Staging complete!

Well, we’ve wrapped up our Peace Corps Staging. It was a whirlwind of activity, from checking in to meeting people to shuffling our bags to the airport. Last night we had our last foray into really tasty/high quality food on American soil. I had some halibut with all kinds of great veggies. Then I moved on to DO’s salad remains. DO, I’ll get you some noodles later, mkay?

Currently we’re all vegging at the gate. Most people are zoned in on Internet activities, trying to wrap up their last downloads, blog posts, or contact with family.

Checking in was a straightforward, yet lengthy, pursuit. We’re arriving in Tokyo in a dozen hours or so, then heading to Bangkok for a 10 hour stop. Though we’ll be shuttled to a hotel in Bangkok, we’ll not have much time to rest.

Then it’s on to Chengdu where we’ll be in a hotel for the next few days, and begin the Pre-Service Training period. Really looking forward to what’s to come!

I’ll leave you with a photo that KF, GH, and I took on a sidewalk just before sunset. I wonder if you may be able to pick out my silhouette.

Service with a smile, and nearly a sneeze

Peace Corps, before its volunteers depart for their countries of service, put them up in nice hotels for one (or two) nights in various major US cities. This event is called “staging”. The China 19 class is convening in San Francisco as we speak. Like me, a few people came early and have been seeing the city for the past few days. Others are en route as I write this, facing nervousness, excitement, and, some, delayed flights.

For the past two nights, I stayed at the home of a future local Madagascar Peace Corps Volunteer, CS. She’s a charming and brilliant gal who is bound to have an amazing experience in her African island nation experience. I must admit I’m a bit envious that she’s going to a place that’s simultaneously a rare travel destination and glorified by Disney, et al, based on its ecology (among other things)!

Yesterday I met three other future China volunteers (G, S, and K), picked up a rental car, and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods, home of California redwoods. We spotted deer, banana slugs, and chipmunks. Then we continued along winding roads, fortunately with constantly dissipating fog, and found ourselves at the little town of Stinson Beach. Lunch at a cafe and a quick amble to the sands. Signs warning of great white attacks, surfers rolling in crashing waves.

Drove back, everyone taking catnaps in turn…except the driver, of course. Drove down the s-turn paradise of Lombard Street and then headed to return the car. After a siesta we reconvened and walked across town, ending our time together with a bayside seat to view the Bay Bridge lights.

I’ve never slept so well on an air mattress!

Super giant special thanks to CS, her dad, and her cat, Lulu, for their trusting generosity and efforts to help me enjoy my fleeting moments here. Every time I have the fortune to meet such generous people, I’m reminded that there’s plenty of hope of cultivating understanding and goodwill when we lend a little trust to our interactions with fellow man. Thinking globally and acting locally. What a solid example of this idea CS and her father have left imprinted on my comings and goings!

In the Parc 55 Wyndham, the fancy hotel where Peace Corps has gathered us before jetting us to our host country, the PRC, I’m inhaling the aroma of coffee, listening to easy pop hits, and glancing over to observe folks checking in, wondering if any of my colleagues are among those classy looking people.

The lady who checked me in informed me she was on the verge of a sneeze. I assured her not to feel ashamed, and that I had, myself, indeed, sneezed many times in the past. She made it through our transaction, emitting nary an achoo. Anyway, I wish her Gesundheit.

Ladies and men of the gentles, let’s begin these proceedings!

Over the bridge and through the woods

Today we went into the woods. The urban mix of San Francisco is a glorious, entertaining, inspiring thing. A short drive away is one of the most peaceful assortments of thousand-year old trees there is. 

In every walk in nature one receives far more than he seeks. –John Muir

Flight, not fight

Young families grouped around charging stations while their happy children run back and forth on the moving walkways.

Tired faces moving into the terminal and towards the information displays.

A man playing a guitar as he walks across the waiting area.

A 60-something lady sweeping the floor, her mouth moving. She stops to give an adorable, poofy-haired child a hug. The child smiles. The lady hugs the other children in the family.

Oatmeal cookies given by grandma this morning complement my coffee.

Shoeless and motionless, a sleeping fellow drowns out the ambience with an eye mask and earplugs.

Shouting as members of a lacrosse team vie for victory on an iPad game.

The recognizable smell of fast food disturbingly wafts to my olfactory factory.

She rolls her suitcase slowly, slightly hunched over as busybodies rush past to catch their connections.

