Sun & Surf in Thailand

After a lay-over in the Bangkok Airport – home to the recent political protests – we reached the beautiful beaches of Thailand.  We would spend our enrichment week relaxing on a small island in the south called Koh Tao, becoming certified to scuba dive.  We stayed at a little dive resort right on the beach, nestled in a beautiful cove, in bungalows overlooking the ocean. A bit isolated from the heart of the town, it was a very serene location, with plenty of hammocks to kick back in. 

According to the 2005 version of Lonely Planet, Koh Tao is a gem precisely because locals don’t spend their time catering to tourists, and even electricity hasn’t reached the island. It’s amazing how much a place can change in just four years: now, I’d say 95% of the island’s economy is tourism-based, the place is covered in resorts, restaurants, and adventure sports outfitters.  And as for the electricity – it’s everywhere. 

The scuba course was four days long, and began with a number of boring instructional videos.  The first two days we also did foolish bubble-blowing activities in shallow water.  So when it came to day three, I was numbed into expecting very little from diving, and it came as a pleasant surprise when all of a sudden I found myself at the bottom of a beautiful coral reef, freed from gravity’s constraint, and able to navigate a National Geographic setting myself.  We made it on four dives, each about forty minutes, to a maximum of fifteen meters. What I never realized about diving is that you have to pretty consciously control your buoyancy – each inhalation and exhalation changes the volume of your lungs, and sends you up or down.  After a couple of minutes with the bizarre sensation, you get used to it and buoyancy maneuvering becomes second-nature.  It truly was the coolest experience – we got up-close and personal with the most bizarre neon fish, did back-flips on the sandy bottom, and had an underwater dance party.   We saw stingrays and barracudas, not to mention sea cucumbers galore. 

    We were lucky to have beautiful weather, and we’re leaving Koh Tao with healthy tans (or some of us – there’s a good amount of burn, too).  Besides scuba diving, we rented kayaks, indulged into cheap Thai massages, and enjoyed amazing cuisine.  The pad thai and curries are delicious.  I’ve been missing out on pad thai all my life; when we ordered it at home, it always came with shrimp, so I just never bothered to try it.  It is so, so not bad.  I also love the eating culture here – at local restaurants, and most shops, too, you take your shoes off before entering, and meals are eaten around low tables on lounging cushions. 

            In transit we spent a night on a larger island, Koh Samui, where I had a pretty striking experience walking back to our hotel through the red light district (safely, with Sandy).  Tiny little open-air bars lined the main street, competing music blaring from the speakers, and prostitutes blatantly promoting their bars.  Thailand had a large stake in the sex-tourism industry, and though it’s illegal, it’s also largely overlooked.  I looked up the issue online, and learned that in Koh Samui, a small little beach town, there are more than 10,000 prostitutes.  Having just read a book on modern-day slavery (A Crime So Monstrous, by Benjamin Skinner) the walk through the bar neighborhood was particularly unsettling.  I have no idea what proportion of those girls were coerced into their positions, but I also sense that women with economic options choose to go into the business.  So far we’ve also seen a couple of lady-men, whose presence is proportionally high in Thailand because it’s culturally acceptable for men to transform themselves into women. 

We’ve been pretty cloistered away on a touristy island, so it makes sense that I haven’t seen any indication of the recent political unrest.  I wonder how much evidence of it we’ll see later on in the trip, when we go north to study sustainable agriculture in rural homestays. 

Final Weeks in Vietnam

After celebrating Christmas with the group in Quy Nhon, I visited Nha Trang on independent student travel with Emily and Renee.  We spent a couple of nights in the backpacker’s beach town, in a little hostel just five minutes’ walk from the ocean.  Of course, it’d been sunny all month while we were stuck in sweaty Ho Chi Minh City, but once we reached the shore, it clouded over and drizzled.  We got a couple of hours of sun in, lying on the beach, enough to redden a bit.  Other than that, we enjoyed the little town: we had an amazing Indian meal, homemade ice cream, browsed the book exchange shops, played badminton.  It was a fun challenge to make our own hostel reservations, secure bus tickets back to Ho Chi Minh, and be in charge of all our own meals. 

  We took a public bus back down to Ho Chi Minh City along a beautiful costal route.  We returned to impending media projects and planning for our student environmental conference.  That evening, though, when we went out for dinner, we could sense unusual activity in the city.  It was a Sunday night, but the place had more energy than we’d seen all month.  We learned at the restaurant that it was the night of the final match in the South East Asia soccer championships, with Vietnam competing against Thailand.  The game stretched on for hours, and we kept catching glances of it on TV as we worked on media projects.  It looked like it was over for Vietnam, but they won in the last moments on an exciting kick.  The city absolutely went mad.  They won at maybe ten or eleven o’clock, but the celebration lasted well beyond four a.m.  Around midnight I ventured out of the hotel to explore the festivities, and it was an absolute mob scene.  Everyone was joy-riding through the city on their motorcycles, waving the red Vietnamese flag, banging trash cans, and reveling in general mayhem.  At some intersections, it was so crowded that it was literally impossible for a pedestrian to make any headway.  It was probably the rowdiest crowd I’d ever seen, but it felt completely safe and good-natured.  I think in comparison to Red Sox rioting, this was a national accomplishment, and felt united rather than divisive.  On the other hand, I can also see how intense fervor could turn dangerous in a mob setting with that much energy and collective emotion. 

