Dagger eyes and Grizzly Beard

Wednesday, Oct 22, 7:15pm

Finally, I’m turning into the hotel in Ottumwa, Iowa! I check in and start dragging my stuff into my new temporary home. It isn’t long before I spot a friend of mine from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I flag him down and we chat. As he’s giving me the low down on the crew, a woman walks by with what can only be interpreted as a “don’t even try to talk to me” face. Devin explains that she’s a crew chief…and not a very friendly one. Great. Glad I’m being thrown into such a happy environment.

But my crew chief is a different person anyway. I’ll be meeting him tomorrow morning at seven. Then we’ll all load up in trucks that should be four wheel drive but aren’t and go look for signs of past occupation in the woods and farms of small-town Iowa.

Thursday, Oct 23, 7:15am

Rapping on my door rouses me from a deep, comfortable sleep. I stumble my way out of bed and see my friend from UALR through the peep hole. I open the door, thinking it must be the middle of the night.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s time to go.”

“What?” At first I assume that he’s kidding, but I look back at the clock and realize that I’m already fifteen minutes late. “Oh no! Are they waiting for me? Are the mad?”

“No, it’s fine…just get ready and get out there asap.”

7:30am

I power walk through the parking lot with a stack of new hire paperwork in my hand. I head striaght to my friend’s crew, which I had been told would also be mine. Self-conscious and flustered, I hand my paperwork to a man with an authoritative-looking clip board before making sure he’s the man I had been instructed to report to.

He isn’t.

However, as he tells me with a smirk under his grizzly beard, the other guy quit and he’s the replacement. BUT….I won’t be on his crew anyway. They’re crew seven and they’ve decided to put myself and another new guy on crew six. With the dagger-eyes lady from yesterday.

Well, what a great start.

5:00 pm

After work, my friend invites me to join him and some of his crew mates at a local grill and bar. I know how important workmate bonding is, and I want to be received well among those who are already established in this group, so I join.

Grizzly beard is there, and makes a few playful pokes at my sleeping in, but overall is friendly and really doesn't seem to care about my blunder. And after we get to the hotel I’m even invited to hang out and have a beer at the fire pit out back.

So I guess I had a shabby start….but overall, it wasn't a bad day. This project and the potential friends in it at least seem promising…

Holy catchapuri, what have I gotten myself into?

Wednesday February 19th

It’s my second full day and I am already exhausted.

I like school. One co-teacher is a young man who is motivated and ready to take advantage of having a native English speaker in his lessons. The other co-teacher is an older woman who is very kind to me and lets me speak or do activities when I ask, though she doesn’t plan her use of me beforehand. I absolutely love the students and want to be at school from start to finish instead of just my required classes with the 1^st-6^th grades, but I know that settling into two different co-teaching strategies will be challenging.

And being at home is always challenging. Don’t get me wrong, my host family is great. They are very friendly, the food is delicious, and I have the whole upstairs part of the house to myself. But not having anyone around who speaks the same language is absolutely exhausting.

I try not to stay in my room all day, as Georgian society is traditionally a collective society, and families tend to spend all day together in the common room or kitchen. However, sitting there for hours not saying much or being able to express myself is frustrating. Listening to everyone around me and still not having any clue what is going on is boring. And although my host sister-in-law is fairly good at finding a way to communicate things to me when need be, the process is very tiring. And I don’t have internet so that venue of escape or even communication with my family back home is out of the picture for now.

The only way I can rest or relax is to withdraw to my room and study Georgian or call the friends I made during orientation.

But this worries the family. This evening we are playing cards. Well, I’m not really playing cards, because even though it is a game I know, a Georgian friend of the family is “helping” me, aka playing for me. I think people have a tendency to associate language ability with mental ability. I don’t mean that in a snide way. Back at my university in Arkansas, it was something myself and some other students who volunteered with internationals were specifically warned to be conscious of. But anyway, I get bored, and eventually excuse myself and head up to my room. It isn’t long before the sister who lives in Tbilisi and speaks a little English is texting to ask how I am, which she is obviously relaying to the family. Eventually the sister-in-law comes up as well, brining catchapuri and tea and sympathizing with how much work I have.

