Holy Cow my student almost died last weekend!

So I came into class on Tuesday, the 20th, the first morning after a three day weekend. Here in Korea, Lunar new year is the second biggest family holiday of the year, kind of Thanksgiving to Chusok's Christmas. (Chusok is the Korean harvest festival, and it's amazing: EVERYBODY goes to their ancestral home/town/grandparents' house, offers up special foods and dishes to the ancestors in the old way, dressed up in the traditional hanbok clothes. I've seen the ceremony at a friend's girlfriend's house, and it's quite impressive.) The city empties out -- it's almost eerie. Even the street food stands are closed up! Then, at the end of the weekend, everybody returns to Seoul, and the gridlock begins fifty kilometers outside of the greater Seoul area, all the way into town.

{Tangential story alert: Once I travelled on a holiday weekend, and the trip took four hours out by bus, and twelve hours back, because of seventy kilometers (no joke) of stop and go traffic. Even better, the tour organizer had rented three movies to watch on the trip: X-men (not bad) Black Hawk Down, and Saving Private Ryan. That's comic book action movies: 1, Gory gory war movies: 2. Being trapped on a bus, in stop and go traffic, hung over (as most of the group was), with "Oh GOD IT HURTS" "I can't stop the bleeding Ty!" "You're gonna be okay, Eddie. You're gonna be okay. What's your daughter's name? You'll see her again, Eddie, I promise." "I feel cold Ty. I feel cold" for two hours is just hard to manage. So after Black Hawk Down (the noisiest, most overwhelming war movie I've ever seen: long and just gross), the guy was about to put on Saving Private Ryan (the second noisiest, most overwhelming war movie I've seen) on, and the entire bus vetoed the choice. At the next rest stop, somebody went to the DVD stand and bought "When Harry Met Sally" or "You've God Mail" or some Sandra Bullock romantic comedy, and the travellers were placated. End of tangential story.}

Well, some people go into the mountains, to see their ancestral gravesite, as did my student Lucas. As I asked about the students' weekends, this story came out, piecemeal, as Lucas remembered different impressions of his adventure. The total innocence in his eyes matched my own sheer disbelief at how close this kid came to being hospitalized, at least.

He saw a snake, and decided he didn't like having that snake in that spot. So, being a kid, innocent as all Eden, he chose to move that snake along by prodding it with his foot. "Teacher and then the tail is up and," he held his hand up and moved it side-to-side to copy a tail's shaking. Shaking a raised tail is a common warning signal for poisonous snakes (not just rattlesnakes, as I learned by research). He poked it again, and "teacher, it biting me in the pants" and he pointed to the cuff of his pants, right behind his ankle. Because it was February, and cold, the snake was slow; had he poked it in June, it probably would have had the speed and wherewithal bite him properly, but as it was, the thing missed his ankle. By then his father had spotted Lucas, and saw what was happening. His dad ran over and punted the snake, kickin it far clear of his son, but I don't think he saw the whole scene, because Lucas never mentioned an extremely angry father in the jumbled account of his story.

I was so incredulous I immediately went to the next class to tell Caleb about what had just happened. The kid never even realized how close he was to serious danger.

(Side note: there are four species of poisonous snake in Korea, in the viper/asp category. None are as deadly as the cobra, the black mamba, or the dreaded snakes of Australia, but none are to be trifled with either. Lucas being a child, the poison would have been more dangerous because he has a smaller body mass than say, me. Of the snakes in Korea, the one with the coolest name is called (in Japan) the mamushi. Just say that together with me one time. Mamushi.)

I'm glad Lucas made it through honouring his ancestors, without joining them. He's a sweet kid. Except when he isn't.

These video clips made me laugh.

Deb, I think you'll especially enjoy the second one.

This one is short. And funny.

You might recognize the thin, silly one as Hugh Laurie, now most famous as the abrasive star of the TV series "House". He actually has a background in comedy that goes all the way back to "Black Adder", the early '80s sitcom that also gave Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) his first big break, and is FAR superior to Mr. Bean in every way. I also like Hugh Laurie's comedy stuff far better than the TV show house. . . what's with all the medical and crime investigative dramas on TV these days? Here in Korea there are only three or four channels that regularly play English programming, and at any given time, one of them is playing a Jean-Claude VanDamme movie (which cease to be entertaining even ironically after two watchings) and another is playing CSI, or one of its spinoffs, rife with grotesque modes of death and gratuitous autopsy scenes.

Sigh.

Oh well. At least it's weaned me off watching TV.

