Bangkok or NYC?

On May 3 I arrived in Bangkok and found my way to my next gracious hosts, Paula and Albert. Not only did I have a beautiful room to stay in but Albert happens to be a chef so I ate some pretty scrumptious meals! I also enjoyed the company of KK the cat, who hails from Indonesia. I developed an allergy to cats a few years ago so tried to keep my distance. However, my love of animals overtook my need to stay sneeze free and before long I was petting and holding KK. My new ‘temporary’ home was in Dusit, a bus ride to the fairly new above ground train but a nice quiet retreat (complete with pool!). For the two weeks I stayed with Paula and Albert I set up informational interviews with many different NGOs, cold calling some to get a meeting, but also making a fair amount of connections through friends and former-colleagues (Thank You!!!).  I also managed to make it to a Spanish Meetup (not even Asia can stop me from speaking Spanish!) and a Fair Trade show with artisans from all over the country.

I never knew this but Bangkok is a huge hub for all kinds of designers. Which is ironic because in addition to my interest in refugees, I have become a bit obsessed with the idea of sustainable design/reducing waste/simple living. Finding myself in a city that was very design focused started to make me question whether the universe was trying to tell me something. Alas, it must have been speaking in Thai because I didn’t understand the exact message. However this fact has been stored away in my brain for future endeavors.  

To me Bangkok is Asian NY. Good public transportation, so busy, really fashionable folks, just lacking the attitude. You can find anything you want in the city, and it is possible to forget you are not in the US anymore. In my interviews many have mentioned what a coveted post this is for the NGO/UN crowd. You can even get by without learning Thai. In my case, I am waiting for more permanence before attempting to learn more than the essential ‘thank you’ and ‘not spicy’. This realization of how ‘posh’ the post is was also a bit disconcerting, as I wasn’t really going for that intentionally. I know I’ll have to pay my dues in a more ‘rustic’ area, to put it lightly, at some point soon.

Ironically, some folks I haven’t seen in ages happened to also be in BKK. Jess is a former colleague from my Community Service-Learning days at JMU whose husband was posted here. The other, Michelle, is a former apartment-mate from Ibarra, Ecuador! Michelle was nice enough to put me up in BKK for a few days as well, and give me the low-down on the NGO/UN scene as well as the ‘best soi** (street) food in the city’ scene. If you ever see Thousand Year Old Eggs on the menu you must order them. The ones below are with crunchy basil leaves. Droooooll….

**Soi is pronounced soy. When I first arrived I heard everyone talking about ‘soi dogs’ and just thought that there must be a lot of vegetarians here. Turns out there are actually a lot of street dogs. 

So, Bangkok was pretty serious. Lots of running around to interviews, getting rejected a lot (some of those cold-calls never called back!), and getting the low-down on the job scene here. I did make it to the infamous Khao San road which is a major tourist spot. However, all you can really do is eat and buy stuff. Since I was on a budget and anxious to do other things a few hours was enough.  Around the end of week 2 I decided that my best bet for finding some kind of activity (paid or unpaid) to occupy me while I continued to look for work was to head north to Mae Sot. Mae Sot is a few miles from the Burma border and near the largest refugee camp in Thailand. I took the night bus and arrived Sunday morning…

It's My Anniversary!

Today is my one-month anniversary in Thailand. In addition to having crazy dreams I’ve been up to quite a bit. I arrived here on a Sunday and immediately flew to Phuket where Christie, Steve, and Griffin were nice enough to let me occupy the extra room in their apartment. I got in lots of pool, beach, and baby time during my week and a half there! Christie and Steve also took me to my first hash! For those who haven’t heard of this ‘hashing’, as described on one website, is ‘a drinking club with a running problem’. Hashing is basically an excuse for many expats and some locals to get together, participate in a sporting event (running, biking, hiking), and then stand around in a circle and make fun of each other while drinking beer. Once you’ve hashed for awhile you get a nickname, usually not in the PG range.

The hash that we went to (Christie, Steve, and baby in the hiking pack) was a hike through a rubber plantation/jungle. The organizer marked out the trail for us using tiny brightly-colored pieces of paper. The papers are in a pile and with each pile you find, you know you are on the right path. Some ran and some walked. We hiked up and sometimes slid down, forded small streams and thwarted snakes and mosquitoes. But we all eventually made it outta there! After the hash most continued on to a yummy Thai buffet where I learned there is no such thing as a non-spicy stir fry here. All in all a fun evening and great first hash! See pix below.

