Travel, Relationships, and The New Twenty

In the Chinese Lunar Calendar, February eighteenth began the Year of the Pig. Like many of the animals in the Chinese zodiac, the pig is considered a propitious symbol: it is associated with fertility and virility (making this a lucky year to have children). But 2007 is also the year of an unprecendented step by the Chinese government: banning representations of the pig in television advertising.

On the night of February seventeenth around eleven forty-five, Lacey and I found a lucky parking spot on snowy Broad Street and walked four blocks into the heart of Philadelphia’s Chinatown. We heard the celebration well before we arrived, machine-gun fireworks erupting in sporadic bursts and volleys above the subtler, steadier beat of giant drums. When we arrived we worked our way into the crowd until we could see the action, a bright blur of shiny dragons and white-hot explosions, grinning faces and nodding heads. The smell of gunpowder was everywhere. I was reminded of my one previous trip to Beijing, when the lack of safety restrictions around places like construction sites and major intersections filled even mundane moments with an extra twitch of caution.

That night each dragon in the parade was made up of two young people: the unfortunate one in the back, whose only job seemed to be maintaining the illusion that the dragon had hind legs, and the one in the front, who animated the dragon by opening and shutting its mouth and eyes and crouching low, only to jump up again suddenly and move in a new direction. The movements made the dragons appear curious, almost childlike, as they ducked and bobbed their way forward, eyes wide, heads swinging. As the dragons advanced an unseen hand lit a long string of fireworks, draped from awnings and parking meters or from a long stick dangled out a second-story window. The sudden explosions drew the dragons closer, dancing and ducking into the heart of the blaze, their heads sometimes inches from the crackling gunpowder. We saw one young man emerge from a dragon on the front lines urgently beckoning another troupe member, shoving the mask onto his friend’s head and pulling away with his fingers in his eyes. We watched until we made sure he hadn’t gone blind. Later an older Chinese couple was caught trying to cross an open area just as someone lit an enormous bottle rocket; the couple was pushed back just before the thing cracked and varoomed into the cold sky. And more than once Lacey and I felt the sparking heat of the dangerous red strings exploding too close to our feet, while I pushed in to snap camera phone pictures of the chaos.

The following Thursday in Mandarin class, a fellow student introduces herself by saying “wo xiang Duncan.” My teacher doesn’t correct her, although for the second time she has said “I would like Duncan” instead of “my last name is Duncan.” The teacher is a lot friendlier than the ones I had in college. There I was constantly corrected on my tones, my stroke order, sometimes my attendance. Here I am the star pupil. But the same pitfalls lurk: in Mandarin even a one-syllable word can mean four different things, depending on slight variations in tone; two-syllable words hide a treacherous infinity of meanings. Even the order in which a character’s strokes are written is fiercely adhered to.

The ban on pigs in television advertising is meant to protect China’s population of 2 million Muslims from exposure to the offensive animal. As a Westerner, this sensitivity can be hard to make sense of, given the rumors we hear about the Chinese government. But this is the same culture that regards taking a business card with one hand (instead of two) as unspeakably rude. In China, the dangers are often subtle and unexpected: a woman can walk down a dark city street at midnight with no fear of being molested, but there is no guarantee that construction debris won’t fall on her head or fireworks won’t suddenly explode at her feet. And if she doesn’t get her tones right, once she gets to the hospital she might just find herself telling the attending physician that she would like her last name, thank you very much.

In September I’ll be turning thirty for the first time in my life. People tell me that thirty just isn’t what it used to be. My friends say that They are saying (who is saying?) that thirty is the new twenty. To test Their wisdom (They are so smug), I begin a highly scientific evaluation of this trendy hypothesis and translate it into layman’s terms.

Reasons why thirty might be the new twenty:

1. I’m older than my parents were when they got married, but I live in a big house with several friends with whom I throw parties, drink beer and procrastinate.

2. I wake up more or less when I want to, spend my weekdays around a university, and see my mom most days of the week.

3. I don’t floss.

4. I take whopping chunks of summer vacation. I laugh my best, most carefree you-must-be-confusing-me-with-someone-who-cares laugh when encouraged to start thinking about retirement savings.

5. My girlfriend and I are going to live abroad for a year.

Photo analysis:

These photos were taken at about 17 and 29, close enough for this scientist. Note the same single raised eyebrow, same weird curly hair, same vaguely smug expression. There are even 2 youthful pierced ears now instead of one. In fact, evidence shows my style has clearly regressed. Very interesting . . .

