The Away Game

So this week has started my intensive language studying. I've got at least eight weeks of learning language between five and six hours a day, six days a week. I basically study three hours a day on my own and then meet with my tutor for about two hours. I'm learning a local language which is only oral so we do a lot of pointing at pictures, I write down how I think it sounds, and then reviewing the audio recordings that I've made. I'm studying with the guy I stayed with during the first village trip so I've been out to his house a couple times this week. It is a little far but they usually feed me while I'm there and it has been good to get to see them and spend time with Grandpa and the baby. As strange is it sounds, it is a lot like visiting friends (granted they are friends I can't really talk to. . . but they are still friends). I've also discovered the gym in my apartment complex. My apartment is right behind the basketball courts and the gym is right next to that. It is actually very nice! I mean, I've been working out in the Anson Field House for the last four years, so I'm not very picky, but this place is way nice for being out in a small rural town. So I've been going up there every day.

Basically my day looks like: wake up and read/eat breakfast/read, then study for an hour or two, go work out, lunch, meet with my tutor, then study a little more and then basketball at night. I've noticed this week that there are a bunch of guys that play basketball every evening from about 6:45 until it gets too dark to play (around 8:30). So I've been out there and played with them a few times this week. They are actually pretty good for being out here. I've played a decent amount of basketball in this country and most everyone here is horrible. Most all of these guys have some concept of how to play though, and a few of them are actually good. I kind of have an edge being a good four inches taller and forty pounds heavier than most all of them, so that helps with getting picked on teams. One of the guys I played with one night picked me on his team and we won a lot (it helps that he is one of the better guys out here). After playing together for a couple hours he starts talking to me in English. I was thinking 'You speak English! Why didn't you bring this up sooner?!?' It turns out his English is actually really good. So he is kind of my first friend out there. We played together over the next few nights and he told me that we have an apartment complex team that plays on the weekends just for fun, and I got an invite to play with them this weekend.

So today was our big game. I got a text last night telling me that we were meeting at the basketball courts at 2 pm and taking a taxi to our game. It turns out we play away games, and our game today was in a town about forty minutes away on the other side of a mountain. So we load up into this really nice Jetta and drive out to this big complex with a large iron gate and an armed guard (which kind of jumped out at me since guns are illegal here). I'm quickly told that we are playing a military base. We go out and start warming up and then this whistle is blown and about sixty men in uniform come marching out in formation chanting and carrying stools. My friend who speaks English says 'look, we have an audience.' It is a little intimidating being the only white guy at an away game against the military (especially of a country that you're country doesn't always get along with) and then having a pretty large audience all packing heat. But once the game started it all kind of faded away. Both teams had coaches, however I didn't understand any of what mine was saying, refs and score keepers. We jumped out to an early lead and were winning 23-10 at the end of the first quarter. I'm pretty sure I had the most muscular guy out here I've ever seen guarding me. Then in the second quarter some other guys showed up and my guy was replaced with an even bigger guy. We were about tied at half time, then were down in the third and pushed ahead in the fourth. We ended up losing when the other team started hitting a lot of threes at the end. I think the final score was 100-94 but I'm not totally sure. They used some kind of weird scoring system and wrote it in chalk.

I did okay in the game but constantly had about three guys guarding me. Their basic game plan on defense was to stack three guys in the paint on me, have one guy guarding the ball, and then have another guy waiting down court for a long pass and an easy fast break basket. For some reason our team could not figure out how to defend this. It also didn't help that they didn't keep track of fouls and when you got fouled there were no free throws, you just got the ball out of bounds. So I got fouled. A LOT. I think it averaged out to once every two trips down the court. So I had some kind of messed up stat line. I think I had a couple steals. I had three or four blocks, including one where I chased a guy down on a fast break and threw it out of bounds when he layed it up (all the military guys yelled). About eight points (remember the foul thing...), and at least twenty-five rebounds. The team we played was pretty good though, so I'm not too worried about anyone else we'll face. And I honestly think if we played them again we would win.