But THESE clips are funny. You should watch them.





This one plays around with actors, lines, and scene setups. It makes me smile, having acted on stage myself.



This third one. . . I think they're making fun of flag-waving singers. I'm not sure though.

Valentine's Day. . . meet a friend of mine.

I have a friend named Zooey. Here's a picture of him, partaking in a vice. . . usually he's not that bad. Really. Upstanding, even. (And let's give him a break: Leffe is a really good quality beer.)






Even though he sometimes drinks beer (he swears it was only that once), he also really likes to come to school with me and meet my students. He lives an adventurous life: adventurous enough that he often appears in the stories I tell to my students. He's a bit of a rennaisance elephant: he speaks tiger, bear, octopus, English, Korean, and a handful of other useful languages (not to mention African elephant, as well as Indian elephant).

When Sally the genius' family was struck by a tragedy that shall go unmentioned, I introduced Sally to Rhonda, the only other known mini-elephant. Here's Rhonda. (Un?)surpringly, Zooey and Rhonda hit it off when they met, and have been courting in the traditional mammothian way. Rhonda's even helping Zooey with his addiction to peanut butter.

Here's Rhonda.




My students love Zooey, and love to hear stories about Zooey. One day, after visiting Sally, I accidentally left Zooey at her house, and Zooey and Rhonda spent that whole week together. After that, Sally asked if Rhonda wanted to come to my house for a few days. I agreed, so that Rhonda could meet my students. My students loved her, and wanted to hear all about Zooey and Rhonda.

Then, two months after her appearance at SLP, on Valentine's day, Arooh made valentines for all her classmates, including me, and even one for Zooey. However, she couldn't remember Rhonda's English name, so she had to write her Elephant name.

Here is the card she wrote for Zooey and Rhonda.








It made me smile a lot.

I will be teaching adults next month: my contract with SLP is up, and I just couldn't imagine another year of teaching little kids, and mediating conflicts like "Kevin hit me." "James hit me first." "No, Zach pushing me so I hit you accident." However, I'll miss the sweetness of Arooh trying to sound out an elephant's trumpet.

For sure.

Kevin's Really Funny.

On February 26th, we have a graduation show: my preschool class is finishing their two year preschool program, and graduating to elementary school. This is nice. The graduation show, though, is stressful. We have to put on a big old show to prove to the parents that their money was worth it and their kids now kick butt in English. As the preschool director, it falls upon my head to make sure everything comes off well.

Today, during gym class, we practiced with the six-year-olds. That was as cute as you would ever believe. It's such an easy job directing a performance of six-year-olds: if the kids get it all right, it's really impressive. If they get it wrong and somebody turns the wrong way, it's really cute. You just can't lose! Anyway, the kids did a really good job, considering the graduation show is almost two weeks away.

The seven-year-old kids are working really hard to do a good job, of course.

Well, I was practicing the lines with my class of seven-year-olds during phone teaching today, and the kids really impressed me: they really have their lines down cold! (With one or two exceptions.) The thing about phone teaching, though, is that it's really repetitive and a bit tedious: it's my least favourite afternoon of the month (other than the month when I actually lost my temper at Tom because he was standing in the corner, with his hands over his head and his eyes closed, and still giggling and speaking Korean to Peter). In order to keep myself from shoving a pencil in my ear just to spice things up a bit, I play around with the students on the phone. When I call them, instead of saying "This is Rob teacher," I say, "This is Ashley teacher," and argue with the students about how they know I'm Rob, for sure. Well, today, I had to phone Kevin. "Is this Kevin?"
"Yes."
"No, it isn't. This is Kevin's grandfather."
"No teacher, it's Kevin."
"No. It's Kevin's grandfather!"
"Teacher!"
"Nice to meet you Kevin's grandfather!"
"Teacher!"
"Can I please talk to Kevin now?"
Without missing a beat, Kevin says, "OK," waits for five seconds in silence, and then says, "Hello this is Kevin!"

Quick wit, that one. To play along as subtly as that, with a purely verbal joke, over the phone, at seven years old, in his second language, is pretty impressive to me. I laughed out loud. Kevin's awesome. He has these squirrely bright eyes and a face whose entire shape seems to have been created for the express purpose of laughing. He's great.

At lunchtime today, David broke my heart.

During my first four months at SLP, David was in my homeroom class, and he was like one of those tempestuous days when you never know whether, five minutes later, there will be a downpour or a sunny break in the clouds. He was moody, and his bad moods were awful. Few kids manage to sulk on a par with David's epic glowers. He's the smallest kid in the class, asthmatic, with pale skin and eyes that crinkle when he smiles.