On New Year’s Eve, we hosted our student environmental conference.  We’d invited local university students, and about sixty attended.  For three hours, we shared our media projects, learned about Vietnamese students’ efforts in environmental clubs, and discussed conservation.  It turned out quite well – it was very organized and ran smoothly – but I think we perhaps overestimated the collective English level, and in the limited time, it was hard to get very many insightful ideas.  The Vietnamese students, however, seemed very willing to participate, and tossed around ideas about emissions-trading and governmental regulation.  The most concise point that I took away from our discussion was that Vietnam lacks two things in regard to environmentalism: awareness, and alternatives.  Most people remain ignorant of the consequences of their actions, and even those that realize the detrimental affects of particular behaviors don’t have many other options.  

We celebrated the New Year at a fancy hotel party where there was a buffet, live music and performance, and a balloon cascade at midnight.  New Year’s isn’t a very important holiday in Vietnam, but in Ho Chi Minh City it’s celebrated in certain neighborhoods.  The entire hotel district was decked out in more lighting than during Christmas, and one street was even named “Times Square”. 

 

Not long afterwards, we were having our last Vietnamese iced coffees and on our way to the airport to head for Thailand ...

Christmas in 'Nam!

I should preface this by saying Christianity itself does not have a strong presence in Vietnam. Nonetheless, the commercial industry has embraced the Christmas season, in bizarre but omnipresent ways: techno versions of Christmas carols, lights, and gaudy decorations everywhere. This was especially true in Ho Chi Minh City, but the TBB crowd made sure it followed us to Quy Nhon: upon arrival at our guesthouse at 3:30 in the morning, Lily, Becca and I didn't go to bed until we'd hung up our Christmas lights around the walls and on our makeshift tree (a clothes rack draped by a green hammock).

It's been warm and sunny all month, but of course it rained Christmas eve and Christmas day. We had a relaxing day to ourselves on Christmas eve, but had a nice group dinner followed by a round of Christmas carols on the walk home. We made a time in our schedule to honor other faiths, too, on Christmas eve; we broke out Becca's supply of gelt, lit the menorah, and learned how to play dreidel.

Then it was time for the Christmas eve night service at a local church. For years, my parents have literally had to drag me to church, but this time, I decided to go on my own accord. Lily, Renee and I went, and it was quite the experience. From two blocks away, you could see something festive going on (Lily even pointed it out, saying "you guys, I think there's a carnival"). But it wasn't a carnival, it was the church, which had been decorated to the point where it looked as if it should be in Las Vegas. Lights were everywhere, strung from the steeple to surrounding third story windows. Illuminated doves flapped their wings, and massive Jesus figures decorated the outside of the chapel. At the center of it all was a giant Nativity scene, with plastic Mary, Jesus, and Joseph, where people crowded around to pose for photos. All around the church, women hawked balloons and Santa costumes and glow-sticks.

We made our way to the entrance, where we encountered a crowd that was more like a mob scene at a rock concert than anything I've ever seen at church before. We were caught up in a crowd of hundreds trying to get through the doors, with people pushing and shoving wildly. Unaccustomed to the aggression it required to move forward, we never made it to the doors before the security guard baricaded the remaining parishoners. We, with many others, were turned away from the house of our Lord. I was disappointed not to witness the service itself, though it'd have been in Vietnamese, but just being at the church was an experience in itself. Locals asked to take pictures of us, we bought glow-sticks, and we enjoyed the hubbub.

Back at the guesthouse, much of the group gathered around a laptop to watch a Muppet's Christmas carol. At midnight, we broke out milk and cookies for Santa. Those of us who missed the northeast weather made it snow with styofoam packing peanuts from the ceiling fan.


When we woke up the next morning, Christmas, it was still gray and dreary, but we cheerfully piled onto the bus for a short ride to a beach resort where we spent the day. It was a fancy hotel, nestled in a rocky cove right on the ocean. It was festively decorated, but not too tacky, and given the drizzling weather, felt quite cozy inside. We were treated to the most amazing brunch buffet ever -- having had nothing but noodle soup for breakfasts lately, the fresh croissants, waffles, omelet station, etc were absolute heaven. Once we'd gourged ourselves, we exchanged final secret santa gifts; Lily gave me the spiffiest suspenders ever. We lazed around the rest of the day, playing volleyball, pool, and Boggle. We had an amazing meal for dinner, then made our way back home.

It was the most unusual Christmas I've had, but quite nice considering we're all away from home. Merry Christmas, I hope you've all had lovely holidays, and Happy New Year!

