thing called greng jai... Thai people won't say what they really mean because they don't want to cause conflict." Okay. Well, that is my family. I don't know if it's a scandinavian thing or what, but my family is painfully non-confrontational. For instance, whenever we go out to eat it takes us about half an hour to actually agree on a restaurant, not because we're arguing but because no one wants to have an opinion in case someone else really wants to go to a different place. At the actual restaurant, if someone gets an order wrong, we're not the kind of people to make a big fuss and send it back. No, most likely we'll just eat what gets put in front of us, whether or not it was what we ordered.

People have told me that I should assert myself and have an opinion. It's not good to repress your desires or some such. But that's not it at all. When I don't give an opinion or a preference, it's because I really don't have an opinion or a preference. It really is more important to me that everyone in the group is happy with the place that we go. If I did have a preference, and ended up getting my way, I would be unhappy if I knew that someone else was unhappy with that choice. That is greng jai. It's the same with the food orders. If the restaurant messes up my order, and I get the wrong thing, I don't want to make a scene. I don't like being the center of attention for one, and I know that it will probably get the waiter or chef into trouble and they have a hard enough job as it is. Mistakes happen. I make them all the time. Unless it's a food I absolutely loath (of which there are few) I'll probably decide that, well, it's not what I had in mind but it looks very nice too and it will be much easier for all involved if we just keep the peace. Greng jai.

so while there are many ways in which Thai culture is absolutely foreign, there are some things that I find I understand surprisingly well. Ironically I find myself trying to explain "greng jai" to the other volunteers who have been here longer than I have. People really do not get it. Once again, it goes back to values, which is something my brother talks about a lot. People act on what is important to them. Greng jai is not a particularly selfless concept. It's not that I'm trying to be a good person or anything. It's just that I naturally dislike conflict. Avoiding conflict is one of my values. It's not always a good thing. Conflict can be beneficial. sometimes I put up with really ridiculous stuff because of trying to avoid it. But it's how I work.