f l-mgrib: Month Two

(A very belated month two wrap up. In my defense, I was pretty busy at the month mark, what with swearing-in and moving to a new city ALL BY MYSELF, but it doesn’t bode well for this month wrap-up idea if I’m already making excuses this early into the project.)

During my first month in Morocco, everything was new. New country, new friends, new language, new family – everything was new and different, and it wasn’t until my second month that I started to find my footing and feel at home in Morocco. Part of it was just exposure to the culture and after two months here, I had learned my way around Sefrou, my CBT town, and knew my host family’s routines.

Part of it was my increasing language skills. As the month and my Darija ability progressed, I started going beyond basic fact-based statements (today, we ate tagine for lunch) into a little more depth (today, we ate French fries for lunch, but I ate my French fries with a fork, because I don’t like to eat French fries with bread like Moroccans). During my last week in Sefrou, my host-sisters and I had a conversation about why Americans are fat and Moroccans aren’t, even though Moroccans eat way more bread than Americans do. Being able to actually commutate, no matter how grammatically incorrect that communication might be, has done a lot to make me feel more comfortable.

My host family was wonderful, and put up with a lot of terrible Darija in an attempt to make me feel at home. Simo, my host brother, and I had a running joke where he told people he was from America. It started when Simo was playing a driving and shooting computer game and one of the levels was set in America. I told Simo he was violated American traffic laws. He told me he wasn’t. I reminded him that I was, in fact, from America and was quite familiar with American traffic laws, especially the ones involving not running a red light to ram a cop car, and Simo informed Soukayna and I that he was actually from America.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Which state are you from?”

“I’m from Florida!” he told me.

“Which city are you from?” Soukayna asked.

Simo, not knowing any cities in Florida, leaned over and whispered to me, “What’s a city in Florida?”

“Miami,” I whispered back.

“I’m from Miami, Florida,” Simo informed us, and that night at dinner he told the rest of the family that he was now from Miami, Florida, and continued to remind us for the next few weeks. A week or so later, my host mother made me a separate pot of tea with dinner because she knew I like my tea without sugar. Simo poured himself a cup from my teapot, took a sip expecting the saccharine mint tea Moroccans usually drink and immediately started gagging.

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “You’re from America. This is American tea.”

“You are from America, right?” his sisters chimed in.

“Yes, I’m from America. I can drink American tea,” Simo reassured us, bug-eyed, then took a tiny sip of my tea and a giant spoonful of jam to prove it. His sisters stole the jam and demanded that he keep drinking. Poor kid. No one deserves to suddenly get an extra older sister.


Simo, tiny Moroccan thug, and my sitemate Jenn. Just before this picture was taken, Simo was disco dancing. Americans disco dance, right?
l-عid l-kbir, biggest holiday in the Islamic calendar, was in early November and I celebrated with my host family. I thought the most important holiday was Ramadan, or would at least involve the Prophet, but l-عid celebrates Ibrahim’s (Abraham) willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. At the last minute, Allah replaced Ishmael with a sheep, saving his life. Now, on the tenth day of the last month in the Islamic calendar (du l-Hijja), Muslims have a sacrificial feast to commemorate the occasion.

My family slaughtered a sheep. The sheep spent the night in the front hallway (which is in between the bathroom and the rest of the house, which made for an unexpectedly exciting late night trip to the bathroom), and on the morning of l-عid, my host father and sister killed it, skinned it and gutted it in front of the house. I stood on the front step and watched. The entire sheep is eaten during the holiday, and until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know it was possible to eat a sheep’s face. I had already told my host family that I was vegetarian (they tried to convince me that lung and heart don’t count as meat) so I mostly ate bread that week, but my sitemate Kim ate an eye and was tricked into eating sheep testicles. Her host mother offered her some meat that looked like fat, and Kim asked what part of the sheep it was from. Her host mother patted her stomach, but once Kim had eaten it, she leaned over and swung her hands back and forth like a pendulum to explain that actually, it came from a little bit further south.


During l-عid, it's traditional to decorate your hands and feet with henna to ward off evil spirits. The day before l-عid, Naعima came over and drew henna on my hands. It's drawn free-hand with a syringe, which makes the results even more impressive.


The final product of the henna with a glass of mint tea. It's my iconic Moroccan photo.


My family's sheep hanging from a tree over the irrigation ditch in front of our house after it had been skinned and gutted.


