Just my two cents.

This isn't really a post, I just wanted to respond to a friend's facebook status, but without leaving a paragraph no one would read...so I'll put it here...where it can more easily be not read.

(The post was over which countries are more polite, with assertions that Americans are more polite than Europeans.)

It’s one of my inconsistencies that I think such broad generalizations are inherently pretty useless (no nation is that homogeneous) yet find myself interested in them and making them myself.  So I won’t pretend to be an expert, but having traveled in 39 countries I can offer my impression.

With regards to politeness, the US varies so immensely it is almost obscene (see: political discourse, racism, sports fans) but if I put my rose-tinted glasses of optimism on, I would rank us as near the top for politeness in interactions with strangers.  We smile and nod on the street, hold doors, talk to waiters and cashiers, and ask each other how it's going.  (That last one in particular amuses people here, particularly on the phone.)

(I would say this politeness is more common in smaller communities, since cities are more of a nationality in themselves, regardless of which country they happen to be in, but that's another topic.)

So I would say America does very well…but only compared to other developed countries.  (I have not been to Japan.)  I have yet to find a single developing country that doesn’t kick the holy crap out of the US when it comes to hospitality and manners towards strangers*.

(* Caveat that this exempts a few highly-touristed zones, where the unscrupulous will try and rip you off, though even then I can only think of one country where I felt this way.)

From Guatemala to Zambia to Nepal, the level of openness and friendliness towards strangers beggars our behavior in the West.  Of course it is not universal, there are assholes in every land, but I think one learns a lot about hospitality, priorities, and humanity from traveling in undeveloped countries.

Which reminds me of one image that continues to amaze me.  In this secondhand anecdote it was in Kenya.  If someone gets on a bus to find it empty but for one other person, they will go sit next to that person, to talk.  I just love that.

My two cents.

Gratitude and siblings

After posting that blog last night I went into the kitchen and started chopping veggies for dinner, and on the last cut of the onion sliced into my thumb.  Not too bad, but there’s a chunk of nail and skin hanging off, and blood started flowing, and much to my disappointment I got a little shaky.  Damn, I wanna be a mountain man who shrugs away compound fractures!

But I sat down for a minute to let the nausea pass and was thinking it’s not too surprising that I don’t like seeing my own blood.  After all, I’ve gone without seeing it much, at least since childhood’s continuously skinned knees.  And that lack of injury is something to be grateful for.

And holy cannoli, do I have shit-tons to be grateful for!  I look down at my clothes alone… 

My belt…I set my favorite belt aside when I packed up the rest of my stuff in Santa Cruz three years ago, then forgot to put it on the morning I left.  My brother drove me to the airport, and when I noticed I was beltless he immediately whipped his own off and gave it to me.  That was three years ago, and the belt’s come with me just about everywhere.  And he is still sagging like a homeboy.

Hanging on the back of the chair next to me is the black hoodie sweatshirt I wear to the gym, given to me by my other brother when he heard I didn’t have one.  Hanging on the retro coat rack (cuz we’re stylish like that) is my waterproof layer that a pequeño Spanish innkeeper on the plains of La Mancha gave to a poor shivering pilgrim.

Looking at this list I feel a tremendous gratitude (and a little embarrassment at my apparent lack of preparation and shopping skills) for the gifts I’ve been given, and these are just a few physical ones!

Another place in Spain gave me a hand-me-down cap that protected me from the sun all the way to Zambia where I traded it to a guy at a river-crossing for a wood carving to give to a friend who had donated very generously to our fundraising for the orphanages there.  Is there a blessing greater than friendship?

My folks were here in September (which is yet another thing to be grateful for) but I was surprised when my mom asked if we really enjoyed Nepal.  I guess my blogging tended to focus on the odd and sometimes uncomfortable aspects, just cuz I think they make interesting tidbits, but I was startled and frankly ashamed to not have expressed just how fantastic our time in Nepal was.

I mentioned two of my three brothers already, all of whom are fantastic buds that a guy is lucky to have, and all of whom I am proud to call my kin (plus my sister!  I could go on but I feel like I’m bragging.)  I am already blessed by them, but in Nepal I picked up more.

K and I lived in a room, in a building, next to a school, in a neighborhood, outside of Bhaktapur, in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal.  The owner of the building was a…shall we say: taciturn…little fellow, and though his wife smiled enthusiastically and greeted us with a robust “Namaste!” every morning, her total lack of English (and our Nepali being limited to “My name is Tilak, I like vegetables and the color blue”) made a more substantial friendship rather difficult.

But we were far from bereft of friendship, because in the school next door (Kalika, one of the two schools we taught in) lived Saroj Subba and his wife Anita (I never saw it written, so I’m not sure if that is a westernized form or not).  Subba Sir is a teacher at Kalika as well as the property guardian, and was our liaison and assistance with all things scholastic.  (That's K and Subba Sir on the third floor.)

