Life Lessons as Taught by Three Year Olds

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm still not really sure what made me decide to move to Singapore. It was a mixture of boredom and the anticipation of adventure, I suppose. I had nothing better to do, my prospects of finding a job post-graduation in the USA seemed slim, and Singapore sounded romantic and exotic in comparison to where I was in the drab desert of South Texas. So almost on a whim, I packed my life into two suitcases and moved to other side of the world - never imagining the heady highs and despondent lows that I would experience here – all of which would form part of what I now consider to be one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.

 What I encountered in Singapore left me saddened. It is a culture that still does not fully accept the arts as a viable career and has yet to grasp the concept of the time, effort, discipline, and beauty that goes into becoming an artist. I found myself teaching class after class to students whose parents only allowed them to attend ballet class once a week. Some of them were painfully talented, others disgruntled and disrespectful precisely because they didn't want to take dance classes. Very shortly after my arrival, I fell into a deep depression. I felt that what I was doing was irrelevant; I was not forming artists, nor was I choreographing, I was simply teaching classes to children who generally took it as a hobby or were pressured to do just well enough to pass the annual ballet exam. I gave the best of myself daily but began to question my purpose and what I could take from the job as well.

About three months into my time in Singapore, I was approached by a mother who had sat through her daughter's first Pre-primary ballet lesson. She had watched me struggle to get the little girl to make eye contact and to understand my movements. The mother was intensely apologetic: her little four year- old had autism and experienced issues with making eye contact and forming sentences. The mother - a young woman not much older than me - apologized again and again, mortified that her daughter had disrupted my class. I didn't know much about autism, but I sensed that taking dance lessons was probably good for the little girl no matter what. I asked that she bring her daughter back the next week and we would try again. In the few weeks that followed, I was initially hesitant and nervous because I wasn't quite sure how to adequately instruct a child in these special circumstances. However, her mother sat quietly in on every class and helped me along. I learned to use masking tape to help the tiny dancer find her place in the room, to snap my fingers when I needed her to focus her eyes, to pick up on signals which indicated that she felt lost in the studio space and needed guidance to her spot. Her mother firmly made her practice simple sentences on a weekly basis: "Hello, Teacher Katherine.", "I want the blue sticker.", "Good-bye, Teacher Katherine." Suddenly, without realizing how or why, this little girl has become the highlight of my week. As the tiniest dancer in the class, she is looked after by the taller girls who have all fallen in love with her. She is generally the last dancer to arrive after all my other ballerinas have already taken their places on the studio floor, but the minute she walks into the room in her tiny pink leotard, skirt, tights, and shoes, with her hair pulled back into a neat bun on the top of her head, and an enormous smile on her face, the entire class calls out her name in excited unison.

 Another learning experience for me began when I was asked to teach one on one classes to two little three year old sisters. It was an odd request, as at that age one on one classes are not necessary, but for some reason I agreed. My first lesson with the two little sisters created a deep impression on me. One of them was your typical three year- old: she didn't take the class seriously, enjoyed playing the games, and had her moments of distraction. The other little sister, however, was the complete opposite. She never made a joke out of my class, but watched me with luminous, serious brown eyes and copied with precision my every movement. She had a raw 2 inch scar on her upper right chest and a head of peach fuzz hair - I discovered that she was fighting leukemia and for fear of infection her mother didn't want her in a regular class of three year olds. The scar was a constant reminder of the surgeries and treatments she was suffering through at a time in her life which should have been made up of innocence and joy. Perhaps this is why she seemed so mature - she innately understood something that I probably never would. Not even she knew that she possessed this wisdom. Every day was a battle and a struggle yet she seemed to live life to a much fuller extent than any of my other three year old students. She seemed determined to squeeze each moment out of each ballet class she took and to never take a single second of it for granted. There were difficult days: days where her mother would call and say that she was too sick to come to class, or days where she would be crying uncontrollably throughout the entire class because (as her mother would explain to me) she had just changed medications and it was wreaking havoc on her emotions and her tiny body. But even days like these have been few and far in between. Mostly she seems sturdy and wise beyond her years and yet terrifyingly fragile at the same time. She loves the same things that other little girls love: the color pink, monkeys, smiley face stickers, and twirling on tip-toe, and yet she remains in a league of her own - completely different from every other little girl.

