Amy Adoyzie Enjoys Life and Junk

Finally, time off. A much-deserved three-day weekend has been given to us and I'm spending that time in my kitty pajama pants (thanks Dyanne!) and working on this blog migration.
Yep, I'm moving this thing to amyadoyzie.wordpress.com or amyadoyzie.com. Either will URL will take you to my new home. Please update your bookmarks and such. There may be just a couple more entries at this address, but I'll be posting exclusively at the new place soon.

Robots can vacuum and replace your hip, but for whatever reason, I still have to essentially re-post every entry on its own. Fuh-un.
Technology: The Blessed Burden.

Maybe it's because I attended a Californian public school as a child, or it just wasn't mandated in my elementary school curriculum. Either way, I was never taught how to diagram a sentence and the lumbering ghost of grammar is haunting me now.
Even the most basic terms simple present, present progressive/continuous, past perfect progressive magic potion that makes unicorns fly. All of it is completely foreign to me, someone who writes and has been endowed with the ability to simply discern correct grammar usage based on whether it sounds right. Unfortunately, "that sounds wrong" isn't an adequate explanation and neither is "because I said so", which means that I am now forced to study grammar in order to teach it.
Lets cram that, shove it mercilessly, into my 15-hour work days along with lesson planning, teaching, Bangla class, lesson planning, grading assignments, creating assignments, lesson planning, researching lessons, breaking and fixing the copy machine. It's the type of schedule that leaves you out of breath, drowning in ticking minutes.
I'm constantly playing catch up, without enough time to even think of decompressing at the end of each day as I crash onto my overly firm mattress. My everything reaches a point of exhaustion where I can feel the synapses in my brain shut off and recoil.
I'm spent and frustrated with no release. Constantly climbing the steps of the the same six floors in our nine-storied building. Feeling trapped because of the workload and how I don't even have the energy to venture outside of the building to face beggar children who slap and kick me. I'm spent, like a worn single taka bill- limp, deteriorating and torn from age.
Even with the fatigue, anxiety, homesickness- even with the increasing burden of realizing that I am fully-responsible for providing a legitimate post-secondary school education on a volunteer's stipend and base training- even with feeling lost, alone and abandoned. Even when the only solace I have are those mere four to five hours of sleep inside of my droopy mosquito net. Even so, I love teaching.
Every morning I am in class 5A5 at least ten minutes before first period begins. It's 8:00 AM when I present the day's schedule to my first literature class, sipping on coffee sent by loved ones in between the daily announcements. As the caffeine begins to course its way through my body, it feels like the sun is shining brighter into my classroom. The lessons that I pored over, that I researched and compiled on my own, take shape in 5A5.
During their first week, I introduced the following poem:

Speech to the Young : Speech to the Progress-Toward
By Gwendolyn Brooks

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

When I passed the poem out, they read it once and looked up from the photocopy with the type of dread reserved for dentist office waiting rooms.
"I know this is difficult to understand now," I said. "But we will learn it together. Don't worry, you will understand this poem soon."
From the title to the last word, we studied every line of Brooks's poem. I offered an interpretation and had a few students come up to me after class worried that their answers were different. It was a teachable moment that I used the next day to show them that poetry, and much of literature, can have many meanings and interpretations. They, students of rote education, were stunned to learn something that didn't have one clear answer.
There's some quiet magic in seeing these young women grapple, for the first time, with abstract concepts, creative and critical thinking. Goosebumps dotted my arm when, after almost a week of studying the poem, the classes read it out loud. Each student read a line, fully understanding the text and the theme and the purpose of this poem about determination and staying positive. There's a satisfaction in knowing that they were reading out loud, completely confident and sure of the words that were emerging from them. After the last student read the last line, "Live in the along," all of their eyes lifted from the poem on their desks and small smiles beamed at me. They got it.
This is my paycheck.

It's the Bangla New Year!
Yippee! Shubho Naboborsho!
I spent the holiday lesson planning! Woohoo!