Quy Nhon

We spent a week in Quy Nhon, an industrial town on the central coast of Vietnam. It's right on the ocean, but hasn't been hit by tourism (yet) so as foreigners we were pretty rare. We continued our study of waste management by visiting garbage sorting centers and interviewing workers there. We visited nearby temples, including the bizarre Cao Dai church, which is a combination of all the world's major religions, intended to become the universal faith. There were funky holographic portraits that looked like Jesus from one angle, then Buddha from another.

We took a day trip to visit the My Lai massacre site, a museum commemorating the brutal attack on the Son My village by the US army in '68 in which 504 innocent villagers were murdered. The village itself is no longer much to see, since the US bombed it a year after the fact to hide evidence. The massacre was awful -- in itself it was a catalyst for the anti-war sentiment and protests back home -- but some powerful stories came out of it: one US pilot threatened to shoot his own men in order to save a dozen local people; one soldier shot himself in the foot to avoid carrying out orders.

Another difficult trip was a visit to a local organization that works with children disabled by remnants of Agent Orange. 40 years after the war, there are 4 million people still affected by the chemical that the US sprayed to thin forests and seek out Vietcong troops. These children were severely physically and mentally retarded, with cleft lips and contorted limbs. Their parents were unimagineably patient in caring for them. Sadly, most of those affected by Agent Orange are already impoverished but must face the additional burden of serious incapacitation. This organization has tried to petition the US government to support medical bills, as they do for US veterans ailing from Agent Orange, but to no avail.

We also visited what was essentially a local projects: within the past two years, the government exercised eminent domain and forcibly relocated all the poor residents living on the oceanside (I assume to make way for more profitable hotel industries). The residents we visited seemed fairly content with their new homes, since the government provides them free, temporarily, but since they were fishermen, they’re finding it more difficult to access the ocean.

Quy Nhon is a nice change of pace from Ho Chi Minh City. Outside our guesthouse, if you turn left, you're in the heart of the town, with bustling shops and streetside restaurants and a produce market. If you take a right instead, you're just a block from the ocean, which is quiet and full of fishermen. I'm not sure what the swimming would be like, but it's a great place to run or simply sit on the shore.

Remnants of the Vietnam War

It's not something I was taught much about in school, but the war is certainly in the not-so-distant past here in Vietnam.  Of course, it's not called the Vietnam War, but referred to as "the resistance to the American invasion," telling of the role the US played.  

Yesterday the group went to the museum in Ho Chi Minh City commemorating the war and its victims.  Some of the particularly interesting exhibits included one on reporters and photographers who covered the war, and one on the remaining effects of Agent Orange, including harrowing photographs of deformities.  

What really struck me about the museum, however, was looking through the guestbook and comments that people from all over the world had written.  There was a very strong anti-American sentiment; the hardly-surprising overtly "I hate all Americans" statements, which are difficult to take really seriously, since they're so generalized.  What really began to get under my skin were the more subtle and legitimate comments about how America seems not to have learned anything from history.  The scariest part of the museum was that this -- war -- is not a thing of the past; the news articles and photographs we saw seemed in many ways a reflection of present-day American foreign policy -- Iraq??

In some ways I'm struggling with how to be an American abroad.  The other day a motorcycle driver asked me if I wanted a ride (as happens just about every thirty seconds) and although I didn't, he struck up a conversation.  He asked where I was from, and when he heard I was from America, he was ecstatic, raving about how great America is.  It's one thing for the Vietnamese to be forgiving of America after the war ... but to be that enthusiastic about the USA?  It's hard for me to understand how he can feel that way.  So many people that we've met have been excited to meet Americans, as we're somewhat of a novelty, but why the popularity among some, when my instinct would be to feel ashamed?

Today we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour outside of the city, where an entire town of 16,000 people lived literally underground during the war.  They carved out tunnels where they sought refuge from America's bombs, and ventured out only occasionally to gather food or hunt down enemies.  We got the chance to go underground, and most of the tunnels had been widened and lit for visitors; one part of the tour, however, took us to a second layer of rooms six meters underground with no light whatsoever and a winding downward slope -- that became pretty unnerving pretty quickly.  

I've also been reading some books about the Vietnam War -- one, which I'm sure many of you have read, is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien; the other was The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh.  Both were fictional novels about the war, one by an American, the other by a Vietnamese veteran.  Because of this contrast, they offered different perspectives on the fighting, but what interested me most was where they overlapped.  There was a frighteningly similar description of a man being blown up into a tree by a landmine in both books, and each had the recurring theme of how even distorted memory is reality.  

Tomorrow morning we're off to Quy Nhon, where we'll be doing work on conservation and studying the affects of Agent Orange.  We'll be on the beach for Christmas!

Environmental Issues in Vietnam: Waste Management

We've spent the past week or so studying environmental issues here, going to various sites to see waste management.  We visited a number of landfills -- as raw and dirty as you can imagine.  There's no sorting done, and any recycling is unofficial and inefficient.  Pretty much all of the city's waste, organic and inorganic, gets trucked out to the massive landfills, thrown in, and covered.  The smell is unbelievable, as you can imagine.  The issues there include not only limited space, but also leeching of toxic sludge into the ground water.  

