This is not an adventure, it's a hassle.

In two weeks I will have officially moved to Japan.  Matters grow weighty as I try to fix my teeth, gather supplies, arrange accommodations, and find somewhere to store all the stuff I can't afford to take with me.

Allow me to explain: my future employer is not paying or supporting me in any way.  I am expected to arrange everything from afar and "just show up" on time, perky and ready to go.  I am also expected to navigate Japanese society as a total white freak with no language skills and set up a phone line, bank account, residence card by myself before signing the contract to begin working.  Makes you grateful for the internet, ya?

Given that my parents plopped me down in the woods as a child and more or less expected me to raise myself with minimal input, this is hardly something new.  Yet, after years of struggling just to walk down the sidewalk without bruising myself on a motorbike, being run down by a reversing car, being hit by someone's football game, stepping in urine, whatever...it's just one more hassle.  Just one more hassle that makes me want to grab someone and physically shove the paperwork down their throat:  NO, YOU DEAL WITH IT.

It's extremely brutal, and now that I'm 31, actually somewhat beneath me.  This is not an adventure, this is annoying!!

The thought of going through all this, combined with showing up in a hostile world totally alone and dragging all my luggage across Western Japan has left me feeling so utterly melancholy that I have done the rare thing:  I have chosen to live in a dorm room.  With other people.

Those who know me know I am territorial and can't share my space.  After living with a shit head from Nigeria for two months, I vowed NEVER to share space with another human being. Ever.

Today I had to violate that vow.  I've been isolated for 3 years, deathly ill, with not one person (INCLUDING MY OWN MOTHER) to call me and tell me my life even matters to the world anymore.  And I just don't want to be alone anymore.  The mere thought of arriving alone and isolated only to come into an empty, unfurnished house and carry on going about my meaningless existence, still alone...just makes me want to roll into a ball of despair.

I may regret it later, but it's becoming clear to me that I cannot continue living in isolation.  So, I've taken out a dorm room, an airticket, and submitted my visa request to the Embassy of Japan.  And I do so hoping that my long years of suffering will one day come to an end.

ADVENTURE...?

Japan: An Announcement

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It's official--I am moving to Japan to continue working as an English teacher there.  I am set to move in late June, and will update more in the future.

I regret not being able to update my blog more thoroughly during my time here, but luckily I am moving to an environment where WiFi is easier to obtain and my electronics are less likely to be robbed.  I will likely share all my nostalgic stories then, and may even be able to create cartoons again.

:)

Please note, I will hereby publish all backdated entries.

New Years' Two

Just to prove I'm not a total killjoy, I went out to join the enormous Songkran party tonight.

It's basically what I told you.  The populace throws water and mud on you.  Kids (and adults) run around with super-soakers and spray you with them.  They carry them on trains, in stores, etc.  Boys use the mud as an excuse to touch girls on the face and shoot water on their breasts...I guess girls do the same thing, but damned if I'm masculine enough to know the answer to that one.

An element of sadism enters the picture when folks throw ice water on you, jam mud into your face with such force that you see stars, or rub your face with a block of ice instead of mud (and you can imagine where their hands have been). 

It's just like war!!

In the streets

Coming Soon: Songkran

Shit that would not fly in America I

Shit that would not fly in America II

Shit that would not fly in America III (yes, this is in the building)

The teeming masses shutting down the streets again

Walking through Saladaeng

Not That Tame

Why is it that whenever I visit Bangkok, it's shut down?  Crazy city.

Happy New Years!

It's New Year's you say?

In countries that depend on the rainy season to grow rice, it apparently is.  Though I am working 7 days out of the week to afford to go to Japan, I have been granted a week off for the Khmer New Years' celebration.

I have decided to spend part of this week in Thailand, picking up a few necessities.  That's what expats do in Cambodia--they go to Thailand when they want useful Western goods, like clothes that fit, McDonalds, air-conditioning, advanced paperback books, medical treatment, or pretty much anything else beyond the creature comforts of Swensen's ice cream and Ciprofloxacin.

Needing at least 3 of the 5 items listed above, I got on the quickest night bus to the border (I've had to add many pages to my passport solely because I've done this so often that the visa pages are all used up).

For whatever reason, despite the fact that the New Year is a lunar holiday celebrated by all people in the rice-dependent Southeast Asian region, I somehow forgot that Thailand is also celebrating New Year's.

It's a lot different over here--literally the entire city becomes some sort of outdoor orgy of water and mud and silly drunk people flinging themselves and each other into it.

Hooray!! What fun!, you are thinking.

While this is normally the sort of thing I get into, it's awfully annoying having to hide from water-and-mud snipers behind cars when you're carrying 20 shopping bags and didn't bring any spare clothes to get wet and muddy.  This is probably the reason they no longer do this in Cambodia--all the foreigners complained!