I will say though, there was a pretty awesome dance party last night in the dining hall. A couple hours of reprieve from the ax-grindingness of the never-ending work that is lesson planning. Pictures and more whining to come.

Our first days of teaching have been crossed off the calendar, now we have sixteen and a half more months to go. Since this is a brand new program, a complete blank slate, the responsibility of creating the meat and bones of the curriculum rested on our tired shoulders. We worked our respective booties off and the first week went off with very minor hitches. Except with the copy machine, it's being a total jerk.

Day One
- Four and a half hours of sleep and a cup of strong black coffee before my first class. (This was the beginning of a slippery slope into incomprehensible mental exhaustion for the next few days.)
- My schedule: five periods a day, five days a week. A few meals throughout the day and all other hours are devoted to lesson planning or putting off sleep.
- From all over: 7 Nepalese, 5 Sri Lankans, 11 Bangladeshis, 5 Indians and 1 Pakistani student. I don't have any Cambodian students at the time, but I'm hoping I'll teach them some of them during this next year and a half. I have the luxury of only seeing the same 29 students daily. Smallest class size: 6. Largest class size: 12.
- The south Asian head waggle is another gesture that I have to file into my body language vocabulary. It's a side to side, almost bobble-head like motion to signify yes or okay, but to my untrained western eyes it looks more like huh? I have no idea what you're talking about. When I ask a class if they understand what I just said and all I see is a stream of waggling heads, I feel like I've failed until they all verbalize yes, Ms. Amy.
- Renu, an Indian, doesn't smile as freely as the other students. I have yet to see her laugh and was concerned that she wasn't comprehending anything I've said in class. I asked her if there was something I could do to make class better for her. She said, "No, Miss. I do not know how to smile or laugh very much in class. In my education we do not do that. My education was different." I vowed to myself that by the end of her time here, I will have her choking on the type of laughter where you throw your head back and joy gushes out of your opened-mouth smile. I didn't tell Renu that specifically, but it's a quiet mission I've taken on.
- There are two chatty Nepalese girls in my Lit and Homeroom classes. Anu and Prabi. I'm a terrible disciplinarian, but felt some type of odd authoritative redemption when I asked them to not talk while others were speaking. They apologized and haven't interrupted class since. I was telling friends from home about my first day of classes and how I had two chatty Nepalese girls and realized what an incredible sentence that was. I can't think of another job where I would have the honor of griping about my Nepalese students.
- I was doing an introduction activity where my students have to guess questions to answers that I wrote up about me. One of them was Razorcake and some students guessed that it was my favorite food! Ha!
- My left eye is zonking out. There is a small splotch of grey blurriness that is popping up in the middle of the lower half of my visual field. It's like pixels have gone out in my eyeball. I believe this is a physical manifestation of stress and not a sign that I'm losing my vision. Cause if I go blind while I'm in Bangladesh, my mom's gonna be super bummed at me.

Day Two
- Getting up just an hour after the sun has risen was more difficult today. Especially since I only managed about five hours of sleep.
- I posted the question "What is Literature?" to my Lit classes. The students wrote their definitions on the white board and when they referred to literature as a means for one to write about their emotions, they would invariably write "he" or "his" like "Literature is a way for someone to express his feelings. He can show his ideas through literature." As we went over their responses, I presented the idea of replacing generic general pronouns from the standard he/his to she/her.
"I know you are all used to using the he/his," mostly because in a lot of their native languages their they pronoun is not gendered, "but for this class we will only use she/her."
They smiled and waggled their heads. Some eyes widened at this new notion of making the woman the normative. I felt like I could literally physically see their minds expanding, their brains thumping inside their heads. It's only the second day and I've already earned one of my most favorite teaching moments.
- When asked about their goals and expectations for my class and the school, Uma, from Sri Lanka, said that she wanted to learn to think critically and to be more creative. I said I would try to help them with these skills, but what I really meant to say was that they all had it in them and all they need is a place to practice. I'm just a facilitator, a middle-man for change.
- At the end of day two I came to two conclusions: 1) The next sixteen and a half months is going to be grueling, hard, hard work. 2) The next sixteen months is going to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my lifetime.