 So I can't say that these days I feel as if my life and my career have any more of a purpose, but I can say with certainty that I am discovering the gems and life lessons that I am humbled to learn from the tiniest of human beings. After all, if my little students can keep their chins up while going through the unimaginable, I'm sure I can do the same! :)

The Solo Girl's Guide to Thailand: Part 1

I touched down in Bangkok at 8am on a Tuesday. I had barely slept the night before, but my exhaustion was instantly replaced by excitement and I watched Bangkok envelope me bit by bit as I sped towards the heart of the city via metro. When I emmerged from the metro car, I was greeted by a plethora of sights, smells, and sounds that stood in stark contrast to the sterling,prim and proper Singapore I had left behind. The constant blare of traffic, the smell of gasoline, pollution, and garbage, the shady men who cat called to me as I walked by, all reminded me of the twilight world I lived in in Singapore - and I loved the complete change. I crashed for a nap at the hostel and awoke to the friendly face of one of my bunkmates grinning at me. Enter Kitty, a spunky Indonesian doctor who was taking her first solo trip ever and was extremely excited about it. We became friends immediately and agreed to set out exploring that same evening after my job interview. At 7:30pm we issued forth into the Bangkok night and hailed a taxi to go to Chinatown. If I felt overwhelmed as I tried to take in all the sights and sounds of Bangkok by night, Chinatown literally blew my mind. My first reaction was an awed "Wow!"; neon signs blinkind bright Chinese characters at us, traffic whipped by and people milled about the streets stopping at vending stands or sitting down at restaurants which had extended their tables out onto the sidewalks and streets. We picked the busiest restaurant we could find and stood patiently in line waiting for a couple of the plastic stools set up around one of the many foldable tables to clear up. One of the waiters winked suggestively at us while teasing that it was going to take at least two hours for us to get a seat. But two minutes later we found ourselves squeezed in at the end of a table and ordering with relish. Oyester omelette, black pepper crab, fried rice with crab meat, and mussels with chili were our choices and these were produced with rapid haste. We feasted until we were stuffed then ate more until we polished off all four dishes. The entire meal, including drinks, cost each of us less than fifteen dollars. We walked the length of Chinatown taking in the sights and smells. The majority of the vendors were Chinese which made listening to them speak music to my ears. I pulled out some of my rusty Chinese and tried to use it - this allowed me to garner more than one smile from several of the stand owners. Our next two destinations were Khaosan and Patpong. The former was a backpacker's paradise: there were cheap clothes, jewelry, bags, and other brandless items. There were vendors selling fried bugs (even cockroaches!) which was by far the most interesting thing I spotted there. Patpong was a little bit more of a hub of decadence; the night bazaar is famous for the knock-off brands sold there and you can find everything from Coach to Chanel at bargain prices (as long as you know how to barter for them). The bazaar runs down the middle of a street which has strip clubs on each side. It was a strange feeling to walk by and have people shoving laminated peices of paper in my face trying to convince me that I should go in and see one of the shows. Accross the street was another alley dedicated for those with a rather different taste: signs advertised "Fresh Young Boys" (as if they were the equivalent of purchasing fresh fruit or fish) and "Hot Male Bar". I think this is the thing the surprised me the least about Bangkok; I had heard enough about the city to know that decadence is a large part of it's notorious image. That marked the end of the night for me, I felt sure that I had had enough of this side of Bangkok and I looked forward to discovering a whole new dimension to Thailand the next day.

