And Now I’m Off Again (My Life is Weird)

Or, if not weird, an embarrassment of riches.  You remember a couple of years ago, when the Democrat party had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?  (And quite frankly I would have babies with either of them.  Happily).  Well my life feels like that right about now — I’ve been handed nothing but incredible opportunities recently, and my only problem is deciding.

So Now I Live in Ethiopia

5 weeks and 6 time zones later…

… I am sitting on the front porch of my brand new room, listening to the neighborhood mosque blasting its evening call to prayer and the constant jingling of horses and donkeys pulling their carts in the street outside.  It feels like home already, a perfect fit, but now that I have time to sit back and examine the last 5 weeks I feel a little dizzy.  I knew I was jumping blindly into this next adventure — I just still can’t believe where I landed.

I spent the first few days in Addis Ababa completely overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed by the city (I’d forgotten what it’s like to yell at a 6-year-old barefoot boy because compassion is great and all but the kid followed you for 2 freaking miles and won’t stop sticking his grubby fingers in your purse.) Overwhelmed with my questionable decisions that leave me unemployed in foreign countries.  Overwhelmed with gratitude at being near one of the most important people in my life.  And overwhelmed with the enigma and excitement that is Ethiopia.

The Next Chapter: Jumping, Falling, Flying to Africa

“You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

~Annie Dillard

The Leap, a photo by . Anne on Flickr.

There are some pretty cool people on Jeju island. People who have decided to try on a life that runs against the grain, people who love adventure and find it every day. These are the people who, on my last night in town, packed an entire bloody marry bar into their backpacks — including the olives! — and hiked down some precarious cliffs using the moon and a cell phone to light our way. We made bloodies in dixie cups and water bottles, stripped down naked, and slipped into an ocean pool. The water was deep and cold, and pulled us out and in with the waves. After a few minutes one of my friends discovered the biolumenescence – move your hand, your arm, your foot, and little green sparks of light fly off your skin like so many shooting stars.

It was the perfect send off.

Island Sky

The morning of my 22nd birthday, I wandered into a crowded one-room library on the border between Uganda and Sudan.  There, of all things, I found a well-loved copy of Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel.  I read the entire book that morning to the sound of mango sellers calling their prices and the boda-boda men peddling their bike-taxis outside my window.  I don’t remember much about the book to be honest — I was a little preoccupied wondering whether or not I was going to be arrested later that afternoon when I tried crossing the Sudanese border — but there is one phrase de Botton talked about that I fell in love with: “bottling the sky.”

Dawn reflected in the Nile

10 Signs That You’re Working for a Sociopath: The Hagwon Horror Story

Sometimes it’s the language barrier.  Sometimes it’s a cultural thing.  Sometimes your boss is a moron.

But sometimes you’re actually working for a sociopath…  Having been-there-done-that, here are some signs that you should forget your contract and run for your life:

1.  You’ve never been paid on time.

A day or two late?  No problem.  Once in a blue-moon?  Sure, it’s Korea after all.  Things run a bit differently around here.  But when your paycheck is 3 weeks late, for the fifth month in a row, “I have to for the double checking!” is no longer a legitimate response.

2.  Your Boss May or May Not Be Living in the School

There’s cigarette smoke in the air and a blanket on the chair.  He looks like he hasn’t showered in days, and he’s got a kitchen knife stored above his desk.  You suspect this is because he is “making divorce” with his wife, which is also conveniently the reason that he can’t pay you this month.

3.  Your Boss is Arrested for Drunk Driving

And you find this out from one very scandalized 4th grader.

4.  Your Boss Throws More Temper-tantrums Than Your Students 

Only when he throws a tantrum, he hits his desk and turns red in the face and screams at the top of his lungs.  You mildly wonder if you’ll be out of your contract if he has a heart-attack, and don’t find this thought callus at all.

5. He Turns the Temper Off For the Mothers

He sweet talks them and makes them coffee, and there’s a possibility he’s sleeping with more than one of them.  You wonder how to say “save your children! run away!” in Korean.

6.  Your Co-Worker Gets Fired…For Not Getting Paid

She casually asks the labor board what to do about a 6-week late paycheck.  They call him.  He screams.  She is making very big headache.  She is for the leaving on a plane, tomorrow!  She will never work in Korea again!  No, she will never work again, anywhere!  She is a traitor!

And, yes, it will all go downhill from there…

7.  Your Evil Boss Is Uncharacteristically Polite   

It’s a Tuesday morning and he calls you up to tell you to open the doors, that he has a meeting.  Then he has you forward all of the phones to his cell.  When you have a question later that day, he doesn’t pick up his phone but instead texts you back.  After a strange but brief text conversation, two ominous words appear on your phone, two words that are so unlike him that your stomach drops and alarms buzz in your head.

He typed “Thank You.”

8.  Your Boss Officially Disappears 

Wednesday morning he texts you again to open the doors.  That’s the last you hear of him, and you are strangely relieved.  When you get to school, there’s a leak in the ceiling and the trash cans are overflowing and random kids are floating in and out of classes.  You let them play computer games while you whisper with your only remaining co-worker about what to do.  You catch each other glancing into the corners of the room: you both wonder if the room might be bugged.

9.  You Find Your Boss’s Fake Passport 

He doesn’t look Australian to you.  And you’ve never heard him go by the name John.  But there’s no mistaking: the photo on that passport is definitely your boss.

10.  People Come Looking For Him.  Angry People.

Since you don’t speak Korean, you don’t really know what they want.  There’s a mother who is so worried she looks like she’s about to puke.  There’s a couple of men dressed up in suits, maybe lawyers.  Maybe the Mafia, you have no idea.  There’s some random woman who saunters in and riffles through his office and makes copies of all of his files.  You’ve stopped teaching completely by this point, and are frantically calling every bilingual person you know, every embassy and labor board and immigration, and even your recruiter.  Who immediately tells you she can get you another job in Seoul.  Which would be great if you didn’t hate big cities and could legally work at any other school besides the *fantastic* one that she put you in in the first place.  So thank you but no thank you and you hope she chokes on her kimchi.

It’s about now that you realize you have, in fact, been working for a sociopath.

(read on for some more specifics, and some advice on how to avoid such a *pleasant* experience!)  

What My Mother Needs To Know

“I once had sex with a very large woman at the very very tip of a long quiet pier while a herd of stranded sailors cheered us on from a navy boat a hundred feet away. And that is just one of those things I don’t need to tell my mother.

But.  There are other things I do need to tell her — you —  Mother.”  

~Poet, Activist, and Badass Andrea Gibson

      I’ve yet to have sex with a very large woman at the end of a long quiet pier with or without an audience.  But if I ever did — and I’m sure she’ll agree on this — my mother just wouldn’t need to know.  There are lots of things she doesn’t need to know.  Things that begin with “this one time when I was lost in Africa….”  Or “I met this guy at the bar and…”  Some ellipses are just better left unsaid.

But.  There are still things that do need to be said.  Lots of them.

The Nonviolent Method For Teaching English

Die is a verb.

Shoot, stab, kill: all verbs.

I die, but he dies. Yesterday, we all died. Good job, David.

David is the kid’s English name. He laughs every time I try to pronounce his real name, but he can’t say mine, either. And besides, he’s the one killing me off on a regular basis. At first it was “teacher die.” After weeks of hard work, though, he’s grasped that teacher dies. The ‘s,’ David, remember the s! Recently he’s gone so far as to explain the circumstances of my death, even the murder weapon. He sweetly tugs on my sleeve and smiles, then points to this sentence: “Teacher dies after I kill her with a knife.”

David! That’s a complex sentence! I’m so proud.