My media group, video, spent four days visiting a non-governmental waste collectors' cooperative in District 6.  Just getting to the site has illustrated how vast and dense this city is -- an hour's drive in rush hour, and you're still in as urban as an environment as downtown.  At the co-op, collectors, mostly middle-aged, and many women, gather all the garbage they've collected from households, and sort it as best they can into organic and inorganic.  Unfortunately, there's just not enough space and time to process all of the material that comes into the sorting center; out of 330 tons each day in District 6, this site receives 60 tons, but has the capacity to sort only 8 tons.  That means 322 tons daily are not sorted at all and end up in the landfill.

Another important part of the work at the sorting center is off-the-clock recycling.  When the workers aren't collecting or sorting rubbish, they're free to pick through it and gather paper, bottles, and tins, which they sell to a middleman who transfers the goods to a recycling company.  The global economic crisis seems to have had a drastic effect on the recycling process; whereas just five months ago, the workers could earn 80,000 dong a day for their work recycling, now they receive only 30,000 dong.  This is income on top of their stable salary, but that is only about 100,000 a day (at 17,000 dong to the dollar).  That means those 80,000 dong were a significant proportion of their income, which has now been drastically reduced.  Nonetheless, the job with the co-op is considered fairly good for those without the education for other employment -- it's stable, and after a couple of years you're guaranteed healthcare.  It's pretty amazing to see how widespread the damage from the economy reaches.  I haven't been home to witness the worst of it, but the consequences are far-reaching and have affected even menial laborers in Ho Chi Minh City.  It also has pretty serious implications for environmental efforts which are too-often considered more expensive than worthwhile.  

Other activities -- lectures with local development workers, consulting agencies, and volunteers; watching movies like An Inconvenient Truth and The Corporation, visiting floating markets and small-scale factories in a river region in the Mekong Delta.  

Unfortunately, we'll also be changing our itinerary.  After the attacks in India, our safety is in question there, so we'll be spending the month in Thailand instead, hopefully working on sustainable agriculture there, too.  It's disappointing not to go to India, but our presence in the rural community we'd planned to visit would be dangerous not just for TBB but for the community, too.  I'm sure we'll have a great program in Thailand, plus the food will be amazing.  

Ho Chi Minh City

We arrived the other day in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) in Vietnam. We flew in on my birthday ... which was celebrated with delicious cake and lovely surprises like furry sweater vests and Sox tickets and yogurt. (Thank you for all the cards, too!)

Ho Chi Minh is an unbelievably busy city; no matter what time of day, you've got to dodge thousands of motorcycles to cross a street -- and even if it's marked as one way, don't expect it to work that way. Christmast is already everywhere, even in early December; all the shops are heavily adorned with gaudy decorations, and horrible techno versions of Christmas songs blare out of every door. But it's great; I'm glad we'll be spending the holiday somewhere withs lots of Christmas cheer, even if somewhat peculiar.

We're living in a dorm-style guesthouse; the girls in two large rooms, and the boys in doubles. We're working closely with CET, a study abroad program, and their office is fairly near the guesthouse. We've spent the last couple of days at the office, having lectures on Vietnam's history and economy, taking crash courses in Vietnamese (which, believe it or not, seems more difficult than Chinese), and having TBB seminars.

Tomorrow we'll start our work with our local NGO, Enda, Environmental Development Action. Our focus is waste management, and we'll know more about it once we start.

The best part of Ho Chi Minh so far? The iced coffee -- a local favorite, served usually with thick condensed milk. Easily found not only in cafes and restaurants, but also on stools on the sidewalk, it is more abundant even than Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, a blessing after its scarcity in China.

Killing Fields & Genocide Museum

The other day we flew from Siem Reap to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh... there could not have been a more striking difference between the two. With its proximity to Angkor Wat and constant crowds of tour groups, Siem Reap feels distinctly touristy: everyone speaks English, cafes and restaurants cater to western tastes, and the main street is lined almost exclusively by fancy hotels. In Phnom Penh we found a much more realistic city, full of local people who were as friendly as Cambodia's "smiling country" reputation would make them out to be.

In Phnom Penh, we visited the Killing Fields and the genocide museum, both in remembrance of Cambodia's genocide (1975-1979). We've learned a lot about the event, considering most of us knew very little about it a month ago. We watched a documentary on Pol Pot's regime and I read a memoir called First They Killed my Father. The sites were very powerful, and I think very well done. They were not nearly as crowded as Angkor Wat, and nearly all the visitors were very respectful. The exhibits had simple yet powerful facts and anecdotes about the history, and the photos that had been salvaged from the Khmer Rouge records spoke for themselves.

