It's very hot today. It's one of those humid, sticky days that suck your shirt against your skin and turn the palms of your hands into clammy slabs of meat.
I woke up hot and cranky. I've been having more and more trouble with sleep, because my airconditioner blows right over my bed (and I can't rearrange my room to obviate this problem--the room's too small); if I put it on low cool, it's still blowing grit and mold over me so that I wake up with a stuffy head, dizzy and confused. If I put it on fan, it doesn't cool me enough to allow me to sleep well AND I still wake up with a stuffy head, dizzy and confused. I've tried going without the airconditioning, and besides the fact that I'm wicked hot, I don't have the white(ish) noise I need to block out the frogs, roosters, turkeys (I'm now convinced there's one of two of the buggers just underneath my window), human beings, dogs and cats that make all sorts of noise well past the midnight hour.
A few days ago, I woke up confused and dizzy, and my ears hurt--prelude to an ear infection? Heaven forbid! The last time I got one of those, the eardrum burst and snot water leaked out all over the place. So this is why toddlers scream, I thought, then, in a haze of sympathy. Their brains are literally melting.
Yesterday, I remembered that I'd brought some over the counter Zyrtec with me and decided to use it again, even if it does make me a little giddy and--I'd actually forgotten until this side effect until this morning--dehydrated. But even with the Zyrtec-clone, I finished my second class today with one of those right-eyeball-jellifying headaches that I've always thought of as sinus-related.
Furthermore, the apartment complex gave us a notice yesterday that today they'd be bombing all the apartments with pesticide, and that we needed to put all our food into the fridge and vacate the premises for the duration of the "treatment." I loaded the fridge to the gills and, this afternoon, while unloading it again, managed to drop the black pepper and break the glass container, so that pepper shot all over the floor.
The point of this long rambling whine is that I'm hot, cranky, constipated, headachy, sticky, and possibly poisoned. Not to mention peppered.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Suicidal Lizard
We had a suicidal lizard on our hands. It jumped off the top floor. At least we think it was a lizard.
Yes some unidentified jumping object jumped off the top floor right before our eyes and it landed to the ground. We think it was a liz
ard that committed suicide. We aren't sure 'cause it flew by really fast. So I'm going to take this blog entry to commemorate our lizard friend. This is what I believe it would look like.
I don't know why the lizard wanted to go. Maybe it was depressed, I don't know. Maybe if I was a lizard, even for a day. I'd be able to see what was wrong with Shay. (I named the lizard Shay). Having a little lizard friend is fun for awhile. But not to the lizard itself sometimes, pooping on the tile. I don't know why but I have to make this ending rhyme, it only seems better than giving this dead lizard a dime. I hope this lizard is happier wherever it maybe. Whether its floating in the ocean, or sitting in a tree. I just hope its happy up in lizard heaven. If not, I don't know why it jumped off the top floor.
In honor of the Suicidal Lizard, Shay.
Lizzie :*-(
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Sound of Rain
Lizzie didn't have school today--I think because the president of the country, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (aka GMA), is giving her (last) State of the Nation Address (aka SONA). But it could also have something to do with the hard rain that came around 11 AM. Beng says it's because they want to prevent students from organizing protests during the Address.
But if they're in school, aren't they less likely to be able to organize?
I've tried to capture the sound and sight of rain. Here's this morning's show:
Just as I set the movie up to load, it began to pour again. Whenever it rains, the signal strength for the internet becomes iffy. In fact, it just dropped down to a 10th of its speed and strength.
Right now, it's quite busy in the breezeway where we all hook up to the world wide web. A group of women is watching a Spanish movie on a computer at one end; another woman is working on what appears to be a big stack of homework on my other side. The guard and the housekeepers just turned off GMA's SONA (I heard the announcer say "126 applause during the speech" before they switched it off)--they had it going on the TV behind me.
GMA's gown, a brilliant (some might say violent) shade of raspberry, did not flatter her figure. It had stiff, puffy sleeves that rose up on either side of her narrow shoulders like armor plates, and a thick tangly fringe reminiscent of a rebozo in the square cut neck. I know. Yes. I am a shallow, shallow person for fixating on GMA's outsides rather than the text of her speech (I heard her say "they were called to serve their country, but instead they served themselves," and then a wave of applause and a pan of the audience--ringers? I wondered, given GMA's low popularity ratings in the newspapers).
And...it looks as if my upload of the film has been successful. Huzzah!