The nice thing, though, is that there are all kinds of "Songkran sales", where everything is 30-50% off for the New Year.  Man, did I luck out on that one.  Also worth noting that the general populace seemed happy, affirming, and high-spirited for once in the entire  50-or-so times I've visited this place.  (Generally, the city is quite stuck-up and inhuman, even degrading, if I may be so bold as to cast a judgement Bangkokward.)  I don't think I've ever been happier to be here.

Khmer Lessons

I had this entire entry written out MONTHS ago on my old computer extolling my linguistic genius, but alas.  I was forcibly divested of it before I had the chance to publish it.  So I'll just write an updated version now.

Basically, I've now been taking Khmer language lessons for about a year and a half.  I haven't been studying much--it's sort of my afternoon hobby; for $5 per hour, I take a class once a day.

I don't practice much outside of class, largely because people address me in English anyway and most of what I do has become habitual, routine, and non-interactive.  Note that I think this is kind of sad, but currently lack the inspiration to do otherwise.

I've still managed to develop basic communication skills that could probably save my life if I were stranded in the backwoods.  That's not saying a lot, mind you, but considering the (lack of) effort I put into it--and my inability to speak the Arabic I studied for 5 years in college--I consider this an achievement.

Actually, my capacities to speak far exceed my capacities to listen, meaning I start shooting off my mouth in order to cover my incompetence in registering what people say.  I'm currently to the point where I've got a basic system down (I know all the basic grammar), but my vocabulary is so stunted that it inhibits me from reaching the next level.  I'm also completely illiterate, which is finally starting to annoy me.

I'll use the rest of this space for some tips on speaking a foreign language.

- I like to repeat whatever someone says to me.  This appears to show a sincere interest in the other person, but actually it's a method of buying time to think and pretending like you understand when you don't.
- Whatever word you pick up on, respond to that one.  If you understand the nature of the interaction, you don't even have to understand the words at all, and you'll still be right.

Just wait till I tell you the one about dengue fever.

Droppin in on Sri Lanka

Well, sorry folks.

I had to drop back in on Sri Lanka for a week.  (Even I can afford to do this when I take Cathay Pacific's crap 2 am flight from Bangkok for 220 USD.  Despite the chauvinism expressed by their marketing department, I actually thought the service was quite OK.)

Why did I do that?  Well, I didn't say anything about it last time, but while I was in Sigiriya last time, I somehow became appended to a local family and I thought I'd drop in on them while I still had the chance.

It didn't work out, actually, but never mind.  Here are some quick photos I took while I was there.

The guesthouse where we stayed

Jungly things

I went back to Anaradhapura, where I got lost last time.  I wanted to see the world's oldest cared-for tree, which is said to have been a clipping of the boddhi tree under which the Buddha  received enlightenment.  How cool is that?  My sense of history was engaged; problem is, I didn't get to visit last time due to getting lost.  So I hopped the first bus to Anaradhapura and visited for the afternoon:

A dome

Lovelorn monkey

Here it is...the clipping of the tree under which the Buddha received enlightenment.

Another view

Another view.  No, I did not go inside.

I forget what this is

Damn green country

Dirty jungle river

I had about $125 that I lived off of the entire time I was there.  Then I took the bus home from Bangkok in a glorious display of 48-hour long endurance.

So, it is possible to travel if you're poor.  Just a word of affirmation for those who think they don't have the money to travel.

Bangcock.

Tonight I'm in Bangkok yet again.

Why, you ask?  Well, because I enjoy torturing myself  by putting myself through the hell that is the night bus to Poipet, the on-foot border crossing, and the navigation through the largest (and least friendly) city in a developing country.  That, and I'm headed back to Sri Lanka again.

Before you ask me why a second time, I'll just cut the conversation short.  Get to that part later.

You're probably worried about this situation because of all the stuff in the news about riots and uprisings and protests and stuff.  Fear not!  The fighting is not in my part of the city, though tourism is all but halted and the streets have been taken over by protesters blaring their stuff out for the cheering masses.  Normally buzzing after dark, a dark silence the curbside market places despite the blaring loudspeakers.

I went to Siam Square only to find the streets blocked off and filled with tents.  People are more or less not budging from this spot till their demands are served!  Major arteries are now protest sites.  I regret that I didn't bring a camera, but you can get a good look at it here:
http://www.travelfish.org/blogs/thailand/2014/01/15/whats-bangkok-really-like-during-the-shutdown/

Also, I bought this shirt:

Shut Down Bangkok!
That's what I say.
The protesters' goals are similar to mine.