Then, in March, a new student joined, named Belle. She was a nice girl, and she and David became best friends. They played together, sat beside each other, and were really sweet. David always picked her when we played name games, and openly told people that he loved her. Their parents became friends, and they played together after school. When Belle broke her collarbone in August, she missed a month, and then came back to school sooner than the doctor's recommendation, so the doctor told her she had to stay in the classroom during lunch and breaktimes, for about four or six weeks after she returned. Every breaktime, David stayed in the classroom with her, colouring or making paper crafts, to keep her company. David's one of my favourite kids because of that kind of stuff: an absolute sweetheart.

Well, over the last two months, Belle has fallen under the spell of Willy, the most charismatic student in the class. He's bright and sociable, he has good ideas for games, and he's funny as anything. Arooh (the other girl in the class) has taken to following him around like a puppy (while Lucas follows her around like a puppy, saying things like "Arooh I love you. I want to give you a present and chocolate and everything!") For the last two weeks, David, always a slow and somewhat picky eater, has been eating even more slowly than before.

Today, as he mulled over his honeyed sweet potatoes, poking them and contemplating them, instead of eating them, I said, "Davarino? Why are you eating so slowly?"

He looked up at me and said "Teacher, in the playtime Belle is say 'don't play' and everyday 'don't play' to me," and his sweet little eyes had this forlorn helplessness that just about melted me right then and there. He was a really sweet kid, and Belle's been spurning him to be another of Willy's groupies. Silly girl doesn't recognize loyalty and sweetness when she sees it. I hope she figures it out before she grows up, that she doesn't become just another of those young ladies who shunts aside the sweet, generous boys who'll take good care of them, for the charismatic guy who attracts people into his group, but then (as Willy does) plays a bit of a tease, never quite letting a person know whether they're really in the group or not, so that they're never sure if they're in or not, so they have to keep working at the guy's approval (and stroke his ego along the way). (Arooh's had some days when he's made her feel totally rejected. . . but then other days Willy can be a really sweet kid.)

Willy has good parents (I've met them). And I've told them point blank about Willy's ability to do this, and Willy's a sweet kid by nature: he'll figure out, between his parents' guidance and his own innate sweetness, that there's a better way to treat his friends, but for now, it's sure sad to see little broken-hearted David's devotion totally ignored.

So, in summary:

Kevin's funny
David's sweet
Belle's inconstant
Willy's charismatic and charming but unaware just how much influence he has over his classmates
And I'm going to teach adults next month (found a new job) so I don't have to worry so much about issues like that between students, because I know that my students will be adults who can figure such things out on their own.

(Just to show willy's usually a good kid: two stories.

1. Caleb's wife, Heather, brought their baby, Kylie to school to meet the students. The students get so excited to see the baby, they run the risk of mauling her, so Caleb and Heather have to set clear limits on how much they can bug her. Paul reached over, once, and touched Kylie on the nose. To head off a swarm of hands that would follow, Caleb said, "Paul, please don't touch her."
Willy commented, "Yeah. When they're little they die really easily."

2. During the same phone teaching afternoon when Kevin cut me up, I asked Willy, "What special day is it tomorrow?"
"Valentine's day."
"What will you do for Valentine's day?"
"Give chocolate to the teachers."
"Will you give chocolate to Ellen teacher?"
"Of course, teacher." (He's taken to saying, "of course," lately).
"Will you give Ellen teacher a lot of chocolate?"
"Of course."
"How much chocolate will you bring for Ellen teacher?"
"Maybe she will die."

He's not a bad kid. He just doesn't realize how much he influences his group of friends.)

OK. Enough for now.

Love you all! Take care.

Rob

Some photos.

I like to draw pictures on the board during attendance time in my homeroom class. It entertains the kids. Here are some examples.




Seals are cute. I can also draw rabbits and elephants and rabbiphants (Rabbiphants are very rare: most elephants are protestant, um, I mean, protephant).










Sam is absolutely incapable of staying in his chair. One day I joked that I need to stick him in his chair with a hammer and nails, and made this illustration.



Then I explained that I could't really do that, because of course, Sam would grow up, and then he wouldn't fit into the small chair, and modified the picture to look like this, to show everybody why I could't nail Sam to his chair. (Though I've been tempted to get out my stapler a few times.)




I'm actually proud of this one. I think it actually looks like a polar bear.



