Malaysia, Part Two: Batu Caves

Remember how I promised all the monkeys at the teasing end of Part One? Time to deliver on that promise. The Batu Caves proved itself to be worth all our sweat and dehydration. A slow, 8-mile train ride away from the center of Kuala Lumpur delivered us worlds away.

The Hindu shrine is home not only to a devastatingly awe-inspiring cultural and spiritual immensity, but also to a population of rather bold monkeys known for stealing valuables and snatching snacks from unwary tourists. They sure were wonderful.

This guy doesn't give a crap about your renewed sense of wonder and majesty.

So. Many. Stairs.

One of my favorite photos I've ever taken. Something resonates about points of light in the dark, the quiet in the heat.

Oh yeah, and bananas. Stereotypes, man.

One particularly feisty monkey made off with a woman's offering of flowers intended for one of the cave-sheltered shrines. I hope they were as tasty as they were beautiful.

I wasn't joking about those snacks.

 

Yikes.

I think this monkey had a big touch of the crazy, but maybe we just caught it on an off day, photogenic-wise.

Then there was this little girl. I feel like if I was a monkey, I'd be her, insecurely fidgeting with and chewing on her own tail.

Surprise bonus? Baby monkey.

My first ever coconut water straight from the coconut. So good.

Next up in Part Three, we take a quick trip to the town of Melaka, where we encounter the next best animals after monkeys: MALAYSIAN KITTENS.

Malaysia, Part One: Kuala Lumpur

One of the benefits of living in Asia is our proximity to locations previously only accessible to us by day-long flights and more money than we had. A short mid-summer break from work (and Adam's 30th birthday) provided an opportunity to jet to one of these places, and so we found ourselves in Malaysia. We first landed in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and adventured around a bit (this series of posts will be photo-heavy and caption-light).

The rooftop pool view of the Petronus Towers. Not a bad start.

Starbucks, of course, provided ample WiFi for important things like Instagram access.

The Petronas Towers are staggeringly tall - the tallest twin towers in the world, in fact. You'll get a better idea from the top.

See? This isn't even the top yet.

Here's the top. Whoa.

The National Mosque was humbling both in its beauty and its welcoming. Docents graciously provided robes for us to enter respectfully, although Adam could have used a few more inches on his.

  

Wandering through markets led us to one of my more ridiculous experiences involving doctor fish.

  

With thoroughly pecked-over feet, we continued to explore, sweat-drenched but happy. The rest are just bits and pieces throughout the city.

Plumeria, for dad.

 

Next up, Malaysia, Part Two: Batu Caves. Here's a cheeky peek of what's in store (hint: monkeys. All the monkeys).

Cicadas and slumberlust

A flash of sunlight through a wing, a glimpse of glint among the leaves. The heat-spurred chorus of the cicadas pushes past my headphones – music pours into my ears, but the insects flood the stream. The heavy blanket of summer malaise dampens our shoulders and our desires to do much of anything but muddle through until fall.

Here we are: sweat-drained bodies on sodden bed sheets, limp smiles under umbrellas-turned-timpani drums as the monsoon breaks overhead, foreheads never wanting for company with a constant spackling of damp hair. A months-long longing for sleep in the maddeningly inescapable humidity as we wring out a little oxygen from water we breathe.

Through this steamdank haze, an unassuming intensity leans in every so often, clearing its throat in the doorway and sending me flying. The feeling of stepping off a curb you didn’t know was there – that same reeling as if the world slipped out of reality for a moment and took you with it – and the ground, solid and unyielding, interrupts just as you realize you’re falling to meet it in the first place. These breaches through the mundane are basic truths that nonetheless jar me out of placid comfort:

I am very far away.

The people I love won't live forever; neither will I.

We all have a finite number of heartbeats.

The big things, like the little things, don't ultimately matter. Do they?

This season of cicadas and slumberlust offers a warning: In the cycle of song and death, some choose careful dormancy while others burn in passing brilliance. Both paths require sacrifice, and neither is without its unique resistance. Regardless of choice, time delivers us to the same end.

If I ever remember how to sleep - my hopes lay sooner in wine than in September - this strain of memento mori will make a terrible lullaby.

