Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Belonging, Part 5: Informational Genre

This project actually contains four genres - visual, creative, essay, and informational - but I decided not to post the creative genre on my blog.  It's a short story inspired by true events and people I care about, and it's not really my story to tell.  I shared it with my class, but I don't want to risk someone seeing it who knows the real people involved.

The informational genre could entail a book review, trivia game, survey, etc.  I shared my survey with Logos students in grades 7-12.  38 students responded.

Survey Requirements: Create a survey of at least five questions.  Give it to ten or more people.  Display the results in an easy-to-read format.






What were some reasons you felt that way?  (free response – top answers)
  • I was left out. (6 responses)
  • I felt out of place and different from others. (5 responses)
  • I was with strangers/people I didn’t know well. (3 responses)
  • People treated me badly. (3 responses)
  • I was depressed/sad.  (2 responses)
  • I had problems with friends. (2 responses)
  • I felt lonely. (2 responses)
  • I felt unwanted. (2 responses)
  • I felt disconnected. (2 responses)







Sometimes students reached out in creative ways…
  • I cheered for the B Team and tried to remind them that the B games also mattered.
  • I bought them cakes and wrote them letters.
  • There was a kind of new girl in my community; I introduced her to people and places.
  • I try to point out unique strengths that they have.  When students have trouble finding others to work with, I work to ensure that they are included in a group. 
But often it didn’t need to be complicated.
  • I saw that they were alone so I want over there and talked to them for a while.
  • I try to spend time with other people and not stay in a little bubble. As a result, I tend to wander around different groups - even the ones that don't feel like they belong.
  • I just try to smile and be friendly.
  • When I see someone who is alone or looks sad, I go talk to them. I make sure they are okay.
Sometimes the results of reaching out were negative or unclear…
  • I did try. The result was that they never knew that I was helping them, and so when I'm not with them they talk behind my back.
  • I like to talk to everyone including the people that no one talks to. It kind of works.
  • I tried to talk to them, but I don't know if it helped any.
But usually they turned out positive.
  • Someone I know has had trouble fitting in and had a little bit of teasing from her classmates. So, whenever I see her I usually scream her name and act like it has been forever and then hug her. We talk and hang out a bit. I really love her and she is awesome. As a result, she is more talkative with me and is comfortable.
  • I've talked a lot more to this person and treat him not like a new acquaintance, but I treat him like he is one of my brothers. He's becoming much more open and he doesn't look as uncomfortable around us.
  • There was a girl who doesn't go to a church. She came to Cambodia about a few months ago. She went to our church meeting and had fun. We welcomed her and we had so much fun. I think she really liked it, too. :D
  • I think I did cheer my friend up a bit. :-) I'm happy with the result, and I want to continue doing it...
  • When someone was all alone, I went over to them and just talked. We had a great time. I think they appreciated being accepted. Afterwards, they were happy, and that made me feel happy. :)
  • I sat and talked with people who look lonely, trying to point out their gifts and encourage them, praying for them, talking to other students to encourage them to reach out to them. It seems like a few of them are coming out of their shell, and are a little happier, more confident.
  • I sat and talked with people who look lonely, trying to point out their gifts and encourage them, praying for them, talking to other students to encourage them to reach out to them. It seems like a few of them are coming out of their shell, and are a little happier, more confident.

Belonging, Part 4: Essay Genre

Reflective Essay Requirements: Write 800-1500 words reflecting on events, ideas, or questions related to your topic.  (The other choice was a persuasive essay.)

Do I belong in Cambodia?

Jeden Tag packe ich den Koffer
ein und dann wieder aus.

“Every day I pack my suitcase up and then unpack again.”  This line, the opening line of the poem “Dazwischen” (“In Between”) by Turkish-German author Alev Tekinay, has haunted me since I studied it in 2006 with Dr. Ünlü, perhaps my favorite college professor.  I tried to imagine how I would feel as a Turkish immigrant to Germany, homesickness mounting day by day even as Germany’s culture felt more and more like home. 

After decades in Germany, thousands of Turkish-born or Turkish-extraction residents are torn “between the closet and the suitcase,” as Tekinay describes it.  Every year that passes makes going back to Turkey a more elusive dream, and yet barriers to complete assimilation or acceptance in Germany seem to remain insurmountable.  For example, citizenship is not automatically granted everyone born in Germany, so many residents are considered Turkish though they've never stepped foot on Turkish soil.  There are some Germans who would say, “Sure, he was born in Germany, but for thousands of years before that his ancestors were Turkish.  How can we ignore all that history to say he’s one of us?”

            The past five years in Cambodia have enabled me to relate better to Tekinay.  I’ve celebrated so many milestones of language and cultural acquisition: visiting a Khmer friend’s relatives in the province, memorizing the alphabet, arguing my way out of a traffic ticket in Khmer.  I know how to pick out the perfect mango, how to make an early left turn before the intersection, how to keep my smile when I’m angrily confronting someone, how to hear the “no” hidden inside a certain type of “yes.”  I can pat myself on the back that I’ve arrived here younger, studied the language more, and stayed longer than many of my fellow expat friends.  Cambodia often feels more like home than America does, and my love for Cambodia increases each year. 