It was pretty cool to wander the streets without masses of tourists for a change.  And interesting!  These are the forces that are shaping our world, folks.

There are also plenty of armed soldiers behind sandbags, but given the state that my hometown of Phnom Penh is in, I can't complain...or even summon the energy to feel awed, threatened, or mildly interested.

Actually, the only thing I can do is pray that Thailand gets what's coming to it.  If the entire country and all its people went down in flames, that would scarcely be comeuppance enough.  I bought a shitload of things (which I now have to drag through Sri Lanka with me) because I ponder the state of the city when I return in two weeks.

How to Terrify Your Students, Piss off your Bosses, and Lose Faith in Humanity

You'd probably like to hear what happened after the little fiasco last week.  I'll tell you.

Predictable, horrifying, hilarious

Given my students' disrespectful attitude, I thought it would be highly appropriate to do the Mean Teacher write-an-essay-about-how-much-you-suck thing.  So, the next class we had, I did just that.  I made them write an essay on how to respect people.

I see nothing wrong with doing this.  Frankly, given the bullshit I'd been putting up with all term, I should have done it a lot sooner.

I also told them, as a scare tactic, that any bad behavior or wrong move on their part would result in marks being taken off the final exam.

The results were at once predictable, horrifying, and hilarious. 

First, the kids who'd been absent the prior lesson came in, sat down, and very nervously cranked out a 5 paragraph essay about Respect.  Of course, those who had nothing to do with the situation took it very seriously...meanwhile, those with the worst attitudes refused to participate.  They simply couldn't fess up to their own bad behavior.  The absolute snottiest girl in the class (the one who always walked in half an hour late and spent her time talking over me and flunking exams) of course refused to work at all.  Actually she stormed out when I had the audacity to tell her to stop talking yet again.

And the most disruptive students then followed her out.  My firm opinion is, once again, that those privileged with the greatest of resources (academic, fiscal, and otherwise) are the least deserving.  She went crying to the office about how I had the nerve to make her sensitive little ass behave like--God fobid!--an actual student who wants to learn.

So I filed a counter-complaint.

Actually I had filed a counter-complaint on Monday, long before this ever happened.  My boss promised me someone would come talk to them.  (Obviously, no one came to talk to them).  So, theoretically, none of this had to happen beyond the shittiness that culminated Monday night.  And, theoretically, the central office should have realized there was a problem, handled it, and let the matter drop.

They didn't.

Inferior Superiors

So they sent someone in Friday to address the class after the lesson was over.  Please note that I had no desire to teach them in the first place at this point, much less spend the lesson being observed by the central office so they could address the class at the end.

But they did, and that should have been the end of it.  Especially since I told the class we'd begin lessons again on Monday if they were "super good".

But no.

I got a phone call the following Monday and was summoned to the central office.  Four of my superiors proceeded to gather around me, seat me in the dean's office, and berate me for the next 30 minutes for my conduct.  For MY conduct--my students' behaviors were all but condoned.

Their premise was that I was failing in my job as classroom manager--not that my students had been obnoxiously disrespectful for the last X number of weeks.  They told me MY conduct had to improve and that MY actions were all wrong.  Never mind the fact that it's wrong that I can't get markers refilled, papers printed, or have simple requests to higher management taken seriously.  Never mind that.  The company is right, and I am wrong.

I've been teaching for nearly 4 years and never have I ever tolerated a class like that.  Only in China did I encounter anything remotely resembling this, and then I was dealing with over-stressed 10 year olds.  Therefore, I am inclined to ignore condescending, self-congratuatory lectures berating my management skills, especially given that I've survived significantly MORE hardships than any of the pampered men in that room through conditions that would have crushed them all.  I am not a child, nor are my adult students who, by all rights, should know how to behave themselves better.  But I just sort of grinned and bore it, hating them all.  (Of course, if they'd like to pay me to behave like a well-mannered professional in the face of open disrespect and brutal hardship, I'd be happy to open negotiations on this matter.)

Then the school councilor informed me that my emotions had "gotten the better of me".  Actually, what happened was more along the lines of a strategic withdrawal, (disregarded) requests for reinforcements, followed a power move designed to instill fear and respect.  I had the intelligence not to point this out at the time, but I wonder if I would have gotten the "emotions" lecture if I were not female.

Isn't that nauseating?  It's like when someone gets sexually harassed at work and the company moves to protect itself rather than address the grievance of the sufferer.  It's like...just one more thing for me to be adversarial against these days.  My own company, with its own councilor's office, designed to help facilitate student-teacher relations.  The hand that feeds me...why not?  Join the 50 Front War, folks!!

You know why my company berated me as it did?  The bottom line.  That's all they were thinking of--next term's enrollment numbers.  My boss even said so to my face--"We have re-entry fees to think of.  You need to reconcile."  As if I owe any fealty to this place.  As though corporate team spirit is even possible under conditions like these.

