Mexican mountains and Bollywood!

I haven't had time to update exactly why we made a Bollywood video in the Mexican mountains... but we did... and here it is!!!

(we made promises not to post it on YouTube, luckily I can sneak on this rarely-viewed blog site!)

Arrival in Oaxaca

These entries are coming! In the meantime read some things that a teacher I worked with in Oaxaca wrote about his experience, both at the SIT TESOL course as well as about a little trip we all took into the mountains...

(click those links!)

Blast to the Past: Santa Fe

I took an easy Denver to Alberquerque flight and was met by my co-trainer John Kongsvik, who drove me to Santa Fe. He put me up in a house just around the corner from his, and we spent the few days before the course started hanging out in his pleasant backyard, lounging in the hammock, meeting some of his friends, and listening to his favorite Mexican rock band Mana at a volume that the Ipod player stand certainly hadn't been programmed for. Basically doing about as little to prepare for an intensive course that I've ever done in my life! About all we did was divvy up who was doing which workshops, and spent the remainder of the time talking un peu en francais, chatting about student-centered teaching, comparing notes on SIT, and gossiping about who all we knew in common. It was very nice to be relaxed for a change going into an intensive course...

It had been one hassle after another for John in getting this course going... the College of Santa Fe had a new director and the course was literally on-again off-again for some time, playing havoc with both our plans. Eventually it was on-again... well, one course at least, the second summer course was cancelled, even though both were full at 12 with waiting lists no less. It was my first real time in Santa Fe and what a unique culture it was here! Not that I had too much time to do any real exploring, given the 12 hour plus workdays, but the little I gleaned was interesting. There was a mix of American, Mexican, and Indian backgrounds, making what a number of locals described as a genuine Santa Fe culture and perspective. Many buildings were in an adobe style, and the ones in the downtown were actually required to be, even if it happened to be a McDonalds or an office.

The first week working with John was incredibly eye-opening.... I'd never quite seen a teacher, or a person like him! It reminded me of what Gabriel Garcia Marquez said upon reading Franz Kafka for the first time... "No one ever told me that it was possible to write like this. If I had known that you were allowed to do this, I would have been a writer a long time ago." And sure enough, Marquez dropped everything to become a writer at that moment. It's the way I felt watching John teach-- I had never known that it was possible to teach like that. In one sense, it was extraordinarily inspiring and I felt like there was so much going on at deep and subtle levels that I wanted to absorb as much as possible in the short time of our course-- forget that I was the teacher trainer trying to help along the beginning teachers! I felt like there were so many layers of what he was doing and I wanted to see beneath as many as I could, which meant plenty of careful observing and inner questioning, or better yet, inner quiet. On the other hand, it was overwhelming at times, and very humbling. Which is always a good thing when worked through appropriately, though it also means that painful parts of one's own ego can come up. As Parker Palmer wrote, "we teach who we are," and to really delve into one's own teaching practice, if it's done in honesty, transparency takes place and it can lead to a profound questioning of who we are and what weaknesses and challenges get manifested through our teaching persona. To change this isn't an easy switch of donning a new jacket and pants, but can take some real inner work as well.

So all this came up as I watched how John presented the material through just about every learning modality there was; as he never answered a question but fully helped to resolve the participants' inquiries and seeing them satisfied, as he used humor to lower the affective filter and create a group dynamic, as he shifted his pronunciation and intonation to attract attention and take it away from himself, and as he filled in his breaks with extra workshops and stayed after the day's end to keep up an energy that I had no idea where it kept coming from.



After the first week, I was treated with a visit by my mom and our Nepali friends, who had just stopped in Salida for a July 4th celebration. Coming from Kathmandu we thought it would be nice to have them experience a small down Independence Day parade and festival. With John covering so many bases I didn't have as full work weekend as I might normally, so had plenty of time to sight-see with my family, and it ended up being the only time for that in my month in Santa Fe. We went to some museums and saw the downtown, which in many ways resembled various areas I'd seen of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Perhaps the best part was the free Japanese spa we were treated to by my friend Linden, who happened to work there (called 10,000 Waves but recently downgraded to 1,000). I'm usually fairly critical of the American spa experience (and justifiably so after my 3-4 years in Japan), and this one hit the mark.... the best stateside I've been to. Subtle enough to just barely put an emphasis on a relaxing and calming hot water experience over the new age element.

