Vicuña, Llama, Alpaca?




Jen in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Preliminary Research?

 OK the "camelid's out of the bag" and truth be told we are going to  . . . Argentina! At a recent "going-away" luncheon with some friends I elicited some interesting questions that our visit hopes to answer. Not all at once, ¡Claro que no! but as time goes by, I hope to comment on all of these queries. We could cheat and go directly to Wikipedia . . . but isn't it more fun to wait and get an "on location" view?

1. What is the difference between a vicuña, a llama, and an alpaca?
2. Is the plastic surgery good?
3. What are some cool linguistic Argentine-isms? OK, so it's obvious we are language teachers!
4. What are some cultural taboos? Things to avoid doing?
5. What is the overriding opinion about Eva Peron? Is she more popular overseas?
6. What is the education system like?
7. What is the best wine?
8. Do kids start learning the "Tango" in grade school?
9. Can foreigners own property?
10. How much is a monthly gym membership?
11. Can you wear sweat pants in public?
12. How do people dress in general?
13. What's the deal with steak? How often do people really eat beef?
14. How many people are of Italian descent?
15. What are rules about kissing, touching, personal distance?
16. Where do most of the tourists come from?

Do you have any questions to add? Please click on comments below to add yours! Countdown till take off  . . . 3 weeks.

Hello World!




Jen & Joe in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona

 Hello world!
When last we met, Jen and I were bidding adieu to Laos and all of the wonderful people and places we experienced in that peaceful and beautiful Southeast Asian country. We returned to the US at the end of June, relocating back to our base in lovely New Mexico, and have spent the last six months regrouping for our next international adventure. Well, that new and exciting foray to the literal “ends of the Earth” begins in less than a month, so we figured it was high time to fire up this blog…

Wherearetheherrins is back!



Canadian geese at Bosque del Apache, New Mexico



Looking back, 2010 has been a very eventful year for us, but let it suffice to say we are looking forward to 2011 with tremendous anticipation and excitement. We love our corner of the southwestern United States, and we try to take advantage of its wonders when we are here (see photos of Bosque del Apache on the Rio Grande in central New Mexico and the Sonoran desert outside Tucson, Arizona), but nothing gets our blood pumping like a new challenge and a new adventure in a new corner of the globe. Today, Christmas is in our rearview mirror, the New Year is directly ahead of us, and we are psyched, baby! In my journeys, I have been to every continent except one – and we are moving our traveling roadshow to that very continent in exactly 4 weeks…

Let’s get ready to rumble!!! (Hmmm…how do I say that in Spanish?)


Goodbye, Lao

Our Lao adventure has come to an end.

Tomorrow we’ll get on a plane in Vientiane, fly to Bangkok where we’ll overnite, then fly Saturday morning to Tokyo, Salt Lake City and finally, Albuquerque. A long, long trip.

I really hate goodbyes, but they are inevitable when you have 65 students who are losing their teacher in the middle of the semester. The past couple of days, Jen has gone with me up to the university in Dong Dok to be the official photographer documenting the "final classes". Lots of photo ops, gifts, songs, speeches…

I love my students, but I hate goodbyes.

But it’s goodbye to Lao. Ten months in the calmest, friendliest, hottest country we’ve ever lived in. Goodbye to eating in restaurants twice a day (farewell, sticky rice!), to gliding monks swathed in orange, to packs of howling dogs, to five people on a motorbike, to gorgeous flame-colored trees and graceful palms and rice paddies, to bouncing along in tuk-tuks and songthaews crammed with fifteen people…

Goodbye to the gang of neighborhood tuk-tuk drivers we’ve come to know. Schumann (so-named because he repairs shoes when he’s not driving), Chiclets, Mittens, Bon Jovi…
We gifted Schumann with a ton of good stuff this week (including some pairs of shoes). He must think we’re crazy to be giving him sacks of clothes and kitchen goods.