Reasons why thirty might NOT be the new twenty:

1. I think my joints actually are starting to ache more right before it rains.

2. When I sleep less than seven hours in a night I spend the next day wondering if I’m getting sick.

3. I am in charge of my own work schedule. I regularly write up proposals and invoices. I pay estimated taxes.

4. I have had two surgeries, one near-fatal illness, and my first cholesterol test.

5. My girlfriend and I are going to live abroad for a year. Gulp.

~

In other news, longtime reader Carrie Fletcher seems to have identified the mystery object from the Museum of Natural History in my most recent “Photos” post. Fletch, going to the Museum of Natural History is definitely not cheating, it’s total dedication! Just identify the object in a comment on this post and I will sing your praises as promised.

Lacey and I suffer from a baffling inability to get to movies on time. But on Friday, a gorgeous lazy stretch of clock yawned between us and our movie when she and I and her roommate, Annie, decided to make dinner before seeing “Notes on a Scandal” at the Ritz 5. We dawdled as we prepared coconut curry with tofu and veggies, Lacey entertaining Annie with her first sing-song phrases of Mandarin, me wondering out loud why the tofu wasn’t brown yet (I had forgotten to turn the heat up). Time passed this way until I happened to look at the clock and realized that our endless cushion of time had dwindled: the movie was going to start at 9:45, but at 8:50 we were still in the middle of cooking, the theater a 20-minute drive from Lacey’s house.

While Lacey turned up the heat on the curry, I powered up my trusty laptop and used a neighbor’s wireless signal to find a movie ticket web site. I was certain that modern technology would solve our chronic problem. Unfortunately I failed to notice the checked box that said “Print tickets to take to theater,” and before I could change anything, our incredibly convenient printable ticket for 3 popped up on the screen. Which would have been incredibly convenient, except that Lacey and Annie don’t have a printer.

Gulping down coconut curry didn’t bring answers to our dilemma, and by the time Lacey and Annie were ready it was 9:25. We ran down the three flights of stairs to the street and the car, my laptop shoved into my backpack as an ambiguous last resort. As I dropped my backpack in and turned the key I began my predictions of doom and gloom: we wouldn’t get there in time, we wouldn’t find parking, they weren’t going to let us into the theater anyway, it was my fault for messing up the ticket purchase. Lacey disagreed, unilaterally, but in light of my flawless realism I think this was mostly a stress response. Annie, the consummate backseat optimist, predicted that we would reach our seats during the opening credits, or maybe just after. I shut up and sped through a gauntlet of yellow lights.

Somehow we reached the parking garage by 9:40. There we found a reflective attendant waving us away at the entrance: it was full. We hadn’t seen a single empty parking spot on the street, and our situation was rapidly deteriorating. We drove toward the theater. We drove past the theater. Two blocks further we agonized, then skipped a not-really-legal spot where Lacey had once gotten a ticket. Three blocks away there was nothing. Hope evanesced. We reached the fourth block. Suddenly I saw an tiny opening. My grim heart opened just enough to ignore Lacey and Annie’s protests; heroically I maneuvered us into the miniscule opening, wedging Lacey’s small Honda between two other cars at the opposite ends of their meters. It was 9:45 when we jumped out of the car and ran to the theater.

Two breathless minutes later we were there. Inside the lobby we looked at each other and nodded, disagreements aside: it was showtime. I approached the ticket taker, trailed by Lacey and Annie looking innocent and hopeful as I swung my backpack around in front of me to pry out my laptop. Our happy ending hinged here. I swung open the laptop and held up the screen like a salesman, the bar-coded and unprinted e-ticket still glowing in the foreground window of my browser. I dropped my line.

“This wouldn’t print.”

The ticket-taker was unmoved. In fact, his look suggested that he was regularly approached by breathless laptop-wielding maniacs who would do anything to find their way past him. He frowned, grunted and pointed back to the ticket window. I stared at him, stunned. Finally I turned back. My laptop still open, I cut back out to the line on the sidewalk and waited. Everyone in front of me was paying with a credit card, chatting or staring into space instead of signing their slips. A mild self-consciousness set in and I held the laptop down as far as I could, pedestrians staring at me as if I had wet my pants and looking away again just as quickly. Inside Lacey and Annie stood, frozen, next to the ticket-taker. Finally my turn came and I stepped to the window.

With a deep breath I unfurled my laptop and started talking fast, screen and keyboard open at 180 degrees, pressed as close as possible to the window while I tried to explain the whole situation through the little microphone in a cool, level tone that said that this kind of thing was pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, really, but for some reason the guy over there wanted me to come check with you first.