Here is a picture of some member of the local police force who wanted to give a proper American welcome to our Nepali friends:


And here's a church we stopped at where Ba-Aama donated some money to light some candles. (One of the things I love about Indian-Nepali customs is there reverence towards any religious tradition... part of this stems from not wanting to be "wrong" and having a better chance to being right by contributing to all beliefs, and part of it comes from seeing the oneness of all religious or spiritual sense of devotion)

I was now staying with John... the home where I had been staying the first three weeks had me sharing my dishes with the animals, and things even stranger... finally, on the last day of the course, somehow John and I came up with an idea to "trick" the participants into dancing as much as possible and recording it on film, then mixing it to dance music on my Mac. I thought it was a pretty funny idea, though when I woke up the next morning, I was tired from a full course and decided if John didn't remember, I'd let it go-- also, knowing myself to be all or nothing with no middle ground when creative projects came around, I didn't know if I'd have the energy to see this one through. When John reminded me that we needed to record ourselves dancing in the car to put on the tape later, I knew it was all over. The day was a riot and I spent more time editing and shooting and planning for the video than anything course-related. Within a day the video was all shot and edited and the participants howled when we showed them it. There was so much dancing snuck in-- with workshops, practice teaching, feedback, break time--- it gives the impression that that's about all we did the entire month.



See if you can catch it here, click!

FLASHBACK: Boulder

After Chicago I headed back to the easy flight to Denver and spent some time in Boulder. I'd thought I had my training plan set months earlier but due to site considerations and participant levels it had been in a state of continual fluctuation. So it left with me with a month free in June, which now, looking back on it, I have no idea how in the world I possibly could have done without!!! So I spent some more time hanging out with my Nepali family as the season started warming up and I could sneak away to the nearby parks to read.

The exciting news was that now Vidya's parents and sister were visiting the United States for the first time ever. It was a busy household and I offered to change my plans to give them more family time but they would hear nothing of it. Unlike many homes you'd find in the US, in places like Nepal, the more the merrier, and welcoming and generosity are the order of the day! So I ended up staying on floor mats in their newly converted yoga studio. The parents didn't speak a word of English and got up early in the morning to garden and take their morning constitution. Here is a picture of them working in the garden together. (Even though I was only in Boulder as the summer was approaching, it was as deep into summer as I'd ever seen their garden, and so it was neat to see it starting to really grow and blossom.)

They watched Bollywood movies as well as unfamiliar American programs. It suddenly seemed quite important to me to learn a few Nepali phrases so I could converse with them around the house, so I took in some simple greetings and responses and amused everyone by learning some rather odd idioms and expressions that I'd always look for opportune times to use. Oh, and the food! That was great. Every lunch had fresh Nepali food cooked up, actually it was more reflective of their particular tribe than Nepal in general (which is really more of a tribal country like Afghanistan from what I understand). They'd put 15 cups of different beans into a crockpot, through in several kinds of spics and a whole lot of ghee, and a wonderfully tasting curry would come out the other end.



We went on some nice hikes around Boulder as well... the nature that exists here is quite nice, it sometimes feels like there are just a few developments living with nature all around (and you can thank arcane zoning regulations for that!) Sometimes Aama would come with us as well and we'd stop as Paul did some climbing.






My mom came for another visit, and we took the Celestial Seasonings tour in their factory, and then went to the nearby Western Museum of Art. Here are some fun pictures we had being silly around their outdoor artwork...

They were also interested in making it to a baseball game, but by the time we talked about it the local Rockies team were playing road games. The only way they'd be playing when I arrived back in Boulder in October was if they made it to the World Series, and the Colorado Rockies, fat chance of that!!!


We did, however, get to go to the Bolder Boulder race on Memorial Day, where both Sharmila and Vidya walked the race. I went with Ba-Aama (as their parents are called, as a single entity) to the giant University of Colorado football stadium and we watched as the serious and the non-serious runners finished the race, followed by patriotic song, F-16 flyovers, and parachuting members of the military with giant American flags coming down on the field. I could only imagine how it must have seemed to a Nepali couple in their 60s that had rarely left the suburbs of Kathmandu!

A recap of sorts... MIDWEST!

