Village Week Two

Well I've survived week two out in the village. It was a good week. The setup this week was a little more . . . rustic. Things weren't bad but our village was more on the outskirts of the valley so it was little more rural than last week (aka, not a fun to have to visit the toilet and no shower for the week). The village was a great location. We lived right along the southern ridge and very close to a lake and a golf course. Nobody really plays golf out here but they have a couple courses. I think it is just too much money for anyone to spend on a hobby, so only tourists go and play out there. The family I stayed with this week was great. There was an older man, who told me to call him Uncle, and his wife, Aunt, and they were both great hosts. We couldn't understand much of what each other said but they would always just smile and laugh. Our basic day would be that we would get up and cook breakfast then go for our morning walk. Most days this consisted of hiking up the ridge and collecting firewood. It was good to just get out and there were some amazing views from on top of the ridge. One morning Aunt decided to take me out to the golf course. Like everything else around here, you just talk to the guard a little bit and they let you right in. So we walked out there and then around the first five or six holes and then back again. It was a LONG walk. The course is on the side of the ridge so it was a lot of uphill walking. And it was hot this week, so we got a good workout in every day. After our walk we would cook lunch, then it was nap time, and then I'd spend most of the afternoon studying. I didn't get as much studying in this week as I would have liked because every time they saw me with my language book they would come over and want to help me out. It was actually a good review on some things but it made me go a lot slower. Our evenings usually consisted of getting dinner together and then watching TV. When you're in a culture where there is not a lot to do you spend a lot of time with meals. Over the past two weeks we probably averaged a good hour on getting breakfast and lunch ready and then dinner would usually take between one and a half and two hours. It gives you something to do though. And Aunt knows how to cook too. The food this week has been really good. Usually there would be a mix of something a little weird or that I wouldn't like with something that was amazing. So I tried to fill up on the good stuff as much as I could. Thursday night I had a few things that I'd never had before. We had some rabbit (not bad) and some horse (not good). I had forgotten what it was like to be living with a grandmother. They have no hesitations to put things in your bowl if they don't think that you are eating enough of your vegetables (or horse for that matter). So that is a little different but Aunt wasn't as bad about it as some others that I have known.

There was a little more English this week. The son who lived at the house could actually speak a little English. So it was not as hard to communicate as it was last week. By about Wednesday I was starting to have conversational issues. Basically being out in these villages has been taking on a vow of silence for the past two weeks. It was fun but it was starting to get old not having anyone to talk to and not being able to communicate anything more complicated than 'I don't want that.' One of the things about learning a new language is that you are basically forced to be an introvert until you learn how to communicate. It is very frustrating at times. But it is good motivation for learning.

I got home this weekend and enjoyed a good shower and then have basically been running errands. It makes for crazy times when you move to a new country and then spend your first two weeks there out of pocket. It makes my weekends back in town very busy with trying to get things done. I did take a break yesterday afternoon and went and hung out with a bunch of other foreigners and local teachers. We went to 'the fun place' and had a big cookout. One of the guys brought a bunch of pork tenderloins, some veggies, and we had some marinated chicken and we had an ol' fashioned bbq. It was the best meal I've had in a long time. Then we went out and played some laser tag. We played on teams with the Americans against the locals and even though we had two people less than they did, we dominated. I guess that is what happens when you play people who live in a country with strict gun control laws. It was a good relaxing day and a great way to unwind from spending a week in the village.

Village Week One

Well I've survived my first week out in the villages. To be honest it was a lot less village-like and a lot more resort-like than I thought it was going to be. The house I was staying at was more in a neighborhood on the edge of town instead of being out in a village. It was a great place to stay. The houses out here are built in a style that has a large courtyard in the center of the house and the rooms are actually all within the wall. It is kind of like an old fort I guess. The house I was staying in had a small garden in their courtyard (as opposed to most people who keep animals and random junk) and it was really nice. there were a couple of cherry trees that were just starting to become ripe, so I had cherry blossoms and also fresh cherries whenever I wanted them. They also had a lattice built with lilacs hanging from it that you had to walk under to get to my room. The room I stayed in was very clean and the house, in general, was VERY nice. Even the bathroom wasn't all that bad. I mean, it was still a squatty, and you had to go around the chicken coup to get to it, but it was very clean. There was a concrete area with a large slanted pipe in the hole and they even had a bucket with water in it that you used to sort of flush everything down. So I can't really complain about the set up.

No one out there spoke English, so most of my week was spent in silence or just trying to get some basic points across. The family was a dad, mom, their one year old baby and grandpa. Grandpa watched the baby all day because everyone else was at work. So for most of the week I was with him on babysitting duty. It was actually really nice to be watching the baby. I think it was comforting to know that there was at least one person that I could communicate better than. And the baby and I got along great. I think it was because of our common bond of not being able to speak. Basically my days would look like:

-Getting up in the morning and helping with breakfast: I got to build and keep up the fire, but they wouldn't let me touch the food.

-Then our morning walk: Usually we'd take the baby out to the street vendors a few blocks away.

-Then nap time.

-Lunch

-Studying for a couple hours after lunch

-Our afternoon walk. These were a little more random. One day we went out to the new sports complex that they are building in our town. It is very nice but they are still doing a lot of construction on it. We got out there and Grandpa started talking to the guard at the gate and after about ten minutes he let us walk right on in. We climbed up into the new soccer stadium (walking right past all the construction workers wearing hard hats) and saw the new basketball complex. I should be pretty nice once they finish it all. Another afternoon we took a bunch of carpet on a bike out to this large pond that is a few blocks away. We got out some brooms and some laundry detergent and threw the carpets in the pond and then Grandpa and I started scrubbing away.