The oldest and wisest we've ever been

A nearly 2-month-long inability to write anything decent - or even coherent - for this space is ridiculous. My thoughts have been weak and my attempts to write them weaker. So, allow me to lift something I wrote elsewhere, tweak it a bit, and lazily deposit it here (self-plagiarism is all the rage):

Today, at 26, I am in a place - literally and metaphorically - I never planned for, even as little as 2 years ago. Right now, I'm working on that whole being-in-my-twenties thing by living life as I can. Some days, it's an adventure of exhilarating reaffirmation that I exist, and other days it's the kind of soul-rending, mind-enfeebling, heart-crippling "What Am I Doing With This Life" wandering that - obviously, and appropriately - plagues all twenty-somethings. I think we sometimes feel like we've reached a point at which we believe we know what we're doing (or believe we should) because - quite simply - each new day, we're the oldest and wisest we've ever been. We have only hindsight to teach us and hope to guide us. We are careful to keep old wounds closed and learn to analyze the scars, pouring over the lines as if they will map out the future. I expect this is a notion that can carry us well into our old age, right up until death, when all our oldest, wisest-ness will be just a comfort, if we're lucky. Maybe we should take comfort now in knowing what we can, feeling what we do, and putting the pieces together as we find them.

Today, you are your oldest and wisest. Let's all have a drink and take it a day at a time, because our days are quick to build the lifetimes we may never see coming.

Here comes the feeling you thought you'd forgotten

*****

Ancient fingers on spage-age screens: someone's grandmother (great-grandmother, ancestor), her weathered face cragged and proud like the mountains of her country, hunches in her too-big coat lined with downy memories of colder days. Her feet scrape like gravel while her knot-jointed fingers skim with a surprising deftness along touchscreen technology. She is taking photographs of cherry blossoms - at once old and new, having bloomed and slept and bloomed for centuries, maybe as she has - on an impossibly sleek iPhone. It is not often you see generation gaps closed so easily when two eras rush to meet each other. After all, I am here, raising my eyes and arms in exactly the same way, my veins just beginning to consider the kind of transparency hers have earned.

*****

My mind is a rabbit's warren best barricaded by distraction. I have been moving unrelentingly, mentally and physically, since I have been here. My days are long and my nights mostly quiet - a few hours with Adam, studying Korean, watching mindless shows - before trying my best to sleep. Weekends are time for devouring culture, winding our way through the subway to new discoveries, while reserving the mornings for reaching across oceans of internet to loved ones littered around the world. Because of this routine of bustle and motion, I had pushed down the unruly, mutable part of myself into a place where truer emotions and more dangerous thoughts could be safely tucked into restless sleep. This internal stonewalling works fairly well. With the exception of a few particularly self-aware minutes eroded into exposure by the vulnerability that comes just before falling asleep or waking up, the threat of release is reliably tempered. But with the thawing of spring came an end to this hibernation of the heart.

A few weeks ago, I was running my usual route and, as they usually had over the last few days, my favorite stand of cherry trees slowed my steps and drew me in. I intended to stop for only a moment; I had already taken dozens of photos of these familiar trees. Instead, something lengthened my pause. I sat at the base of one of many stark black trunks in the twin rows, following the lines of branches tapering overhead, bold rivers of night trickling into the pale of early morning. Here, sitting to catch my breath, the world caught me instead. Here, beauty broke a dam.

In that moment, under the trees, I felt everything. Every emotion, every joy, every pain, all the exuberance and grief and nameless churning I'd buried for months spilled out like the petals at my feet. I'd needed for numbness and dumb, mute strength to function in the face of the monumental upheaval I'd invited into my life with moving across the world, and under the canopy of pink, the numbness and strength just fell away. I cried. I cried, bursting back into feeling as I sat on the ground, surrounded by elderly women wearing baffled half-smiles. I cried in my stupid-bright blue running shoes with my stupid-bright blue waeguk eyes blazing in red rims. I cried knowing I and everyone and everything will die, yet these trees will outlive us without care or remembrance. I cried for everything. For, finally, the relief of release.

Gratefully emptied into silence, I looked up and let myself take in the fleeting sight of the blossoms. With their contrast of strength and fragility, delicately demanding attention, these cherry trees deserve all the glory and awe they get. Their beauty is soft and gently riotous - if fireworks didn't roar, but whispered. They are branches of angular shadow and sprawling lace, wading in the shallows of the sky. As I write this, they are gone, ghosts overtaken by the green of impatient summer. But I'll remember them - living briefly and dying with grace - and remember to let myself wake up, to balance the dark with the light, and be okay with the illusory lines often crossed by both. 