The cashier cracked up. He leaned closer, looked at me, looked at the laptop, and cracked up again. When he recovered he ducked out of the office to tell the ticket taker to let us through, the across-the-lobby announcement interrupted by another round of hilarity. At this point I didn’t care; I cut back inside all restrained jubilance, motioning to Lacey and Annie and nodding to the ticket taker, businesslike, stuffing the laptop into my backpack as we skipped through the doors. We were in!!!

But the theater was nearly empty. For a moment we thought we had gone down the wrong hall, picked the wrong showtime, made some final, critical mistake that would conclude our ill-fated efforts. And then the opening credits of a movie, our movie, appeared on the screen. Before anything happened we were in our perfect seats, stunned, incredulous, perched in the middle of the middle row, reaching across to slap each other on the backs and stage-whisper congratulations over the miracle journey that had ended here, now, just as the movie began.

Still, when I think about everything it took to get us to our movie in time, it’s hard not to wonder: if this is what we’re like at home, what will Guatemala and China be like? Will we ever make it as globe-trotting expats? Fortunately, Lacey and I have plenty of movies left to shoot for before we even leave this country. By August we might even be casually buying popcorn and taking turns visiting the bathroom before the previews start. And there’s probably no better practice for Lacey and I than trying to get to the movies on time, no better way to build up the resourcefulness and mutual tolerance that we will need to rely on so heavily once our trip begins. So to be honest, I’m not that worried. Plus, if we can get anyone in Guatemala or China to crack up as much as the guy at the ticket window, our trip is sure to be a wild, unequivocal success.

When we arrive at the top of the hill and pedal up the final, more gradual rise to the turn-off for La Cuchilla, we hear the first shouts of “profe, profe!” Lacey and I are drawing breaths in huge gulps and sweating through the backs of our shirts, but we manage to grin holas and buenos diases as we pull up and disentangle from our bikes. Still meditating on the long-term effects of sucking diesel fumes while exercising strenuously, I cross the street to the concrete window of a store perched across from the school, trailing a tiny Maria. The dented sedan on blocks out front serves double duty as a jungle gym for a few more grinning “profe” callers. At the store window, after my third “buenos dias?” floats hopefully into the back, a woman slowly appears and hands me the keys to our classrooms. By now a bored Maria has found other entertainment and the sun is breaking through the clouds; crossing back to the school I watch Lacey peel off layers as early arrivals chase around her. The fifth grade classroom key sticks as it always does, but finally it gives and Lacey and most of the early birds tumble in. There will be time to sort them out later, and indeed, by the time all the classrooms are unlocked, our bikes pushed to the corner, and the last of the students trailed in, it’s almost quarter after. Class has begun.

We always start with an icebreaker, which can make or break the rest of the class. The song “Pollito, Chicken,” which I learned from another volunteer, was more than icebreaker: it was the key to my transition from a helpless adult who occasionally stammered a few miserable Spanish words in front of the class to a goofy crowd-pleaser, a confident bumbler who strewed his tattered Spanish like confetti, and even imparted a thing or two as the months went by. (Note that the “Pollito, Chicken” song is basically a nonsensical, but very catchy, list of Spanish words and their English counterparts; after a few weeks it was a number one hit, requested constantly and even sung at recess.)

On the other hand, sometimes the icebreaker left me in shambles. Lacey liked to split the class up for short games, which I respect but learned to dread after Donald, an eleven-year-old and our most defiant student, wouldn’t change partners:
“But you have to go with your partner. It’s part of the game.” In my early, broken Spanish.
Donald gave his trademark smug grin and shook his head.
“Donald, please. You need to go with your partner.”
He leaned over and snickered something to a classmate, which I couldn’t understand.
“Donald, we’re playing a game. You need to go with your partner, or else you’ll have to leave.”
He looked at me and grinned again, even more smug than before. “Shit.”
It was the first English he had spoken all class. Pride eluded me. “What?”
He didn’t repeat it, but the smug look was even more challenging.
I tried to take up the challenge. “Do you think that’s funny? I don’t. I don’t even care. I think it’s just stupid.”

Five minutes later I had completed my descent to Donald’s level and was dragging him out the door in front of the whole class, his knuckles gripping the doorframe as if he were being sucked out of a depressurized plane. Lacey glared at me while the class watched in stunned silence. I spent another fifteen minutes outside with Donald, alternately trying to send him home and trying to explain that I was his friend, but also his teacher, and that when I asked him to do something he needed to do it. He sat twenty feet away from the classroom, creeping back whenever I looked the other way, ignoring me, trying to taunt his classmates through the window. It was my worst moment. And his. He didn’t come back to class for two weeks.