So I wanted to write a little more about my February to September events but I don't know if the time will be available for it on my end! I just have never been so busy. I came back from Mexico City in February after finishing up my 20 day course at Dhamma Makaranda in Mexico. I was supposed to have a short break in Boulder and then head out for Chicago to team up with Andriy, a trainer out of Ukraine, to work on an SIT TESOL course. Instead I found that this course had failed to get more than 6 participants (for 2 trainers we need at least 8). This was quite unusual... the site managers here said it was the first time in 5 years of running the site this had ever happened. Luckily I was so equanimous from my 20 days of meditating that everything was still glorious. Then there was a course going on in Veracruz, Mexico, that might go and I would be running it alone... and this fell through. A call to the SIT home base in Vermont and I found out that Korea was also a bust, so I was stuck in Boulder.

So I made it to some local group sittings, enjoyed the good Nepali food and even tried a few dishes of my own... nothing I love more than checking out a random cuisine cook book from the library and trying out some new foods (even better when I can't pronounce it!) Then I read about a half dozen ESL and linguistics books I'd been given in Costa Rica, wrote some articles that had been on my mind (including one that had occurred to me during the 20 day about what it means to have "mastery" in the context of awareness), and went through my computer every day going over course lesson plans and adjusting sessions.

Then, after a very powerful visit to a friend in Milwaukee, I went to the Illinois Vipassana Center in Rockford. It was my first time at a center since the 20 day, and actually, so sadly, I haven't been back to one as I write this now. Well, going soon to the Land of Dhamma should be changing that, I hope! I served the first course there, a Satipattana. I was kitchen manager for the first time and it was just wonderful, the best serving experience I'd ever had. From my own perspective I actually combined a number of things I'd learned about effective teaching and they had wonderful results... small things that have huge effects, like letting people choose what kitchen tasks to take rather than telling them... what this does to personal initiative and responsibility. Of course, I was also blessed with five unique and positive individuals who worked hard and got along exceedingly well... an French-Chinese American between jobs in Chicago who started hanging out here and really started changing in a good way, an American off to India after ending a relationship and grad school in a single day in Boston, a Thai married to a Texan, and a Korean heading back home after a while away. We enjoyed our work together so much that we were loathe to take breaks... people kind of looked for more work to do since everything was always ready with plenty of time to spare. We started making some great jokes that we'd take our show on the road, applying as one to serve courses over North America and caravaning together. I'd never had such a beneficial experience in a Vipassana kitchen! (of course, the hard times work on those important paramis too...)



I was planning to stay on at the center for about 3 weeks, but my computer was having problems, and my Mac is the lifeblood of my entire livelihood (talk about trying to be balanced here!) So I went into Chicago and stayed with my Mom's close French friends in the heart of the city for a couple days. I met the other trainer, Todd, working out of Chicago and got set up at DePaul. Then I went to the Apple Store in downtown. They somehow got my desktop back, sold me an external hard drive then and there and copied everything on it, then took my computer in. As it turned out I lost *EVERYTHING* on the computer!!!! They gave me back a blank hard drive. Luckily I took my newly acquired back up and plugged it in... within minutes I was back and running. What luck!

I got a ride back to Dhamma Pakasa and served about 7 days of the following course. My mind was now on the upcoming TESOL course and the incredible energy it would take of me. So I was much more careful to take my rest and not over-work as I'd done last course... oh, how I love overworking at Vipassana centers, but I realized I absolutely could not arrive in Chicago with no gas in the tank.
I got back to the city tripping on all the city things you do when you're at a silent meditation center, and once again felt my James Bond life... Andriy had sent keys to an address in Boulder and I had those with me. I took appropriate trains and walked following a map, finding my apartment complex. A portly African American looked at me strangely and asked who I was looking for... this was Darvis and in the month to come we'd have plenty of talks, usually about Chicago sports, a guy with a huge heart that I was always glad to see and always brought a smile to me. Other times I arrive in places and pull keys from my passport case to open doors when other doors I'd just closed thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. In the next few days I'd find myself calling some phone numbers of friends in Chicago I hadn't seen, and getting together for good Japanese and veggie meals... Here is a picture of a big commotion that took place one evening after post teaching feedback... we thought another plane of anti-Americans who hate our freedoms had struck a downtown Chicago building with all the fire trucks present!


