Family Time

OR WHY I MISS MY FAMILY AND YET HAVE KIN ALL ABOUT...IF I WAIT LONG ENOUGH

Hi Folks,

I am very jetlagged right now, so this update will have to be short. I have just had so many precious moments in the recent days that I wanted to share them with y'all.

Being in a new city without many local contacts is challenging. I forgot how hard London was before London became the hip, happening, creative mecca I found it to be in the end. London is also wet, dreary, cold in so many ways, lonely, isolating. In turn, Berkeley started as a hard place. Now, being back from holiday, having friends to call, having too much to do and see, this is just all so new.

Fourth of July was the first important holiday I've ever had without family or friends, which made me homesick indeed. In the past few days, I have been surrounded by 3 families (none of my blood kin though) and it has been so nice to be cared for and taken care of so lovingly.

This past long weekend I visited two lovely friends of mine from Oberlin in Massachusetts at their beach house. I got to eat vegetarian food every meal! I woke up late. I didn't have any homework! More surprisingly, I had free time. I found myself sitting on the deck, peacefully staring at the ocean or catching up on Eddie Izzard comedy shows I hadn't yet seen. These two wonderful folks took grumpy me in, gave me a huge bed to sleep in, free laundry, and a personal bathroom within 8 steps of my bed (all luxuries when you live in a big dorm) and let me detox from language class and life jitters. I even received an adorable bear to make sure I had enough cuddles in room back at Berkeley. Though the holiday was too short, I am so glad that I was given the opportunity to visit.

Back in Berkeley again, trying to get over jet lag and get into studying daily, I receive a lovely email from Anya, former Shansi fellow to Himachal Pradesh, India (Jagori site) asking if I would like to meet up and chat about Shansi. This turned into sharing a meal with her family in tucked-away Ethiopian restaurant, saving me from another dining hall, anti-vegetarian meal. It was so nice to be taken in as simply another child who needed to be fed and who had some interesting stories to tell in return.

I also have had the chance to contra dance this week. I have contra-ed once before in Berkeley. Going this second time I actually recognized a bunch of people, and made friends with some friendly folks. We even had some friends in common, whom I had met in my wanderings of San Francisco. (That made me feel so cool.)

Anyway, I hope you all have some nice family around to nurture and be nurtured back. If not, never fear! Maybe some will be waiting on the end of your next email or plane flight.


I can't wait for the Chinese family to come!

Character Sketch

OR THE PEOPLE I FIND IN MY WANDERINGS OF THE BAY AREA

I have run into some noteworthy characters so far, people with interesting stories and unexpected pasts. I keep meaning to write this post, and then I meet another one. Darn, more characters! I grumble. How will I fit them all into one post? Well folks, I'll give you the best of the best according to people expert extraordinaire, Ray Gergen. (I feel like this is something I can safety yet pompously claim because of my major, Anthropology, and my passion, creating characters to act out on stage.)

Before we begin our tale, you my dear readers must be asking yourselves where do these characters come from? How do you meet people in the Bay area? I may have become braver. I have gotten over my fear of finding a free seat in cafeterias -- big spaces with lots of people but no friends and therefore no safe space to sit in. Now, I sit down willy nilly at any table I please, introduce myself and, actually, usually get a smile and a hello in return. And then, if I'm lucky, a story. The Indian girl who loves America because all her idols are from here: Jim Morrison (of The Doors), Pete Townshend (of The Who), Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin), people and groups I also love. The Chinese girl who ballroom dances competitively and shares a love of Blues dancing with me.

I may have become a better listener. (Thank you SIC roleplay training.) I find people just open up to me. And if I pause and listen, they tell me the longest stories on the train, on the street, anywhere. Like the women on the Bart train who was also an Anthropology major and who taught English in Eastern Africa for a few years. Or the lady who helped Judy and I pick wild plums off of a fraternity bush. She pushed and pulled the branches just right so that our harvest was quite big. She was so excited by the Shansi fellowship. "Sounds like life is good." she said, after hearing about my 2 year's worth of future plans.

[Of course, Judy is of Tamara and Judy, my Canadian friends whom I adventured with often, to places as diverse as Napa valley and the Cheeseboard Collective Pizza Shop. They have returned to Canada, leaving me to press on alone. They are certainly missed in Berkeley.]

San Francisco also seems to be a pretty friendly city, especially compared to London, which considering how reserved the Brits are with strangers, isn't saying much. But London is the only other city I've cut my teeth on.