Anita made our dal bhat, twice a day, delicious without exception, all summer long.  The guest culture of Nepal is “The guest is a god” which included not letting us help with the preparations or clean-up, but we enjoyed a nightly game of seeing how much we could get away with helping.  By the end I could sometimes wash a few plates before she ran me off, and K was allowed to help cook.  (Which is great because now she makes a mean dal bhat herself.  Here she's crushing garlic and ginger with the big stone roller.)

But Subba and Anita were much much more than just our feeders.  They invited us into their home, in all the profound senses of the word.  They invited us into their faith, culture, and family.  Some of my favorite memories of Nepal are participating in the Hindu rituals of their humble home.

One of those rituals was Janai Purni.  (Note: I will describe it according to my experience and explanation of it while there.  When I looked online for confirmation, I basically found the same article plagiarized on half a dozen different sites, which describes something different from what we experienced.  Thus this disclaimer.  This blog is not a text on Nepali Hindu-Buddhist tradition, just what I learned while there.)

Where was I?  Janai Purni!  Janai Purni takes place on the first day of Gai Jatra, the weeklong Festival of the Cow.  Gai Jatra is another whole post, in fact it’s second on my longstanding mental list of post-to-be.

On Janai Purni we were invited up to the Subbas’ room (Subba is their surname, but what Saroj Sir went by most of the time) where we had a tikka ceremony, but with something extra.  After lighting the Ganesh lamp and incense, Anita performed a ritual cleansing with a pinch of rice (which absorbs your sins/impurities and is then thrown out the window) and sprinkling of water, then blessed me, as my sister, and tied a Janai around my wrist.

The Janai is a sacred thread that seems to have two manifestations.

The first (according to my googling) is as a marker of male adulthood, and is bestowed in a ceremony called Bratabandhan.  This Janai has three threads, which represent body, speech, and mind, and when the knots are tied by a Brahman the wearer gains complete control over all three.  He must wear the thread for the rest of his life.  We did not have a Bratabandhan ceremony.

Janai Purni (or Purnima) is the day when these threads are changed, if they have become frayed or defiled (for example by touching a woman who is menstruating), and for us it was a single thread, which granted protection from evil spirits.

Anita had already blessed me, and afterwards I blessed her in kind, including a tikka and a ritual gift of money.  (My Western money-consciousness wished I had known this beforehand and so brought more cash with me, to sneakily pay them back for all their hospitality, but I’m not sure this would have been appropriate.)  This two-way blessing was repeated by K and Subba Sir.

Then the sisters served the brothers a portion of a special rice pudding, with dried dates, coconut, and raisins, which tasted better than anything, eaten there in a familial circle on the floor of their room, which was fairly Spartan in décor, but luxurious with hospitality.  Subba set aside a little of the pudding as an offering to his mother, who died the year before.

The Janai on this day is tied onto each man by his sister.  So when Anita tied one on me, and K tied one on Subba, done in appreciation and recognition of our time together, they became our brothers and sisters.

So I have four brothers and two sisters, spanning the West Coast of the US all the way to the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal.  And more blessings than I can count.

Another week in the life.

Wait, wasn’t my last post about time moving quickly?  Sheeyit, I guess it’s a theme because where did those last couple weeks go?

Do we all agree time goes faster when you’re in a routine?  When it’s all familiar, unthreatening, and you have a good idea of what they next day is going to be like, that’s when the years act like months, the months look like weeks, and the weeks barely fit on your watchface.

When I started traveling I didn’t know where I would sleep that night, where my next meal would come from, and what anything would be like.  After a year of this feeling it was only three weeks in.  That’s an extreme example, and even then, the months started squirting away like that unripe cherry tomato on your plate at the fancy restaurant.  (Just use your fingers next time.)

I thought I have enough uncertainty these days to keep them crawling, but I guess even if a day lasts a long time, it can be part of a fast week.  Can I even remember last week?

Monday…  Oh yeah, I had the day off so took the bike ride between Flemish farm fields to have lunch with K in our sandwich place, with kinda weird amateur drawings on the walls: a horse’s head, a duck flying, and a serious-looking baby with a bowl of spaghetti overturned on his head, noodles leaking down his neck and their misspelled slogan “no nonsens pasta.”

It had been closed for renovations by a new owner, and we were eager to see the new version.  They put on nice tablecloths, removed the perchy bar, and painted it off-white, slightly violet and whatever.  We weren’t sure if we liked the random old stuff, but now…the funkiness is gone, man!  It’s basically just like a million other “proper” restaurants in Belgium/Western Europe/The West.  Boooooring. 

Faux-elegance is a stand-in for actual personality.  (And real elegance is even worse, like boasting of that lack of personality.)

Tuesday my first class was late enough that I could go to the gym first.  The gym is my best local site for people-watching, and I am enjoying learning the different crowds.  

-During the day: is quiet, like a singles’ club on really off-hours.  A few folks peering around, looking for each other, and showing off for the wrong audiences.  Some beefy lad pumps iron for housewives who look more frightened that titillated by his grunts.  Or that lady I mentioned awhile back, the blond in tight black spandex who comes and does lunges behind  my bench.  (Remember her?  She got embarrassed after I caught her farting.)