-Dinner, tutoring, and then crashing sometime around 11pm

So that was pretty much my week. Another random event was that on Monday a guy showed up with a medical kit and I was kind of wondering what was going on. Grandpa pointed at the pigs and so I helped him round the two of them up. I then got to watch as the guy castrated one of them (the boy) and then cut into the side of the other one and pulled out part of the intestine or something, cut it off, and then stitched it up. I'm still not totally sure what that was all about. Tuesday was haircut day. A guy came over, he's related somehow but I'm not totally sure, and he brought some clippers. He gave Grandpa a haircut and then he let me cut his. I figured I'd return the favor by letting him cut mine. I was going to have to have it all cut off eventually anyway and I figured it'd make a good story. I had a language breakthrough this week too. On the way back from going to see the new sports complex the baby went to the bathroom in his pants. They don't really use diapers out here and so there is a lot of times where we'd have to stop and Grandpa would pick up the baby, drop his pants, hold him out and then we'd wait for him to do his thing. Every time he'd do this out by the road I would always wonder if people thought it was weird (especially since there was a white guy just sitting with them). Anyway, the baby went in his pants and so Grandpa was cleaning him off and then he said 'pants' (not in English but in the language I'm learning) and I knew exactly what he said without thinking about the context or anything. It was a small thing but it is nice to know that I'm starting to get a little bit of the language.

I got back to my place on Friday night and then have been running errands all weekend. It makes for crazy weekends when you've been gone all week and then try to cram everything you need to do to get settled in into two days. I met my new landlord and paid a year's rent on my apartment. It is a really nice place. It has two bedrooms, an office, it is clean and in a great location, and all for about $2000/year. I did manage to go and get an hour and a half massage with a couple of the girls that live out here. I figured that it would be $8 well spent after a week in the village. And it was. I spent the afternoon today playing a little basketball. The basketball court is right behind my apartment building and I'm going to try and spend some time out there once I finish up all my time out in the villages. I went out there to watch them play for a minute last week and then I went out to play a little today. One of the guys from last week recognized me, which isn't saying much because I kind of stand out. Hopefully I can start getting to know those guys once I have a little more free time. I'll be heading out to the village again tomorrow morning and I should be coming back on either Friday or Saturday. I've been told that this village is a little more out of town, so it could be a little more village like. If it is anything like this last week it won't be bad. I'll be staying with the in-laws of the guy I stayed with this last week, so I'll at least have a little bit of a connection. I'll catch up on things one I get back in a week.

I'm back!

Okay, so after much harassment from people I've decided to resurrect the blog. I'm not going to do daily updates or anything like I've done in the past. I mean, who has time for that kind of thing? My goal is to write something once a week or if something big comes up. I'll be back dating a few of these first entries from my journal but I should be caught up soon.

I've made it back to LJ and there were several things that I've forgotten since the last time that I was out here. The first one is that it isn't a twelve hour flight from L.A. to Hong Kong, it is fifteen. I'm pretty sure that I have airplane a.d.d. because I'm always dying by the end of that flight. I did end up next to a nice Australian guy who was about my age. He had a really thick accent and was hard to understand but we got along well. He invited me to go grab lunch with him in Hong Kong but I figured since I only had a four hour layover I'd better just hang out in the airport. After Hong Kong I have two more stops and with each one it becomes more and more like a different place. Hong Kong's airport is different but it is different in the fact that there are Prada and Gucci stores. With each stop afterwards you become more and more rural and things get increasingly less western. At my second stop I remembered a few more things. One is that there is no such thing as a line here. People just crowd around and push their way towards the front of whatever line they are supposed to be in. I remembered this pretty quickly so I did the same and it saved me a lot of time. I also forgot how big I am compared to everyone else here. The people over here are generally small but most of the people I would see were minority people and they are even smaller. I'm basically a giant wherever I go. The third thing I remembered in the airport is that every price is negotiable here, including how much you pay in the airport for overweight baggage (which I'm pretty proud that I got a third of the price knocked off).

After getting to town it has been a busy couple of days. Friday I got moved in and ran some errands and then yesterday we had a big Easter egg hunt with a ton of kids from our apartment complex. I've also started language already (I think it is a record to start that on your first full day here). I basically work with a tutor for a couple hours a day and we have a book full of pictures. We work in groups of six pictures and he says points and says the word and I write down how I think it sounds. Then we go back over the words again and he just points. Then he mixes up the order and says the words and I have to point or do the command that he is giving. Then we record an audio file for me to study later. Then we add six more. By the end of each session we go over between forty and fifty words. It isn't that hard until you start having thirty plus words you're supposed to remember and your brain is tired. But I don't think it will be too bad. I'm looking forward to getting the language down.

My game plan for the next couple of weeks is to spend them out in some villages. I'm not exactly sure what to expect. The villages that I've been in before have been pretty rough places to live. No running water, not good food, and only an outhouse with a hole in the ground. I'm going to spend my first week at my tutor's house, then come home for the weekend, then go back out again to another village the next week. I'll be leaving tonight and will be back on Saturday. Six days is a long time to spend out in a village. The longest that I've stayed out before has been four days and by the end of it I was dying to get back to civilization. I'll update things once I get back.