This is one of my favourites.



Sometimes air in Seoul is dirty. Those apartments you can barely see are about two kilometers away. No more than that.



Cute Konglish in a soaps shop.

Another typical day in Seoul, Korea.

So this morning I woke up as usual, poked around on the internet, started up the coffee maker (at eight in the morning, it's worth it to have the starbucks stuff on hand), and took my shower. I boiled an egg. (Boiling eggs is fun for me right now, because I just finally got the hang of it -- I'd always either do them half-raw or rubbery dry-yolk overcooked. I'm so pleased with myself for figuring this boiled egg thing out, I've been popping them like candy!) On the way to work, I bought a cinnamon swirl at the bakery I mentioned before, where they changed their baking schedule so I could have a cinnamon swirl every morning, instead of just on mornings when I was late.

Got to school, and before I even made it into the classroom, James was saying "teacheeeeerr" in that way Korean kids have perfected, where suddenly "No" can become a fourteen syllable word that requires a two octave vocal range to properly pronounce. He's telling on another student, who pushed him, or stepped on his foot, or looked in his show-and-tell bag without his permission. . . or something.

I'm thinking about implementing a policy where the student who did wrong gets punished, but the student who tattled gets an equal punishment. That's how tired I am of kids coming to teachers with their little "he looked in my book" disputes. We have a teacher named Eunice who's unreal: every time, she hears each kid out and gives them a reasonable solution to their problem. Listening to "he said I don't want to play with you" "no I didn't!" makes me want to chew holes into the inside of my cheek after a while. Her patience is laudable.

Right after that, Willy cracked me up by taking the stuffing out of me, teasing me about something I'd told his family when they invited me to his house: I'm good at cooking a bunch of foods, but I've never managed to successfully cook rice: I always make it too sticky, too dry, burnt at the bottom, or something (now that I've mastered boiled eggs, rice is next). Willy had the whole class poking fun at me about not being able to cook rice. It was funny.

Then, during break time, I was chatting with Caleb in the hallway, when right at waist-level, a little girl in a blue hooded sweater flies by us with her fists up in the air, in the "I'm a flying superhero" pose. On second glance, she has her sweater's hood pulled right over her face. It's Lisa: she has a hooded sweater with a mask on the hood, and eyeholes, so that she can be a superhero anytime she wants. Here she is, in superhero and in secret identity mode.






The boy with Lisa in the first picture is Andy, a funny little boy with gangly arms and legs who doesn't move around so much as he flops. As soon as he's moving faster than walking speed, he always reminds me just a bit of a rag doll -- a Raggedy Andy, if you will. The girl in the second picture is named Sue, owner of my favourite student nickname ever: "Soodlee-Doo!" I used to say it out loud to her, but then other students called her Soodlee-Doo so much she told us to stop calling her that, so now I call her over, and whisper it in her ear, and she twinkles with glee every time.

Anyway, lunch looked unappetizing, so I walked (in a fantastic cold that was so sharp I opened my jacket just to have myself a good shiver: sometimes a good shiver's as invigorating as twenty push-ups) to the sandwich shop near the school, where they know exactly what I want as soon as I walk in, because I always order the same thing. "Kuh-lop senduhweechee, cheejeuh bae-go, ahmaeleekah-no shirop manhee" means "club sandwich no cheese, cafe americano, lots of sugar" the lady smiled: she's seen me coming in there ordering over-sweet americanos since my first year in Korea, 2003, when they first opened, and her husband didn't know how to count out correct change yet -- if the sandwich and coffee was 4900 won, and you gave him 10000 won, he'd give you 6100 won back, or 3100, or 4900. He's much better now.

After the sandwich and coffee (takeout), back to school. More teaching, other stuff, then, after I left school, I popped by my house, picked something up, and headed out to Lotte Mart. You see, I like to hold a keyboard in my lap, but having an entire laptop in my lap is cumbersome and worrisome: what if I spell my coffee, or a sparrow flies into the apartment window and startles me, and I dump the computer on the floor? Yesterday, I bought a keyboard, plugged it in, only to discover that the J key was garbage: it didn't register when struck, unless you really cracked it, and it had a weird feel, different than the other keys. Unbearable, when you're trying to type fast -- like jogging with a stone in your shoe. By phone text message, I asked one of my Korean friends how to say "This keyboard had a broken key when I bought it. Please replace it." She sent the reply, and then I brought the keyboard away.