-Early evening: is the working folk, efficiently checking Exercise off their To-Do List.  They move faster, are in better shape, and don’t talk.

-Weekends and holidays: (unless it’s warm weather) are like the bars on Friday night, without the beer.  It is preening, strutting, and pissing contests among the males.  A stage crowded with solo acts.  Highly entertaining.

-Weekday morning, opening hour 8:00 AM: was a new one for me.  Turns out that’s Senior Time.  Silver Citizens crowd the stationary bikes and circulate, a few at a time, among the rest.  One distinguished fellow came to row next to me, and when I finished, a little lady with finely brushed hair and one of the squarest jaws I’ve ever seen came and took my place.  She looked at him, he didn’t look much at her.  When he got up and moved on, another retired fellow took his place.  This one looked at her, but she didn’t look at him.

I love humans.  We are all children on the playground.  Or maybe sniffing dogs.

Work on Tuesday and Wednesday was functional but forced.  Like when I tried to get new (to me) students to use the language in ways they weren’t used to from past teachers, and just looked at me in confusion.  I’m still on the learning curve…and feel like a bit of a fraud.  I fear I am less of a teacher, and more of a conversation partner who guides a bit and corrects your grammar.  Wow, that would be annoying in real life, yet people pay beaucoup bucks for it in private.

Especially for the intensive lessons!  They pay a boatload of cash to spend all day with a private teacher…we even go to lunch with them, speaking only in the target language.  I had a kid (23) on Wednesday who was there to learn coffee vocabulary, since he’s going to coffee school in London next month.

Okay, we’ll talk about coffee.  Only as soon as I started, he mentioned that no, he wasn’t interested in that at all, he’d learn it at the school, where he was going just for kicks.  Okay then.  So we talked about other stuff.  Like “tell me about your home town” which provided a glimpse into Belgian xenophobia.  That was awkward.

“In my town there are a lot of…strangers.”

“Okay, what do you mean by ‘strangers’?”

(Searching look.  Probably realizing I am an immigrant.)  “You know…foreign…Arab…  You know, terrorists.”  He continued “you can’t look at them, or they get angry.”

“Hmm.  Are there a lot of fights?”

“No.  Not for ten years.”

I am gratified that I still find it shocking when someone dismisses and judges an entire macro-group of people, even though it is a very common behavior.  So common in fact, that I’m going to do it right now.

There is a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in Belgium.  I’ll save my theories on why for another day, but I have to mention that sometimes I want to drive to the immigrant neighborhoods and twist some ears.  On the news last week was a mass brawl between immigrants from Turkey and (I think it was) Azerbaijan.  Started by a damn soccer game.

I’m sorry, but guys…GUYS!  You can’t do that!  You can’t come to a country where people, you know, behave themselves, and get in a gigantic brawl, throwing stones and shit, because your f-ing soccer team played!  (Not even if your great-grandfather was killed by his great-grandfather.  Sit down.)  You wonder why Belgians talk about you like that?

Obvious disclaimer: not all Belgians nor non-Belgians act in either of those ways, in fact, most don’t.

I got home Tuesday and Wednesday at quarter to nine at night, in time to scarf a bowl of cereal (there was no slot in the schedules for dinner) and go to bed.  That’s okay sometimes, but pretty quickly I find myself saying “I gotta quit this job.”  Especially after I realized today that I paid 57% of my earnings in taxes and fees already?  And there are more coming at the end of the year?  Can that be right?

The air is getting colder and the sun is gone by six.  Fingers on handlebars feel locked solid and the skin on the knuckles dries and cracks.  Cheekbones feel prominent as the skin on top stretches tight in the chill, and even at 8:30 PM the streets are abandoned, humans huddling together for warmth in front of cold television screens that never lived.

(Did I mention you should get rid of your TV?  The two Secrets to Wellbeing that I’ve discovered amidst all my profound cluelessness are to give up your TV and automobile; both are toxic to the human spirit.  But that’s a soapbox for another time.)

Thursday was back to Brussels for the follow-up “Consolidation Day” to formally end my teacher training.  I was eager to go, to see and catch up with my little teacher cohort.  We were originally 9, but 4 had to teach, and 1 has already left the country, but it was nice to see the other three and hear that I’m not the only one…

The day was run by the internally famous regional head honcho, a rather severe woman whose flat looks and minimal expressions (that seem disapproving) leave people stumbling and stuttering in an attempt to figure out what she wants from them.  How do I please this person?!?

Maybe it was having a small group, or that she was just back from vacation, I don’t know, but she was in rare form.  We went over a new tool to use in class, and in a demo lesson Dolly Parton came up as an example.  So here was the stern, inscrutable, and much-feared Chief Director of Something-Or-Other for Western Europe discussing Dolly’s boobs in the Causative: “Yes, she has had her boobs done.”  It was awesome.