New Beginnings, Hard Endings

The city of Thimphu is growing rapidly, and there are many new buildings under construction.  Bhutan has a standard building code to preserve the culture, and therefore the buildings all look similar.  The foundations of the buildings are laid with bamboo, the cement is poured, and the carpentry is completed in what feels like no time.  Much of the work is contacted out to workers from India who sometimes work into the night using large lamps.

Today I hopped into a cab to go to town and grade some tests in a peaceful coffee shop.  The weather was drab.  The cab diver who picked me up was very friendly and smiled as he asked me where I wanted to go.

“I am going to Clocktower la”

We got a few blocks from my home, and I happened to glance out the window at one of the new buildings being constructed.  Something was weird.  I thought I saw a man working, but something made me look more closely.

The muted, clay colors of the unfinished building faded into the overcast sky, until all I could see was a lifeless body at the end of a rope.  I held my next breath inside me, feeling far too many things to attempt to make sense of.  The morning was silent, and the swaying motion of the body rocking in the breeze, almost suggested a feeling of calmness.

I noticed a second man climbing the bamboo to reach the body.  I said nothing to the cab driver who was watching the road and still wore a smile.

I have heard nothing of the incident.  Perhaps the man climbing the bamboo is the only other person who knows the gentleman did not accidentally fall to his death.

Is Mousetrap a Buddhist Game? (The Follow-Up)

I asked many people I know about mousetraps.  One student told me that mice are why Bhutanese have cats.  I need to choose between cat allergies and mice.  The mice will stay.

Today was long.  The dead body and the dog attack put me on edge (I will explain later).  I went into my bathroom to get cleaned up and brush my teeth.  Then I saw him.  My guest returned.  Better yet, the mouse hadn’t left.  We stared at each other.  I shrugged a “what to do” sigh and decided I would chase him out of my bedroom after I was ready for bed.

When I was cozy in jammies, I turned the place upside down, digging through the suitcases under my bed with the intention of coaxing the little guy into his own private bedroom or kitchen for the night. 

I spent an hour shuffling though things to find him.  By 2:30am, I gave up and hopped into bed, tired and over it.  The second I pulled the covers under my chin, my friend scurried across the floor and under my bed where I had been looking all along.  I was too tired to move.

I let him stay. Now I am never lonely and I think the thought of sharing my room has grown on me. We now have pillow talk and play sleepover games.  I even let him invite his friends to crash at my place.  Maybe I am a good host, or maybe I am losing it.

It is impossible to feel lonely with all these house guests

I have been stomach bug free for 12 hours now.  This is happy news.  Tonight I sat on a step between my living room and kitchen.  (The floor of my apartment is concrete like the walls, so some of the rooms are built a step above the concrete with wooden floors for heat.)  I laid my papers out all over the floor, and graded.

From any given seat in my house, you can typically see 2-3 creepy crawlies.  They are usually the little bugs we call silver fish.  Tonight, there was a spider… a big guy.  I tried to pretend he didn’t exist until he totally pushed the limits and just got too damn close to me.

I typically never kill spiders.  This is not due to religious reasons or any other valid purpose.  I am just too scared to get near them.  This quick beast was an exception and I did not want him to be one of the 9 spiders I swallow in a year (because we all know this sixth grade fact is true).  Though the spider was probably no larger than a silver dollar, it seemed as though it could take down a baby giraffe.

The apartment wasn’t big enough for the two of us and he just had to die.  Seeing as though I misplaced my numchucks, I grabbed my handheld broom.

A swing and a miss.

I grabbed a cardboard box, which doubled for my trashcan, because the American in me knows the bigger the weapons, the more problems they solve.

“One, two, three draw.”  I went in for the mush, but my lack of commitment sent both the spider and I screaming and racing in opposite directions.  He won as he ran and hid underneath the stack of test papers I was grading.  That was it!  I needed to shank him.

I tapped the papers with the broom until I coaxed him into a vulnerable position.  When he was right where I wanted him, I smothered him with the box.  I then took to sweeping his tiny shriveled body outside, not wanting to run the risk of throwing him in the trash in case he was just playing opossum.

I went into my bathroom and jerry-rigged the broken switch of my water heater using a shiny heart sticker to keep it in place.  I was happy at the thought of a hot shower.

I went back into he other room to continue grading while the water heated up.  The dogs began to serenade me from outside when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  I looked up and a mouse ran across the cold cement floor into my kitchen.  I pondered what I could use to trap him.  Nothing.  I shut the kitchen door, locked the outside latch, and shoved the broom/ weapon under the crack at the bottom of the door.  As long as we had our own rooms, he could stay the night.  In a Buddhist country that hardly sells fly swatters, I have no idea where the hell I will find a mousetrap.

My grading session was over.  I needed something familiar.  As we have all done at one time or another, I escaped my house guests by retreating to the porcelain throne.  As I sat and waited for my water heater to heat, I hoped my guests had enough manners to know that bathrooms are a place of privacy.

If I Steal A Bhutanese Kid To Bring Home To The US, It Will Be This Guy

Class was about to begin as students filed into their seats.  At a distance I saw a fifth grade student hiding and peering around a corner.  He was watching the stairs carefully.  As his math teacher walked up the stairs and into the fifth grade classroom the student bolted down the steps and made a run for it.

I have been told that the student has been “left to his own devices”, and he “gets to do whatever he wants”.    Teachers tell me he is “very, very naughty”.  I think some teachers still don’t realize I am actually a special ed teacher in the US and the kid would be my student.  I asked his mother if I could tutor him at his house.  The first day I showed up, he was maaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.  He made it perfectly clear with the silent treatment that he did not want to practice reading.  The second day he hid somewhere in the house for 20 minutes before coming out to work.

