June 4

Shi Ann and me at the artificial beach in Male. The water was so nice!!
Star gazing at Banyan Tree one night. Amazing! Saw Saturn's rings, Big Bear, Southern Cross, the full moon and more.

Students and me on the last day! Love them!!
Dana - loving life and people as always.

Finally! I am updating my blog!

There are so many things that have happened since last time, but where to start?

DANA BECKELMAN

In loving memory, I pay tribute to her. She was Dr. Dana of Saitama University. She was mother to Cheyenne. She was irritant to countless people on list servers! She was a cheerleader to anyone who had even a simple desire for anything in their life. She was loving to thousands of people and loved in return. She was simply an AMAZING woman that should not have left us this soon since she had so much yet to do in life.

This is a nice video she had posted on You Tube. It was around 2000 with her ex Karen and daughter Cheyenne. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tyj9O7y5hg

TESOL 2011

I submitted my proposal to lead a Discussion Group at the conference in New Orleans in March 2011 entitled “Navigating Cultural and Teaching Complexities in Japan and Maldives”. I fear it won’t be accepted this time since I rushed creating my session description to meet the deadline. I see many areas for improvement in it! I need to start preparing a journal publication about my research findings though. Good opportunities. Thank you Lisya for your support!

RESEARCH in MALDIVES

It has been interesting to note the intercultural communication here and to observe society. It is fun to hear first impressions of my various roommates too. I hope to put my thoughts in an organized article sometime this year. I have half of my questionnaires from students too. I will gather the other half Sunday.

WORK

I finished up two eight-week classes at my favorite resorts Banyan Tree and Angsana last week. I really loved those students and enjoyed my time there greatly. I even went out last weekend for dinner with a couple of them. And I collected many nice gifts from the resort gift shops from them! Great!

I loved what my Japanese student discovered through the class. Japanese, and herself included, are often very tentative about speaking because of their fear of making mistakes. The Maldivians and Indonesians in the classes were not shy at all and made tons of mistakes! I think I said before that they wouldn’t even stop talking as I would try to stop and point out their errors! Communicating their mind was more important to them than what others thought about their ability. Mizuki really grew from that realization that she didn’t have to worry about making mistakes. She is confident now and willing to just speak out and compete with them. It is wonderful. I felt the same. What others think is so unimportant at times. I love my students even if they can’t speak well, and I admire their zest and creativity in class.

Sadly, my last resort that I am at now is more reserved. There are many low-level students and a mix of Bengalis and Maldivians. Their bonds with each other are not as strong perhaps because the staff is about 550 instead of about 200 at the other resorts. I don’t think they know each other as well. So, I feel we haven’t had the total relaxed atmosphere I like in class. I will see what they really think after the questionnaires though.

TOEIC BOOK with Yosuke Ishii

He is working hard on the next book and I am thankful he is using my help! I am so proud of him and impressed at his initiative and mind. He recognizes so many details in speech when he travels abroad or interacts with English speakers.

ROOMMATES

I think I mentioned my previous set of roommates to you – American teacher in the UAE with her pilot teacher husband who grew up in Peru? She was good to be with due to her stories and seriousness of teaching. She had been through the CELTA program which seemed to ensure excellence and awareness in her teaching which I saw in the classroom on occasion. She did eight 1.5 hour classes with mostly ladies from the community.

Since Sunday this week I have had a new roommate Shi Ann from Australia. She is about 21 years old but has done quite well it seems. She is in her final year of university and hopes to teach art in secondary school. Banking has been her part-time job and she has already bought her first apartment it seems without help from others. She is very curious about how things work, quietly will analyze things in her head, although she seems to talk non-stop at the same time. ;-) She loves photography too so we were great together touring Male together Thursday! It is refreshing to be with young people like her who seem to have no ill-will, are not jaded, and are just fresh and full of energy for life. It is so easy to feel like I am back in college when I am with her and just be carefree and curious and non-judgmental about anything that pops into our heads! It was great to enjoy restaurants and souvenir shopping together. I guess we are just well suited in many ways.

Another roommate arrived this morning. I think she is around 20 years old and is from Colorado or Utah. She just did the 32-34 hour flight through Dubai like I did and trying to stay up til a reasonable bedtime. She is very much in the belief of God leading her here…hope she tones things down in public. She was quite loud in the apartment and I worry about being with someone so open and loud in public about religion here…dangerous or possibly isolating.

Another roommate will move into my room when I leave. He works at the Beverly Hills Hotel (Laura, have to see if Mark and you know him!) and is away for several days of surfing now. I hope to meet him Saturday. His name is Chris and around my age.

A fourth lady moves into town tomorrow I think. I don’t know much about her. She will rent a room from Piper’s neighbor. She lived here for like 10 years long ago and speaks Dhevelia. She is in her 50's.

The apartment is coming together a little more. They found a gas canister finally and will install it this weekend so we can cook finally (9 weeks after I arrived??). The city finally built a sidewalk in front of my apartment five days ago, so I can walk around the dirt and trash if I want to now. The roommates got a hot water heater for their shower, wardrobe and bunk beds this week. Before it was only cold showers (all that is needed here unless it is raining often) and living out of a suitcase. So, things are coming together more and more.