My first thought when we arrived at the museum was how similar the building looked to the Chinese middle schools, and it turned out that it had been a school before being converted by the Khmer Rouge into a prison detention center, with routine and brutal torture, for the duration of the genocide. I can't begin to imagine what the visit would be like for a Cambodian who's lived through the recent history, whose parents may have been killed, or who grew up in Pol Pot's regime themselves. Throughout the day I found myself wondering how locals percieved us there, as blatant foreigners, paying respect to those killed. What is our place there? We had barely heard of the event; our nation had played a shameful role in creating the situation in which the Khmer Rouge rose to power -- and then neglected to take action to stop it. And yet the Cambodians seemed to genuinely welcome us as guests, not specifically at the museums, but throughout our whole trip, they were extremely friendly.

It was certainly worthwhile to visit Phnom Penh; it was emotionally straining and I think we all found ourselves trying to comprehend the history that made a catastrophe like that possible, but it was a provocative stop on our trip.

Happy Thanksgiving from Siem Reap

Happy Thanksgiving! The TBB group had a nice meal together at the hotel -- impressively Thanksgiving-like, considering we're in southeast Asia.  The chef made us pumpkin soup, mashed potatoes, chicken with gravy, and vegetables.  No pie, but otherwise it was great.  

We've had a really relaxing week, visiting temples, renting bikes, taking a river boat to a floating village -- though that was a kind of questionable trip.  Basically, we took a boat ride an hour and  a half to a community that lives entirely on stilted buildings in the water, and we were surrounded by school children trying to sell us notebooks to donate to the school.  Many of us bought notebooks and pencils, which were then given to the teacher.  It's possible that they just resell the books over and over each time another tour group comes to the island; I just hope the supplies are getting to the kids in some form.  It just felt very invasive to motor on through their community, all snapping away on our cameras, for a mere fifteen minute visit.  How often do foreigners come peering into their town?  How is their culture being affected by tourism, and are they actually the money, or does it go to the tour agencies?  It raised some important questions about ethical tourism.  Of course anyone would be curious to see a lifestyle so different from their own, but how to approach the sightseeing in a respectful way?  

Other things we've been up to: seeing a documentary on the Cambodian genocide, going to the Angkor Photography Festival, renting bicycles, going to the market, relaxing by the pool.  This morning a couple of us went to a cooking class where me made local dishes.  The best one was a pineapple-coconut curry soup.  

Some of our itinerary may be up in the air at the moment.  First,we heard about the coup in Thailand.  With all the unrest, that seems like a long time coming.  We're scheduled for an enrichment week there in about a month; it may be sorted out by then, but otherwise we may not be able to enter the country.  Furthermore, there's this whole mess in India right now.  It's in Mumbai, which is nowhere near where we'll be, but it's still being played out, so we'll see.  

Off to Phnom Penh tomorrow for a couple days at the killing fields memorials.  

Angkor Wat

Well, I can now say I've seen Cambodia's most famous attraction: Angkor Wat.  It's in fact a collection of hundreds of temple sites, Buddhist and Hindu.  We spent one day exploring smaller ruins, which were truly overcrowded by tourists, mostly Japanese and European.  There's been decent preservation, and one of the coolest parts was seeing enormous ancient trees whose roots had been incorporated into the walls, but overall, the sites didn't feel very spectacular or spiritual.  

What was really amazing was seeing the main Angkor Wat temple at sunrise.  We woke up early to get there, and entered the main gate while it was still dark, so as we watched the sun come up, we had no idea what we were surrounded by.  I got the chance to wander around inside the main temple's corridors before the crowds made it there; it was beautiful in the early morning light.  

Definitely worth the early morning!

Arrival in Cambodia

We flew into Siem Reap last night -- it's about a thousand degrees hotter than Kunming.  I've reclaimed my flip flops.  Not much news to report, just wanted to let the parents we've gotten here safely, and it's going to be a great week.  The town is pretty much dominated by tourism.  We'll enjoy the relaxing time at our nice hotel, with pool, Angkor Wat, floating villages, and a bustling market.  

Night on the town

Saturday, we took a ten-hour bus back to Kunming from Shaxi.  When we got back, we had media projects to finish up, and we were tired, but it was also our last night in China.  We'd been wanting to go out dancing for weeks, but never managed to -- luckily, we made it happen on Saturday night.

My media group, Google Earth, was reasonably finished with our project, so we headed over to the local night scene: "Kundu Night Market".  Our first task was to find appropriate attire -- the cheapest, ugliest Chinese apparel possible.  Dave and Zach bought matching t-shirts, trucker hats, and sunglasses.  Isabel bought earrings, and I got some ugly referee shirt as a last resort: all the ugly sequined shirts were surprisingly expensive.  

Then we hit the dancefloor.  The entire neighborhood was full of clubs, about half

 of them were just bars, but we managed to find some discos where locals packed onto the dancefloor.  We enjoyed terrible Chinese / euro pop music; mostly, it was just ridiculous, rhythmless, raging, and appropriate- no one much danced in pairs so much as in a circle.  