After the game we left pretty quickly because all the military guys dispersed and later formed a line. I noticed that they all had guns and my friend who spoke English said 'look they are about to shoot their guns.' That was about the time I got the hint that we should leave. The coach and five of the guys were taking the car back to the school to study so that left the four older guys and myself to find our way back to our apartment complex. We had to walk about half a mile back to the main road and then were going to hitch-hike back to town. We were about to get in the back of a cargo truck when a minivan taxi pulled up and we all jumped in that instead. It is funny how sports bonds guys together. After the game it was like we have all been best friends forever. We joked about the game and how the other team played dirty and how we should have won. After we got back the guys took me out to dinner at the front gate of the apartment and we spent a couple hours hanging out. Somehow I always find myself in these random kinds of situations when I'm out here. Don't get me wrong, it was a great day. . . just random. But since these guys are about the only ones I know in this country I'm sure we'll all be hanging out a lot over the next few weeks.

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.

My Last Day in Asia

Well, my last full day in Asia has finally arrived. The trip has flown by really quickly. I can't believe I've been gone almost 3 weeks already. I wish I had more time to stay and work on some more projects but summer school and work is waiting when I get back. Today was a pretty good last day. I left early this morning to go out with M_ and his wife to help them in their village which is about 45 minutes out of town. They have done some work out there in the past and our game plan was to go and visit the elementary school and just see what happens. When we got out there they were having some program because some gov officials had given the school money and so the kids where doing some kind of thank you type of thing. It worked out really well because we got to make some good contacts with people in the local gov over here, which is always a big deal. We did some hanging out with a few of the teachers and they wanted us to go and teach English, so I got assigned to 5th grade. English, especially in the elementary schools, is very limited and since my local language is basically nonexistent I basically pointed at things, wrote them on the board and had the class repeat them back to me. The class was really good at doing things as a group but as soon as I started to single kids out and ask them simple things they got really shy. So I did a lot of talking. We talked about sports, brothers and sisters, pets, and we played "Is this big or small?" Somehow that took up all of the time. Actually I'm pretty sure I went over time by like 10 minutes and the teacher was just being nice and didn't stop me. It would have been nice to know because I was really reaching for things to talk about the last 5 minutes. We went and visited a family that M_ knew for a few minutes and then ate some lunch back at the school. M_ and I left lunch a little early and went and played basketball with a bunch of the kids. It was basically 2 on 20 but it was a lot of fun. The kids kept trying to get me to dunk the ball but they couldn't understand that I can't. They would want me to hold my arms up in the air and then they would oohh and awww because I was so tall. They couldn't imagine how a 6'1'' white guy couldn't dunk a basketball. We had a lot of fun though. Tonight the entire crew went out for a going away dinner. We had some really good food and it was a great chance to say goodbye to everyone. Afterwards A_ and her roommate and I went and walked around for a while looking for things to pack gifts in so that I can transport them back to the states. Afterwards we definitely did get some massages (and yes, that is the 3rd this week for those of you who are counting). Our legs were pretty tight after working in the fields yesterday and I figured since I have a 20 hour plane flight tomorrow I can spring for a $7 massage. So hopefully that will make the trip go a little smoother. Well I've got to jet. It is getting late here and I still haven't packed, which will be an adventure in itself, so I'd better go. See you all back in Texas!