Goodbye to sweating gallons every day and to worshipping air-conditioners. Goodbye to dust and dirt and fumes and giant ants falling from trees. Finally, goodbye to Beer Lao – I’m really going to miss you!

It’s been a good ten months for us. We experienced Lao culture and Lao people and have been greatly enriched by them. We saw some beautiful sights and ate great food and stayed relatively healthy.

I’m going to try not to freak out when I get back to the States. Laos, even living here in the capital city, is incredibly understimulating in terms of Western-style “excitement”. Outside of an occasional festival, little ever “happens”. There is no shopping mall. There is no movie theater. People drive slowly. There is no road rage. People don’t act out in public. My God, I’m going to miss the complete lack of public aggression and bad behavior. Time to steel myself for the inevitable return to “Western values” and the accompanying stress levels. Sigh.

And so, goodbye, Lao.

Our own backyard

It's "high time" that I produce another entry for this blog! Joe has been doing more trainings at the US Embassy and at the National University. The teachers are always responsive to his style and get a big kick out of practicing the teaching techniques with each other. His last week is coming up in which his students will be giving presentations; they are all looking forward to that.

Joe and I were recently treated with a visit from one of my friends (some of you know her!), Krissy. She is volunteering in Thailand for the summer and took a break to see the sights in Laos. Her first stop was Vientiane where we spent two days seeing as much as we could: Patuxay (a tall cement structure that has stairs to a birds eye view of the capital), Talat Sao (the morning market), and our favorite restaurants Joma and Makphet. We squeezed in some temples too: Wat Sisangvone, Wat Phonxaysetthathirath (really!) , That Luang, and Wat Ha Phra Keo. It was a sweaty endeavor, but we managed to keep hydrated and even shop silk weavings till we found the most beautiful one in town which will be hanging on Krissy's living room wall later this summer :)

Unfortunately, Joe was laid up with a badly banged ankle; he slipped getting out of the tuk-tuk on the way to work, and a tender part of his ankle met metal with force. A lot of greenish blusish swelling came out of it, but we don't think it's broken as it has been improving. That being said, he was off the hook for the aforemtnetioned intense trekking excursion.

It's great to have visitors so that you can see the sights! Although Joe and I have seen many together, sometimes the ones right under your nose go unnoticed because they are so familiar. Everywhere we went, in classic Lao style, the people were very friendly. The monks at the temples practiced their English with us, the kids posed for pictures, the vendors smiled at us even when we didn't buy anything, and the sun occasionally cooperated by going behind a cloud (or was it the clouds that covered the sun?). Thank you Krissy for getting me out and about to see some new things, taste some new fruits, find new ATMs, and for teaching me more about Buddhism all in my own backyard!

Reunited . . .

. . . and it feels so good! Yes, I'm back in Laos again with my 'muzh' (that's husband in Russian). I don't think I ever mentioned how many people I run into in Laos who know Russian . . . most of them studied in the former Soviet Union. Laos had tight connections with the Soviets and the Russians still maintain an active embassy here that has it's own Russian school. Just the other day I was attending one of Joe's workshops; after chatting with the Lao counterpart from the US Embassy, I found that he had studied Russian. I whipped out my language book and he started reading the cyrillic out loud. He admitted that it had been a while since he had used it.

So, I made it back to Laos without a glitch except that the first leg of my flight from Dnipropetrovsk to Vienna was canceled when I got to the airport. Apparently, the "owner of the airport refuses to let Austrian Air land on his airstrip due to political reasons" according to an Austrian Airlines representative. So, after quickly downing a Kwell's (motion sickness pill), I boarded a mini-bus for Zaparozhye, the place I had visited with the students and teachers the weekend before. After quick goodbyes to my new friends Irina and Natalie, the mini-bus kicked into gear to shuttle to the airport where the flight was really taking off from. I had some good conversation with my bus companions, engineers from Washington, DC who were contracting the manufacture of rockets in Dnipropetrovsk (DP). DP had been completely closed until only 15 years ago due to it's nuclear, weapons, and space research and manufacture. Now the US Government contractors are getting much of their design and assembly done here due to the long-standing Ukrainian expertise and low prices. The guys I met were manufacturing rockets to be sent to repair space shuttles (you scientists out there, please correct me if I got that wrong!). Anyhow, it was interesting to hear about something totally foreign to my usual topics of conversation.

