Everything happens in April

At least that’s how it’s felt over the past 24 days. How is it not already May? The most important task for the month of April was completing my thesis. I was on track — and some said even ahead of the game — to do so. But I had also planned a rather spontaneous long-weekend trip to Paris to visit Danielle. I tried not to publicize this too much in my grad school circle. My thesis advisor found out about my travel plans the day before I left. He wished me a pleasant trip, as well as the ability to type feverishly over the 8-hour flight.

Paris was exactly what I needed in every way. I loved living with Danielle and Amelia again, even if it was in the smallest (but most adorable) apartment I’ve ever seen. We were roommates senior year of college, and my only regret from that year is that we did not cook together nearly enough. This time, we cooked all but one dinner in Danielle’s apartment, mostly out of frugality but also out of our deprived-American desire for French dinner parties.

wining in the sunshine

April has also had the worst spring weather in my recent memory. I never remember this much rain or this many 45-degree days anywhere that I’ve lived, including Pittsburgh. But France is having a much different story. All five days that my skin had the privilege of being in the Parisian sun, it was 75 degrees and perfect. We literally napped in a park while children chased ducks and rode ponies. Do you see how this could be refreshing for a graduate student who has not had a break like this in literally two years?

paris in bloom

Amelia and I landed in Paris at 8am after a sleepless flight from Pittsburgh. We fought the desire to nap by walking what felt like the entire length of Paris. We saw the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, but I didn’t take any pictures partly out of exhaustion and partly out of snobbery (we’ve been there before…duh.) I think the majority of our time in Paris was spent in parks and grocery stores. Like I said, we cooked a lot, and we wanted to take advantage of the French bread, wine, and cheese that just doesn’t taste the same back home. We went to one museum, the Musee Rodin, where we only paid the 1 euro fee to walk around the sculpture garden. We also took the catacombs tour, which was super spooky and cool. The catacombs are miles of tunnels under Paris that are full of bones, mostly skulls and femurs, which were buried there because they were spreading too much disease above ground (200 years ago).

who are you? and where are the rest of your bones?

I accomplished everything I wanted to in Paris. I ate crepes au sucre et sandwich avec fromage et jambon, we joined the mobs of people on the metro and I felt like I lived in a giant city again, and we even wandered around Paris’s Chinatown. Most of all, I got to relax with two of my favorite people. And despite the minor jet lag, relaxation was the perfect solution to thesis-writing mania. When I got back from Paris, I spent the next four days at home in my pajamas just WRITING. I literally only left the house to walk Marshall. And in the end, I turned in a 27,000+ word thesis that I am proud of. I turned in into my committee, successfully defended it a few days later, and now all that’s left is the bureaucratic process of publishing it for the university library.

the thesis-writing process is not pretty

And if that wasn’t enough, my summer plans suddenly revealed themselves. For the months of May, June, and July, I’ll be staying in Pittsburgh to work for the Confucius Institute. It’s a great opportunity for me to continue working in Asian studies and get more hands-on experience with international exchange between the U.S. and China. I’m really happy to be staying in Pittsburgh for the summer. I left last year in May, so I didn’t get to experience the sunny days that everyone has been telling me about. It will also give me more time to search for a more permanent job (anyone out there who wants to offer me that?)

This week is graduation madness. All of our family members will be here to celebrate Jon’s graduation on Thursday and mine on Sunday. Also, it’s Marshall’s gotcha day slash birthday, so we are throwing a party for the three of us. I’m still trying to comprehend that graduate school is over, I did it, I don’t have to do this ever again if I don’t want to. It’s pretty liberating. I’m hesitantly reading a book for pleasure right now. Maybe I’ll finally paint that blank canvas that has been sitting on the mantel for two years.

Happy Easter!

My Fourth of July list from China

It’s been about six weeks that I have been in Asia now. If you’re reading this, you probably know that I love it here and usually prefer being here over the good ol’ USA. But I’m still an American, and I still think there’s some pretty sweet stuff there. Sometimes I like to think about what specific kinds of things make America cool. So on the birthday of my country, here is my current list of things I’m proud to say we do pretty well:

• cereal
• amusement parks
• parking lots
• kickass music
• SPORTS
• pie
• sneakers
• salad
• backyards
• slushies
• waiters who tell you their name
• used bookstores
• pizza
• smiling
• sidewalks
• parades
• reality shows (you know you have at least one!)

Happy birthday, America!

Bali part one: the tourist

this is probably what people mean by paradise

Most people who have an image of Bali think of it as a tropical dream vacation: beaches, pineapples, jungles and volcanoes. They would not be wrong. However, going to Bali alone is a much different story. Well, I’m not alone exactly. I am here with Kasihani, but we are in separate rooms and she is in meetings all day. So in practice, I am here alone. I have never been at a five-star resort alone before, and I plan to put effort into making this not happen again. It is a bit depressing to watch honeymooners holding hands on the beach while I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that I am going to be away and alone all summer. But of course I have to make the best of it. I am in Bali!