“So in this picture, where is the ball, in relation to the box? Donde esta la pelota, con relacion de la caja?”
Shouts leap around the room: “Adelante! Encima! Sobre!”
“In English? Raise your hands.”
Four hands shoot up. I point to Alan, straining over his desk. He’s endearing but another troublemaker, and I’m impressed that he has his hand up.
I wait and nod, but his hand is still up. “Alan?”
He hesitates, grins, drops his hand, and shrugs. He laughs. For some reason this is a popular trick, raising your hand when you don’t know the answer. I point to Zulma, who didn’t raise her hand, but should know the answer.
“Zulma?”
She shakes her head vehemently.
“Yes, yes,” I counter.
She shakes her head again, but then the shake becomes a shrug, and she begins to move her mouth. She makes a very small noise. Is it the answer? It sounds like it. I grin. “Louder? Mas fuerte?”
Zulma seems almost ready to shake her head again, but her expression suddenly focuses. Still quietly, but loud enough for me to hear, she says: “on.”
I beam a congratulations, wanting to fall down on my knees and sing her praises, but simply give a warm“very good, muy bien, very good Zulma,” before I point again to the picture, address the rest of the class, and begin the call-and-response chorus: “On.”

By the end of our stay Lacey and I were coming up with worksheets before almost every class, alternating games and quiet study work during classtime with a degree of success I never thought possible. Our students began to display not only an intermittent understanding of certain aspects of the English language, but a confidence in themselves and their learning that was an even greater reward. I hadn’t had the imagination to understand how hard teaching would be, how critical the planning, how quickly it might all be thrown off track, how ravaging the anxiety or disappointment could become. But I also hadn’t imagined how deep were the rewards, how much more satisfying it was to teach a good class than to write an apt e-mail or run a good meeting. The thrill I felt coasting back down towards the city on my rickety bike after Jason had written a complete sentence or Sara spoke up because she knew the answer or Josue said anything at all was an utterly new one. Still, teaching means you have to come right back and try to do the same thing all over again, and again, and again. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever tried, and I would never have survived without Lacey. The example of her warmth and energy, her dedication, and her knack for getting wide-eyed students to follow her were nothing less than inspirational. Whenever she took a boy aside to scold him he invariably cried, and whenever she drew one of the girls under her arm she got the most brimming look of happy confidence any teacher could hope to see. I’m in awe!

On December 21, after two weeks of traveling, Lacey and I returned to Xela. It was our last full day in Guatemala. We caught a 5 a.m. bus from San Pedro La Laguna, a town three hours away on Lake Atitlan, because we had a special date: through e-mails to other volunteer teachers we had asked our students at La Cuchilla to meet us one last time up at the school. We were exhausted; our trip had begun with my camera being broken and Lacey’s stolen, and had included four (often bumpy) transit days of over ten hours, our full share of missed buses and boats, plenty of haggling at every stage, and even a night where we were awoken after midnight by a roaring fire on the hillside above our hotel. So when we hustled up the hill one last time to meet our students, this time without our bikes, we were a little dazed. And also late, our weariness compounded by the fear that even if our students showed up in the first place, they might have already given up and gone home. Classes had been over for a week now, and families everywhere were preparing for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

I jogged ahead. The shriveled corn on either side of the road was all knocked down now, the fields dry and quiet. I fought the sudden, desperate certainty that our students wouldn’t even be there to meet us. My back sweated against my backpack, heart valves thumping their return to the highlands. As I drew closer I saw one or two children on the corner. The same children who were always there. Not our students.

Suddenly another head appeared around the corner, then a body, and two more. The tousles and pony tails looked familiar – or where they? – but then they started bobbing toward me, the shouts growing more and more distinct as we closed the distance in a cinematic run: “Profe! Profe! Profe Ethan!” In a moment I was at the center of a home-plate style mob, small hands and heads poking in for a hug. The joy was tempered briefly by panicked questions about Lacey, until I pointed back down the road and half the growing crowd kept running: “Lacey! Profe! Profe Lacey!”

By the time we herded the mob back up to the school there were twenty or twenty-five students, surrounding us in various stages of hugging, laughing, or pretending it was just another day and horsing around with each other. Eventually Lacey and I began a final set of games and activities, skipping out to the local store to bring back sweets and prizes. In the end, the final reunion lasted only an hour and a half, but for that hour and a half the feeling of being a Profe, a Profe whose students had come back to see him one last time, was one of the most fulfilling I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget it.