Church Hunting Abroad

Whenever I move to a new place, I've discovered that one of the most intimidating processes that I have to face is that of finding a church to go to. Attending a congregation of a hundred or so people who for the most part have broken off into smaller groups of aquaintences can be scary and overwhelming. Back when I left home for the first time, my first day away actually fell on a Sunday. I was taken to a local church and dropped off at the door with directions on how to get home. Even though I was fifteen minutes early, the church was jam packed with people - there wasn't an empty seat in sight. This, however, did not stop the usher from leading me to the second pew from the front and requesting that a woman give up her seat to me, as I was a guest at the service. Mortified I tried to say no, but both the usher and the lady were insistent. I would feel even more mortified later on when I learned that people would stake out seats for up to an hour before hand in order to have the privilege of sitting down throughout the service. Everyone else crowded around the door and at the windows in the alleys to the side of the church. My experiences later on of standing in 100 degree humidity just to be able to worship God forever changed my persepective on Christians.
But there were other more amusing episodes of church hunting. Once, when a pastor delightedly discovered that not only was I a visiting guest that day but that it also happened to be my birthday, he led the ENTIRE congregation in a hearty rendition of "Happy Birthday". Another time, after I had unwittingly filled out a visitor card at a church with all of my information (address included) I recieved an impromtu visit from two members of the congregation who stopped by my apartment randomly un-announced (it gave me the feeling that I was being stalked). Perhaps one of the best stories I can tell involves my mother who had flown to visit me while I was in training. She handed me the address of a church with the full confidence that I would know how to get there. The grandfather who lived at the house where I rented a room gave us directions on which bus to take and we set out on what would turn out to be a two hour ordeal. We switched bus lines twice and as we rumbled further and further away from anything I considered remotely familiar, I began to worry. It was growing dark and although I generally don't have a problem being lost by myself, I felt a little distressed at being completely lost with my mom in tow. Fortunately, she has a healthy sense of adventure and wasn't too phased by it at all. I finally walked to the front of the bus and asked the bus driver if we were anywhere near the address on the sheet of paper my mom had given me (by now it was a crumpled mess after being held too long in my nervous, sweaty palm). It was nothing short of a miracle when a woman who was standing off to the side remarked that she lived right down the street from the church and she could show us the way. We exited the bus and followed her through the night (again, not the safest idea, but if you know my mom you'll understand the inordinate amount of faith she has in that everything happens for a reason - a great viewpoint which she has passed on to me). We arrived safe and sound at the church doors and the look of astonishment on the pastor's face that we had made it out that far only increased when we told him we had come on the bus. "Not even a local would come all this way on the bus!" He exclaimed, surprised. We were, of course, led to the very front pew as, I now knew, was customary for guests. That night, after the service was over, they found someone with access to a car to give us a ride back. What strikes me most, is that neither my mom nor I had even thought about how we would manage to get back home - we had only thought about the journey there and assumed that, somehow, it would all work out.
So when I began my hunt for a church to attend in Singapore, it was with a bit of trepidition. I didn't know what to expect from the culture here. Luckily, I found a great church on my first try. Sure, I stand out like a sore thumb as the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed, woman in attendance (I also happen to be several inches taller than most the people there), but I am reminded of how much peace it brings me to be in a foreign place so far away from family and friends and yet to still carry out a custom that I share in common with them from the other side of the world. And I put it down to my interesting experiences visiting churches in the wierdest places that, when the pastor of the church I attend here announced from the pulpit that there was a visitor all the way from Texas and asked me to stand up, I brushed it off with a laugh - it's not so embarassing any more. :)

A Semester of Russian and a Glass of Bulgarian Whiskey

When my company manager informed me that there was going to be a special employee luncheon to celebrate Chinese New Year, I looked forward to it as an opportunity to meet some of my music and dance colleagues. My job involves very little interaction with other teachers as I am constantly shut up in the studio teaching and working with students. But I was rather surprised the next day to find myself sitting at a table compromised entirely of Eastern Europeans and Russians - all communicating in rapid Russian with the occasional English thrown in for my benefit. I would have never imagined that I would be using my one semester of Russian more than my three years of Chinese, but apparently the grand majority of my co-workers speak it better than English.
It was a fascinating community of expats of a variety of ages and professions. Some were pianists, others violinists, others dance teachers like myself. But two stood out amongst them as the most memorable for me.
One character appeared out of the blue and disappeared almost as rapidly. I returned from a trip to the buffet to discover that a rather unkempt looking man - complete with long hair and frazzled greying beard - had availed himself of the seat right accross from mine. He had brought with him an enormous plate piled high with what looked like every possible food from the buffet, and an empty glass. He didn't aknowledge me right away, but instead sat down and pulled out of his backback a glass bottle of some sort of clear liquid. For some reason I didn't think it was water. He proceeded to fill his glass with this unlabeled substance, then holding the glass in one hand he fixed me with an intense stare over the top of his spectacles and asked in heavily accented English:
"Where are you from?"
"The U.S." I replied rather timorously, poking at my watermelon slices like a little girl.
"Oh!" He turned his face away and held up his empty hand, "Then I cannot speak to you!"
Oh dear, I thought, I've offended him just by the sheer act of being American. But I had to ask.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't speak English." He replied in perfect English.
I wasn't sure whether or not to laugh at this response so I mustered a polite smile.
"Cheers!" He said, with a less than cheerful face and holding the glass of miscellaneous liquid up in the air in my general direction. Then he downed the entire glass in one gulp.
He smacked his lips, satisfied, then explained: "Bulgarian whiskey."
My reaction was a tie between admiration and alarm at having just witnessed someone swallowing that much hard liquor so easily and so early (it was noon). He then began the monumental job of working his way through his huge pile of food. He ate the entire plate,and having satisfied his T-Rex sized apetite, stood up, then asked me: "Do you smoke?" and before I could respond, answered his own question with: "Of course you don't smoke, you're American." (I'm unsure of what being American has to do with not smoking.) He then disappeared as quickly as he had come.
Still reeling from the encounter, and in search of some icecream to calm me down, I headed towards the dessert section where I was approached by a beautiful young woman.
"You work for the company as well, don't you?" She asked me.
"Yes! What do you teach?" I asked, even though I could tell that she was most likely a dancer.
"I teach dance." She smiled. "When I first came to Singapore, I was completely alone." She confided in me as we stood by pastry counter. "I was depressed for two months and I didn't know anyone."
I nodded sympathetically.
"I will give you my phone number," she continued, "I don't want the same thing to happen to you."
This sentence startled me. I didn't imagine that her story was going to end that way, I believed I was just lending her a listening ear. But she had known me less than five minutes and was already concerned for me. Back at her table, she passed her phone number to me, then as I got up to leave she gave me a glance filled with such sweet compassion that it nearly broke my heart. I saw the pain reflected from her memories of her first difficult months away from home, but even worse, I saw the reflection of how I seemed to her. I've lived far away from my childhood home for so long, that I've stopped thinking about the fact that I'm alone, or that I'm so many miles away. But in that look I saw that I looked like a young woman, who ocean's away from everything and everyone she knew, was completely and utterly alone in a strange place. For the first time since I arrived, I was enveloped in a feeling of overwhelming despair. I've been an expat my entire life and I'll probably be one until the day I die. But in that moment I realized that it takes an expat to truly understand and empathize with another. And she was the first one who, in all my travels, had managed to do that with a single glance.