On the way to Lotte Mart, the taxi driver tried to rip me off, but I caught him before he could go past my destination. This made me feel half-annoyed that this kind of thing still happens, that the driver still sees white skin and thinks I'm some chump tourist whom he can filch by playing dumb, and half-pleased that I'm savvy enough to catch him heading the wrong way and ask him, in Korean, "why aren't you turning right?"

Then, I exchanged the keyboard easily, by showing the text message, the receipt, and the wonky "J" key to the fellow, but was stopped on my way to the escalator by another store clerk who didn't speak English, and didn't understand that I'd already exchanged the keyboard: they thought I still wanted to change the new one, and laughed at my broken Korean and body language. Finally, by going to the clerk who'd already made the exchange (who resolved the issue in three words), they got it, and let me go. I walked out of the store, noticed halfway home that they hadn't taken off the unit's anti-theft security tag, but also noticed that no alarms had gone off on my way home, anyway.

This is my life in Korea. The rule of twos still applies from time to time (in my first year I formulated the principle that every new thing you attempt here takes two tries to get it right, and any task you might want to do takes twice as long as it would in a country where everybody speaks English). Sometimes it's maddening, sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's just brilliant. In the end, it's not that much different, I suppose, than life just about anywhere.

Amy teases me about telling pointless stories, stories that don't go anywhere. But I don't think they are pointless. When she worked at the bakery, Mom used to come home every day, and tell some story or another about a grumpy, or a funny customer, or an order she nearly got wrong, but then luckily she re-counted the hot cross buns just before she put them in the box, or other such minute details.

The point of Mom's stories was not so much to teach me something new, or even (usually) to make me laugh. The point of them, I think, was more cumulative than specific -- it wasn't so much any one story she told me, as the fact she told stories about those little things. That said to me that the little things, the pointless uninteresting things, are worth noticing. They are the texture and rhythm of our daily lives, and they keep each day different from the next. If we notice them, suddenly our lives aren't a metronome-dull repetition of wake up, eat, work, eat, work, go home, free time, bed time -- our lives can instead be all cluttered with sounds and smells and personalities we never noticed before. In his book, Letters To A Young Poet, my favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote, "If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it, blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place." So maybe that's why I tell stories like these: not so much because I think you'll find them riveting; more because I want to be the kind of human being who notices them. In Seymour: An Introduction, J.D. Salinger (another of my favourite writers) says, "Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong?" So forgive my rambling if it bores you. I'm just looking for those patches of holy ground.

Love:
Rob

I'm easy to please, really.

Tonight we'll have a wine and cheese night at my house. I can't even eat cheese, but I'm excited to have company, and have a good time. Maybe I inherited the hospitality gene from Mom -- nothing pleases me so well as seeing people around me having a good time (especially if it's partly my doing -- through hospitality, or through suggesting an activity, or [best of all] through recommending a restaurant. For some reason, taking a person to a restaurant I know of, and seeing them really enjoy the food/dish, gives me inordinate, almost inappropriate amounts of pleasure.)

That's really enough to make me happy, right there: some people at my house, some nice conversation, some laughs, and some good food. Wine is the best conversation drink, bar none. Beer is too loud, and lends itself to binge drinking. Hard liquors either must be drunk too slowly, or lead too quickly to drunkenness, and, once drunk on hard liquor, people make bad decisions, and have odd moods (for example, the "let's see what happens if I throw X at Y!" mood). Wine's taste is rich and subtle, good to be savoured (especially red wine), which means it gets sipped rather than gulped. Add to that the way alcohol lowers a person's inhibitions, and you have more honest and interesting conversation than coffee or tea (because they're alcohol free, people's defenses never quite drop). Plus, wine is a happy drunk. People don't start throwing things or swearing or punching when they've had wine.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. Wine and a friend will do. So will wearing my leather-soled doc marten boots and walking in Lotte Department store, where the floors are polished stone, and where I can slide for almost three meters after a short running start. (Yep. That's me. The grown man sliding around on the department store floor like a little kid on an ice patch. Stare if you want, but don't tell me to stop, because I won't. And if you don't like it, just look at the grin on my face and reflect upon whether I'm really hurting anyone. Yay me!)