But if they're in school, aren't they less likely to be able to organize?
I've tried to capture the sound and sight of rain. Here's this morning's show:
Just as I set the movie up to load, it began to pour again. Whenever it rains, the signal strength for the internet becomes iffy. In fact, it just dropped down to a 10th of its speed and strength.
Right now, it's quite busy in the breezeway where we all hook up to the world wide web. A group of women is watching a Spanish movie on a computer at one end; another woman is working on what appears to be a big stack of homework on my other side. The guard and the housekeepers just turned off GMA's SONA (I heard the announcer say "126 applause during the speech" before they switched it off)--they had it going on the TV behind me.
GMA's gown, a brilliant (some might say violent) shade of raspberry, did not flatter her figure. It had stiff, puffy sleeves that rose up on either side of her narrow shoulders like armor plates, and a thick tangly fringe reminiscent of a rebozo in the square cut neck. I know. Yes. I am a shallow, shallow person for fixating on GMA's outsides rather than the text of her speech (I heard her say "they were called to serve their country, but instead they served themselves," and then a wave of applause and a pan of the audience--ringers? I wondered, given GMA's low popularity ratings in the newspapers).
And...it looks as if my upload of the film has been successful. Huzzah!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
My Bus Driver
Here is a personal assignment I have given to myself to tell you all about my bus driver. Enjoy.
My bus driver never ceases to amuse me. His definition of "on time" is usually 10-30 minutes late. And when he picks me up, extremely late, he just smiles and says, "Hi, ma'am!" to my mother and then lightly pushes me into the back of the bus and drives off as if he has done nothing wrong. Usually I'm extremely ticked at my bus driver's poor internal clock. But the thing that amuses me the most is when he has to pick up my bus mate, Princess, he comes at exactly the same lateness as he does when he doesn't have her. When its just me, its later. One time, I was all alone while my mom got her spiffy new ID card, my bus driver came 10 minutes early. What kind of bus driver is this. He can never come at the correct time in which he is supposed to come. I'm glad we didn't have the bus come at 11:30. Or else I would be extremely late for school. I'm also glad that I don't have the same bus driver coming home or I'd be home at 6:30 instead of the normal 5:45-6:00. But once my afternoon bus driver came half an hour late. So this is why I am oh so very glad to be within walking distance of my school. (At home). At least I know my feet won't be 10-30 minutes late.
Bye peoples!
Lizzie >:-[
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Stage Two
Sorry if I've been a little taciturn lately (in other words, if you've checked for a new entry, expecting my usual verbal diarrhea, and have been disappointed). In truth, I've been struggling with ugly feelings and haven't wanted to share them.
I wanted to embark on this adventure because I knew I needed a change. Perhaps it's the cliched midlife crisis--I'll turn 45 next month and, assuming 90 to be a ripe old age for anyone, that puts me right at the halfway point--and I need to shake up the usual in order to feel as if I'm really living, or perhaps I really did want to get out of Green Bay in order to explore the rest of the world, to feel that I was still connected to it, or maybe I wanted to recapture some of that high school buzz I felt living in Mexico, getting a whole new perspective on the "American" experience.
I wanted, too, to think of myself as cosmopolitan, a woman of the world, to remind myself that I'm not a stodgy middle class white woman who takes her privilege for granted. In other words, I wanted to think of myself as a good person.
But I can't think of myself as a good person when I walk down the streets with a black clot of despair and anger and even repulsion roiling in my brain. And that's what I've been carrying for the last two or three weeks, an intermittent, pulsing center of disgust and rejection, along with waves of homesickness and fear. I remember the Army brats at the American School in Mexico, angry kids who swore and spat out their hatred for my adopted country between long drags on their cigarettes and pulls on the bottle. I never wanted to be like them, mired in self importance and entitlement, full of loathing for anything new or different, "ugly Americans" to the core.
Surfing the internet yields the stages of culture shock: stage one is the honeymoon phase, when everything is exotic, new, exciting. Stage two is the negotiation phase, when 60% of those of us in new cultures begin to compare and contrast, and to reject. We might withdraw into small communities of like-minded compatriots, to feel depression and repulsion for aspects of the new culture, to dream of returning (immediately) to the familiar. This stage is characterized by the fear of doing wrong, the self consciousness of difference, feelings of rejection and anger. Some of us never make it out of this phase, becoming Rejectors. Stage three, if one gets there, the adjustment phase, is either assimilation, or adoption, rejection or cosmopolitanism.