After I hashed it was time to get down to business. So I arranged to get my Open Water PADI certification (diving license). My instructor was French and the class was the first he had taught in English. The other student was a lovely German woman (Urlike) from Hamburg (I’ve met more Germans from Hamburg these past few months than actual Germans in my life…well except for ‘the wedding’). We started out in the pool to practice breathing and what to do if you lose your mask or breathing apparatus, and then did 4 dives over the next two days to seal the deal. Two days later Urlike and I went on a day-long diving tour to the Phi-Phi islands where we saw a lot of beautiful (and poisonous) fish. Diving is no fun to just talk about so here are some pictures! (having slight technical issues with these- keep checking back here!)

After a week and a half I headed to Bangkok to start networking and job hunting. Thanks so much to Christie, Steve, and Griffin for hosting me and to Urlike for being such a great dive partnerJ

Exactly what I needed to hear

Maybe this belongs as a facebook post but I figured I would share here anyway:)

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/easy-and-certain.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Have I Told You About My Dreams?

And not in the 'I want to be an astronaut' kind of sense. More in the 'wacky and I can't explain them' way. From vivid recollections of the names of people who show up (Ping Zed, Momo) to recurring dreams of childhood friends who I haven't spoken to in many years my REM period tends to be quite exciting. So much that I felt inspired to comment today. For that last year or so I had begun to have a recurring dream that I was in a tsunami. Each dream was different than the last, only a different tsunami scenario that seemed to grow more intense and graphic over time...until they stopped around December. I surmised that these dreams were related to the unconscious stress (on top of the actual 'conscious' stress) of my job ending eventually. So when it ended and I had my plan they stopped all together. But last night I had another! It was pretty intense as I was in a large house or hotel with many people and the water just kept rising and rising until the only ones who were safe were on the top floor, and not everyone made it.

My analysis of this dream is that I am a little unsure of next steps in the coming week. I've spent the past two weeks networking like it was my job and now I've decided to take a bus 8 hours north of Bangkok to an area called Mae Sot. This town is near to one of the refugee camps on the Burmese border and there are oodles of NGOs and volunteer opportunities. So I will be trying my luck there and hopefully gaining some professional experience as well. It will be a new adventure certainly, but with a lot of uncertainties.

I didn't quite expect this to be my first Thailand post, so I'll have to backtrack to Phuket and other BKK adventures in the next day or two. In short, Bangkok is: HOT, familiar, HOT, very 'New York City', HOT, fashionable,  and spicy. Did I mention that it is really HOT here?

Quantifying the 'Sabbatical'

While my posts have all been very positive, I can’t deny that sometimes I question this experience. When I hear friends talk about what they’ve done in the past few months (ie: work, be promoted, finish school, etc.) I start to wonder if this ‘sabbatical/job hunting experience’ was really the smartest path (and many who have been with me in this process knows this is an understatement). There are so many reasons not to do this BUT I think that the reasons to take this risk at this point in my life outnumber and frankly weigh heavier than the reasons not to. 

After reading Seth Godin’s blog, I have started to just equate this self doubt with my ‘lizard brain’ who will tell me all the reasons I can’t, I shouldn’t, and why I will ultimately fail. The lizard also causes me to procrastinate and not take action because of a fear of rejection. However, taking a risk like this causes one to realize that the lizard is just a lizard. I am not saying that, like Charlie Sheen, I am a tiger but I am saying that a big part of this trip has been personal growth and learning to grab the lizard by the tail and tell it to shut up. That there is a difference between self-doubt and the instinct inside your head that what you are doing is really off track (a lizard of a different color perhaps?), it is just a matter of separating the two. Besides, all risks involve some kind of fear, otherwise they wouldn't actually be risks.

I am trying to be consciously aware of my lizard and his voice is now significantly quieter than a few months ago. At this moment in time, risk is OK and necessary. 

On top of this I am trying to look at the trip objectively as its own experience. An adventure, an opportunity to learn (and not just a language), and reminder that even though I don’t have diplomatic immunity I am still an ambassador. Even if I don't come away with a dream job, I will have had one hell of a time!

But just for the sake of practicing the explanation of the time lapse in my CV, I’ve taken inspiration from another blogger (yes, I do read a lot of blogsJ) who is on her own job hunt and the struggle to discuss the ‘unemployed period’ with her peers. Everyone works, so one without a job starts to feel like they haven’t been accomplishing as much as his/her peers. Katy Dunnet looked a little deeper and when asked ‘what she had been up to’ she quantified her time through her loss of 25 pounds! That is not a small amount of weight to lose; it takes some serious time and effort. In tribute to this alternative way to look at unemployment holistically, and also because I have always thought it would be entertaining to write a resume that was filled with big and small personal accomplishments as well as ‘life’ objectives (ie: Objective: To work with refugees in a dirty coastal city) I present to you….. (cue line from A Chorus Line “…who am I anyway? Am I my resume?”)the ‘quantified version of the past two months’.

Sabbatical, Tangier

Student, Writer, Ambassador, Volunteer

·         72 hours of intensive French language tutoring; resulting in conversational level of French.

