December 26, 2010 – 6:33 pm
I am afraid my thoughts are scattered and won’t form a proper sentence. A thought-spewed-sort-of-poem will have to suffice:
sixty-four feet meet hundreds of other feet;
hundreds of dirty, large, clean, deformed, well-traveled, small, pedicured, hidden and smelly feet;
cross-cultural feet.
some feet walk here; a long time ago, over there;
in this house the feet do this,
and over there they go like this.
time’s passed now.
four feet were sick; two feet were burnt; fifty eight feet are tired of rice;
SEA’s been seen, learned, and studied now;
SSU’s sixty-four feet are tired now.
sixty-four feet are happy though;
thankful for the other sixty-two feet
while remembering all the pairs that were met along the way.
Rosie
November 29, 2010 – 5:26 am
(I have been rooming with Moriah, a very gracious partner)
We met our “mother” in the afternoon, she was shy and kept apologizing for her poor English. It wasn’t the best, but we didn’t care; we were not there to speak English, we were there to learn Thai, and Thai culture! We went home and met our “family”. Her son and daughter came out to meet us, they are 7 and 5, her mother was living there as well, and her husband came home from work later. Everyone was shy – but not for long! The next day when we came home from school, the kids ran out of the house and couldn’t wait until we were out of the car so they could wrap their arms around us, “Pi MoMO! Pi LoSIE!” they cried! We colored together, we played badminton, we let them play computer games on our computer, they fell asleep on us when they were tired, they taught us Thai, they lit firecrackers for us, we swam together, and they even ate the food off our plates. We made the most of our time with our little “brother” and “sister”; they in turn soaked up every minute they had with us, really, almost every minute. It was not only our mother and father welcoming us in to their lives, it was truly a family affair! On the weekends we would go out from dawn until dusk, seeing temples, animals, family rallies (you can ask, but I still don’t understand…) attending parties and celebrating festivals!
To have people let me into their small home, make and buy food for me for every meal, to trust me with their children, to bring me out and about to see the beauty and attractions of Chiang Mai, while still taking time to help me understand what life is like for them on a daily basis, was simply humbling.
From the bottom of my heart, thank-you Pi Nan and Pi Poy, Toon and Katen!
November 9, 2010 – 11:59 am
The other day I was in a mall (no big deal, they are everywhere here, and they’re huge) and I saw a group of people who were deaf; they were selling arts and crafts that they made.
Because I took sign language for 4 years in school, and learned quite a bit about deaf culture, I wanted to somehow start a conversation with one of them. I inched my way closer to the table and started looking at the different crafts they had made. A man said hello; I replied and somehow I managed to start a conversation with him, telling him how I knew a bit of sign but forgot a lot of it over the past 5 years of not using it. We chatted and he told me that the sign language I use (ASL) is different from their sign language (BIM), but it was similar enough to talk. Another girl came up to me and we began to chat. She was delighted to know I was a hearing person who had learned sign language; she never stopped smiling. The fact that we were deaf and hearing, or Malaysian and Canadian didn’t affect the connection we were making. We talked with choppy signs, sign alphabet, and a paper and pen for the next forty-five minutes. It was the longest connection I had had with a Malaysian yet (besides our beloved Zi Yun, a former SSU student). It didn’t necessarily go very deep, we talked about what to do and what I have seen already. I told her I had gone to church that morning and I was going to a party later. She shared with me that she has been going to a Baptist church, but she has not yet become a Christian. She comes from a Buddhist family and they do not approve of her going to church. She respects them and is going to wait before she makes a decision. I simply said that I understood.
This is a huge part of what I want this trip to be about for me; I not only want to learn the history and the culture of a place, I want to make connections. I thank God for this connection and pray that somehow, some way, Jesus was displayed through me to this girl who had obviously found something worth searching for in Him.
We parted with, “See you on Facebook.”
October 25, 2010 – 11:56 am
Here I am again in The Philippines. This time I am with 27 of my classmates and three of the faculty/staff of the university. Things are so familiar: the food (chicken adobo, pansit, bright red hot dogs, mangoes) the complicated traffic, the beautiful luxury homes beside the poor squatter areas, or the common flooding of the city streets. Yet this experience is extrememly different from my year spent in the south of Mindinao. There is nothing like travelling with 30 other people, on a tight schedule, attending lectures and viewing the culture through anthropological eyes! I have enjoyed the lectures here; understanding the history of this country is essential to understanding the current social, political, and economic problems.
We had a tour around Old Manila, or Intramuros. With Fort Santiago on one side and Manila Cathedral, an old Roman Catholic Church on the other. We saw from a wall where the Americans set up shop when they came to ‘liberate the filipino’s from Spanish oppression’; there was almost literally a wall where the American’s ‘Hollywood’ started and the Spanish and Church’s architecture and culture meets it. Our guide talked to us about the devastation of Manila during the Second World War due to the Japanese and even the Americans.
He ended his tour by comparing Filipinos to the famous Filipino desert, Halo-Halo (in English, Mix-Mix, or everything). They have a complicated mix of Spanish Language, Catholic Religion and American Secularism with Chinese, Japanese and Indian cultural influences as well. The tour guide explained that people often look at Manila and say it has no soul, no heart, and no culture. His ending sentence was “If you can’t change the way Manila looks, change the way you look at Manila”. I think this goes for all of the Philippines as well. Despite the complicated and sometimes painful past, the Philippines is a beautiful place full of cultural diversity.
Rosie
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