Now back in Laos, where Beer Lao is the most successful product manufactured, we are still waiting for the big rains. We are due to go back to the US in less than a month, and as it always happens, the "signs" are starting to pop up that our stay is coming to an end: our favorite restaurant, Vong's, has mysteriously closed a day after raising their prices, someone helped themselves to our bicycles that were sitting on our front porch one Sunday afternoon, my Russian conversation partner has gone back to Uzbekistan for the summer, the fan in our house exploded, and the aircondioner keeps flipping the breaker because it's too hot outside. But the upside is that we got tickets on the same dates on the same flights which is a whole other drawn out story! AND . . . my friend Krissy is coming in a couple of weeks to do some volunteer teaching. I hope to go on a photographic mission with her to get an album of parting shots of Laos.  In the meantime, we are trying to sort, donate, and organize the stuff we're taking back home. It's amazing what you can collect in less than a year!

Monsoon? What Monsoon?

In this part of the world, the monsoon rains mean everything. This is an agrarian culture, and the seasonal rains provide the sustenance for the rice crop and everything else that renews life in Laos . I'm not scientist enough to play the global warming card in this instance, but the monsoon is late this year, the heat is oppressive, and people are suffering from it.

It has been over 100 degrees pretty much every day for weeks and weeks. It's hotter than hell with no respite. I was talking to one of my students this week about the situation.We were sitting outside and chatting before class at 7:50 in the morning...I was mopping my face like Brother Love after a Salvation Show, and beads of sweat stood out on Bounleuam's forehead.

"My parent are farmers. It's terrible for them. Without rain there is nothing."

I can only imagine. Working in a rice field or herding buffalo, I'd be clinically dead in 90 minutes, tops. The humidity climbs each day without any corresponding drop in temperature. Han lai...freaking hot, dude.

Today it rained a bit in the afternoon and when I went down the street to eat dinner this evening, it was sprinkling gently, and the air was remarkably cool and fresh.
Hallelujah! I was taking in huge gulps of air and waving my arms joyfully - it felt wonderful.

The monsoon is not here yet because we haven't had a kickass, barnburning, streetflooding storm yet - not even close. I ask the locals, "When is it going to start raining?"

"June", they muse.

"July, maybe".

I really hope it's tomorrow.

How I passed “Feis control”

 

 

 

Feis kontrol: a Russian klub colloquialism of the English words "face control." Your "face" is your level of wealth, beauty, power, social standing, and overall desirability. Feis kontrol is the power of the velvet rope, originally referring to the surly bouncers at the most exclusive Moscow klubs. It can literally refer to club door personnel, or it can be used figuratively to refer to some ideal social arbiter. (http://www.urbandictionary.com/)

 

From Laos to Ukraine is a pretty big jump . . . and although I’ve been here before, I find that the leap from the mellow land of smiles to the fast-paced oblasts of growing consumerism . . . well, “a leap”. Don’t get me wrong, it is great to be able to be here in Dnipropetrovsk (what some call Ukraine's second city next to Kyiv), go into a cosmetics store, supermarket, or clothing store and buy what you want (or at least approximately). Ironically, I am teaching university economics and management students – we are watching Michael Moore’s “Capitalism – A Love Story” as part of the course. In the three years since I’ve been here, I think Ukraine’s own love affair has become more passionate. Frequenting the 2 new-fangled malls, McDonald's, and "ahem" nightclubs is everpopular. The upside is that customer service has really improved, the post office has an English option on the automated take-a-number machine, the pizza restaurant is entirely non-smoking, and public drinking has been banned in the city center.