Singapore: A Brave New World

"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." Romans 4:20

My first impression of Singapore is that it is a place of order. The streets are washed, heavy fines in the 1,000 of dollars are imposed for anything from littering to riding one's bicycle on the sidewalk, and chaos is more than a foreign term here - it simply does not exist. I didn't know enough of the poliitics of Singapore to realize why; my new roommate took me out to lunch upon my arrival and explained to me in candid tones that politics are not generally discussed by locals. "It's a communist government under the guise of a democracy." he explained. The next day, I discovered this to be relatively true when I found myself riding in a car with a new aquaintance. "I'm going to tell you something that I probably shouldn't say," she said in hushed tones, once we were safely in the vehicle, "some people say it is worse than communism here, but if you don't do anything wrong then you will be okay." I somehow sensed this was a warning. "Well it seems to make everything very efficient." I told her politely. "Yes, but you can never run away." This reply caused an omnious sense of dread to settle on me. I had already lived through something similar to this many years ago, I felt unsure of my desire and ability to do it again - no matter how wealthy, globalized, and orderly this country may seem. I feel that perhaps a healthy dose of the unruly chaos of Mexico will be necessary when my vacation time rolls around; this will help counteract this strange sense that I've fallen into a twilight world of mass mind control.
Perhaps it is incorrect to complain: I can see myself living a nice, orderly life here. My apartment lies a two minutes walk from the beach so now every day I can start it off with a morning jog along the coast while smelling the sweet, pungent scent of the greenery and watching the sun rise over the Singapore Strait. I will go to work on an efficient transportation system that is never late. I will never have to go without anything that I need as it is all available in shops that are right at my fingertips. And all of this terrifies me. I came for the adventure and seem to have ended up with the life of a pampered expat. All those years of repeating my mother's advice of: "Hope for the best, expect the worst." is so utterly useless here that I am left confused. I don't believe there is anything that could have prepared me for this. I've fallen into Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World" and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. Even I have to laugh at myself when I realize that my biggest complaint is that I'm too comfortable, but being too comfortable makes me uncomfortable in return. I will have to grow accustomed to this feeling - it may persist for the next year or so.

What is Occupy Austin?

We've all watched as the Occupy movement has taken over not only the USA, but other parts of the world as well. Today, on October 15th, people from all over the globe marched in a solidarity movement to speak out against corruption, corporate power, and even budget cuts. People in Australia, Germany,Italy,Japan, and many other countries took to the streets to speak their minds and let the world know that they are the 99%. The Occupation, quite simply, has gone global.
Today, Austin marched in what was a surprisingly peaceful manner. Maybe it's all part of 'keeping Austin weird', but there was not a single issue with anyone acting out against police or attempting to turn the rally into something other than a peaceful protest. Organizers encouraged a 'police neutral' approach - basically whether you love them or hate them, you should remain neutral to police presence at all times. This worked well. The police chief even got up on a podium and thanked the Austin crowd for protesting in a manner that was respectful and peaceful. And protesters were grateful as well that the police did not crack down in Austin in the way they have in New York, Denver, and other cities. Though police lined the streets all the way from City Hall to the Capitol building, they seemed to be present to just ensure over all peace - not only from protesters, but also from pedestrians and people driving their cars downtown.