Of course I don't want to be a rejector--rejectors have the hardest time, even when they do go home (reverse culture shock on reentry is the worst for these folks). I don't want to be one of those people who has to drink herself into oblivion, or smoke herself into a stupor, one of those women who barely lives and, because she's so miserable, makes everyone around her as wretched. And I don't necessarily want to disappear into a new culture, to assimilate perfectly. Either way, I don't want to lose myself. I want to be better, bigger, a cosmopolitan, able to sort through all the cultures I've experienced to enjoy them all while retaining a core identity.
But I'm feeling all these rejector feelings (which I didn't even want to admit to you all, which is why I've been reluctant to write anything real down, except in emails to those who know me best). These feelings play themselves out on the level of sight and smell (as, if I'm honest with myself, they did in Mexico, too), but smell particularly. Is that because the sense of smell is the most primal of our senses? In any case, for the last few weeks I've been overwhelmed by smells here: Jeepney smoke, a black pall that hovers over the street; the mold and dust of the air conditioner, sour and dizzying; human excrement; thick woodsmoke; armpit sweat; rotting garbage; overripe fruit; stinging laundry detergent; moldy sink rags; dirty hair; cheesy feet; fried foods; raw meats in the hot market air; cigarette smoke; the skim of snot at the back of my throat. That many of these smells emanate from myself makes little difference--actually, if anything, it makes my feelings of disgust worse.
The other thing that's happening is that I'm keeping my head down. I don't want to catch people (strangers) in the eye. Eye contact feels invasive, dangerous. So I watch my feet as I walk, creating a little world in front of me for myself only. At the same time, I feel the rudeness of my little world, my attempt to put up an invisible shield, and it pains me.
I won't say that I want to come home immediately. It's not that dire. But I am aware that we're nearly halfway through our stay here, and will admit that the thought gives me comfort. Perhaps the knowledge that our visit is only for 4 months makes me more likely to stay in the second stage of culture shock, negotiating, isolating myself, failing to learn much of the new language; knowing that we'd be living in Mexico for at least two years forced me to find my place there, my peace, to see the good. But I did, on reflection, spend quite a bit of time hidden (alone) in my room, reading whatever I could get my hands on--but, particularly, schlocky American novels and trashy romances. And there were smells and sights there that still haunt me, that can't be expiated by poetry, fiction, talk or time.
I guess the worst feeling of this second stage is the self consciousness, the paranoia of the uninitiated, the obvious outsider. I've always wanted to belong, I suppose.
And the flashback to high school. It's painful to feel like that lost young woman again, trying to find her voice in both a new culture and (what she couldn't name) an oppressive patriarchy determined to shape her voice to suit its pleasures. Does anyone out there want to relive his or her high school experience? I hope not.
I wanted to embark on this adventure because I knew I needed a change. Perhaps it's the cliched midlife crisis--I'll turn 45 next month and, assuming 90 to be a ripe old age for anyone, that puts me right at the halfway point--and I need to shake up the usual in order to feel as if I'm really living, or perhaps I really did want to get out of Green Bay in order to explore the rest of the world, to feel that I was still connected to it, or maybe I wanted to recapture some of that high school buzz I felt living in Mexico, getting a whole new perspective on the "American" experience.
I wanted, too, to think of myself as cosmopolitan, a woman of the world, to remind myself that I'm not a stodgy middle class white woman who takes her privilege for granted. In other words, I wanted to think of myself as a good person.
But I can't think of myself as a good person when I walk down the streets with a black clot of despair and anger and even repulsion roiling in my brain. And that's what I've been carrying for the last two or three weeks, an intermittent, pulsing center of disgust and rejection, along with waves of homesickness and fear. I remember the Army brats at the American School in Mexico, angry kids who swore and spat out their hatred for my adopted country between long drags on their cigarettes and pulls on the bottle. I never wanted to be like them, mired in self importance and entitlement, full of loathing for anything new or different, "ugly Americans" to the core.
Surfing the internet yields the stages of culture shock: stage one is the honeymoon phase, when everything is exotic, new, exciting. Stage two is the negotiation phase, when 60% of those of us in new cultures begin to compare and contrast, and to reject. We might withdraw into small communities of like-minded compatriots, to feel depression and repulsion for aspects of the new culture, to dream of returning (immediately) to the familiar. This stage is characterized by the fear of doing wrong, the self consciousness of difference, feelings of rejection and anger. Some of us never make it out of this phase, becoming Rejectors. Stage three, if one gets there, the adjustment phase, is either assimilation, or adoption, rejection or cosmopolitanism.