How do I know SF is nice? Two complete strangers have complimented me, in seemingly asexual, genuine ways. Once on the Bart train, while I was doing Chinese homework, a manish boy upon exiting the train, for I was sitting next to the door, told me that "You are so awesome!" The passenger next to me smirks "He took his time saying that ." True, too true. Just today, someone else complimented me on the Led Zeppelin patch I have on my messenger bag. After these mystery people state their thoughts they simply walk away. Friendliness or blunt and pleasant honesty? Either way, it's nice.

And you cannot forget my daily run-ins with the residents of I-House in the halls, at the front desk, in the elevator, in the Great Hall, in the bathroom. I've met an RA who took the Japanese version of my summer, beginning Chinese class and quit. Whenever we run into each other, we commiserate about the seeming lack of pedagogy in summer intensive language classes and cheer each other on in our personal struggles to master an Asian language as native English speakers. (He continues his study in his free time.) The Cyprian, who studies in Lebanon, and fluent in Arabic, explains Arabic texting to me: "we don't use Arabic script, we use letters and numbers" Why numbers? "Each number represents a sound English doesn't have." He confessed that his handwritten Arabic was rusty. "I can't think in Arabic. ...I haven't taken a class in Arabic, other than Arabic literature classes, since 9th grade." It has all been in English. And my friend is a graduate student. [Basically all the graduate students here are doing research, and it's all in some kind of engineering or law.] And of course, my favorite are the linguistic conversations. People love knowing about Chinese grammar or just practicing their colloquial English. In exchange for me playing teacher, I get to hear free lessons in topics as interesting as Finnish grammar and Dutch law versus Dutch practice -- apparently two very different things, because "Even thought things are illegal, we just don't care that people do them". Very unAmerican indeed: we care even when there isn't a law against the behavior.

Oh the things you learn when you pause, listen, sit by a new face.

p.s. I found a great and truthful guide ready to shed light on my fellowship: Dr. Seuss.

My Weekends in San Francisco (Pictures)

Street car in Fishermens' Wharf.

Sandcastle I made on the beach near Ghirardelli.

Mint sundae I ate at Ghirardelli's.

Group at Fillmore Jazz Festival.

Chocolate covered strawberries at Ghirardelli's.

Ghirardelli Square.

Dungeness crab at Fishermens' Wharf.

Palace of Fine Arts.

Driving on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Beach near Ghirardelli Square.

Finding New Energy to Cover New Ground

OR HOW SPONTANEOUS DECISIONS CAN GIVE YOU LOADS -- LIKE INSIGHT, PERSPECTIVE, ADVENTURE

Today has been a long day. Today is the day my Canadian friends, these two lovely women who took me under their wings and became my make-shift family here at I-House (International House), left. Today is the start of a holiday weekend. This 4th of July will be the first holiday that won't be spent with any of my loved ones. Today is the last day in a long week, a week that contained 3 tests and some of the final, tired steps of my first semester of Chinese. The course I'm taking is 2 semesters' worth of material, meaning I'm grasping onto the threads of the dead middle. And I am so tired.

Yet on my walk home, I kept finding more and more energy. Maybe because I had just come out of The Last Airbender, a fantasy movie about war, peace, and finding one's purpose, all by age 11. Ang, the last airbender, learns how to master the water element by learning to accept his emotions whatever they are. Funny enough, but this really resonated with me. There is so much on my plate that I am finding hard to swallow. I don't want to accept that I've graduated, that I am far from the people I want to be around, that I am a fellow, that I'm stuck in this Chinese purgatory for another 6 weeks. The walk back I just let myself accept what came -- the frigid weather; the 30 minute, uphill walk; the bizarre people on the street (preppy, rich college kids and homeless people); the drums. The drums?!?!?! THE DRUMS!

On my way home, I followed the sounds of a drum circle. On the street, people were talking about how "primal" the sounds were. Rolling my eyes at them, I went to go check out the perfectly valid music coming from a hidden corner of campus. I came upon a janggu ensemble, a form of Korean drumming. The janggu is that hourglass drum you see in the picture. Three drummers sat in a semicircle, facing a gong player. The gong player was clearly setting the tempo (pace of the music), because he changed it quite a bit during the drumming. Much like the master drummer controls and manipulated the main tempo in gamelan music, if you are familiar with that.

Seeing these players, I was was just flabbergasted. I had never seen drums like this. My only clue was that the language the players spoke to each other sounded a lot like what many of my bilingual classmates speak, Korean (and English). So I googled and found the janggu. It's been too long since I've encountered an entirely new instrument. As I walked away from the players, I chose a path that led straight away from them, so I could hear them for much of the rest of the way home. The farther I got, the more intense and frenzied the playing sounded, until the distance snuffed the sound out.

PHOTO FROM http://www.flickr.com/photos/misterpetey/2588126606/