After it was decapitated, the sheep's head was taken to a fire pit where a couple of guys cut off the horns and roasted it. You know, for the eating.
During month two, we started doing technical training at the Dar Šabab, which also helped make me feel at home in Morocco. We started the month by doing PACA activities with the kids. (PACA, Participatory Approach for Community Action, is the Peace Corps guide to community analysis. It’s about as interesting as it sounds.) Then we spent a week teaching English at the Dar Šabab, and we ended the month by holding a “camp” for the youth. I’m not sure how much help the activities were in terms of actual technical training — two 40 minute classes does not a teacher make, and the camp was held right after l-عid and was sparsely attended — but it was a great chance to meet and interact with the youth of our town.

The camp was supposed to be the big, final project in CBT, but it fell flat. Not only did we not have nearly enough time to plan for it and only a few interested youth, our original idea for the camp, a talent show/art exhibition, didn’t go over well, so we mostly just hung out at the Dar Šabab and talked with the kids. One of the boys taught me know to write my name in Arabic, Mariam helped me review my numbers and, pressured to sing, I sang Amazing Grace, because it turns out the only songs I know well enough to sing a-capella are either religious or patriotic. On the last day, the youth performed a variety show (like a talent show, but without the practice) with song, dance, poetry and skits. They were a great group of kids, and I hope they get a permanent volunteer soon.


Girls (and Kelly) at the Dar Šabab after making a community map, one of the PACA activities.
I went to a bunch of parties during month two. There was a birthday party for Fatima (my LCF), a Moroccan dance party at Hub, and a going away party my last night in Sefrou. Turns out, Moroccans like to dance a lot. At the two parties in Sefrou, we danced to music videos (both of traditional Moroccan music and more western music, including something that sounded almost like Gangsta's Paradise). Men weren’t invited to either party, so the women were free to shed some of their layers, take off their headscarves and have fun. The day after Fatima’s birthday party, we were discussing it in class, and learned that in Darija, there are two words for to dance: shth which means to dance and rdih which means to crazy dance.

For the dance party at Hub, Peace Corps hired a traditional Moroccan band (like the ones that play at weddings). The band consisted of drums and horns, and the songs were long - up to twenty minutes long. After each piece, the performers had to rest and catch their breath before starting to play again. Everyone joined hands in a circle around the band and danced around in a circle.


Everybody, shthu!
Despite all the fun I had and progress I made during my second month here, most of the month was overshadowed by an abrupt change in LCFs. Due to a dispute with Peace Corps, Fatima had to resign with three weeks left in training. Her departure was sudden and perhaps not handled as well as it could have been by everyone involved, and the experience left me with the impression that the well-being of my training was very much secondary to Peace Corps. While another LCF was eventually brought in, I know that my training, especially my language training, suffered a result. It was an unsettling introduction to how Peace Corps bureaucracy works, but it’s behind me now and I hope the rest of my service is smoother.

Testy

So, there's this cardinal that lives at my parent's house. This is not a bird over endowed with brains, and he is convinced that his reflection in the windows of the house is a rival bird. Whenever he sees himself in the window, the bird (nicknamed Testy, short for Testosterone) repeatedly flings himself into the offending reflection in a testosterone fueled attempt to become the alpha cardinal in the area. From sunrise to sunset, the house echos with the thoinks! of the cardinal ricocheting off the house and the swears of my dad threatening to go outside and backhand the thing with a tennis racquet. It's particularly bad in the kitchen and my parents bedroom (both are surrounded by trees and shrubs for him to perch on while contemplating an attack), and my parents have had to drape the windows of their bedroom with sheets and towels in an attempt to hid the reflections, lest Testy wake them up at sunrise by headbutting the house. It looks like someone ineffectually tried to mummify the house.

This has been going on for a month and Dad has cracked. He came into the living room today with a gun in one hand and murder in his eyes. I'm praying for poor aim, but I think Testy's days might be numbered.

Five Things

[+] Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Christmas isn't really an important secular holiday here. It's a red day, meaning I would have the day off it wasn't already on a Saturday. Christian Koreans treat it as a purely religious holiday and everyone treats it as a couple's holiday, almost akin to Valentine's Day. A few of the bigger department stores lights up and there is a massive coca-Cola sponsored Christmas display along the streets of Gangnam, but there are no Christmas decorations in my neighborhood, I'm still teaching class (winter break don't start until next Tuesday) and I've almost forgotten it's almost Christmas. However, I was linked to a cover of the Little Drummer Boy yesterday and I've been listening to it non-stop. It's really excellent and a nice bit of Christmas cheer.