In other "I love this country" news, the folks at the bakery where I grab a bite every morning on my way to work figured out that the cinnamon buns they make are my favourite thing they serve (Ha! Diagram THAT sentence!). The cinnamon buns are not as good as the ones at Kent Pastry and Bakery, but anything cinnamon is better than no cinnamon. Problem was, their baking schedule had the cinnamon buns ready about five minutes too late for my morning schedule: the only time they were ready by the time I came through was on days when I was already late for work. One day, I came in to find no cinnamon buns, and used the best Korean I knew to say "Nine o'clock. . . cinnamon buns. . . please! Cinnamon buns, ummm, delicious!" The lady gave me a knowing "isn't he cute" smile -- she's been seeing me come in there regularly for more than a year now -- and answered in Korean.

Since then, every morning, the cinnamon buns have been on display by the time I pop in for munchies. I can't even communicate with these people (other than "Have a nice day!" "Do you want a bag?" "Two thousand won, please!" and "Nine o'clock . . . cinnamon buns. . . please! Cinnamon buns, ummm, delicious!") and they're going out of their way, if only just a little, to make my day better. People are great.

And that's all it takes to make me happy, really. Add in a good book to read and good music to listen to, and enough personal time to write stories and poems, and I'll love life, whatever else is happening.



This also makes me happy.



His name is Micah P. Hinson. Beneath the Rose

Home, and Cat Stevens, and some Malaysia pictures.

Just had a great conversation with a friend about how, to me, home is people. Home's a slippery kind of idea -- my Dad just moved to a new church in Niagara Falls, which is great, but it also means that the house where I lived for most of my last decade and a little, is no longer my house. I don't have a bedroom in Canada anymore, by any stretch. There are numerous couches I could probably crash upon, but none that I'd call my space. Even if I DID go back, Agassiz has changed so much from the way I remember it for me that I wouldn't really feel like I belong there (at least in the way I used to).

But you know, I'm not complaining, really. Coming to Korea my first year hurled me so far out of my comfort zones that I had to create some new ones, fast, so now home is not so much a house or a place with my posters on the wall (though that's nice). Rather, home for me has become a starbucks latte on a sunday afternoon, a long walk around my neighbourhood after work, cooking one of my specialty dishes for a friend, showing a friend a restaurant I love, hanging out with someone around whom I don't have to talk or entertain. Curling up on a coffee shop chair and writing poetry. As long as I have access to these things, I'm no longer too far from home, and if I'm near somebody who can ask me good questions, I'm set!

More than anything else, though, home for me is people. Having people around me who know me and respect me gives me a grounding from which I can go off in other directions.

By the way:

I'm listening to Cat Stevens right now (speaking of feelings of home). Wow, this guy's great. He isn't the best singer, not the best musician or composer by any measure, and his songwriting, while simple and well put-together, certainly isn't as clever or intriguing as a Tom Waits or a Leonard Cohen (and certainly not as intentionally obscure as Bob Dylan). Yet, despite that, listening to Cat Stevens, for some reason I can't quite name, is one of the most satisfying things I can think of. It's like sitting down and having a mug of coffee with a good friend -- not spectacular, not even quite memorable, just nice, and relaxing. After listening to one of his songs, I feel like I've gotten to know him a little, and that's nice. There's a warmth and a humour in his music that makes it easy to be around, like that friend in a group who doesn't always say a lot, but just manages to set everyone at ease, and seems to really enjoy everybody's company. So give Cat Stevens a try. You don't have to buy his box set or his complete works, but it's sure nice having his best of in your collection -- sort of like having a tin of hot cocoa powder in the cupboard. You don't have to use it often, but it's sure good to know it's there.




Modelling one of the shirts I bought.



Sliding down the rock slide at seven wells.



The tower on the highest peak of Langkawi Island. There was this fantastic structure with a bridge where tourists could wander (accessible by cable car). It was all held up by this tall tower support, and I have NO idea how they built that whole thing right up on top of a mountain. Best of all, there was a sign tucked away on one corner saying, "If you see dark clouds feel drizzle or rain, or see flashes of lightning, get off the tower immediately! That made me smile.



I may not have mentioned yet that it's really pretty there.





I climbed this rock and swam around in the waterfall pool. Then I looked up and right there, inches from my face, were three black toads, blinking up at the waterfall. I didn't go under the stream because I had no idea how deep the pool was, but it was pretty cool being that close to the waterfall.

On the way up, I was stepping over slippery rocks, and lost my footing as I tried to step around an eight-year-old kid. By twisting my body ridiculously, I managed to fall sideways into the water instead of crushing a child. Once I surfaced, I looked up, and Anthony was laughing at me.

Malaysia report, part three.

Since I've already mentioned the most interesting characters I met in Malaysia, here are the nicest ones. These are in either the order I met them, or the order they appear in my diary.