·         18 hours of volunteering in Nursery of Abandoned Babies; feeding, playing, singing.

·         Residency in Islamic country; resulting in greater understanding of culture and religion.

·         3 informational interviews with local NGOs to learn about project objectives, challenges, etc.

·         Visited one project site where an AIDS workshop was given.

·         3 CV ‘Drive-Bys’ in Rabat.

·         12 blogs written about sabbatical.

·         About 4000 pictures of Medersas.

·         Learned to correctly pronounce ‘I love You’ in German.

·         1 ‘Introduction to Calligraphy’ course.

Estonians in Morocco

I am not particularly proud of this next story, however the events to be mentioned do make me question whether I did actually miss the boat to Hollywood or Broadway…

One of the common threads that link tourists the world over, because they are so obviously tourists and more so in certain countries is the unwanted attention they receive from the locals. Chefchaoun , otherwise known as the ‘blue’ city, is almost three hours from Tangier so Iris, Edith, and I spent the night there. The majority of our time was spent wandering around lost in the ‘blue’ medina which is blue because of the Jewish influence here. As far as being hassled to buy and walk into shops, Tangier is pretty tame compared to Chaoun (and anywhere else in the country for that matter). We arrived in the late afternoon, had dinner, and then wandered aimlessly taking pictures of the blue walls. (Some of us were also wishing we had not ordered the pigeon for dinner- not it!) But everywhere we went we were engaged in conversation and some seemed truly offended when we did not heed their invitations to look in a shop. By the end of the day I had reached the end of my patience.

Dan, my original housemate in Tangier, had come up with a really good idea for warding off unwanted attention and conversation with every shopkeeper. Since Moroccans all know somewhere between 3 and 6 languages, they are pretty successful at getting the attention of most tourists. But there was one (I am sure there are many but this one was chosen) language that we were pretty certain they wouldn’t know.

Around 9pm the ladies and I entered a shop to admire some (blue) artwork of the city. We had just been offered drugs by a guy who spoke all of our languages fluently, so it was hard to deter him from pushing them on us…we got away and I think I jokingly started talking about Dan’s idea. I was the first to enter the shop and the first to be engaged.

Shopkeeper: “Where are you from?”

Me:  (smiling)

Shopkeeper: “ English? Spanish? French? German? American? Russian?”

Me: (shaking my head but not saying anything)

Shopkeeper: “Where are you from.”

Me: “don’t…understaaaand…(pointing to myself)…Estonia”

Shopkeeper: “Where?”

Me: “Estonia. Little English.”

Edith and Iris were silent, especially because I dragged them in with me referring to them when I said I was Estonian. Well Edith stayed quiet and played along, Iris on the other hand couldn’t stop laughing.:)

Shopkeeper: “Estonia? I don’t know Estonia.”

Suddenly he reached under the counter and pulled out a map of the world…so I quickly scanned it so could point out Estonia. Then things got even more complicated as I told him my ‘Estonian’ name and he asked me how to say ‘good morning’ ‘good afternoon’ and ‘good evening’ and repeat them several times  to make sure he got the pronunciation! Somehow I continued to play along with a straight face and extremely accented English. Finally we said we had to go. He said how nice it was to meet us as we were the first Estonians he had met. He was so excited! So while this may have been a little cruel, to my knowledge he had no idea that we were not, in fact, from Estonia so we probably made his day. I don’t this will work everywhere though and I apologize to any Estonians who may be reading for misrepresenting your country…but I was niceJ Below are some pictures of the city.

Medersa Mania

I am kind of obsessed with architecture and calligraphy in these old Islamic schools. It is so detailed that can just wander forever in each one! In Fez I made it to all three of these (quite a feat in the maze of the medina) and to one in Meknes. Below are some of my favorite shots, but you really have to go to feel the awe that is these places. Also, did I mention they are totally quiet inside? Each one is off a road in the medina which is constantly bustling with people, animals, tourists, etc but once you step inside you are part of total tranquility.

Getting Political In French***

***Warning! The following post get political, its not just a play on words…you have been warned…***

The very first paper I wrote in college presented the two opposing arguments for whether or not the US had the obligation to be the ‘World’s Policeman’. Since writing this paper back in the Fall of 1999 my opinion of this subject has evolved significantly, and I haven’t heard the US referred to as ‘the world’s policeman’ using that particular phrase for many years…until Thursday evening. Of course I’ve participated in the ongoing debate on whether the US should be intervening in the affairs of other nations, to what extent, and what the motivation has been for each intervention (both publicized and ‘actual’). In the past two months I think that the administration has been in a unique position to define the US’s role as one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Our involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan is ongoing, although controversial, and the motives behind the initial intervention have been scrutinized along with the consequences of a long-term presence in an attempt to stabilize these nations. This ‘open wound’ as well as our historical relationships with the powers that be in North Africa have forced the administration to tread lightly in the affairs of Libya. While we have taken a stance and sent in a force in the skies, we haven’t put ourselves in real danger in the name of human rights.