Bali is a small island off the east coast of Java. The people of Bali are Hindu, a minority in the largest Muslim country in the world. The Indonesians I have talked to have told me to go to Bali. It is a beautiful place. However, staying in a resort like this makes me feel like I am not really seeing Bali. See, Kasihani is here for a conference in the hotel. I am tagging along because we are also going to a teacher training event together in the north of the island. She has her room for free, and she is getting mine at a discounted rate. I could have stayed at a normal hotel I guess, but we didn’t plan that far ahead. So here I am, at a five-star resort next door to the Grand Hyatt. My hotel is called Inna Putri Bali, and it is full of Aussies and Russians.

inna putri bali hotel

It’s not that I think this place is bad. And I definitely do not think badly of anyone who chooses to come here; some people’s idea of vacation is to sit on the beach and have drinks with little umbrellas delivered by friendly locals. That image makes me squirm. I feel restless knowing that outside of the security walls and perfectly manicured lawns of this resort there is a real city, a real island with real people. But I have not been completely stuck. Nusa Dua, the area where I am staying, is near the capital city of Denpasar. North of Denpasar are mountains and jungles, so I decided I needed to see that to really see Bali. The only way to do this is to hire a driver.

relaxing at the pool

Once again, hiring a driver is not usually my cup of tea. In the past I have preferred taking the local transport, which also turns out to be the cheapest and biggest (most fun!) challenge. This time, I had no other options. I ended up with a fantastic driver, Nyoman, who was very easy to talk to and who showed me lots of things on his island. Bali is full of artists, so Nyoman took me to many places where people produce and sell art, including wood carving, painting, gold and silver jewelry, and batik. Batik is the national cloth of Indonesia. For nice events, such as a conference, everyone wears batik. I bought myself a gorgeous blue batik skirt, plus some gifts for secret lucky people.

women making (and wearing) batik

We also went to a fruit and coffee plantation up in the mountains. They produce lots of drinks like cocoa, coffee, ginger tea and lemongrass tea. They also make that kind of coffee that is made out of cat poop. It’s not really a cat: it’s a luwak. I’m sure you have heard about this. It is the most expensive coffee in the world, but the animal originates in Indonesia so it’s cheap here. The way it works is the luwak eats the coffee beans, poops them out, and then the people gather them and make them into coffee. Unfortunately I don’t drink coffee, so I was not willing to pay the extra three bucks to try the delicacy. I met the animal though. He was super cute! If you get a chance, you should definitely drink his poop.

kopi luwak coffee!

just a small part of the Hindu temple

On the tour, I also visited a huge Hindu temple, watched a Balinese dance performance (a classic tale about the battle between good and evil), and ate lunch across from a volcano. Eating lunch while looking over a landscape of mountains and rice fields is truly spectacular; the only downside is doing it by yourself! Alone time is totally overrated. But all in all, Bali is awesome. The only downside is that everyone already knows that. At least everyone in Europe and Australia. It was packed with tourists, and that means most things are at tourist prices. A meal in Bali will cost you $8, while a similar meal – if not better – costs you less than a dollar in Java. So I guess my best advice is that if you plan on going to Indonesia, make Bali just one of many destinations on your trip!

Barong dance

my lunch in front of Mt. Batur. there's no glass between us!

me in front of rice fields on the hills

Pittsburgh welcomes the world?

I actually wrote this a couple weeks ago, and then was waiting for Jon to send me photos he took at the G20, which he still hasn’t done.  Oh well!  Here we go:

I’ve been living in Pittsburgh for a few weeks now, and I was just getting used to the slower, more peaceful pace of life here.  That is, until, DUN DUN DUN…the G20.  All of a sudden, I am thrown back into the world I knew in DC: barricades, motorcades, police sirens and huge white tents.  On campus Thursday, there were conversations about Michelle Obama sightings and Russian and Japanese leaders.  That was all pretty familiar to me, until Jon and I decided to follow some of the riot police…

It was convenient to follow them, really.  We heard from friends that the action was going down not downtown, not near campus, but in our neighborhood, Bloomfield.  So following riot police was just part of walking back to our apartment.  The first sign of damage we saw was a broken window at a bank.  Then we came upon the Boston Market restaurant, where I walk by every day.  Every window in the place had been smashed with bricks and rocks.  Farther down the street, another bank, a McDonald’s and a BMW dealer had windows broken, too.

The people who did this belong to the anarchist group that seem to show up at every protest, everywhere, no matter the issue.  Their posters showed that they don’t believe in government or banks.  Ok, so that explains why they smashed bank windows.  But fast food joints?  In a working-class, residential neighborhood?  No one involved in the G20 goes to Bloomfield.  So how does breaking windows of restaurants in Bloomfield send a message to members of the G20?  That destruction happened on Thursday; on Friday, they broke windows of local businesses, including the breakfast joint where Obama ate during his campaign.  So this was not a protest against the corporate world; it was just an excuse to go break stuff.