Announcements ask for a Mr. Xchalrnthlyima to please see the desk attendants at gate D10.

Cafe Versailles glows, 70 feet away, beckoning hungry people to its tables.

Spanish is spoken.

A confrontation on the moving walkway. Flight attendant asks girls to move to the right.

—
Miami airport seems to be aiming for a different kind of waiting environment. No free wifi, no TV’s, plentiful natural light. I like it here. And I’m going to miss this place–America.

Bike love, revisited

Well, it turns out my bike frame is too big to bring on the plane unless I’d like to
A) pay extra charges and
B) risk it getting smashed by sloppy handling somewhere in the US, Japan, Thailand, or China.

However, I did take off everything I could fit in my baggage, with exception of the headset/fork. Check out my tragically bare bike. Rest in peace, my friend.

Hopefully the guys at Natooke bike shop in Chengdu can help me out with an economical frankensteiny reincarnation of my bike.

Again, I may be crazy for making bike possession one of my priorities in China.

Update later from the airport and/or packing results.

Bike love

I’m dreading leaving my bike behind again. Who knows what will await me in China? Will I be stuck with a heavy, cumbersome bike that is too small for me? Or worse, will I have no bike at all?

I’m basically packed. Considering trying my darnedest to get my bike into a suitable dimension box as a checked bag. I’d be leaving some parts (wheels) behind and purchasing replacements in Chengdu, but ooooh, I want it. Oh so bad.

I’ll be getting out the tape measure and tools tomorrow and, well, I may be sending the bike back home with my dad if it gets rejected at the airport. Nothing ventured, right?

Fingers crossed I’ll be surrounded by Chinese riding buddies soon! Updates on this very, very soon.

And yes, I may be crazy.

Zhongwen

Well, about six more days until I’m going to be spending time immersed in the Chinese language. The more I study Chinese, the more I am excited about the prospect of learning this language. Chinese won’t be the first, second, or even third foreign language I’ve studied. I have pretty substantial experience with Italian, Spanish, German, French, and some experience with Korean and Georgian. Also a little Japanese thrown in there…very little. Ok and a few words of Russian thanks to life in Georgia.

After living in Korea, I became a bit intimidated by language learning. I never really gave much time to Korean and therefore felt a bit defeated by my lack of communicative ability while there. I did learn quite a bit in three years of living there, but I listened and read FAR more than I spoke and wrote.

Chinese is starting out quite differently, though. Peace Corps’ Pre-Service Training is notoriously excellent for language learning. PC stresses fluency in the local language as an essential element to creating sustainable impact in the host community. While I’ll be teaching English, I’ll be interacting a LOT with my community using Chinese. For this reason, I’ve tried to start independently learning as much as possible before departing.

Allow me to share some of the resources I’m using.

Foreign Service training courses from ca. 1979
This website features pretty darn great Chinese materials along with other languages. PDF versions of the original textbooks and workbooks and streaming audio files work excellently to boost listening skills. Though perhaps a bit dated, the recordings feature male and female native speakers. Tip: the texts are long (100+ pages) so I’d recommend printing four pages to a paper, and double-sided if you care about the environment. Visit the site here: http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Chinese

Laoshi Mike on YouTube
This funky Midwestern American dude may seem like a slacker judging from his hawaiian print tshirts and messy garage classroom, but his systematic approach to delivering video language instruction is a nice intro for beginners starting with little to no knowledge of Chinese. He’s got nearly 100 videos to date, so get started and you’ll keep busy for a while with him. YouTube.com/ShermerIL

Mind Snacks: Mandarin
This app has gotten lots of play on my iPad. It’s free to download, but with limited lessons. Fifty additional lessons can be purchased for $5. While entertaining and engaging, this app focuses mostly on memorizing vocabulary rather than communicating or using the language in problem solving. It’s somewhat fallen down on my list of preferred study methods, but I’ll keep it around as something fun to do when I’m looking to exercise my brain. 🙂 Find it on the app store or at http://www.mindsnacks.com/subjects/mandarin

And, finally, Pleco
This is an excellent Chinese dictionary. You can enter your own Chinese characters using your touch screen device, you can type in the word using the romanization system of writing Chinese, and you can also enter the English word to find out how it’s written/spoken in Chinese. The greatest thing, perhaps, is that you don’t need to be connected to the Internet to use it! Also, all words have plenty of example sentences, so you can discover new ways to use each word you look up. Download on the app store or at www.pleco.com

Hope this list is helpful. One of the great luxuries of going to China (as opposed to, say, Moldova) on a Peace Corps assignment (in addition to the, ahem, two bedroom apartment and posh university teaching position) is that there are SCORES of Mandarin resources and learning support sources available everywhere. That being said, big props to those of you who are working in countries whose languages are not so ubiquitous! 😀

At any rate, I’m off to bed. Whoa, just three more nights until I bid adieu to Georgia, USA, and ni hao to San Francisco for PC staging. After that, on June 28, it’s off to Chengdu I go!