So the question was posed to me on my ride back to Tangier by an Arabic teacher who had the same level of French as me. She said she didn’t understand why the US, as the supreme military power, could oust Saddam Hussein so swiftly by itself but only send planes to fly over Libya when the world clearly agrees that Gadaffi must be stopped. I tried to explain to her why I thought this was, in my limited vocabulary, and then the conversation inevitably turned towards the motivation of the US’s involvement in foreign affairs. In my opinion it is never solely for humanitarian reasons. There is always money to be made. This sounds harsh the way I say it, but it is something that I see and has been brought up to me by several Moroccans. While I previously assumed that those in the Arab world were completely against any US intervention, many that I have talked to see the power that the US has (in terms of military force) to do good, but that this ‘good’ turns out to be more of a secondary goal than the original motive.

I’d had an almost identical conversation with my language teacher, but we had taken it further to the subject of whether democracy was the correct model for all of these nations in ‘revolution’. Like most Moroccans, she is happy with the King and while reforms are necessary doesn’t want to change the political system. ” However,” she paused “it is a certainty in a democracy that leaders can’t run off with millions of dollars earmarked for the people”, referring to Mubarak, “and that is something that you cannot guarantee in this system of monarchy.” I’m paraphrasing, but it is honestly something I never considered.

Back to the train, I also wanted to share a very frank part of the conversation with the teacher.

Teacher: What do Americans think of Moroccans, of Islam?

Me: (trying to find the right words to say exactly what I think, but delicately) Well, I think that many do have a negative view of Islam because they don’t understand it and equate it with terrorism. This is partially the fault of the media. I don’t think there is a negative or positive view of Moroccans. Of those who had been to Morocco I heard such great things, others just don’t really know very much about Morocco. What do Moroccans think of Americans?

Teacher: Well, there are two groups. One respects the US as a great power but also recognizes that it is flawed. And this group also separates the American people from the government, realizing that the actions of the government don’t necessarily reflect the desires of all the people. The other group has a more negative view.

Keep in mind that during this conversation we both prefaced our answers with ‘In my opinion’ and ‘from my perspective’.  

This blog was difficult to write. I wanted to present things the way they happened but in an objective way. I also know that not everyone will agree with my often pessimistic view of foreign policy and that is ok. But please comment if you have something to say, and let me know if I succeeded in presenting the conversations objectively and in being a ‘good’ ambassador.

Carpe Gateau

"Wait a minute? Isn't she in Thailand now?" 

YES! I have arrived safe and sound in Thailand. After spending a week in Phuket at the beach and under the sea I am now in Bangkok (BKK from here on out) But, in the interest of keeping the blog chronological, giving myself some credit for blogs I've written and failed to post, and closing out the Morocco part of the journey...ahead are a few posts that are ancient but still entertaining:)

Carpe Gateau or 'Seize the Cake!'

The last French class I took in the States was this past fall. I liked the teacher but found myself at the slow table with the guy who asks really obvious questions. One of the classes was devoted almost entirely to bon bons. The professor brought in a power point presentation with colorful and detailed pictures of different sweets from France and discussed the history and ingredients of each. While I appreciate bon bons, at the time I didn’t understand the fuss and how this lesson was supposed to improve my language skills! Since coming to Morocco I wonder no more.

Imagine streets where every other business is a café (and none of them say ‘Starbucks’) or a ‘patisserie’ which, although it sounds blasphemous, trumps any Italian bakery I have seen on Long Island . I have a mental map of all of my favorites that can be accessed at any moment. In this strictly Muslim country, everyday looks like Christmas in the windows of these delicious pieces of heaven. Giant plates are piled high with delectable truffles, or horn shaped pastries filled with almond or fig filling. My favorites are the chocolate covered, nut-filled sweets with a walnut on top. A common snack here is mint tea (served in a tall glass, hot, and brimming with real mint leaves and enough sugar to make you a diabetic) and Moroccan pastries. The sweet stuff is either cookies or sweets from the closest patisserie or a piece of ‘gateau’ (cake) that is so perfect looking and tasting you would swear it wasn’t cut out of a giant sheet like its brothers and sisters. In my experience, cake either tastes better than it looks or looks better than it tastes but somehow the French (and now the Moroccans) have succeeded at winning first prize in both categories.

So now that I have teased out the sweet tooth in each one of you, I will leave you with a few picturesque examples as a final torture…I mean temptation…

banana-chocolate crepe :)

 

 

Oops I took a small bite before I took the picture:)