Day Three
- My eyeball is still doing that weird gray blurry thing.
- I frightened my Homeroom class when I told them that after they've mastered English they might want to start practicing Chinese because of their rising power and influence. They were not amused.
- My students wrote short essays about why they are here at the Access Academy, Marzi's answer exemplified the general sentiment:
I come to this academy to achieve something special in my life. Not only for study but also for knowing different kinds of people, different cultures. I want to learn how to face challenges easily. Here I will be have to adjust with the people of different cultures so in future I will have not any problem to adjusting in any part of this world. Access academy can improve my everything; whole as a person and it can help me to be a well human being. That's why I am here.
- The minute classes ended it at 3:00, I retreated back to my bedroom and promptly fell asleep until it was dinner time.

It's these moments of sheer exhaustion from just being up, of thinking this is the rest of my life for the next 17 months, of actually teaching students and meeting them and knowing their stories, of sitting in the office meticulously combing through text books trying to find activities and exercises that are teachable and won't make me fall asleep while teaching it. It's these moments where its realer than the dirt beneath my toes as I walk through dusty alleyways. Where I finally feel that I am solidly here, with a purpose.
It's also these moments where I'm still functioning on four hours of sleep and a couple cups of coffee.
The task at hand is so overwhelming and demanding where I just want to crawl back to Portland and slide back into being a dishwasher. Yearning for the simplicity of hauling oversized bus bins into the confines of a greasy dishpit- spray, rinse, load, wash, repeat. I never lost sleep because I was too bogged down with planning on how I would wash dishes the next day.
Don't worry. It's just the fatigue talking. I don't really want to trade Chittagong for steel wool scrubbies.
- -

The school held it's Welcoming Ceremony this past Saturday and all of the teachers donned saris and looked our south Asian best. My personal goal was to look like a Malaysian princess and I felt I succeeded in my plum blue, violet and gold accented sari. The event ended by early afternoon and the lot of us, all dressed up with nowhere to go, decided a trip to Baskin-Robbins was in order. When our gang showed up to the Sugar Buns plaza, where B-R is on the third floor, we created a stir comparable to the a gaggle of young women dressed in gaudy prom dresses hanging out Home Depot.
- -

I really like that our students call us ma'am.

"How do you assess future greatness?" Kamal asked us, a dozen teachers sitting around him after another day of student testing. He, the Chairman and CEO of the Asian University for Women, gently slung the rhetorical question into the center of the classroom, it floated slowly to the ground as we all looked at each other and shrugged in our heads.
We're knee deep, wading through layers of photocopied tests, in an attempt to assess the English and math capabilities of our bright young students. They're exhausted from the multiple daily examinations. We're trudging through trying to grade them in between seemingly endless meetings. After they're all marked, the scores tallied next to student ID numbers, then what?
How do we assess potential? Leadership? Courage? Through a couple 300-word English essays written within an hour?
They've passed a first test by showing up here. Doesn't it take courage to move to a foreign country, away from comfort and security, to invest the next year and a half of your life into an untested program, hoping its rewards will outweigh its sacrifices?
I ought to ask my colleagues that question.

These are students from one of the best public high schools in Chittagong. Some of our Bangladeshi students were plucked from schools just like this, which looked alarmingly similar to my classrooms in Huarong, Hunan, crammed with about a hundred students and a single teacher.

No one likes tests, they're fallacious gauges of one's complete and true ability. How does one say: I am from a remote area of Pakistan where my father is a potato farmer. Girls like me never leave. But I have. on a multiple choice exam?
Thankfully, they're only being tested for English comprehension and writing ability- to place them in the best possible classes to further their studies.
Thankfully, we're not grading them on potential, because there isn't a mark high enough to do them justice.