The Most Random Day Yet

So as the title of this entry indicates, it has been a pretty random day out here. It started off pretty normal though. I went and ate lunch with some of the teachers that I had a few years ago when I studied out here for a summer. It was really good to get to catch up with them and I got offered a job at the school. They are needing some people to come out and teach English at the college. I gave her one of those "maybe"s that really meant that there is no way I'd want to do that job (but if anybody else is interested I'll put in a good word for you). After lunch I went out with A_ and K_'s wife out to A_'s village. Everybody out here has different places that they go and build relationships with people and so we went out basically to just hang out and see who we could meet. We walked around for a while and ended up at this little shop where a lot of people were hanging out. Basically these little corner shops are where everybody goes when they are not working and people are usually playing pool or mahjong. Mahjong is a tile game out here and it is HUGE. Generally everyone playing it is gambling, and since I can't really remember how the numbers on the tiles work, and therefore would lose a lot of money, I usually don't play. However, today out in the village they were playing and A_ was like "that's so cool!" after one of the games. At first I was just thinking that she had been living out here too long and was too easily impressed by stuff but turns out the tables these guys were playing on were some of the most high tech things I've ever seen. After a game you push a button and the middle of the table pops up and you push all the tiles into it. There is a tumbler inside that mixes up all the tiles and then turns them the right way (I'm still not sure how that part works), and then stacks them into rows. While the table is doing all this a slot in front of each player opens and a different set of tiles rises up so that you can play while the table is mixing them all up for you. The thing had lights and all sorts of other cool stuff. It is amazing what you can find out here in the middle of nowhere. So after the rain died down we left from the shop and went and helped some girl that A_ had met before plant corn. The lady has a 6 month old baby and needed a little help with planting the corn with the rest of her family. So we went out and our job was to scoop dirt with little rice bowls and cover up the corn that had been buried in the ground. They plant corn out here by making rows in the field, covering them with thin strips of plastic to keep the moisture in the ground, and then opening little holes where they drop in the seeds. So we did this for a few rows. While we were out there it started to pour rain and the girl we were with pointed over a few rows and everybody else who was planting was huddled under one of the strips of plastic that hadn't been buried yet. So the three of us squatted under this small piece of plastic with about 4 locals. I'm sure the people in the next field thought it was hilarious to watch. We worked in the field for a while longer and while we were out A_ took a break and sat on a piece of extra plastic with her friend and the baby. People over here can't really afford diapers so the babies wear crotchless pants. A_ was holding the baby for a while and then all of sudden the baby had a case of diarrhea and it got on A_'s pants leg. Luckily she wasn't holding the baby in her lap but just barely on her leg. After we finished with the field the father was putting things up and was like "what is this green stuff on the plastic? I got some of it on my arm." He was rubbing his arm in the grass trying to get it off when he found out what it was. They tried to get us to stay for dinner but we needed to get back, we had only planned on being there 2 hours and had been there about 5, so we headed back to town and then ate at a Thai place in town. The food was pretty different (I ate some purple rice out of a pineapple) but was really good. A_ and her old roommate and I spent the next three hours watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I give it two thumbs down! Way too long and the plot was everywhere. I got back to my hotel a little after midnight and the guy working the desk had locked everything up and was asleep, so I had to wake him up to get in. I don't think he was too mad at me though. I'm usually pretty cool about waiting when he is playing around on the internet (which is ALL the time), so I think he kind of likes me.

Salty Roots

Today was the last of the down days for my trip. For being a down day, I was out doing a lot of stuff. Mostly just hanging out with people though. There is a lot of that out here. i was going to go and meet some of my old teachers this morning. I needed to be there around 10:15 am, so I took off walking up the hill to get there at about 10. Well turns out it is a lot longer walk than I remember and they changed some of the bus routes that take you there, so I ended up getting there at about 10:30. They had all gone back to class but I got to hang out with A_ and C_ for a few minutes while they were on break. I talked to some of the other people up there that I knew and we set up going to lunch tomorrow, so I'll get to see them all then. C_ and I decided to hang out later that night and A_ was done with class so we went and grabbed some lunch and some smoothies. There is this great smoothie place in town where they mix up all the fresh fruit right in front of you, and for under $1 it is hard to beat. We hung out there for about an hour and mostly talked about the dumb things we'd gotten into with Mo back in college. After that I did a little DVD shopping. I've found out that if you have a couple of hours to kill it is a great thing to do because the shops out here have tons of them and they are in no particular order, so it takes forever to find what you want. Later tonight I went and hung out with C_. He and a group of locals were eating dinner, so I met up with them. It was this little place right across the street from his apartment and it was pretty good stuff, except I didn't really care for the fish. Just something about a whole fish coated in spicy peppery stuff didn't really do it for me. That and the fact that we are hundreds of miles from water didn't really make it seem like a great idea to eat. But I gave it a go just so I could say I did. We went back to C_'s apartment and hung out with some of the guys that are living out here. We got out the guitars and started playing around. Turns out C_ is in a band and the boy can play. So we played around for a while and then called it a night.