The SIT course in Chicago was the first one I'd ever run on my own. I was a bit terrified beforehand! These courses are almost indescribable amounts of work for everyone involved: trainers and participants. As I often tell people, I get six hours of free time a day and I usually use it for sleeping. The day is full and with planning and transportation, not much other time is free. Being a solo trainer was like this on steriods! All my lesson plans, copies, schedules, and tasks had to be almost totally ready the Sunday before the following week, because there was no other time. There was no other trainer to step in and lead a session as I stared at a wall and decompressed, responded to an email, made a copy, looked ahead and adjusted my mind for the next workshop, etc. The welcoming session on Sunday felt a bit rough to me... I was working with Anglos in the Midwest rather than latinos in Costa Rica and I realized I needed some adjustments. Luckily those were made and Week 1 was great, as was the rest of the course. At the beginning, I remember feeling so much tension that I was almost having troubles just getting through the hour sitting! By the end, it was just such a feeling of accomplishment... and a great, great group of participants to work with! Oh, and another neat aside, I was at DePaul University's downtown location, which basically is a 19 story building with us on the top. Being Catholic, they have a small quiet space for chapel on the first floor... this became my refuge for 20 minute meditation sittings before practice teaching, which really saved me... I don't know how I would have managed without these!!! My mind was such mush by the time that afternoon came, and this was like a short rest that put me right back in the game.

Oh, and the third week, I actually did have some time. I walked to Lincoln Park and laid on the grass, actually falling asleep. Then happend by Wrigley Field... this was my third time in Chicago and both previous trips that thrawted my hope to visit. The only game I was free was for Cubs-White Sox, and inner city rivalry that sold out months earlier. So I just walked by the park, and happily bought some $12 tickets, and happier still found out they were the real thing. So suddenly I found myself within minutes in the first inning of a baseball game, my first in I don't know how long! It was really cool for a bit before I realized how unpleasant my sensations were becoming and realized how very little I had in common with just about everyone around me. I began to kind of wonder why I still followed sports as closely as I do and why this seemed like such a good idea. I had very little money on me because I hadn't planned on this diversion, and stayed until about the 8th inning when rain poured down...




And here's a nice picture of a flower I took when I visited a greenhouse by the park where I was staying:

The trip home

Finally, when I was feeling almost fine again, it was time to go back to the other side of the world and run another intensive one month training. I packed my bags compact enough to get to Oaxaca with little or no rearranging and got to the airport in Rangoon with 2.5 hours to spare, passing to my delight and surprise the Vipassana center (I didn't go because the schedule showed a 20 day course taking place... also, doubt I would have had the time and health to make it anyway). Of course, here in The Golden Land everyone and their neighbor practices Vipassana so saying this doesn't really mean anything. I'd have to tell people I practiced Goenka meditation and then everyone would nod-- I literally didn't meet a single person who didn't know about Goenkaji, no matter where it was that I happened to meet them. And they were all very curious to hear a foreigner talking about sila, samadhi, and panna!

It took all of 5 minutes to go past security, immigration, and check in. Suddenly I found myself within a very pristine airport and to my total surprise, not a single restaurant, cafe, or gift shop in sight, not a single one in the entire airport!! I was famished, had more than 2 hours ahead of me, and luckily I had stuffed in a Clif bar and water bottle in my carry on before leaving the hotel. I asked several security agents where I could get something to eat and they said nowhere. With frustration serving no one, I told them I was hungry and I couldn't believe the airport didn't have a single place. About 20 minutes later I happened to notice on security guard sitting close by me and seeming to watch me... I made a mental note not to choose this time to organize files on my Mac. I decided to take another glance to judge what he was doing... as I did, he subtly called for my attention, looked around us, and opened his jacket to reveal a box of cookies. He gestured to give these to me... I was confused to say the least. I saw a price on the box and assumed he was trying to make a profit. It took me quite some time to put the pieces together... this was the security guard I had complained to, he had gone outside the airport to purchase this and was offering it to me, and obviously did not want the world to know about it. I tried to politely decline the box and opened it up to take a few biscuits out, whereupon he scooped it back into his jacket and disappeared and I distributed these to other hungry foreigners sitting by me. I smiled and with that, left the country into Bangkok.