Look for plenty of juicy updates.

Time capsule

Ever since I decided to embrace the lifestyle of an international man of mystery EFL teacher, I’ve had to continually shed material things that don’t really help me out in this roll-with-the-punches lifestyle. Yesterday, I grabbed some old boxes from my brother’s attic and began to sort through them. Contents included recordings from my singer times, photos, pots and pans, music scores and books. I believe I put these boxes in his attic in 2009. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. I’ve shifted my professional focus from singing to teaching and I’ve been constantly moving (well, maybe not a huge change).

I think I’ve come to prize simplicity a lot more through the past five years of living abroad. Almost anywhere I go, there’s the potential to be happy. Usually this includes friends, nature, art, food–any combination of these makes for stellar times. Sorting through the contents of old boxes reminds me of this change in my perspective. I wonder–is it informed by experience or just growing a bit older?

As I prepare to go to China with Peace Corps, I wonder how my thinking, especially about the value of “stuff” will shift during the next 27 months.

But yeah, back to trying to figure out how many pairs of socks to bring. 😉

I should blog

Well, being home in Georgia (USA) is pretty darn unremarkable. In a good way. I’m used to using writing as a means of therapy when the going gets rough or when I need to work something out on the (cyber)page. Here at home, everything is relatively predictable, things make sense, solutions are obvious.

Often, it must be said, I’m entirely too bored here when visiting my parents’ rural farmhouse. No cafes nearby, no restaurants, nowhere to go cycling. But these days I’m preparing for Peace Corps departure, approaching rapidly at the end of June. I’m reveling in the newfound control I have over my diet (limited though it may be my the contents of my parents’ pantry). I’m studying Chinese in a peaceful environment, and getting some exercise with my workout rings (thanks oak tree in the front yard!).

My rings. These things look simple, but do the trick. I’m sore after about 10 minutes doing pushups and rows. Also portable!

The view from my Chinese study area (aka my parents’ front porch).

I’m visiting with parents, grandparents, siblings and their spouses, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews! This has simultaneously been the most enjoyable and exhausting aspect of this visit. It’s so, SO good to see everyone!

Xie xie for reading my blog. Sorry you can’t ting to my stories or that I can’t shuo to you. Instead, I have to write. So, for now, zaijian.

Un-scented

Am I a “smells person”? I’m not sure. 

I have two kinds of cologne at the moment. Kiehl’s Original Musk and Gucci Envy. I’ve had the Gucci cologne for about 8 years (I’m so classy) and the Kiehl’s for two or three. When I wear Gucci, I always sneeze. I really dig the Kiehl’s, though.

Last December when I landed in America, I had come from my village life in Georgia (Eurasia). I showered once a week there. I washed clothes once a month. When I met my brother and sister at the airport, I smelled not-too-bad by Georgian standards, but they still  comment on my intense odor at the time. I stank.

The second semester there was one of more frequent showers. I had my own bathroom with a relatively consistent water supply, but I still showered every other day to try to avoid using too much of my host family’s resources. I smelled ok.

Now I’m back home in Georgia (USA) and I’ve just taken my second shower here. My bag containing all of my toiletries (which mostly smell like a person who slept in an herb garden) is on its way today after being misdirected in Chicago. Because of this, I used a mishmosh of soap, shampoo, and deodorant I found in my parents’ bathroom. 

My hair smells like Pantene and my armpits smell like Secret deodorant. It’s a bit overwhelming. I mean, it’s good to be clean, but phew, I’m getting a headache.

Smells mean a lot. They can take you quickly back to a state of mind or reinvigorate a past memory. Smells are also cultural. BO isn’t bad in some places, garlic breath is standard in others. Axe Body Spray, well…that just shouldn’t happen anywhere.

Living in a world of smells, natural and man-made. The invisible enemy or the unseen inspiration.

Smell ya later!