LIFESTYLES

I cannot complain about sharing housing anymore. I was going to complain to a student, but he lives in one room with two bathrooms with 15 people! That is the housing at the resort, but still, it is not too uncommon it seems. Another student’s wife and child lives in Male. They have a 3 bedroom apartment. The three of them are lucky to share one room together and then 5 people sleep in each of the other 2 rooms! There are no beds and they just sleep on the floor and in the living room too.

I had heard it is common for brothers and their families especially to all live in one apartment – one family per room and I guess it is true.

I am very lucky that I got by without sharing my bedroom. I cannot imagine doing so! It is like my only retreat often and place I feel safe not to bother others if I come home really late. (Since we don’t have Internet, I end up spending lots of time at the school til the wee hours of the morning in fact – not watching news like I did in Japan since the system is to slow for downloading things! So, just checking on emails, planning my next trip, and doing job searches.) I am lucky too just to have air-conditioning since many apartment I walk by don’t as I can see those that units on the walls and people just leave their windows open. Shi Ann has been nearly eaten alive with mosquitoes, so I am glad I keep our place closed up and pretty much bug free! She would be so much worse off if we didn’t use the air-con!

OH! I am so impressed at how open everyone’s lives are here! I guess it is nearly unavoidable since they can’t afford to live alone in apartments, afford air-conditioning, afford Internet, computers, or other forms of in-home entertainment. So, people are just out in the streets especially once the sun goes down. It reminds me some of NYC in the ‘60s or something. I think I said that before here… People walk the streets just people watching, chatting, you can hear any fights or children crying in their homes. Yesterday, I was walking on the sidewalk when suddenly someone threw something down the stairs into the street! The man in front of me stopped and leaned against the building it seems to wait and see what else was about to happen. I think it was a domestic dispute and the woman was tossing things out?!

Speaking of fights, I saw my first one from my office window around 10 p.m. last weekend. About 20 young men began a street fight of some type. I think it was just 2 guys and then all their friends being supportive. I didn’t pay attention at first but then it dawned on me that things are usually very quiet so I started watching. The police came and all was back to normal within 10 minutes.

It’s very safe here really. I never worry about walking home in the middle of the night because there are always people still outside! It may be 2 a.m. but there are a few hanging off their balconies smoking or a security guard sitting here and their watching a store.

The people seem really peaceful and just themselves! In Japan, it felt like everyone worried about what others thought. Here, everyone just acts like they are all family or like they are completely alone in the countryside! No one seems to be putting on airs except for some of the teenagers trying to be cool.

Speaking of being cool – I was so shocked when one of my students started revealing his fake images! When he goes into Male, he said he wants to appear tough so the gangs won’t bother him at the ATM or other places (again, not gangs like America I think…just some youth are becoming addicted to drugs here so they are mugging some, but they only do that on back streets and I don’t think they would approach a foreigner.) His earring was like a magnet clip on. His fashionable spiky hair is a wig! He told me many things that were fascinating about his image (glasses, tattoo, phone, girlfriend), but not so interesting to pass on I guess. But, now I look at certain hairstyles and realize that many are likely wigs!

TRAVEL

I may have said I was staying four months in Maldives, but that has changed. I am leaving next week! Really, 1 month would have been more than enough for me, but I had to stay and finish 10 weeks of teaching. The issue of trying to survive on a stipend, finding food I could easily eat – what do I do with a coconut, a plastic bag of rice with no stove, and can of chips?? (NOT to mention any food that I consider necessary for my health) on this island, and so forth was so hard. Again, Americans in particular are so lucky! I guess some poorer neighborhoods in inner cities in the U.S. have trouble in finding fresh foods too though. I guess too if you didn’t have a car in America, life would be hard as well. Here, it is a matter of an hour commuting by boats and walking to find wheat bread or the possibility of a head of broccoli in one of like 5 stores that are known to sometimes have it. You will never find tofu and are unlikely to find anything but cabbage. If I had money to eat at a Male restaurant daily, this would have been more doable, but I didn’t have that luxury.

Thankfully the school gave me housing and the air-conditioned classroom for Internet. Otherwise, this would have been unbearable for me. Another motivation for leaving was that I thought I would do Internet classes from here and have some income, but that is constantly unreliable here so I had to give up hope on that.

The heat is not as extreme as it was in April, but Shi Ann is dying in it. The humidity is just terrible. The rain and clouds help so much! And it doesn’t rain as much as I thought it would. It comes and goes really.

MALE

Shi Ann and I had a great time being the typical tourist yesterday! Some pics are above (or another blog). We went to the artificial beach, saw a bit of a swim competition (no man-made pools for the public/anyone? In Male! So they have sections in the bay roped off!), shopping and more. We really enjoyed drying off from a wave splash up on the announcer stand they use to watch surf competitions. It is like a life guard stand. Lots of fun!

HEALTH

Doing much better overall! I think the relief of knowing I am going is positive as well as some relief in the heat from rainy season. Also, I try as often as possible to catch a guest boat to the airport on my way home anymore so I can take a bus to my island. That helps a lot in my walking in heat carrying books. So, things are good. :-)