I sat next to a young Burmese boy traveling to London, where he was to study for 5 years. He was from an international school in Rangoon and enjoyed basketball... actually, that seemed to be all he enjoyed! Every few minutes he would ask me how tall I was and what position I liked to play, or ask me what I thought of Steve Nash or Vince Carter. He showed me the pictures he had stored on his iPod of LeBron James' autobiography book cover or 50 Cent pointing a gun at the camera. Like everyone else he also knew all about Goenka meditation and actually his great grandfather had been close to Goenkaji at a young age. He told me all about his successful business practice and subsequent migraine headaches! In Bangkok I thankfully got through immigration and baggage easily and took the shuttle to my nearby hotel, the only one I was told within 20 minutes of the airport. More Rugby World Cup with Japan and Fiji squaring off and a very restless 4-5 hours of sleep. Up at 4.30 for morning meditation and shower and off to the airport. A great breakfast of Korean Bipip-Bop, bought some English tea and was wise to finish it ahead of time, and checked into my JAL flight back to Tokyo Narita, where I watched more bad movies and managed to stay awake for several more hours... sleep on planes really doesn't come easy to me.

It was a late arrival in Tokyo, so I scrambled to jot a few email messages at the free cyber-cafe, bought some candies with my leftover Japanese change from before, and just made the flight. This time I watched my first truly fantastic movie of the trip... about a young man who moves from Kyoto to Edo in feudal Japan to open a tofu shop and saw some snippets of Annie Hall after that. Then I felt like a truck had ran over me... for the next few hours I was somewhere between sleep and awake, knowing only that I couldn't open my eyes or else it felt like burning acid was over them. I arrived in Dallas rather upset that my work had twice routed me through the US, which in the post 9/11 world has some rather tough immigration and baggage details to deal with, especially when on this trip the US was merely a few hour layover for the bigger and brighter world ahead. So I checked out of DFW and then checked back in. I wandered a bit confused around the airport looking for food and nearly fell on some slick tiles in front of a McDonalds as a dozen young men wearing matching matching green and white jumpsuits looked up. Later I was to see them all on my small prop plane to Mexico City and still later I was to find out these were the members of the Mexican National Football (Soccer) team, who had just finished playing (and losing) an Olympic qualifying match to Brazil in Dallas! As we landed in Mexico City, they were swamped with autograph and picture requests.

I don't remember much of that flight except for how awful so many different parts of my body were feeling. I tried to make conversation with the enthusiastic young Mexican playwright next to me who had been visiting schools in Kansas and NYC and who I tried to explain what in the world I'd been doing in Rangoon. As I moved through the fourth of fifth plane flights, oval Asian eyes were turning slowly into bushy Mexican moustaches and airplane announcements were cycling from Burmese through to Thai, Japanese, and finally Spanish. I was fairly good at separating the different currencies in my passport case and felt like a secret agent as I kept swapping one for the other, like I should get my other passport or identify cards to go with it. I was much less good with the coins, and as I reach in my pocket now I find dimes, nickels, 50 yen pieces, and almost entirely identical 10 baht and 5 peso coins. Also I had to continue getting straight that something like 100 baht was only 3 dollars while 100 pesos was more like 10... much harder when signing off on hotel bills that numbered to the thousands. Then I had to remember when I could say something like “tiene recebo” and when “sumimasen” would and would not be understood, or when to greet someone with “mingalaba” or when to say “sawadee krup.”

I took a taxi through the crowded evening streets of Mexico City and headed towards the Zocalo, where my hotel was situated. It was a building that dated back to the 16th Century. Mexican Independence Day was now only a few days away and the entire square was crammed with thousands of peoples and booths and large lights in the Mexican colors making the images of the Mexican flag, symbols, and people's faces. Here are some pictures:


With my backpacker looks and my backpacker packs, they denied me through the front entrance where a large dinner was going on representing achievements in bottled water (no joke) and sent me through a side door. The pain was almost overwhelming now. I checked in, went to my room and took a shower, watched a few minutes of CNN and the big Bush speech, and then went out to the Zocolo for just a few minutes. As I went back to bed, the speeches were beginning from the bottled water celebration and I had to turn the lights back on to find some earplugs. I woke up several times in the night and set my alarm for 6.30 am for morning meditation, in which it finally felt not like it was a big truck that had hit me but only a minivan or station wagon. I gathered my things, had some greasy breakfast with what I could find that didn't contain meat or fish (and luckily Mexico and Burma are about the same latitude so the fruits are nearly identical) and called a taxi for the airport. Mexico City airport was now being slightly kinder to me... immigration and baggage had taken only a fraction of the time it had taken in previous visit.


I took another prop plane to Oaxaca, landed in the airport and took a "collectivo" to my apartment, where I met the lovely family who owns the pension and my co-trainer. And, with that we went out to an Italian restaurant as my per diem was fading, arranged Week 1 schedules, and within hours I'd be the lead trainer on another intensive TESOL course...