At one point, the music stopped for a show by a man wearing a ghoul's mask -- I think it was an attempt at a scary interlude at midnight.  After the eerie music died down, he proceeded to do a rendition of the ever-popular Thriller (MJ at his best) followed by the Chinese version of "If You're Happy and You Know it, clap your hands".  I don't have much experience with American clubs, but I'd be shocked if that was in the usual repertoire.  

All in all -- a very successful night.  

Shaxi Farewell

Our time in Shaxi flew by, and before we knew it, we were at the farewell banquet, where local musicians and dancers performed for us.  It was a good chance to see the Bai culture and traditions; of course the village life was noticeably different from urban lifestyles in Kunming, but otherwise it was subtle to distinguish between Han traditions and ethnic minority traditions (for us).  

After the Bai dancing, they turned to our group, and asked for an American performance.  At a complete loss of traditional American culture that we could share on the spot, we settled on the Macarena, followed by a painful rendition of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan.  

Afterwards, I unexpectedly spent the whole evening with my host family.  Other nights, since we spoke no common language, my parents (both maybe late forties, and quite worn) had left me to go to bed by 6:30.  On our last night, though, they pulled me into the communal family living space, where we watched TV and exchanged photos.  They also called their nineteen year old daughter, who's away for high school, since the village has no higher ed, to speak to me in English.  She conveyed that her parents were unsure of how to communicate with me, but urged me to return to Shaxi.  

I've acquired quite the collection of local attire from each of my homestay families.  In Bua, of course, there was the traditional Tsa Chila skirt. In Kunming, I picked up the scarf (see above) that looks terribly like a boa.  My most recent acquisitions include the red Chinese trucker hat, which Dave has enthusiastically commandeered, and traditional Chinese flats.  By the end of the trip, I should be able to put together quite the collective outfit!

Shaxi

Shaxi town center

We arrived in Shaxi the other day, a village outside of Dali, Yunnan made up primarily of the Bai minority group. It was larger than I expected, though, with 4,000 families, and it's not as remote as I imagined. People still have cell phones, televisions, and electricity. It's beautifully preserved traditional architecture, which gives the town a very authentic feel. My homestay is in a traditional courtyard-style home, which is currently under construction. It looks like they're sticking with the traditional building style and methods, though it'll be interesting to see whether they choose to "modernize" their techniques at all.

The Bai language is only oral, and not written, so Han Chinese is taught in the schools. We'll be teaching at the village's one middle school, where 1,000 students go. Of these, about 75% continue on to high school or vocational school, though they must go elsewhere to a town that has these facilities. About 90 students each year enroll at college. We observed 7th and 8th grade English classes yesterday, and we'll be teaching the same ones today. The teachers, however, asked us not to teach our own agendas, as in Kunming, but want us to teach the lesson plan from the textbook.

leaving Kunming

Last night was our farewell banquet with all of our host families, with dinner, speeches, and pictures. It's hard to believe our three weeks in Kunming are already over. We've all been busy working on our media projects and we'll continue to do that over the next couple of days, so they'll be ready to upload by the time we leave China.

This morning we're headed to Shaxi, a small village also in Yunnan Province of an ethnic minority group called the Bai people. It's about ten hours away by bus, and we'll live there for the rest of our time in China.

the group at a Buddhist temple

A Weekend of Coersion ...

The weekend was ours to do what we wanted. Friday evening started off tamely enough, when a couple of us saw the new James Bond 007 movie. Cinemas in China are quite different from in the US -- there were no young people under the age of mid-to-late thirties, and the woman next to me spoke on her cell phone the whole time.   The movie was decent, though, and I don't think it's come out in the States yet.  In fact, you can already buy the bootleg DVD here on the street for about seventy-five cents, even though it hasn't hit theaters back home yet.

Saturday, Renee, Lily, Isabel & I decided to use our independent student travel priveleges to explore outside of Kunming. We had hopes of reaching a region known for it's beautiful nature and tiny temples, and someone from our NGO gave us a piece of paper with the characters for our destination written on it. We learned just how difficult it is to navigate in a country where not only the spoken language, but the written characters, are completely foreign. After going to multiple different bus and train stations, we finally found a salesperson who was able to sell us tickets to Li Yiang, our destination. Well, sort of...

We thought we were going 120 kilometers outside of the city, but after only an hour or so, we were woken up by the driver and told quite clearly in charades to get off of the bus. Dazed from our naps, we looked around and saw that we were quite literally simply pulled over on the side of a multi-lane highway. No, we explained, we're going to Li Yiang. This is clearly not right. But they insisted this was Li Yiang, and we were forced off the bus.  (I should say we never felt in danger, and I think it's quite common for these buses to make stops on the way .... other passengers also were dropped off at various exits)

What we found once we'd walked miles off of the exit ramp was a small industrial town with few redeeming tourist attractions. We made do, however, and managed to find a cute restaurant for lunch. This far outside of the city, no one spoke even minimal English, and the woman who owned the shop called us back into the kitchen to choose what we wanted by pointing at ingredients.