 

 

I’m here working on teacher development and content-based instruction at a university, but due to May holidays, I’ve been able to get out a lot. I have to admit that the teachers and students have seen to it that every moment of my time is spoken for. In the last 2 1/2 weeks I think I have done more than during any entire year of my life. It could be that my “little” Russian is going a “long” way. People open up to me, help me, and take care of me. I am amazed. For instance, I have:

 

• played tennis
• gone to the gym
• been to the art museum (where an elderly woman who worked there talked my ear off for 40 minutes before opening time - all in Russian!) and two galleries
• played air hockey (how did that fun a game ever go out of fashion?)
• taken a ride on a paddle boat (or a “pedal” boat)
• been on two walking tours (even one at 5:30 in the morning back to my dorm room)
• played Russian billiards (very small pockets!)
• gone bowling
• spent time at a "dacha" (country home)
• played basketball ("horse" - remember that one?)
• played chess (the 12-year-old kicked my butt twice)
• been ice skating (only fell once and it wasn't my fault)
• given food to a beggar
• had visitors from Kyiv take the 6 hour train ride to see me
• sketched in the park
• purchased collections of old Soviet movies (I love them!)
• seen a concert at the Philharmonic Theater (the conductor was something to see)
• had Russian lessons
• gotten locked out of my dorm room
• been stopped by the police (I’m sure it’s because I looked like a Lithuanian/Slovak Unabomber in my red hooded jacket and dark glasses)
• seen a guy sprayed with mace get arrested outside my window
• shot a BB gun
• eaten cotton candy
• bought a jacket with a fur collar (I didn’t realize it till after I paid; It dawned on me to ask the woman if the collar was real . . . she said, “Da, krolik (rabbit)” – I looked disappointed – she chuckled and said, “You greenpeace?” – I said, “Da”).
• been to a disco (oh yeah, I guess they are called “night clubs” now)

 

Which brings me to my story about getting into the club, or as much as I hate to say it: face control. They say you should "face" your fears . . . confront them. I guess I should be happy that I immediately passed "age control", i.e. they agreed I was over 18. When Katia (my friend from Kyiv) and I approached the door last Saturday night, the bouncer told us that we couldn't enter as we had worn "krossovki", a.k.a. tennis shoes. I could see that most women who were being allowed the privilege of entering were wearing metallic spandex and spiked heels; our striped Adidas were a giveaway that we hadn't thought ahead. So, as the students who had accompanied us all were "approved", Katia and I headed back to my "dorm room" to change into two pairs of "teacher shoes" (hey, it's all I had!). My brown pair was a roomy fit for Katia, but we wanted to get into this darn club and show them who's boss.

 

We taxied back to the club where our friends were waiting for us. The bouncer decided that the entrance was now closed to women. What the $%@*#!? Aren't nightclubs eager to get as many broads in the door as possible. Hey, Katia is like 21 or something - let her and her "mom" in, would you? So, needless to say, some spindle-y waifs traipsed to the "velvet rope" and were allowed admittance. Time to practice your Russian Jen: Pachemu? (Why?) Ya dumala shto eta vhod bila zakrita dlya devushki? (I thought this entrance was closed to women?) . . . no response, just an effort to fix his view somewhere in the distance to denote surliness as per the urbandictionary definition. Our exasperated friends phoned to the "inside". Contact was made with . . . behold a student who had been at my Friday workshop was a cocktail waitress . . . her chair had collapsed during the seminar and I had helped her back up. Yes - she was our ticket! Ina then called her contact: Mr. Security Man who somehow contacted the thugs at the "rope" and suddenly a heavily accented voice said: You are welcome. After I got over my fit of "that's not fair" . . . I enjoyed a bit of dancing, talking, and drinking a magically appearing free drink from Ina. Thanks Ina for getting me in and allowing me to announce that: I passed "Feis control"!