Of course I don't want to be a rejector--rejectors have the hardest time, even when they do go home (reverse culture shock on reentry is the worst for these folks). I don't want to be one of those people who has to drink herself into oblivion, or smoke herself into a stupor, one of those women who barely lives and, because she's so miserable, makes everyone around her as wretched. And I don't necessarily want to disappear into a new culture, to assimilate perfectly. Either way, I don't want to lose myself. I want to be better, bigger, a cosmopolitan, able to sort through all the cultures I've experienced to enjoy them all while retaining a core identity.
But I'm feeling all these rejector feelings (which I didn't even want to admit to you all, which is why I've been reluctant to write anything real down, except in emails to those who know me best). These feelings play themselves out on the level of sight and smell (as, if I'm honest with myself, they did in Mexico, too), but smell particularly. Is that because the sense of smell is the most primal of our senses? In any case, for the last few weeks I've been overwhelmed by smells here: Jeepney smoke, a black pall that hovers over the street; the mold and dust of the air conditioner, sour and dizzying; human excrement; thick woodsmoke; armpit sweat; rotting garbage; overripe fruit; stinging laundry detergent; moldy sink rags; dirty hair; cheesy feet; fried foods; raw meats in the hot market air; cigarette smoke; the skim of snot at the back of my throat. That many of these smells emanate from myself makes little difference--actually, if anything, it makes my feelings of disgust worse.
The other thing that's happening is that I'm keeping my head down. I don't want to catch people (strangers) in the eye. Eye contact feels invasive, dangerous. So I watch my feet as I walk, creating a little world in front of me for myself only. At the same time, I feel the rudeness of my little world, my attempt to put up an invisible shield, and it pains me.
I won't say that I want to come home immediately. It's not that dire. But I am aware that we're nearly halfway through our stay here, and will admit that the thought gives me comfort. Perhaps the knowledge that our visit is only for 4 months makes me more likely to stay in the second stage of culture shock, negotiating, isolating myself, failing to learn much of the new language; knowing that we'd be living in Mexico for at least two years forced me to find my place there, my peace, to see the good. But I did, on reflection, spend quite a bit of time hidden (alone) in my room, reading whatever I could get my hands on--but, particularly, schlocky American novels and trashy romances. And there were smells and sights there that still haunt me, that can't be expiated by poetry, fiction, talk or time.
I guess the worst feeling of this second stage is the self consciousness, the paranoia of the uninitiated, the obvious outsider. I've always wanted to belong, I suppose.
And the flashback to high school. It's painful to feel like that lost young woman again, trying to find her voice in both a new culture and (what she couldn't name) an oppressive patriarchy determined to shape her voice to suit its pleasures. Does anyone out there want to relive his or her high school experience? I hope not.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Reading Jane in Manila
There's probably something perverse in this, but I've been compelled to reread Jane Austen here. I've made my way through Pride and Prejuice and Sense and Sensibility already (and have watched the BBC version of P & P) and am working through Mansfield Park now. On the shelf yet to read, I've got Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Lizzie bought me Emma for a birthday a few years ago, and it's still sitting on my shelf at home, waiting, so I haven't invested in a Manila copy. Yet. I think I'll crack, though, because the BBC version of the novel waits for me on DVD.
I've always loved Austen, even if some of her sentences leave me scratching my head, and even if the social intricacies of her small, drawing room worlds are as claustral as stuffy old closets filled with Great-great-great Grandma's boots. I'm even willing to forgive Mr. Bennet for his misguided words of caution to Elizabeth, when he suggests that she won't be happy in a marriage with a man she can't respect as her "superior," especially because I know that Lizzy gives as good as she gets, reinventing the term "saucy" even when she beats herself up (unnecessarily) for telling Mr. Darcy where to get off.
What is it about these old novels of manners, set in a country I've never visited, depressingly upper class, marooned in the past, that call to me here? Why do I feel safer when I'm ensconsed in a Bennet bedroom with Lizzy and her self-effacing sister than when I'm walking home, up the main drag, after a rousing class on Zora Neale Hurston or Langston Hughes?
Is this the ultimate escape, the circular story, the talking cure?