Lumps of Human Flesh, Shreds of Humanity

You see, in the degrading world of TEFL, you are an expendable lump of human flesh.  Your worth is reduced to dollars per hour, and you are so worthless, even your health is not worth protecting.  (I'm still blind in my left eye due to a bout of dengue fever in May.)  Your own boss will look you in the face and prioritize re-enrollment numbers over your inherent dignity, health, and well-being...meanwhile giving himself a raise while you struggle to survive below the US poverty line.

I'm not a naive fool.  I knew what it was all about going in, and I know it now.  I knew it when I was robbed of my own most precious object for a mere $25.  I knew it when my parents left me to die here.  I knew it when Chinese moms publicly shredded me at every opportunity, and I knew it when I struggled to force my dying body out of bed for months on end so that I could afford to eat while my thyroid had died.  No one cared for me then, because I am a mere object with no monetary value.  So I'm not in the least surprised that my own company, for whom I have worked for years, would naturally side with shitty, low-quality students whose parents make far more money than I do.

But oh, how I resent it.

We are NOTHING in this world, and working in TEFL really pushes you face to face with that.  NOT a recommended career choice.

LOL.  OK, wow.  

Sorry for that.  I know I'm supposed to be happy and upbeat all the time, because that's the only way I'm legitimately worth listening to, right?  So, sorry for the anti-everything rant.

In the end, I went back to that stupid class, bitched and moaned to my fellow teachers, and just sort of let the students educate themselves without me lifting a finger.  They finished their final exam today, and justice will be administered in some form, even if it's only me taking off points for excessive absences and excessive lateness. 

Not that it will matter when their parents pay the admin to advance them to the next level anyway.

Cambodia - 93289493 / Holyrockthrower - 0

It's official.

After 3 years of managing classrooms solely according to my own resources--through thick and thin, through debilitating illness, through political crises and institutional takeovers--I have finally been forced to resort to using "higher powers".

Generally, I tend to take the attitude that I am the highest authority, and whatever the tangled rest of the organization says or does is strangely irrelevant to me.  I do not refer students to higher powers--I simply deal with them "as is".  If they're crappy, I kick them out or enforce my own consequences.  Likewise, I habitually ignore missives handed down to me by the bureaucracy designed to tell me how to run my class.

That's my general way of handling things--I'm a dictator.

And today I finally met my match.

It built up slowly--

- students disregarding me telling them not to speak Khmer, to refer to me as "Miss Liz", and to turn phones off
- students habitually coming 30 minutes late
- students dragging class time out by chatting during assignments
- absentee rate of over 50% on most days
- locking me out on one occasion
- not doing homework or falsifying efforts
- talking when I was

And pretty much everything else you'd expect from an audience 15 years younger.  Sheesh, I haven't had conduct problems this bad since teaching spoiled kids in China, and even then, there were two teachers to handle it.

Tonight, every time I turned my back to the board to write something, I heard giggling.  Whispering.  Khmer.  I'd turn around and tell them to stop...then it would start back up.  Literally the second I turned my head back around.

After an extremely frustrating 5-minute buildup, I threatened to kick them out or leave myself.  When the class uniformly responded by giggling yet again, I realized walking out was about the only move left to me.

This, for some reason, brought forth gales of (rather derisive) laughter after my back was turned.

So, I kicked down the door and told them off (not using bad words incidentally).  Mainly to scare them into realizing what miserable little shits they were being.  Immature, I know, but not nearly as immature as the response of least one person, who informed me, "Fuck you."

And so that's why my supervisors got a phone call from me today.  The lesson from this is, yet again, Treat people like the shit they are.  They deserve it.

No way in hell is a single one of those kids passing the final exam.  No way.  What utterly useless human rubbish.
 

My Internet.

I have lots of stuff that I want to update.

I've managed to upload my Sri Lanka pictures and have about 20 backdated that will one day be published.  My main problem is internet access--I'm on for a couple of hours two or three times a week, and I generally spend that time doing what's already piled up while I was gone.

This, of course, is because I was robbed in June.  Do understand that.

There's also increasing social turmoil here, which, again, being deprived of reliable internet access, I haven't really been able to report on, or even read much about.  But, I'd like to do a few entries on that as well.

Other than that, all is quiet on the Cambodian front.  The main problem I'm dealing with these days is that, since my return, prices appear to have doubled yet again, effectively eliminating my lunches at the Blue Pumpkin.  Note that I have not received a raise at work, despite the fact that I've worked at this institution for 3 years every day under abominable conditions.  Precisely why I'm ready to move on.

And that's a wrap.