As the rising cost of rice is freakin' out all the Azns who live by it, here's a site that will bring rice to folks who don't have any and improve your vocabulary! Win-win!
FreeRice!

It's happened.
A fever, restless sleep plagued with nightmares about trying hard to remember difficult-to-pronounce names of students from five different countries, and, of course, the poops. I won't get into the details of the latter, it ain't pretty.
Today was the first day of assessment exams where I was supposed to proctor three tests, but I stayed in bed all day nursing "the rumblies."
Insult to injury? The ties to one of the corners of the mosquito net frayed and now it rests limply against a wall instead of protecting me from malaria carriers.
And I need to wash my feet before I get into bed tonight. Our floors are so dusty.

Alright, that's the end of my stupid whining session.

Bangladeshi students began arriving today and I managed to only commit a couple cultural faux pas like purposefully showing my feet and a little bit of my shin to an entire family (on purpose... something about mosquito bites.) The students were flanked by family as they trudged up flights of stairs to settle in their new dorms- across the hall from the teacher apartments. Mothers, fathers, little brothers, big sisters, aunts, uncles and grandmothers- all beaming with pride as they helped their student move in.
The grammas were especially sweet. Two grandmothers of two separate students clasped their wrinkled hands around my arms, tugged me close to their chests and thanked me.
I felt like a jerk when I was trying to make a phone call on my mobile when one gramma asked me to take care of her granddaughter.
"Please tell her I will take care of you," I said to the student and turned to smile at gramma's beautifully-lined face, with a cell phone pressed against my cheek.
The fathers really enjoyed guessing my nationality.
"You from Korea? Or Singapore?! Yes, Singapore. "
"No, I'm from America."
"No, really, where you from?! China?"
"America. I was born in California."
The fathers would eventually concede and recognize that America is a nation of immigrants.
"But you are Chinese-American?"
"Yes." And to reassure that their daughters would be well educated in our institution I would follow by saying, "I went to university in America too."
That usually worked.
By Sunday, all of the students will have arrived from Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India. We're lesson planning as they unpack. They're making new friends and we're making up classroom activities. Operation: Big Bang is about to launch, helping to educate a crop of female leaders of the subcontinental region. It won't be easy, but I don't break promises to Bangladeshi grandmothers.

Folks from all over are following along. (Curiously, middle America is not interested...) Check back often because it's just beginning.

Television rots minds, smothers brain cells with apathy and erodes attention span. But apparently there are still populations of folks who are satisfied with watching shadows stretch across dusty pavement as the sun arcs across the sky. These folks can watch grass grow, or, in the case of this morning, watch me run on a treadmill.
The Access Academy houses a gym facility, roughly the size of my old bedroom in Portland, equipped with two treadmills, a stationary bike, rolls of yoga mats, some dumbbells and a bo-flex-like weight machine. Since I haven't gone on a serious run in a month, I set the timer for 40 minutes and began jogging on the narrow rubber band. I left the door open to let air and sunlight into the room, but didn't expect to find an audience instead.
The gym is alongside the room where the housekeeping staff meets in the morning. As they began to trickle in, to put on their long, red work shirts over their kameezes, they would curiously peer in on me. As more of housekeepers showed up, more gathered in the doorway. So many of the women were crammed into the room that they were blocking the light.
They sat and watched me run on a treadmill for a good 20 minutes- almost the time of an entire episode of an American sitcom. Me, and my short legs with special running shoes, is almost as good as an episode of Out of this World (you know, the show about the girl who is half alien and her pops was this weird crystal candy dish thing). I couldn't fathom how anyone could watch someone jog on a treadmill for so long. Whenever I wiped my brow or scratched my cheek- it felt like I just created a new story element in this unfolding saga. And I tried really hard not to fall. Because I slid off the thing a couple nights ago and I have two gnarly bruises on my elbows to show for it.
Eventually, their boss showed up, a stern man in a button up shirt and khakis. He looked at them with furrowed-brow authority and the housekeepers slowly filed out of the gym. One of the women tried to shut the door, but I asked her not to. I still wanted the sunshine and some of their eyes still peeked in.