Despite all the concerns, I stay in my room as long as I can. I’m not mad at anyone. But already, in my second full day in my village, this experience is kicking my ass. I guess I’m starting to realize what I’ve gotten myself into. There is no escape from work except for solitude. Solitude is rude, however. No freedom to come and go from the house as I please. Nowhere to go, anyway. And there is no way to change the situation. Until I learn more Georgian, at least.

But I also realize that the adventurer in me and the masochist in me are interconnected. In the past, when I heard stories like this from others, these parts, the hard parts, made my adrenaline pump as much as any others. I would always wonder if I could handle it. And how much more badass I would be for it afterward. And after all, there is no great adventure without conflict or hardship. So yes, right now it sucks, but I can handle it, and I’ll get through it. Maybe it won’t get to an easy place, maybe there will be continual struggles this semester. But this is what I was asking for-this is what I wanted. And I can do this.

Teach and Learn Orientation, Spring 2014

As I write about my experiences here in Georgia, I must confess, I’ll be giving you a censored version. Yes, this is my story, but the other characters involved are real people who do not want their names or lives plastered all over the internet. At the same time, I’m not going to fabricate an experience which isn’t the one I’m having, and I’m not going to leave out many (if any) situations which I find integral to it. So those who read my blogs from afar will have to excuse my being vague at times; and those featured in it (should they even know English or someone who does), will have to excuse my honesty.

Orientation Training Week:

By just a couple days in, it feels like this my life. It feels like I know these 20 people, but not like I just met them. It feels like I’m subject to this schedule, but not like it’s something different. This just….is.

We are learning way too much Georgian in our language classes to remember, but I know that only those of us who make the effort to study consistently on our own will get past the basic tourist-guide-book phrases.

Our intercultural training and methodology lectures have some interesting info but can be very boring. It’s funny how sitting in a chair all day can drain you.

The hotel feeds us three times a day, and it’s all REAL food. Bread, cheese, and meat seem to make an appearance at every meal. Which is great, but does get monotonous. But oh well. We are told that there won’t be a huge variety of menu options in the villages either, so I suppose we might as well get used to it now.

We also explore Tbilisi in the evenings. We ride a tram up a mountain to a small amusement park. It’s covered in snow and abandoned for the winter, and in the dimming light it’s wonderfully eerie.

Another day, we explore a park. It’s modern and artistic, with the brick path coming up in swirling mounds every here and there. But at the back we find a very post-soviet feeling block of concrete. Like, seriously, it’s a huge concrete cube with many openings, including two huge circles on opposite sides, and slits on the floor through which we can see that the ground is far enough away to make for a deadly fall.

Another time I’m able to meet up with a skype friend I met online. Yes, he turned out to be a real 19-year-old Georgian university student, just like he was on skype. We walk a ways down the road and stop in front of a monument erected for those who died in the 1989 protests. His parents were there. They took part…saw the tanks, heard the chaos. It blows my mind to think about. The biggest protest I have been a part of was a counter protest when Westboro Baptist came to my uni. We stood across the road and sang happy songs at them.

On Valentine's Day, a bunch of us head to a bar/restaurant on the same block as the hotel for a traditional Georgian dance. When we get there, it’s almost empty, and although there are some young men with instruments, there is no dancing. We end up asking the waitress if someone can show us….and to our delight, a young man and young woman who work at the restaurant come dance for us. And then to our further delight, a guy dressed in a weird woman-suite (I have no other way to describe. Look for the video and you will see!) comes and joins the dance, and even dances with myself and another tlger. They give us a bottle of wine after 10 because we “won a game,” aka are the only people still there; and they light two heart-shaped lantern candle things. Already jolly from wine, all but the Irishman head to a club for some dancing. Its great fun, but we end up leaving when we’ve had enough of this local guy who seems to know English with the exception of the phrase “she doesn’t want to dance with you.”

The last note-worthy excursion is a trip to a local bar…the artsy bat where the stoners hang out. A VERY unique look at a VERY small part of Georgian society. I’m there with a few guy friends, and although I’m ready to go back at midnight so I can get up for class in the morning, they are in the mood to party all night. I can’t go into details for their sake, but I want to give you a taste of the real-life intercultural training we received that night by giving some quotes from people we met:

~

“I do NOT need a Georgian man. I know Georgian men. When I was seventeen, I was married to a Georgian man. He is in jail now. My father is a Georgian man. My brothers are Georgian men. I do NOT need a Georgain man.”