[+] Well, when I say I'm "teaching classes," I mean I finished the textbook last week, so this week I'm showing Up dubbed in Korean with English subtitles. My co-teacher and I take turns sitting in the back of the classroom and occasionally saying, "Quiet" while the other stays in the office and works. Of course, this means I've watched the first twenty minutes of Up twenty times now and if anyone needs me, I'll be weeping in a corner because all happiness will grow old and die or get crotchety and deaf and we all end up alone and sad and *sob*. (Class is only forty minutes long, so I only see the depressing beginning, not the uplifting and happy ending. The students don't seem nearly as affected as I am.)

[+] I've finished my lesson plans for English camp. Well, I've mostly finished them. The last day is a movie day and I really should come up with actual content to teach, but I don't want to. I still need to finish prepping for camp, but this is by far the most prepared I've ever been. I'm sure this will blow up in my face somehow.

[+] I bought my ticket home yesterday. I leave Korea on February 28th, just over two months from now. I was adding money to my T-money card (subway/bus pass) yesterday night and I had to pause and think if would actually use $50 on transportation in the next two months. I got a bit teary about how I was leeeeeeeeeaving, although it might have been because I'm going to have to start buying gas again and there's no way $50 worth of gas could ever possible last two months.

[+] I had a completely gratifying moment on the subway home yesterday when someone asked me what I was reading and I was able to answer with "a survey of political and social forces during the late Roman Empire." I mean, I was reading about the political and social forces that lead to the fall of the Roman Empire (Justinian's Flea, good if a bit pedantic), and I'm not actually ashamed of anything I read (okay, maybe that needle-point based mystery), but it's nice to asked that question when I'm actually reading something impressive.

Goodbyes, Part 3

I leave for the airport in just a few hours and if I tried to actually sum up this past year, I would end up being disgustingly sentimental and Sunrise, Sutset-esque, so instead, just for the lolz, I'm going to post two of my favorite videos that I think do a pretty good job of explaining what life is like for a waegook in the Land of the Morning Calm.


(Probably not safe for work, what with the multiple multiple swear words.)


Bye, Korea! See you in December.

Ansan Asia Town, Redux

One of my favorite things about living in Asia are the bizare and amazing electronics you find here. For example, the machine where you can text your camera phone pictures and have them printed out as Polaroids on the spot or the claw vending machine where you attempt to fish out live lobsters. Only in Asia!

Last night, I went down to Ansan Asia Town for some amazing Vietnamese with friends. (To get there, take Line 4 south to Ansan Station. Exit 1, cross under the street, turn left and walk along the main road until you get to the restaurant with the Vietnamese flag. Order the pho, you won't regret it.) Marie, Greg and I walked around for a bit afterwards and we found Sea World, a claw vending machine with live lobsters as the prize. Greg gave it a try while I took the video. We didn't manage to win a lobster, which was probably for the best, because what the hell would we have done with the thing if we had won. I have this mental image of me trying to shove a live lobster into my purse, along side my bus pass and knitting, as I hop on the subway home. It's not a mental picture that ends well.

Gyeongju, Day 2

Sunday, August 2nd: Splish Splash, I Was Taking A Bath

The original plan was to wake up early and go see a temple. That lasted right up until the alarm went off and Sarah and I promptly decided no thanks, we would rather sleep for another two hours. Story of her visit. We finally made it out of the hotel by eleven and set off to explore Gyeongju. Our first stop was Tumuli Park.


Tumuli are tombs from the Silla dynasty, which lasted from 57 BC to 935 AD. Tumuli Park has twenty three tombs of Silla royalty. The tumuli look like large grassy mounts and they're all over Gyeongju. Many of the tombs have been excavated and the largest tomb is open to visitors, with reproductions of the burial and some of the treasures, but mostly all you see are the grassy hillocks. They're immaculately maintained and there were flowering trees surrounding the tombs, but there wasn't much to actually see.