(Days 1-3) Jimmy: you read about him in the "most interesting characters" section too, because he had all kinds of stories and comments about travellers from all kinds of places, who'd stayed at his place. He earns his spot on the 'nicest' list because he did all kinds of legwork/phonework to help us book our trip and our place in Langkawi Island, as well as helping us see the beach on Penang Island, recommending a place to eat near there, and taxiing us there and back.

(Day 5) Emma, the Kiwi (Kiwi:New Zealander = Canuck: Canadian) we met at the seven wells (or was it seven springs?) mountainside. It was our second day on Langkawi Island, we had rented a car and were driving around to some of the landmarks. We climbed about five hundred steps to get to this spot where there were pools cut into rock by a stream channeling its way down to a big cliff/waterfall, and they created chutes and gulleys where we rode natural waterslides, and while there, I started a conversation with a young lady and her father. They were both extremely well-travelled in Asia, the father was a teacher, and the daughter had just started university. This was the first lengthy conversation I had in Malaysia with another traveller who wasn't part of our own group. We'd just gotten our bearings on Langkawi Island, and it was a very pleasant to have a little chat about where we'd been and where we were going.

(Day 6) We took an island-hopping tour that brought us around to a freshwater lake, a grove where we could watch eagles and sea eagles feeding off the tidal pools, and finally to a DIFFERENT sun-drenched beach than the one where we USUALLY sat. On the boat was a honeymooning couple. The new wife had this fantastic glow about her, a light headdress (Malaysia is mostly a Muslim nation: headdresses were everywhere), and she spent the whole trip chatting with, and totally charming, our travel-mate Amy, asking her to take picture of her with her new husband, etc..

Something I noticed: look at the woman's feet in this picture. I saw that same foot stance a handful of times when I saw Malaysian women posing for pictures. Maybe it was just coincidence, but it's a good pose, and it made me smile every time I spotted it -- you know how sometimes you just notice something, and from then on, it makes you smile when you notice it again, like a friend's little mannerism, or some quirk in the way couples talk to each other, or whatever. (Conversely, ever notice something and immediately wish you could un-notice it - like a friend who's a noisy chewer, and once you've noticed, you'll ALWAYS be annoyed by that friend's chewing.)

Anyway, here she is.




Also on day six, on that same beach, I met Theresa and Raiden. I'd brought my juggling balls to the beach. (Juggling is almost as good as having a puppy in terms of "meeting people" tools -- except that puppies attract cute females, while juggling attracts kids and other totally random people [with cameras] -- any age, any type, unpredictably, from super-cool folks to bedraggled parents of young kids.) At the freshwater lake, I'd noticed Theresa and Raiden standing on the dock because she was wearing a very bright orange dress, draped and tied in a way I hadn't seen before. Then, at the last stop on the island tour, I started juggling, and they approached me, asked about juggling (I gave them a mini-lesson), and took pictures with me after we chatted about seasons, Canada, Korea, and Kuala Lumpur. Also, she's the one who told me to try Laksa soup, and I'm glad I did.


Here're Theresa and her boyfriend Raiden with me on the beach.




Also at that beach, I had a nice chat with an Indian couple who were also travelling; the wife was an educator, so we shared notes on education-y stuff, and the husband got a juggling lesson. He approached me with the line, "Are you giving busking lessons over here?" They were very sweet -- big smiles and approachable manner. The husband's smile reminded me of my brother-in-law Frank. (In fact, I saw Frank's Malaysian twin on the ferry back to Penang Island -- he was sitting on the ferry's deck and looking seasick, but his build, his hair, and his mannerisms were identical to how I'd imagine Frank, if he were seasick. And Malaysian.)

(Day 7) The next day, I had a really neat chat with the tour guide on another tour. He was ridiculously knowledgeable about the area's wildlife, the island's history and natural features (rich in limestone: we drove by a cement factory on this resort island, that TOTALLY threw us for a loop, but then I learned that before it became a resort island, its primary industries were limestone (concrete) and marble). He was really well-spoken and full of interesting knowledge, and made me think of my days as a tour guide, how I took a real pleasure in knowing, or finding out, the answer to any question the tourists could throw at me. We went through a bat cave (the sound of a camera's film winding disturbs bats, but we could take digital pictures), and saw a mangrove swamp. Mangroves are trees that adapted to salt water, and they have roots that come up about two or three feet above the water level, so that it almost looks like a tree on stilts. Neat trees. We went to a fish farm, and archer fish (fish that shoot a jet of water to knock bugs off low branches, into the water to eat) shot my thumb when I put it on the rail and wiggled it. They can hit a target at two metres!