Today I walked into English class and assigned a writing journal.  The student did not open his journal to write.  I sat down next to him and said in a firm, loving tone.  “Your friends are writing!  You are smart.  Do not pretend you cannot do this because I know better!  You are smart and you will write like your friends!”

The student wrote three sentences in his journal.  When he was finished he looked up at me.  He knew I would be coming to his house to tutor him after school.  He smiled and said, “Madam, today is ours!”

“Yes.  Today is ours.  I am proud of you.”

At our tutoring session, I told the fifth grade student that I laughed a little as he just escaped the wrath of his math teacher.  I told him it would be our little secret as long as he never played hooky in my class.  He is proud to be learning how to read, add, and subtract!

Update: He has passed 2 out of the 2 midterms he has taken so far, and he is currently trying to convince me he needs a day off because he is doing so well now.  I just tell him, “TODAY IS OURS.”

You Know You Are in Bhutan When: Limited Edition

Against my will, I am forced to grade my little children primarily on test scores.  So, in the spirit of midterms week, I have taken to ranking everything on a scale of 1 to whatever I see fit.

The flies here are large.  On a scale of 1 to large enough to shoot with a bow and arrow, the flies rank…

BB gun.

The King loves a good game of Basketball.  On a scale of 1 to everyone else in the country loves it too, K5’s love for basketball ranks…

Please start loving phonetic literacy curriculum.

I have a stomach bug.  On a scale of 1 to crap attack, the stomach bug ranks…

Whatever you do, don’t fart.

I was on the toilet for hours with the stomach bug, when my facebook news feed posted a million pictures of my ex and his recently divorced roommate at all our old favorite hang outs.  On scale of 1 to bummer, the ex and his new gf ranked…

F*** You.

Some monks here are the naughty kids whose parents sent them into the monastic school system a long time ago.  On a scale of 1 to holy, these monks rank…

Even more entertaining to eye f***.

I was speaking in Dzongkha with a friend, and he laughed because I accidentally told him, “I have an extremely itchy ass”.  On a scale of 1 to socially inappropriate, not looking like an idiot ranked…

A high priority when I found myself intensely scratching my butt to defend my Dzongkha abilities.

Moments later, instead of offering him water, I screwed up one letter and accidentally offered him “female genitalia”.  On a scale of 1 to confusing, Dzongkha ranks…

If you know men, I bet you know what he answered.

I learned from my students how to correctly eat with my hands without tipping my head back and instead use my thumb to shove the rice into my mouth.  On a scale of 1 to honorary Bhutanese, when it comes to eating with my hands, I rank…

Shimbe.

I have still not seen the thunder dragon.  On a scale of 1 to he doesn’t exist, the thunder dragon ranks…

I should drink more homemade ara.

Put GNH in Your Pipe And Smoke It... Is Gross National Happiness the Good Stuff?

Today I sprawled out naked in a warm, sunny patch of mother earth’s gift.  The bed of pigs' food got me high through osmosis.  Okay, this is a lie, but it sounds scrumptious.

On a serious note, the marijuana is EVERYWHERE!  On an even more serious note, it is also cross pollinated.  These two facts say it all.  To those of you who do not “do marijuana”, don't feel dorky.  I will have you know, I joined your club a few years back, after “doing” plenty of it in college.  Basically, what I am getting at, for those of you who don’t know, is that when the plant is cross pollinated, it is crappy bud.

Which brings me to GNH.  Are we all high on life here in Bhutan?  Sometimes I look at the large quantities of the non-harvestable pigs' food and smile.  Maybe it is not such a bad thing if we just create things that sound good or are aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Freedom of Speech

As a relatively crude writer and definitely no saint in the swearing department, I sometimes let my students write and say whatever the hell they want.  I am entertained, and Bhutan would benefit from a more liberal take on freedom of speech and press anyways.

My sixth grade students are just discovering the art of cursing and harassing others.

Last week, we played the game "Concentration" using parts of speech.  My students kept a snapping rhythm while giving examples of proper nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc.  When we got to verbs, the game got about half way around the circle as the students took turns calling out verbs such as, ”kicking”, “eating”, etc.  Then a clever student of mine pulled out the big guns.

In Dzongkha, he said, “F***ing.”

I replied in Dzongkha, “I understand what you said.”  The students laughed as the trouble causer cringed.  Next I replied, “if it were not a verb, I would be mad!”

I am a bad teacher.

The day following, a sixth grade girl raised her hand and told me that the boy next to her kept saying dirty things in Dzongkha.  This is what I told the young lad.  “Hey, this is English class, so come on up in the front of the class and say it in English to all of us.  Then go into the bathroom and say it another hundred times aloud.  After you get it out of your system, you may realize it is a stupid thing to say.”  The kid said nothing.  As I continued encouraging him to come on up and say the dirty phrase in English, he sunk deeper into his chair.  Sometimes I like to play, “Who’s horrified now?”

Freedom of Speech.

I have another student who has been trying to test the waters lately to see how much I will take when it comes to writing.  The problem is, I cannot tell him to clean up his act because his writing is just too damn funny.  Last week he wrote from the perspective of a stray dog who was exhausted upon just being born.  The student claimed “anyone would be tired if they had just popped out of an ass”.

I called the student over during free time to chat about the journal entry.  I had no choice but to say, “Hey, you do know that babies don’t come out of asses right?”

“Yes mam.”

“Okay, just checking.  You can continue playing.”

Today we wrote about time machines and the same student said if he had a time machine he would do two things.  First he would travel back in time to moments before Michael Jackson died.  He wrote, “I would slap him in the face for using all the drugs.”  He next wrote that he would then travel to the future to see if he had a wife, and if he was so idiotic, he would break it up.

Freedom of press. 

Let’s just say I try really hard to not pick favorites.