There are two sides to this dance; there are the violent protesters, and then there are the violent police.  The problem is when non-violent protesters get punished by the violent police.  The police take any threat as serious.  And that’s what I witnessed on Thursday in Bloomfield.  The people who threw the rocks had been arrested and hauled away.  But people were still gathered around, because, like I said, this is a quiet residential area.  And if weird stuff is goin’ down, people want to see it.  But any gathering of people is threatening to a bunch of police in riot gear who just fought brick-wielding anarchists.

The first disturbing thing we saw was a cyclist get shoved against a car by police.  The biker was just riding through the street, just like the cars.  But s/he must have said something to the police, because all of a sudden s/he was pushed hard against a car and handcuffed.  A friend of the cyclist was there and able to take the bike as the police hauled away her friend.  Then the police started marching toward the crowd (Jon and I stayed as close as we could to the TV news truck; I feel comfortable near media) and telling us to disperse.  The crowd was on the sidewalks of both sides of the street, and a guy ran from one side of the street to the other.  The police must have taken that as a threat, because before he got to the other side, he was tackled to the ground and handcuffed.  Another man, a few minutes later, was handcuffed for yelling at the police to let the guy go.

Looking at everything I witnessed, I just find it so unnecessary.  There was no need for anarchist groups to destroy local businesses, just like there was no need for police to get violent with non-violent hecklers.  At least today there was an example of real protest; thousands of people marched peacefully from the university to downtown, carrying real messages about war and the economy.  One of the speakers at the march smartly said, “We’re confronting G-20 policies, not police.”

Boys in pickup trucks, from Laos to Kentucky

It’s hard to believe we’ve been to three countries in the past two weeks. We are having a lot of fun, but really the best part is being in a new place all the time. I love waking up and not really knowing what I am going to do that day. I love that I have no idea where I’ll be ten days from now. It’s exactly the kind of freedom I was hoping for with this trip. And now more Laos!

Our last night in the Lao countryside included a Lao boxing match that Keo and Cam from the eco-lodge brought us to. Since you probably have no context for what that’s like, as I did not, I will paint this picture for you. Imagine yourself standing in the middle of an Illinois cornfield. Then take away the corn and replace it with rice paddies and palm trees. Walking along a dirt path, you come upon a fenced-off square area, where the fence is made of a big blue tarp, about ten feet high. There’s an opening in the tent, and near there some people are selling food and running some games for kids. Lots of people who don’t have the money are gathered near the opening of the tarp so maybe they can hear something.

Once we give the doorman our dollar, we enter and see the boxing ring. Around the ring, children as young as 3 are perched up to watch the match. Farthest away from the ring are groups of teenage boys leaning on their motorcycles. And then the fighters arrive! They are BIG, BAD… eleven year olds? Well, at least no one is going to get too hurt. The match is narrated along with music that is very hard on the ears, and the little boys use kicks and punches to knock each other out. Although I don’t much enjoy watching people punch each other, it was still a really fun experience, and I’m so thankful to Keo and Cam for helping us experience a bit of their world. Our entire time in the area taught me something very interesting. Rural life anywhere is like rural life everywhere. So many times in Laos I was reminded of something I did or saw in rural Kentucky. Of course a country like Laos has much more poverty than rural America, but the exotic images I had of rural life in southeast Asia have been corrected. No place is really that exotic. We’re all just people hangin’ out.

Our trip from the eco-lodge to Vientiane was pretty adventurous (as all travel has been and will be). Keo asked one of her friends who drives a tuk-tuk to pick us up at noon and bring us to the city. But he added a bunch of other passengers after we got on, which is pretty common. First he picked up a dude with about five bags of clothes. Laundry maybe? Then he picked up two guys and two live chickens. One of the chickens was very upset about being dragged on the tuk-tuk, so he squawked the whole time. Then we picked up a woman with a big empty basket and a fistfull of kip (Lao money) and a woman with a baby. The baby had a hat on that said “Stop global warming now!” I told the woman it was a cool hat, because she spoke some English. At one point during the ride, I had my hand on my knee. She reached over and put her hand on my other knee and said “So different! I want that,” pointing to my skin color. I said “No, no, you are so pretty!” but she wouldn’t have it. This is one of multiple times that Lao people have complimented me or told me I’m beautiful. Once it was Keo telling Jon, “Your girlfriend is beautiful!”  It’s so surprising each time.

I posted a bunch of pictures from Chiang Mai to my flickr account.  We’re off to Cambodia tomorrow and I hope to write more soon about Vientiane and post some pictures along with these stories.