In fact, this random clip from the internet looks like it was taken at exactly the place where the fish shot MY finger!





There was a family on our tour boat, from the Netherlands, no less! As the tour continued, I started a conversation with the parents, and by the end of the tour, the two daughters (Bee, seven, and Ella, nine -- exactly the age I teach) were chatting and asking me questions, too. They asked my age and I told them I'd say a number, and they had to guess if my real age was higher or lower. They agreed to play, so the first age I suggested was 161. "Lower!" "OK. Seven." "Higher." With much giggling, they found out my age. The younger daughter especially took a shine to me, asking me questions and telling me endless stories, and at the buffet lunch that ended our tour, she told me, "I want to take you with my family for the rest of our vacation." It was very sweet. The family lives in Japan, and the girls go to an international school there, so I asked them if they know any Japanese.

"A little."
"OK, how do you say 'Goodbye'?"
"Sayonara."
"Very good! How do you say 'stop biting my elbow or I'll cough on your shoe!'?"
"I don't know."
"How do you say, 'Hello'?"
"Konichiwa."
"Excellent! How do you say, 'Can you call the police? I think my puppy ate your bicycle'?"
"I don't know."
"Well you should study more! My goodness!"

Much fun. I don't have a camera, though, so none of them are represented on film. Sorry. I remember what they look like.

(Day 8) Rachel was sitting on the beach when I went out on my last morning to take my last dip in the water. I walked over and parked myself beside her and we had a lovely chat. She teaches dance to children, and she had a really nice, gentle way. She was there with some friends from her church group, and all their names were biblical names starting with R-- there were Rachel, Ruth and Rebecca. We joked that we got along because my names starts with 'R' too. We had a good, little chat about finding our way home, and wrote a very nice e-mail to me, to boot!

Here are the four things my friend Rachel loves the most about Malaysia.

1. It's really diverse. As a former English colony, and because of its geography, you'll see (some) English, Indians, Thai, Chinese, and Malaysian, all with regularity (and you'll also see all those influences on restaurant menus). This means most people are versed in many languages, and they all generally get along peacefully.

2. It's really easygoing -- everybody there's really laid back. That's nice.

3. Because so many cultures are represented, there's always a holiday or a celebration taking place, and all the special days -- the Muslim holidays, the Chinese ones, the Indian ones, the Western ones, and the Malaysian ones, are observed by their respective groups. The day after Christmas, we saw a Chinese parade in Georgetown, and near the end of our stay, we saw a lot of shops closed during regular business hours, because Muslim Hajj period ended -- the Muslims who took the pilgrimage to Mecca are supposed to have come back on that day, or week.

4. GREAT food.

Here's the drawback:

Every Malaysian I properly chatted with said they wished they could have four seasons. The sun there was so nice, and they all pined for snow! They even mention it in their e-mails! When I think about it a second time, I realize that it's true for me, too: I LOVE seasons. Fall and spring are my favorite things, and the cold of winter really sharpens me. Summer's probably my least favorite season (unless I'm on a beach or a walking trail), but it's true. Seasons are great. Don't take them for granted: especially if you live in a place where leaves turn red in the fall.

Oh yeah. Can't forget about this:

I met this lady on day three, Christmas Day, and she gave me some tongue within five minutes of my meeting her! Some of you may think that's a little fast, but once you see her picture, you'll understand why I had no choice but to go along.

Learned something today.

I learned something today, about ancient Greek theater, nonetheless.

Those great old plays (some of the best ever written, for my money) usually include a chorus. The chorus' main function was, between scenes, to provide commentary and sometimes background information on the events occurring onstage. Today, I realized why the old writers included a chorus: because the parents of the actors playing minor roles and bit parts called the playwright to complain that their children were not getting as many speaking parts as the lead actors. The chorus was a nice way for those background characters to get in some speaking parts, and balance out the allocation of lines.

In a completely unrelated note, I just finished writing the script for the play my students will perform for their graduation presentation, and, coincidentally, it includes a chorus!

While in Malaysia, juggling on the beach, I met a really charming couple. We exchanged cards, and managed to make e-mail contact.

They sent me this fantastic picture of the peaks on Langkawi Island -- the picture of Amy and me is from this same area, but their picture really gives a great view of the area, and the myriad colours green on those mountainsides (one of my favorite parts of the trip -- I talked so much about the trees in the cable car up, that Amy teased me about it that afternoon).