The Foreign Becomes Familiar

Now that we're comfortably settling into our lives in Korea, there are quite a lot of things I've learned - at least, as much as you can learn in nearly 3 months. Korea is a beautiful country with exquisite palaces, breathtaking mountains, and endless opportunities in urban discovery; every weekend is filled with as much exploration as we can pack in. As with everything, there is a balance of good and not-so-good, and some lessons weigh heavier in my mind than others. Through it all - and it is all so much - sometimes it is enough to just keep my head above water and finally make time to write. To complement my often-fragmented thoughts of late, here is a fragmented list of 10 things I've learned, through teaching, traveling, or just living:

1. The Seoul subway is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite form of transportation. Depending on the time of day, it is either a smooth, quick, and efficient way from here to there or a harried, nauseating meat-packing facility on rails straight out of a claustrophobic's nightmare.

2. Skype is made of magic.

3. I will never be able to speak Korean nearly as well as my 6-year-old students can speak English. It is mind-blowing to think that my classroom of Kindergartners are speaking and writing complete sentences in a second language when Kindergartners in the U.S. are barely writing their own names in their native tongue. This speaks volumes about America's educational deficit on a global scale. However, American students have a childhood in which they can play outside after school and spend time just being a kid. Creativity is fostered there, but here, creativity is frowned upon as frivolous. Korean children are instead shuttled from school to school, from academy to activity, from the time they are old enough to hold a pencil, and play is a luxury. As far advanced as my kiddos may be academically, their adult-like schedules rarely allow unadulterated time for childhood. Both systems sacrifice something, but in my eyes, I'd rather my child have the ability to balance academics with getting to be a child.

4. To force myself past the Ick. While the majority of my Kindergartners are heart-wrenchingly adorable and achingly sweet, it doesn't make up for the fact that their bodily fluids occur at times and in places you wouldn't expect, and this is made worse by the kids' inability to keep their hands (and mouths) to themselves. I even concocted "Touchy" the Alligator, a visually-reminding friend I drew on the board with a big toothy grin. Each time I saw/received inappropriate touching, I erased one of Touchy's teeth. This character has evolved into a tiger who loses his stripes, mostly because I got tired of drawing an alligator and I prefer the alliterative aspect. Now, if the touch is accidental (like a kiddo wanting a hug and his or her hand inadvertently lands on a boob), I'm not going to promote body shame; I simply move the hand away without a reaction. However, when a kid grabs my hand and puts it in his mouth, or a girl comes up behind me to squeeze my ass, giggling, or a particularly snotty child wipes her nose before grabbing my hair for a yank, I calmly explain why we don't touch that way while gagging or screaming "Why?!" inside. This system has lessened the amount of snot and saliva I encounter on a daily basis, but that still hasn't stopped the putrid parade in its tracks. I'm still figuring out the best self-therapy to deal with the most recent incident in which I thought one of my Kindergarten boys was approaching me to sit on my lap, only to start rubbing his junk on my knee. I am coming to terms with the fact that I may never recover and will just physically recoil whenever the memory resurfaces.

5. When you eat nearly all of your meals with chopsticks, a fork can feel surprisingly heavy and unwieldy. How quickly the foreign becomes familiar.

6. Not to compare myself to the typical Korean woman. While I am by no means overweight, I do not have legs like a deer stretched on the rack, nor a waist appearing to be sucked in by forces akin to a black hole, nor wrists delicate enough to snap under the pressure of a firm handshake. As much as the American social conscious is preoccupied with image and struggles to deal with the omnipresent, media-fueled pressure to attain an idealized, packaged beauty, Korea seems to transcend such consciousness into virtual obsession. It's inescapable: I can't go one subway stop without seeing an advertisement for plastic surgery in which the (perfectly lovely) Before is transformed into an altogether unrecognizable After with features verging on the cartoonish - any "flaws" have been molded into an acceptably narrow jawline, exaggeratedly rounded eye shape, or tucked-away ear placement deemed pretty by social standards. All personality and traces of real life are erased and and replaced by blank, uniform "beauty." Worse, it starts  young - I have been told by more than one 6-year-old that she is not pretty because her eyes are small and that she doesn't like sweets because they will make her fat. Six years old. My heart breaks when a child can't enjoy a piece of candy because it has been laced with fear and shame. It devastates me even further when they tell me I am beautiful or have pretty hair, because in race toward "pretty," they see Western traits as something to achieve rather than celebrating themselves as they are. Why are these 6-year-olds even aware of this pressure to be thin and have uniform faces to be... successful? Attractive? Worth love? In a related vein, the fact that I even have an ass at all is probably going to be a problem when it comes time to shop for pants.