Back in Kunming later that afternoon, the four of us were walking through Greenlake Park, one of the city's central locations, and a bustling place on a beautiful autumn afternoon. As we passed by a group huddled around a street performer, the woman singing in the center spotted us foreigners, pushed through the crowd, and literally dragged us in. She thrust a microphone in our hands, began playing a traditional Chinese instrument called an erhu, and insisted that we sing every English-language song she knew, from Jingle Bells to Eidelweiss. Unfortunately, none of the TBB singers were in the group. The four of us combined had severely limited musical skills, and despite our protesting, we were coerced into singing song after song for the crowd.

Me & Isabel

On Sunday, my mother woke me up bright and early, and led me out of the house. I wasn't sure where we were headed, but we picked up Zach and his host-mother on the way, and proceeded to go to the local ballroom dancing club. No, really. Some people go to church on Sunday mornings, apparently my family here goes ballroom dancing. This center was reminiscent of a seventies roller-rink, a giant floor with dark lighting, flashing disco balls, and loud music -- waltz, pop, and techno. I was paired with a fifty-year-old Chinese man with quite the mustache, who was not quite tall enough to spin me, but proceeded to drag me round and round for a number of hours. I should mention that my dancing skills are about on par with my singing ability. Nonetheless, our mothers got great amusement of watching us struggle, and the experience was pretty comical. Unfortunately, since I had no idea what was in store for us that day, I didn't have my camera. But use your wildest imagination -- and that's probably the reality of our experience.

Afterwards, we went to lunch, where we were brought some fruity alcohol drink, which we explained we could not drink. Our mothers scoffed and insisted we could. When we did not, my mother reached into her handbag and pulled out two candies. Zach and I ate what seemed at first to be an innocent chocolate truffle- until we bit in and discovered a liquoer filling: our mothers hooted in laughter -- see, you can have alcohol!

All in all, it was a good and amusing weekend, but one we had little control over. We were coerced off the bus, into a singing performance, onto the dancefloor, and into consuming spiked candies.

More on Education

The past two weeks in China have flown by. We've been busy with Chinese lessons (which, to be honest, haven't progressed beyond the most basic words), TBB seminars, and teaching English. As a group, we've been reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who wrote on the philosophy of education in the 1960s. The book essentially breaks the world down into the oppressed, and the oppressors, and uses the idea of being "more fully human" to criticize the "banking-method" of education (rote memorization, didactic teaching, and indoctrination) and espouse liberating education (a process of dialogue in which teachers are not authoritatively forcing knowledge upon students). It has provoked some interesting conversations and fits well with what we've been observing about the Chinese educational system.

We've had a number of lectures from local professors about China's education policies, about minoritys' education in rural areas, about the examination system. Yesterday we had a panel of three generations -- a 90-year-old man, a woman who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and a high school student in the midst of the university entrance examination process himself. It was interesting to hear about their experiences anecdotally. It doesn't seem as though the educational system and overall attitudes towards it have changed much, with the exception of the period between 1966 and 1976 when Mao essentially halted education. And why should the attitudes have changed -- they date back thousands of years to Confucius and general reverence for the value of education. Yet China faces criticism from a number of education experts internationally, with their system based on a passive role for students, rote memorization, and grueling competition between students.

I've certainly seen some instances of this in the classrooms I've observed. In one, outside of Kunming, students were unable to answer some of the most simple questions orally -- "how old are you?" and yet their textbooks had fairly advanced essays and the written exercises were correctly answered. In this case, students were well trained to comprehend written English (and perform well on exams), but could not carry on a basic conversation.

In my school, the students are so practiced at answering certain questions that they cannot understand similar ones. When I asked "what school do you go to?" looking for a simple answer with the name of their school, they all answered, "I go to school by bike." "I go to school by bus."

Each day I began class by asking, "how are you?" I quickly learned that the students understand this phrase, and without fail, each time, they chorus in unison, "I am fine, thank you, and you?" After a couple of classes, I decided to teach the students other responses to the question -- add some variety -- and so we generated a list of other adjectives.

Because we saw each section only three times, for forty-five minutes each, we didn't cover much by way of complicated concepts. The schools had asked us to share American culture, so we talked about our families, teenage life, school, music, holidays. I don't have any delusions that I taught the students much , but I hope that they got to practice their spoken English, and perhaps found incentive to learn English -- a difficult subject that probably becomes frustrating in a class of memorization and testing. It was hard to reach all of the students in the class -- of sixty-five, maybe eight or ten volunteered to speak each class.

All in all, though, it was a fun experience. The students loved to see pictures of my family -- they all thought Stephen, who just turned sixteen, was in his twenties. They all gasped when they saw postcards of Boston, and a couple of boys recognized it for the Celtics.