Our next stop was the 7-11, where we scrounged together a breakfast of Denish pastries (not a typo), some sort of blueberry cream cheese sandwich thing and nuts. Eating was a bit of an adventure in Gyeongju. While Sarah was here, we ate mostly western food. Korea is not an easy place to eat if you're vegetarian and since Tonga doesn't really have restaurants, Sarah was understandable more interested western food that wasn't normally available to her than trying to figure out what Korean food she could eat. That's all fine and dandy when we were in Seoul, but western food (at least, non Korean/western fusion food [*shudder*]) was far more difficult to find once we left the capital. A lot of our meals were pretty hit or miss.





After breakfast we went to Anapji Pond. Anapji Pond was built as a pleasure garden by King Manmu in 674. The buildings have been destroyed, but the pond is full of lotus blossoms. It's a really lovely spot, if very crowded. Sarah and I spend another hour wandering around, taking pictures of lotus blossoms.


We also did the whole "posing in front of cultural monument so we could take a self portrait and sent it home to our parents in an attempt to convince them we're not dead yet" thing and, well, it ended poorly. We posed crouching down on some stepping stones making a path through the pond and as we were standing up, I overbalanced and toppled backwards into the pond. Luckily my purse didn't get (too) wet and I didn't loose my shoes scrambling out of the pond, but I did end up looking like this:


We (well, I) squelched back to our hotel, stopping briefly at Wolseong Park to see Cheomseongdae, the the oldest astrological observatory in the Far East.


Once back at the hotel I tried to wash the worst of the mud and pond scum out of my clothes in the shower and while my stuff tried, Sarah and I hung out at the hotel for a few hours. The owner of the hotel told us about a free traditional music performance held at a nearby resort that we decided to check out. It was, to say the least interesting. There were a few good acts in the first half, but the second half was a Korean/western fusion band playing western songs on traditional Korean instruments. In theory that sounds interesting, but in practice it sounds like this:


Halfway through the song Sarah and I looked at each other and incredulously asked, "Is that ABBA?" There was also a visible drunk man in the audience who kept running onto the stage to try and dance with the performers. It was an unique take of traditional Korean music. On the way home, we stopped by the train station to buy our tickets for trip home well in advance. (That was a bit of an adventure. The ticket seller kept saying there was no train to Seoul that night and I kept repeating Tuesday over and over again, but we finally understood each other and got our tickets.)

The train station was across the town from where we were staying and as we got off the bus we heard a flurry of whispers from a large group of western tourists staying at the same hostel as us. "Wait, is this our stop? Why are they getting off? Should we get off?" The strangest thing about the trip was the tourists. They were everywhere! I don't normally see that many tourists in Korea, since I don't live in a touristy area or spend much time at tourist spots, but they were everywhere in Gyeonju and I kept being mistaken for one. They were loud and complained about how no one spoke English and kept obviously disregarding Korean culture and for a person who travels as much as I do, it turns out I'm an awful snob about people traveling in the country where I live.

The rest of the photos from the day are here.

Sports Day

6-4 class girls running (well, jumping) during a Sports Day race.
Friday was Sports Day at my school. It was a big deal; the kids practiced their performances for weeks. Every Monday morning all the students would gather in front of the school to practice the calisthenics routine and my 4-4 class was canceled for all of April because their teacher scheduled Sports Day dance practice during class. *disgruntled look* On Thursday, I asked my fifth graders what day was it tomorrow. They chorused, "It's Friday!" Then I asked them what classes they had on Friday. They stared at me, perplexed, trying to figure out how to explain Sports Day. Finally, they settled on this: "Teacher, class one, PE. Class two, PE. Class three, PE. All class, PE!" I love making them explain things they don't know the words for and seeing what they come up with!

The day started a little awkwardly when I was late to the festivities. I got to school at 8:30 as normal and the vice principal told me to be in front of the school at 9:30. I went up to my office to get some work done and at 9:20 I heard the national anthem begin to play. I rushed downstairs, but by the time I got to the front entrance, the principal had already started a lengthy speech directly in front of the main doors. I considered sneaking out a side entrance and mingling with the crowd (I wasn't sure where I was suppose to stand), but since in Korea you don't wear your street shoes in school and my shoes were kept in a cubby directly behind where the principal was standing, I was stuck inside. I awkwardly loitered in the hall until the school nurse found me, realized I had no clue what was going on and took me under her wing for the day. She plied me with kimbap and coffee, and we hung out in the administration office so we could still watch the opening activities.