Here I will also note that in a culture where women are expected to be virgins until they are married, shooting for a one night stand may get you into an uncomfortable situation with a drunk girl who thinks she is your girlfriend.

~

“That was my mom calling me. She wanted to check on me.”

“At 2:30am? How old are you?”

“I’m 21. It’s just the way Georgian moms are. If I am with a friend of a friend of a friend, she will call HIM. And I am like, how the f*ck did you find me???”

~

”Weed grows wild here. You’ll find it everywhere. It’s really easy to get. But if you get caught, you can go to prison for 8 to 9 years.”

~
”I am traveling from Turkey. I translate for Greenpeace. But I just wanted to go out for a while. There are protests there now because the government shut off the internet. They claim it was because the people were using it to watch porn!”
~

So yeah. That’s over  a week of TLG and Tbilisi smushed into one post . I hope the pieces I’ve given you are poignant enough for you to get a good taste!

(Dark) and Early

February 5th, 2014, Hawaii.

3:20 am

My alarm finds me and my cousin practically spooning. Even half awake, I it find amusing and fitting, considering that for the past month I’ve been poking fun at her for taking up so much space in the bed. Sometimes she would cuddle in her sleep, other times I barely escaped an elbow or hand to the face. I allow myself to hit snooze once, knowing at 3:30 it’ll be time for a quick shower…my last chance to feel fresh before my 32 hour trip.

4:00am

Taking care of me until the very end, my aunt fixes me breakfast while I pack up my computer and gather up all the layers that I know will suffocate me when I walk out into the warm Hawaiian night, but that I’ll be glad for when I’m freezing in Tbilisi.

5:00am

There is a man assigned to weigh bags before passengers head to the desk to check them. Good thing, too, because one of mine is 57 pounds. Thankfully my smaller bag has room to shove in a few things, though I have to sacrifice a water bottle. I hope some hobo picks it up.

5:30am

I see a rucksack sitting in front of a seat and a head of long dirty blonde hair sticking up over its back. I wonder if they belong to the adventurous type who might be headed to teach in Georgia. Then I notice two fedoras in the seats next to it, which lead me to think I am simply looking at a group of adventurers who came to enjoy Hawaii. When I come back from the bathroom I sit where I can see them from the front and feel that my second assumption is valid.

Rucksack guy has a tattoo sleeve down his left arm and a very distinct “I don’t give a %$#@” expression. The two fedoras are smiling about something. One has black hair to his shoulders and looks like he could be in a band with rucksack guy, and the other kind of reminds me the people I met at college who were known for playing Magic the Gathering for hours on end in the student center.  I notice that the fedoras both have red passports. I can’t help but wonder where they are from, but I don’t feel like making an excuse to strike up a conversation. After all, when you’ve been up since an ungodly hour of the morning and will be traveling until another ungodly hour of a different morning, you don’t feel like making much of an effort for anything.

4 Things You Didn't Know Were "A Thing" in Hawaii

Surfers? Check. Pineapples? Check. Ukuleles? Check. But here are a few things I didn't expect to find while visiting family on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

1) Asians. Lots. And lots. Of Asians.

The most prominent people group in Hawaii consists not of Native Islanders, nor of white mainlanders. Rather, nearly 40% of the total population is Asian! 

Only 9% of current Hawaii residents are Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders. And yet native words and motifs are used everywhere. You'll very rarely see "thank you;" it's always "mahalo." And everyone seems to enjoy making jokes at the expense of us "haoles." I can't help but wonder if those of native descent are honored by the fact that their culture is staying in style as they fade away. Or, rather, are they insulted that all these people who contribute to its disappearance are so desperate to identify with it?

Sorry, that was a little deep. Either way, where back in Arkansas I would expect to see many signs and instructions written in both English and Spanish, here they are written in English and Japanese. And there are plenty of options for sushi!

                                                   

For the stats listed above and more go here:
http://suburbanstats.org/population/how-many-people-live-in-hawaii.

2) Spam Musubi.