Today the school had a huge sports celebration. There were no classes, and the entire school (four or five thousand) gathered at a stadium. The opening ceremony consisted of each class (three grades - twenty four classes in each grade) marching into the stadium and around the track, dressed in matching uniforms, for a good hour and a half. The ceremony was full of balloons, flags, music, banners with slogans like "nothing is impossible," "never say never," and "besides win, what else can we do?" Despite being mind-numbing after a few minutes, the ceremony was so interesting because I can't imagine American middle schoolers having the patience or discipline to march in unison like that, and I can't imagine the schools devoting the time and money to orchestrating it. In a way, it was a microcosm for the very system of education here in China -- a collective spirit, a seriousness, impressive grandeur. The sports will continue for the rest of the week so we're done teaching at that school.

Kunming

We've been in Kunming for a week now, and started teaching. I'm teaching twelve-year olds at Yun Da Fu Zhong, the city's most prestigious middle school. It's absolutely huge, with more than six thousand students, and has noticeably different resources from the public schools I've seen here. The facilities are new, the classrooms technologically advanced, and the teachers speak far better English than at other schools. I teach four different sections of seventh graders; each class has sixty five students. I'll only see each section three times each, so we don't actually have much time for substantive lessons. Mostly we're doing introductory presentations on American culture and giving them the chance to practice conversational English.

with middle school students

The educational system in China is somewhat different from the one back home. Historically, Confucian ideals have instilled the importance of education, and because of the one-child policy, parents push their only child to excel in school -- thus school is hugely important. The kids we've seen go to school sometimes six days a week, often until nine o'clock at night! The ultimate goal of middle and high school is to pass the matriculation exam for university (SAT, anyone?) But this test is far more grueling than anything in the US -- often up to forty-eight hours, the tests assess rote memorization. The raw score alone, and nothing else, determines your admittance to university. Only 21% of the students who take the entrance examinations find spots in a university.

a typical classroom

Things in China continue to be interesting and exciting ... Last Friday, we celebrated Halloween by watching a Chinese ghost film (perhaps the least frightening scary movie I've ever seen). This past weekend, we did some exploration of Kunming, learning the bus system, visiting temples and parks. On Sunday, my family taught me how to make dumplings. One night this week, I went with my mother to a dance class for middle-aged women: complete with traditional music and fans. I've learned the difficulty of going for a run during rush hour here - it's next to impossible with all the cars, buses, bikes, and pedestrians.

Each Thursday at the local park, there's an informal but well-attended gathering called English Corner, where all the students, businessmen, and ex-pats who want to speak English meet there in the evening to chat. Last week a couple of TBB-ers went, and I had the most interesting conversations about what I'm doing in China, about US politics, and about Taiwan. Everyone was extremely inquisitive and curious and friendly, eager to practice speaking.

The TBB group read Three Cups of Tea, written by David Oliver Relin about Greg Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan. It related to a lot of our work, in development volunteer work, and in education. We met at a cafe to discuss the book, and we all pretty much agreed that though the story was amazing, the writing could hardly have been worse.

We'll keep teaching for a couple of weeks, having guest lectures, and TBB seminars. After that we'll visit a rural area also in Yunnan Provence, before heading off to Cambodia ... !

making dumplings .. hao chi

OBAMA WINS

We're all watching the election results live from here in Kunming, China. Just saw McCain's concession and Obama's acceptance speeches. We're all wearing our Obama t-shirts that Becca's mother sent for her birthday -- we've been walking around the city like a giant propaganda group for the past couple weeks while our other clothes were in the wash. Since it's been such a blogger-generation campaign I thought I'd make my contribution ...

GO OBAMA!

Arrival in China

After five flights, nearly forty-eight hours of travel, and a hectic connection at LAX, our group has finally made it to our second core country, China. This month in Kunming we'll be focusing on educational systems. Kunming is the capital city of Yunnan provence in the south of China, bordering Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Though it's a fairly large city, with a population of four million, it's not well known internationally or even necessarily within China. I actually stayed in Kunming last summer when I came to China with a program called Where There Be Dragons.

We're working in collaboration with our host-NGO, the Kunming Center for Cultural Learning & Development. They're helping to coordinate us with three local middle schools where we'll be teaching English. The TBB group is divided between a public school, a private school, and a half public / half private school in either pairs or singles. I'll be teaching solo at the half-and-half school, and classes will begin on Monday. In the meantime, we've been observing at the schools to see what the Chinese educational system is like and how English classes are generally taught.

We're living individually with homestay families -- pretty much everyone lives within a twenty minute walk of the TBB communal classroom, and all of our families are middle-class and live in high rise apartments. I'm living on a university campus where I think my host-parents are professors; most of what I think about my host family is based on inference, since no one speaks English, and my Mandarin is limited to "thank you". At meal times, my host mother calls in reinforcements - the English-speaking nephew.

The TBB group is also taking Mandarin lessons each morning, in small classes of five people. It's certainly a difficult language to get a foot in the door, what with the 2,000 + characters, the tonal differentiation, and the seemingly unphoenetic Pinyin anglecized words.

It's great to be back in China. I've seen places in Kunming that I recognize from my last trip, but I'm also living in a different neighborhood and seeing plenty of new things. With our Chinese classes, our TBB lectures, and teaching English, we'll have plenty to do and I suspect our time here will fly by.