7. I am not and probably never will be okay with the smell of silkworm chrysalis sizzling away on a street vendor's griddle. I love so much about experiencing new cultures and the accompanying foods, and I never want to be that person who gags at another culture's common snack, but the clouds of steam billowing from cooking worm pupa just reek of death and dishwater. I'm really sorry, guys. Gross.

8. Cherry blossoms. I get it now. The yearly frenzy over the trees is totally justified, and I will do my best to explain in a post next week.

9. If I start thinking about space, I can and will spiral into an existential depression. (Okay, this one isn't entirely new, but I relearned it.) The parameters of the human brain can only handle so much, and my mind especially cannot emotionally handle such functions like entertaining ideas about the universe, real or theoretical, because: What lies beyond the edge of the universe? There has to be something, right? How can nothingness exist? Oh my god, what is really going on inside that nebula the size of 15 Earths stacked on top of each other and black holes are what?! I can barely handle philosophies about existence on THIS planet, much less a whole universe, because I will never stop thinking about them and will eventually lose my mind when answers run out. Case in point: Adam recently showed me the Planck mission's map of the universe, charting the lights and limits of space, and I nearly imploded.

10. A job can be both stressful and satisfying. My days are long, requiring diligence and mindful dedication. You cannot mindlessly pass your workday when you are helming consecutive classroom hours of Kindergartners, second-graders, and third-graders until 7:30pm three days of the week, then grading and developing lesson plans until 5pm after morning Kindergarten on my 2 "short" days. You must be vigilantly adaptable, always engaged, and constantly thinking ahead.

BUT.

I see the difference I and my fellow teachers make every day. I work with people who genuinely care about what they do and about each other. My students actually WANT to learn, and (for the most part) like to listen to what I have to teach them - even when my sarcasm takes over. I was tapped to provide sketches for a new grammar textbook developing in Adam's research and development department, and when it is printed, I will have a credit as a published illustrator. For all my teaching, I am always learning. I have access to free Korean food for lunch and dinner if I want it. My demanding schedule and extraneous duties are compensated for with a rent-free apartment and a generous paycheck, and I'm watching my savings steadily swell. And when I am crying with co-workers over devastating news from home displaying the worst depths of humanity and have no idea how I am going to smile for my Kindergartners, I can walk into a classroom that evil has left untouched and all it takes is a hug from one of my kiddos as I sing them their favorite Muppets song to remind me of the overwhelming goodness that exists to mend shattered hearts.

Seoul Searching

Less than 3 weeks in, and here we are. Very much alive and mostly well, safe and relatively sound. We're finally in Korea and it's not feeling quite real just yet. Trying to write has been incredibly difficult when organizing my thoughts is akin to collating glitter in a sandstorm, and posting something intelligible here even more so (unstable, hijacked internet connection notwithstanding). Bear with me.

After a nondescript 13-hour flight, we arrived at sunset on a day that seems - in the receding fog of sleep deprivation, adrenaline, and feeling jarringly alien - to have been years ago. We promptly began a brutal adjustment period in which our jet-lagged bodies fought for appetites and struggled to break the exhaustion-driven pattern of 4-hour naps and restless nights. Sleeping still has its kinks, but then again, I've never really managed to work them out in any time zone. We were immediately embraced by our of small community of coworkers before even setting foot in the school, and over the boisterous rounds of cheap beer and soju, I don't know the last time I've felt so instantly welcome and seamlessly knitted into the fold.

Not everything has been seamless, of course. Several of my own stitches have been rough and exposed when attempting what, at home, would be the most mundane of tasks. Perfect example: navigating the grocery store alone brought me to tears once I escaped the crush and noise of it all (for someone who is prone to panic attacks in Costco, this wasn't entirely surprising; rather, it was expected and still a nightmare). In my smaller, older neighborhood, where our blue eyes and American laughs attract overt stares, the markets are filled with aggressive ajummas pushing their way through the masses on a mission. (A stone's throw from our apartment, I wandered the open-air Dunchon market, littered with bins of gleaming tentacles and roasted chestnuts. I had let myself get lost in the sounds of sizzling vegetable pancakes and clamoring vendors when I was physically moved by a surprisingly strong old woman, no taller than my elbow, on her way to her desired buckets of  squid and dried corn. Had I not gotten a glimpse of her white perm brushing past as I fought for my balance, I would have thought the stalls were haunted.)