As further evidence of the Asian influence, this interesting snack has shown up everywhere. It's a regular at my little cousins' basketball games...on the snack shack menu right along with burgers and hotdogs. I've also seen it in actual restaurants.

I guess you just take a slab of spam, place it on a well shaped chunk of sticky rice, and wrap it in seaweed. Yes, I tried it. A few days ago I even had a hankering for it. Yum!

                       

3) Kendamas

This traditional Japanese toy has apparently spread like wildfire through Hawaiian schools in the past couple of months. The kids take them everywhere. Some schools have even banned them!

I made a short vlog showing how they are used, but Blogger and my computer don't want to agree and upload it directly to this page. So here is a link to it on the Unsettled Voyage vlog page:

Kendama Krazee

4) Slitted Windows

I'm not sure if there is an official name for these, but they are pretty standard in Hawaiian homes. Not surprisingly, air conditioning is NOT a thing. It really hasn't been so bad, though. I prefer being hot to being cold and I rather like the outdoor air circulating through the house!

Anticipation...(TLG) is keeping me waiting!

I arrived in Hawaii on the 7th. Today is the 27th. I won't even get my ticket for Georgia until Wednesday the 29th or later.

Don't get me wrong, there are worse places to be stranded than Hawaii. I really love it here. And there are worse people to be stranded with. My aunt and her family have been fantastic hosts, housing me and feeding me plenty longer than they had signed up for.

Still, the longer I wait, the harder it gets.

After all, I'm waiting for the next big experience in my life to start. And I can't know exactly what it will be like until I am there...living in a country I've never been to with people I've never met who mainly speak a language I'm only beginning to learn. All I know is that my world will be different while I'm there. And I'll be different when I leave.

Ain't No Mountain (That Isn't) High Enough

And the mountains! Civilization may only grow where the mountains allow. They still stand tall and proud all over the island. But why wouldn’t they? This island was always theirs. They were here when somehow, some seeds made their way across the ocean, and the rains watered them, and their roots began to reach out and take hold of any surface that would allow the intrusion. And the mountains still stand as men and women lay the foundations for houses and clear the way for roads and sidewalks. Trees, houses? What is the difference to a mountain?

And they were here when somehow, insects and animals made it to the island, and ants crawled along their arms and spines. And when the first humans arrived, swelling with pride as they drew closer to the great discovery that would affirm their diligent craftsmanship and vast knowledge of the seas and stars, and yet remind them of their humble place as small creatures in a big and beautiful world. And the mountains are still here now, as ants and people and many creatures inbetween still crawl across their skin. Ants, humans? What is the difference to a mountain?

They may not be eternal, but they will live longer than any of us. They will stand until the powers of heaven decide to reshape the surface of earth, pulling the whole chain of islands into the heart of the planet to melt them down and reshape them into some new masterpiece.

I've Got (One) Ticket to Paradise!

So by the end of January, I’ll be in Georgia (the country) settling in for a year of teaching English.  I had decided to use a soon-to-expire ticket credit to visit family in Hawaii first and fly to Georgia from there. Now the program I am working for, Teach and Learn, is having to find a new insurance provider. Bad news? I have to wait even longer to get a better picture of what the next year of my life is going to be. Good news? I’ll probably have at least one extra week in paradise.

And Hawaii really is paradise. 

It’s totally different from Arkansas, yet it feels familiar somehow. Something about the air reminds me of Japan, and the exposed rock of the cliffs jutting out into the water reminds me of Ireland.

 Or perhaps there is just a certain magic that lingers on all islands.  

I flew into Honolulu, on the Island of Oahu. Even with all of the traffic and skyscrapers that accompany human modernity, the island is green and lush. More variations of palm trees than I even knew existed grow throughout the island, even downtown. The sky overhead is a bright and healthy blue with fluffy clouds rolling in from over the ocean.  

Ah, the ocean. It’s gorgeous! From up high, the water is a deep blue that fades into brighter shades as it nears the shore. From up close, you see that it’s really clear. Crystal clear. Even when the sand is stirred up and the waves turn brown, they aren’t a mucky brown like in a mud puddle or pond. It’s more like seeing clouds of brown sand being gathered up and carried to the shore by the clear water.