But does all that make me Cambodian?   Sometimes I wonder how far I can really go.  Could I ever marry a Khmer man?  Live in the province?  Spend the rest of my life here?  Lose my accent?  Write a book in Khmer?  The deeper I go in exploring Cambodia’s language and culture, the more I realize how different I am from Cambodians and how strong the forces are that would stop me from ever fully speaking and thinking like a “true” Cambodian.  I could be the most Cambodian expat I know without crossing the invisible gulf between my birthland and my adopted home.  And in many ways, I’ve barely started trying.  I’ve spent only a month living with Cambodians.  All my students and most of my colleagues – even the Cambodian ones - are fluent in English.  My kitchen currently contains Raisin Bran, spaghetti, Gouda cheese, and not a lick of prahok (Cambodia’s classic fermented fish paste, commonly used in cooking). 

            I wonder who gets to define “belonging,” anyway.  Some days I feel like I’ve got this down.  I have awesome friendships, my language skills are progressing steadily, I’m settled here, and my roots are deepening.  Other days, when the gas station still can’t understand how I say “full,” or when I walk into someone’s house with my shoes still on, or when a joke doesn't seem funny despite multiple explanations, I feel “fresh off the boat” and perhaps even ready to reboard it.  Many Cambodian friends are kind and gracious with me, praising my abilities and encouraging me to stay for years to come.  They accept me despite my differences.  Is their assessment the true one, or should I pay more attention to the Cambodians who still notice how un-Khmer I am in many ways?  Even if it weren’t for my dirty blonde hair and towering height, my way of walking – even of sitting astride my moto – would expose me as an outsider to anyone in sight. 

            I take heart when I look at foreigners who are ahead of me.  My friend Victoria, in Cambodia for seven years and counting, blogged recently about attending a Khmer friend’s birthday party: 

“A sweet sense of community washed over me.  [...] The purposeful feeling of being needed to make cakes.  The family-like joy of joking with people practically sitting on you because the floor is absolutely covered with people.  The familiar comfort of knowing what we are expected to do or say.  Our language skills finally good enough to keep up with the latest banter or joke.  Our lives fully accustomed to the flow of life here in Cambodia.  In that moment it did feel like home.”  

Stories like this encourage me that I haven’t yet maxed out my potential for “fitting in” here – more time and language and exposure could take me farther.  But I need to remember that belonging isn't just about fitting in, but about being accepted by others in spite of sticking out.

Sometimes, my life’s transience is a bit terrifying.  My closest friends and community here (mostly foreigners) have such high turnover that the vast majority of them will move on to another country in the next five years.   Staying here is no guarantee of maintaining my beloved tight-knit community.  If I returned to the US, how long would it take before I truly felt again that I belonged there?  I know my faux pas and awkward moments would subside within a bit, but I suppose I’d have twinges of “other-ness” for years, possibly decades, to come.  My US friends and family are scattered across towns and states, and I currently have no desire to settle there permanently.  If I were ever compelled to leave Cambodia for good, I have no idea where I’d end up.  I imagine myself spinning the globe and pointing to some brightly colored blob.  The mere thought leaves me dizzy, like when I was a little kid lying in bed.  I’d shut my eyes tightly and feel as if gravity had been suspended, as if I were floating off into the blue.  I long for an anchor – something that will hold fast amid tumultuous waves of change.

           I’m thankful that in a spiritual sense, I have a very real anchor.  God says I belong with Him, wherever He is, wherever He takes me.   That means I can be at home anywhere in the world, whether Cambodia or Cameroon or California or Colombia.  Everywhere I go, I’m in the world He created, with people made in His image.  Everywhere I go, I can clutch the hand of a Dad who knows and loves me, a Dad who's got children all over the place for me to discover.  I can be a loyal citizen of my passport country and an eager learner in other countries because my permanent address is in a heavenly country.  I can be at home anywhere in God’s presence, and yet I’ll be fully at home only when I’m fully in His presence.  I belong completely with Him because He’s the one who completely knows and loves me – the definition of belonging. 

           With that source of confidence, I can accept my life of packing and unpacking, the fine balance between the closet and the suitcase.  Change can be dizzyingly exhilarating, not dizzyingly sickening.  I’m reminded for the umpteenth time of my favorite C.S. Lewis quote: 

"The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, merriment, and pleasure He has scattered broadcast. […]  Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home."  

Knowing my true home frees me to fearlessly put down roots despite the risk that they’ll be torn out, to belong to each place as much as I’m able with assurance that no more is needed, and to savor the sweetness of life wherever I am.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Belonging, Part 3: Visual Genre

This is the first genre of four required in the Multi-Genre project that I'm completing alongside my students.  We had lots of choices within the visual genre: a collage, a drawing, a comic strip, etc.  I took the easy way out with a photograph, partly due to time constraints and partly because it seemed to lend itself well.  