Sports Day started with a synchronized calisthenics routine. I had seen the students practice it before, but I didn't realize it was going to be set to music! It was like interpretive dance, or possible Thai Chi to music. Whatever it was, it was amazing. It was also a little eerie watching a thousand children who all already look a bit the same, what with the same hair color and skin tone and matching white outfits, all move in unison. It also raises the question of could we ever pull that off back home. I don't think so. Korea is a far more collective society than America.








There were your normal Sports Days events, such as tug o' war. The fourth graders played a version of tug o' war involving a tire with ropes attached. The vice principal (who is fluent in English) asked me what the event would be called in English. I badly wanted to tell him that if it involves a tire and a dirt field, it's called "wrastlin' wit a tire", but I restrained myself and told him tug-of-war. Then the sixth graders came out and played a more traditional game of tug o' war, and I had to explain that really, English doesn't have an official term for wrestling over a tire.


There were also less orthodox games, such as sticking third graders in hula hoops and making them run around. As someone who actually teaches third graders, I think this is BRILLIANT and would like to be able to use this in class. "Jinho, if you don't sit down, I will stick you in a hula hoop with a group of your peers and make you camper about traffic cones, so help me God!" (Number of words in that sentence my third graders know: 0)






There were also races. Each class (four per grade, except for sixth grade, which has five) had a race to determine who the fastest boy and girl was. The youngest children ran a short 60 m race, but the students got older, the races got longer. The sixth graders ran more of an obstacle course than a race. There was a tumbling section, hula hoops and hurtles. After the grade races, there was a school-wide relay race. The fastest eight students from each grade formed four teams (two boy teams, two girl teams) and ran a relay race to determine who the fastest students in the school were. There was also races for the parents, who were surprisingly intense. Several of the fathers wiped out completely and had to limp off the track.











In addition to the regular Sports Day events, each grade had a special performance. The kindergartners dressed up like the Korean flag and danced (while waving actual Korean flags) to the song "Dokdo is Our Land." Which, of course they did. Indoctrination starts early here. (Dokdo [English name: Liancourt Rocks] is a group of small islands in the East Sea that both Korea and Japan claim sovereignty over. Due to the bad blood between Korea and Japan, it's a BIG DAMN DEAL to the Koreans and they feel STRONGLY that Dokdo is Korean territory and they will not hesitate to tell you about it. Even my little fourth graders have asked me if I know that Dokdo belongs to Korea. I can guarantee you that those kindergartners have been taught about Dokdo and how it belongs to Korea.) The sixth graders performed a dance with colored flags. They were originally suppose to perform buchaechum (Korean fan dance), but the teachers decided to switch with the fifth graders and my sixth grade girls were PISSED about it. I can understand why; buchaechum is so much cooler than waving colored flags about.




The second grade and fifth grade's special performances were traditional Korean dances. The second graders (top photo) performed a dance to a traditional Korean songs that, I must admit, sounds a little like someone strangling a goat. (My office is next to the music room, so after seven months here I'm pretty well versed in traditional Korean music. Most of it I like, but oh, this song is horrible.) The fifth graders danced the buchaechum. The outfits they're wearing are called hanboks, and are the traditional Korean outfit.  The students wore their own hanboks; each outfit was different. I made an absolute fool of myself cooing over how pretty they were.




This is Korea, so no Sports Day would be complete without a Taekwondo demonstration. The best of the fourth and fifth graders gave a Taekwondo demonstration in the gym after lunch. It was set to music, including Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Queen's "We are the Champions." The kids were really good. Maybe I should think twice about reprimanding them in class. *g* There was also a Chinese dance troupe that performed, hence the Chinese on the banner behind the kids.




I talked with my fifth graders a lot during Sports Day. I ended up watching the festivities next to where they were sitting, and the second I moved away from the nurse, I was instantly mobbed by students. They crowded around me, challenging me to games of 가위바위보 (kawi bawi bo = rock-scissors-paper!), stealing my camera and asking me as many questions as their limited English would allow them. Since we weren't in the classroom, I used my pidgin Korean, which sent them into paroxysms of delight. (Oh my God! Teacher said 안녕하세요 (hello). Aaaaaaaah!! Let's go tell all our friend and spend the next hour begging her to say it again. Aaaaaaah!!) Because my classes are so large, I rarely get a chance to interact with students one-on-one for an extended period of time, so this was a good chance to get to know some of my newer students.