Am I trying to lose myself in another century, a forgotten set of problems (marry or not marry = central female narrative), a simpler set of expedients?
Does it help to watch these forgotten women wrangle the social conventions for a little piece of the pie, dearly bought, and realize that my world is so radically different from theirs--that my ability to speak my desire, to set the parameters of my marriage, to work in a job that I love, to teach and to write, to go where I want to go when I want to go there, alone or in company--that I live in a world Jane Austen could never imagine?
If we were to transport Jane here using a time machine, she'd probably blow a gasket. (In Mansfield Park, the heroine is appalled that her family plans to put on a play in the living room. It's so "inappropriate"! Trouble on wheels. As I read these passages, I cluck to myself. I know I'm supposed to think Miss Crawford is a total bitch for wanting to be in the play, and for convincing the hunky male lead to play opposite her in it despite his best moral principles, but I can't help but go against Austen and her priggish heroine as I delight in his shattering conservatism.)
Am I using these novels both to revel in the familiar AND to feel a superiority to these women and their impotence, their inability to navigate or escape the suffocating social strictures of their times? Do I like watching the cultural insiders blow up as surely as I do, daily, as a cultural outsider?
Maybe I'm just clinging to the familiar, the soap opera, the cheap romance--perhaps it's as plebian as that.
I've always loved Austen, even if some of her sentences leave me scratching my head, and even if the social intricacies of her small, drawing room worlds are as claustral as stuffy old closets filled with Great-great-great Grandma's boots. I'm even willing to forgive Mr. Bennet for his misguided words of caution to Elizabeth, when he suggests that she won't be happy in a marriage with a man she can't respect as her "superior," especially because I know that Lizzy gives as good as she gets, reinventing the term "saucy" even when she beats herself up (unnecessarily) for telling Mr. Darcy where to get off.
What is it about these old novels of manners, set in a country I've never visited, depressingly upper class, marooned in the past, that call to me here? Why do I feel safer when I'm ensconsed in a Bennet bedroom with Lizzy and her self-effacing sister than when I'm walking home, up the main drag, after a rousing class on Zora Neale Hurston or Langston Hughes?
Is this the ultimate escape, the circular story, the talking cure?
Am I trying to lose myself in another century, a forgotten set of problems (marry or not marry = central female narrative), a simpler set of expedients?
Does it help to watch these forgotten women wrangle the social conventions for a little piece of the pie, dearly bought, and realize that my world is so radically different from theirs--that my ability to speak my desire, to set the parameters of my marriage, to work in a job that I love, to teach and to write, to go where I want to go when I want to go there, alone or in company--that I live in a world Jane Austen could never imagine?
If we were to transport Jane here using a time machine, she'd probably blow a gasket. (In Mansfield Park, the heroine is appalled that her family plans to put on a play in the living room. It's so "inappropriate"! Trouble on wheels. As I read these passages, I cluck to myself. I know I'm supposed to think Miss Crawford is a total bitch for wanting to be in the play, and for convincing the hunky male lead to play opposite her in it despite his best moral principles, but I can't help but go against Austen and her priggish heroine as I delight in his shattering conservatism.)
Am I using these novels both to revel in the familiar AND to feel a superiority to these women and their impotence, their inability to navigate or escape the suffocating social strictures of their times? Do I like watching the cultural insiders blow up as surely as I do, daily, as a cultural outsider?
Maybe I'm just clinging to the familiar, the soap opera, the cheap romance--perhaps it's as plebian as that.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Rain vs. Snow
On Thursday, I relearned that Doko ni masu ka? in Japanese means Where are we? And classes where suspended after 15 minutes because it was raining. Fun.
I guess its a nice change getting classes suspended because of rain. I mean if it rained like this in Wisconsin they would just tell us to suck it up. But I bet if a blizzard started when we where in school, the stupid superintendent would say: 'It's safer if they stay here.' Like they do when most kids almost get frostbite walking to school. I don't like this superintendent. He doesn't make any good decisions AND on most days when it's too cold or the snow is up to our calfs and still going strong, we still have to go to school. I think he's trying to torture us. I bet he wouldn't care if we all got hypothermia. I also bet that if it rained so hard that the streets flooded and the rain was still going strong, he would wait until it was too late and our parents/ caretakers/ buses couldn't get us. So we'd all have to walk. We'd get sick. But would he care? No. Just shows what the superintendent knows.
Sayonara! ăăăȘă！
Lizzie ;-P
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