Photograph Requirements: a photograph that I took myself, with a brief written description of its connection to the theme.


Description:

The boy in the center is Johann, an Austrian exchange student who spent a year at my parents’ house in 2011-2012.  He adapted really well: my parents said he really felt like an extra son to them, and he made close friends who even came to visit him in Austria.  His friends gave him this T-shirt as a going-away present.  It was kind of intended ironically because none of them would wear a T-shirt that was so blatantly patriotic.  But it also reflected their sense, and his, that in many ways he had succeeded at “belonging” in America, in my family, and in their social circle.  The next year, he experienced some “homesickness” for the US and his community there.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Day trips to the countryside: #2 - the beach

A couple weeks after Ly's wedding, Solomon Church invited me to join them for a day trip to the beach.  That seems to be typical in Khmer churches and sometimes families - you get up early, drive 3 hours in a rented van or bus, enjoy several hours at the beach, and turn around to head home around dark.  It's much cheaper that way: the whole day cost us $10 a person, including lunch.

 One purpose in going was to baptize several new Christians, though to my surprise they didn't involve the whole church in the process.  While the pastor met with those interested in being baptized...

everyone else was preparing and eating lunch.  Some of the women got up at 3 to prepare an amazingly tasty lunch for us.  Here they are dishing it into Styrofoam containers that I helped break in half.  I’m not sure why, but paper/Styrofoam plates don’t seem to have caught on here, whereas you can find the takeout-style boxes at any market.

The pastor’s super-cute son with his super-cute mom.  Note their beach apparel.  I was one of the few women who "forgot" to wear a scarf.  What was I thinking?

 Members of the church-sponsored soccer team chow down.  They were all recruited from the Logos catch-up school for neighborhood children that meets every weekday evening.

  So fresh and delicious: fried chicken, rice, pickled vegetables, fresh tomato and cucumber

After eating, I decided to go wade in the water, only to realize that the baptism crew was already out there and had just finished!  At my church, we always gather around to watch, cheer, and pray for people being baptized, but here only a few adults had gone with them while everyone else ate and socialized.

I'd been afraid I wouldn't know anyone well except Chenda, but many Logos people came, since Chenda invited all the catch-up school teachers.  Sara teaches PE during the day, English in the evening, and helps coach the church soccer team.  She's pretty amazing.  This was *our* beach/swimming apparel: no scarves, but no scandalous swimsuits either.


My friend Sereyroth also teaches English - in my classroom - for the catch-up school.  She's an excellent baker and has been a TA for many years but will be helping Chenda coordinate the catch-up school at our campus next year.

 The river (which we went to after the beach) was so beautiful…but the rocks underwater were hard to spot and very slippery.

 I’d never seen this snack before: bananas and coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves and roasted over a fire.  I enjoyed it.

So much banana leaf, so little that's edible in each piece. 

 Chenda treats the pastor's son like her own son.  It's pretty fun to watch them together.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Belonging, Part 2: Definition Essay

This essay had to consist of 250-400 words defining our topic the way that we want the reader to perceive it.  It had to use at least three definition techniques.  I chose to define "belonging" through its... 
1. origins and causes,
2. examples, and 
3. results and effects.

Everybody wants to belong; it’s a powerful desire that can be pursued in either positive or negative ways.  The word “belong” contains “be” and “long:” could they be related?  Doesn’t being in a place or with someone for a long while make you more likely to feel as though you are accepted and connected?  But they don’t always go together – sometimes we feel excluded or “other” though we’ve been there all along.  The idea of belonging must go back to the Garden of Eden, when God made Adam and Eve for each other and put them in the perfect place for them.  They had total unity with each other, God, and the garden.  Ever since they were banished and that harmony was broken, humans have had a longing (is that related to “be-longing” too?) for that sense of connection and fitting.

There are many ways to belong.  Some are superficial, like joining a club.  Others are informal: a common interest can connect fellow fans of manga or skateboarding.  But in a deeper sense, belonging is more complicated: how do I determine if I truly belong in this group of friends or that culture?  Our attempts at belonging can be painful and slow: many adopted children feel at times, even if they’ve been in a family practically since birth, that they don’t fully belong to that family.  Christians belong completely to God’s family the minute we accept Him, and yet it takes a lifetime or longer to realize it and unwrap its implications.

When we feel that we belong, we feel at peace and free to be ourselves.  When that feeling is missing, it can cause trouble.  Sometimes it leads to restlessness: we keep searching out new people, places, or contexts where we might fit in better.  Sometimes it leads to despair and self-loathing, or to denial and rejection of that person/group/place.  Many people feel insecure and on the fringe, as if they almost belong but not completely.  They might try to prove themselves by conforming or showing off, or by distancing themselves by people further from the center than they are.  That’s sometimes the cause of bullying: people exclude others in order to prove that they are included.  Belonging seems fragile and uncertain, but when we are sure of it, it’s deeply satisfying and builds our confidence.