Taking the subway into the heart of the city to undergo our visa-required physicals was an unusual, intimate-yet-estranging ordeal. Much like I would imagine a very friendly Area 51 laboratory tour, our visit entailed an hour of being led through several floors of medical offices in a robe and slippers, passed with oddly-personable efficiency from nurse to doctor to nurse to doctor, from white room to sterile white room, one rapid-fire test and blood draw to another. If you ever want to feel like you've been sent to the future where you don't speak the language and even the Star Trekkian door-opening technology surpasses your logic, get an alien registration physical in Seoul.

Some of the smallest victories are our biggest accomplishments: purchasing the correct garbage bags (Seoul has a very strict waste disposal system), figuring out how the shower works (forget a bathtub - the shower head is connected to the faucet, so you just shower in the middle of the floor between the toilet and the sink), demystifying the produce section of the market, making tea on our tiny gas range, fumbling through Korean directions for the rice cooker, buying paper and pencils to be able to make art again.

On a grander, more impressive scale, we learned to read in about a week and are well on our way to learning what some words we pronounce actually mean, too. Our vocabulary is blooming through study and stumbling immersion. We've nailed the subway, stand a fighting chance in a taxi, and can order take-out. I'm getting used to a lack of personal space and I've accepted that I'm not in control, and won't even feel such an illusion for a long time.

I've fallen in love with the Olympic Park, a 10-minute walk from our apartment and across the street from our school. The first warm day we had (at a downright balmy 36F), I walked the park for over 3 hours, following winding paths through the trees, discovering gardens, excavated tombs, and sculptures, and chasing the many bunnies, pheasants, cranes, and feral cats stalking the grounds. The photos will warrant their own post here. Even frozen and winter-browned, the park is just beautiful, but I can't wait until new leaves feather the naked trees and the icy streams thaw to a familiar music. I plan on ending many summer days there.

Beyond the Park, exploration of Seoul is endless, but we officially began playing tourist at Gyeongbok Palace a short subway ride away. The main palace of the Joseon Dynasty is breathtaking, a quiet bastion of history surrounded by skyscrapers, hushed in snow even amid the nearby thunder of drums and dance celebrating the Lunar New Year. Gyeongbokgung also merits its own future post.

Not all discoveries have been pleasant, if felt more acutely. As my contract doesn't start for another 2 weeks yet, I am alone in the apartment while Adam is at work, and it is hard to ignore the isolation and the fact that I am without my furry shadow. I miss Eliot terribly, especially when I encounter one of our neighborhood's many stray cats, dirty and aloof, I don't dare approach. I miss my friends and family. I miss Seattle fiercely - my old apartment, my Capitol Hill, my old sense of home. I'm slowly making this apartment our own, but it's not easy given our lack of decorating resources beyond my own drawings and the unwieldy furniture provided, plus inherited artifacts of the previous tenants. Optimism will go a long way in this.

The coffee is awful, as the instant variety is virtually the only kind available in stores, but there are plenty of coffee shops brewing from real grounds in the area that can sell us beans once we manage to get our hands on a French press. I miss cheese and peanut butter and my favorite fruits - I dream of Trader Joe's and Seattle's farmers' markets - but my muffin top is slowly deflating into a pancake flop as we de-Westernize our diets, so I'm not complaining much. I am usually cold and stranded beyond meager communication on stolen wireless, yet even more stranded when I force myself outside and find myself alone in the crowd. My saving grace is the little things, like reading for hours in the weak sunlight, the feeling of my bare feet on the heated floor, and the excitement of learning a new word or three. I even found strawberries at a new favorite grocer: an un-looked-for reminder of bright things and the sweetness of summer. This kind of humble promise - and Adam's patient love - keeps my head.

I still can't believe I'm here, and that I've only been here a few weeks. Time passes so quickly, so slowly, I'm a blur. I am mindful of the Lunar New Year of the Snake ushering in our time here: we are shedding our skins, our senses on fire, blinking our eyes open in a different light of the same sun. I'm excited, I'm scared, I'm eager, and I'm uncomfortable - as I should be - and it's okay; it's messy, it's hard, and I love it. My arms are flung open: our adventure has begun.