This is one of my favorite shots thus far. I love the way the colors of the buildings compliment the woman's sari. She was walking down the path and Auggie had commented that the woman got into her shot and I thought, "She is the shot!"
I lowered my camera and shot up at her and she was staring right back.

It felt like we were toddlers, discovering the muscles of our chubby marshmallow legs and wobbling on twos for the first time.
A few of us decided to walk to a grocery store, Well-Mart, on our own. We gathered on the first floor, gingerly moving around constant construction and onto the dirt path that is to become the driveway. After asking for direction, fingers shot up pointing in opposite directions- both would lead us to Well-Mart. But we were told that one route was less perilous and opted to head that way. While we avoided a stream of vehicles on busier streets without lane markers or stop lights, we didn't count on the hazards of foot traffic. The sheer number of folks crammed onto the sidewalk, when available, and the population of beggars weaving between cars and trucks to ask for charity.
All of our senses were already buzzing from disorientation when a band of beggar children surrounded us. We were spinning, trying to figure out if we were heading the right way, when we suddenly found ourselves within a throng of children grabbing at our arms, their outstretched palms jabbed at our torsos.
It's a complex quandary. As a foreigner and volunteer, I need to balance the perception that Bangladeshis have of me with what I'm doing here. It's a heartbreaking conflict on my conscious, to ignore or admonish children who deserve so much more.
Their sticky hands tugged at our wrists and heartstrings the entire way there, crowding us so closely that we almost tripped over them. A couple of them bent low, in a swing scoop with their hands to touch Auggie and Carly's feet, as a sign of respect.
"Bondhu, bondhu," they said, falling on Bangla-deaf ears. We learned later that it meant friend.
When we finally arrived at the grocery store, where the kids were shooed away by security guards, a few of us were shaken up. My heartbeat raced as thoughts of my privilege and responsibility ricocheted in my skull. I didn't dare give away a single taka, what good would it do but to perpetuate their poverty?
I was surprised at how easy and natural it felt for me to fall back into a place where I am, for lack of a more appropriate word, an asshole. Where I can slip on my game face, stare straight ahead, and avoid looking into the desperate eyes of a child who is asking me for something she should have. My six-month reprieve back to the States didn't de-desensitize me to the plight of kids in the developing nations. Sure, we have debilitating poverty there too, but I've never been burdened with rejecting a begging child there.
I was surprised at how common it seemed to me, having been inundated with poor Chinese kids throughout my time in Hunan.
Minutes later, I calmed and shopped obliviously. I bought some fruit and a soft baby blue bath towel that I use after cooling night showers before I crawl into my mosquito-netted bed and lay my head on a new pillow. I drift to sleep as the car horns, six stories below, fade down narrow streets where children struggle to survive.

I wasn't aware of how often I relied on the thumbs up gesture to non-verbally say, "Okay, alright!", "Awesome!" or "Woohoo! Thanks for not running me over with your rickshaw!"
It just so happened that I was stricken with the stomach sickies and missed the Bangla language class where Fahrana, our instructor, informed us that thumbs up wasn't the happy-go-lucky signifier that we've known in the States. Later that night a couple security guards appeared in the foyer of our new apartment, mumbled something about testing keys in Bangla. I shrugged, grinned and flashed my two midget thumbs, "Okay! Thank you!"
They saluted me before leaving, like I was the captain of apartment 6C. I walked into Katherine's room to let her and Auggie know about our visitors.
"I dunno why they were here. So I just smiled and gave 'em the thumbs up."
Katherine winced, "Oooh, Fahrana told us today that that's really bad."
"Really?!" Woops.
"Yeah, she said it means like you're worthless, you're nothing."
"Oh no!" We all winched a little more.
Now I'm wondering if the salute means, "Yeah, well, you're worthless too, you jerk!"

Thumbs down isn't any better. Katherine saw a man jam his thumbs down at our van on our way to visit the University of Chittagong. Fahrana said that its a sign of defeat, as if to say, "I beat you. You lose. I've stricken you with diarrhea and infinite mosquito bites."

The grand view from our apartment balcony. We overlook Chittagong with a new mosque sprouting up beside lush, leafy palms.
This is my view for the next eighteen months.

There's no hot water and we shouldn't brush our teeth with the tap. But I'm grateful that all of the faucet's work and we have a water cooler.
The electricity cuts off intermittently throughout the day. But the generator kicks on minutes later, as I'm feeling for walls in search of my headlamp.
Malaria is a concern and the mosquitoes are relentless. But I can buy inexpensive prophylactics over the counter and the mosquito net hanging above the handmade block-print bed cover makes me feel like I'm on a safari.

I've got the poops and my head spins a little from nausea and exhaustion from teacher training orientation. But... Actually, this one just sucks.

We've finally moved into our new apartments, our homes for the next seventeen and a half months. My bedroom window faces the city, with a view of lush green palm trees mixed amidst gray cement block buildings. Everything is going dandy, but there's one thing I wish I had packed: a pillowcase from home.
Last time, when I spent a year a China, I remembered to bring the pink floral pillowcase that my mom made. In addition, I also packed my lum jum and baby pillow. I was well equipped in the area of cushiony materials. But this time around, I opted not to and forgot to fold up a pillowcase instead.
And I know exactly where it is, I stacked it in my old closet at Gus & Marah's house. Two big pillows, baby pillow and lum jum sitting softly, waiting for me to come home and hug them to sleep. It's the big pillowcase, with the large ruffles all around, that's the one I want right this second on my new bed.


Who takes a photo of the pillows they're storing away for a year and a half?
I do.

It was late morning and the sunlight bounced off the balcony and into the communal room at the Dove Cottage. My spine curved against the hard back of the red plastic lawn chairs, my legs stretched forward as I let out a yawn. We were in the middle of another TEFL (Teaching English Foreign Language) session, seated around the long table, when I felt a yank at my hair. A tiny spot at the top of my scalp throbbed and stung.
I turned to Auggie, "What the hell?"
"You had a gray hair, I was just trying to pull it out."
There are a about a dozen strands of white hairs sprouting from my boxy-shaped head, and frankly, I don't give a damn.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't vain, but I just can't be bothered when it comes to these whiteys. It's bound to happen, with stress and getting older every morning. I know that getting rid of them is as easy as plucking them off my head, but it makes me squeamish. The combination of wimpiness and apathy leads me to wander around with white hairs, made even more obvious against my dark strands.
This speaks volumes to my ability to be oblivious, to otherwise convince myself that it's quite alright to let this superficial world see some of my grays. I've come to terms with aging, why can't everyone else?
* * * * *

We expect birthdays to be obvious reminders of aging. On a daily basis, we encounter subtle signs of getting older- you don't get carded as often or a gang of teenagers will holler you old at you.
It's the unexpected booming announcements like time has flown by, dragging your bloated elderly body along with it, that are unbearable.
I have been officially invited to the ten-year reunion for the graduating class of 1998 from Glen A. Wilson high school (through MySpace no less!).
Was it really just a decade ago when I was an angry and cliched angst-ridden teenager who almost dropped out of high school as a form of protest against authoritarianism?
Here I am, plopped in the middle of south Asia as an educator. Things don't have to make sense to happen. Needless to say, I won't be returning to Hacienda Heights for the reunion. The most important person that I met in high school is still in my life and feigning interest in the lives of people I've forgotten isn't very appealing. I won't lie, it's pretty awesome to say that I can't attend because I'm in Bangladesh, you know?
* * * * *

Still though, I'm never old enough to enjoy a ride on a mini-roller coaster designed in the likeness of a crawly insect! (From Foy's Lake in Chittagong!)

Tampons in Bangladesh are like cigarettes in prison- you just don't eff around with 'em and you can trade it for goods.