Slogans ranged from "You bailed them out and sold us out!" and "We are the 99%" to "Occupy this street, occupy Austin!", and these were all shouted vigorously during the march. A popular protest item has been the mask that most of us would recognize from the film "V for Vendetta" and which in this last year has come to be associated heavily with the resistance group called "Anonymous".

It's hard to say exactly what will ultimately be accomplished through these global protests. Perhaps one thing which the Occupy Austin movement should be most concerned with is the issue of straying too far from the point. It becomes redundant when speech makers break away from the original goals of the protest to also attempt to turn the rallies into anti-war movements. The last anti-war protest I went to was sparsely populated and not well organized - only partial proof of how this topic has been beaten past the point of no return in the last five years. It's not that Austin doesn't care about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's more that it doesn't tie quite so neatly in with the concept of protesting corporations getting richer while average Americans get poorer.

Other than that, it is a very exciting to be able to witness these movements. History is in the making and many individuals are choosing to become active participants of this.

A Missionary Tale

There once was a man on a mission. He had been born and raised in the heartland of the American dream, but a child of whom nothing much was expected. He spent his childhood and the greater part of his adolescence getting himself into trouble and then swiftly getting out of it using his charming grin and Irish blue eyes. He spent time in the army as a young man and was stationed in Germany where he learned sufficient German in order to be able to sell army rationed cigarettes outside the base. He was kept away from Vietnam by sheer luck; he tried his hardest to enlist but his path was not meant to go that route and he eventually found himself back in the Mid-west with a new passion: Christianity. It's difficult to say at what point he felt that call- the strange yet distinct urging to do something specific as well as immeasurably difficult- but he felt it and one day knew that he was meant to go to Mexico.
It was the height of the hippie movement as well as the radical Jesus movement of the 1970s so the fact that a young man was getting ready to head South without knowing where he was going or even how to speak Spanish did not seem out of the ordinary. Fortunately, direction came in the form of a newsletter by Danny Ost (a man known as the ‘apostle to Mexico’) which somehow ended up in his mailbox. Aha! He thought. I’ll go work with Danny Ost. And so one day he, along with a young couple, packed up his Hippie Bus (a former school bus now serving the role as a type of camper), pointed its nose South and started to drive. The first stop was at Danny Ost’s headquarters in Laredo, TX. Jaws dropped at the sight of this young man who looked a rather shocking sight to these clean cut Pentecostals. In fact, he looked almost intimidating with his shaven head and unruly dark brown beard.
“Where are you going?” they asked with raised eyebrows and wide eyes.
Almost a little too enthusiastically (let’s not forget that our protagonist was still rather young and starry eyed) he replied: “I’m going to work with Danny Ost!”. It seemed inevitable that Danny Ost would, of course, be absolutely delighted to see him.
The people at headquarters overlooked their misgivings long enough to point him in the right direction – not so much because he absolutely convinced them of his calling, but rather because they had recently received a rather cumbersome donation of two massive speakers by a freshly converted rock star who wanted them delivered to Danny Ost in Monterrey, Mexico. It seemed easy enough to send them with this hippie – despite his rather uncouth appearance.
The young hippie responded with equal enthusiasm to the idea of transporting these speakers across the border – ah young gullibility can be bliss. When asked how much he would need to pay off the customs guards he responded with cheerful ignorance: “Nothing!”. The people at headquarters were hesitant to send him away empty handed so after loading the speakers onto the Hippie Bus ( a task which took two people per speaker to accomplish) they handed him a $20 dollar bill and sent him on his way.
Hence the young hippie found himself approaching the USA/Mexico border completely unaware that the items he was carrying would be impossible to get in with a $20 dollar bribe. He walked into the offices to get his paperwork filled out and then confidently walked out to have his paperwork and vehicle checked. A minute later he found himself being shouted and motioned at in a very energetic fashion by a customs official rather on the portly side. The hippie didn’t understand Spanish but he got the general idea that the speakers were a definite problem and that he wouldn’t be crossing the border with them. He had a choice: go back and leave the speakers or simply go back to stay. But a man on a mission does not let himself be deterred by the simple international rules regarding immigration, so the young hippie just simply…well…he hung out. He’d pop in cheerfully every little while to ask the customs officials if he could go into Mexico (he asked in English of course – he only knew a handful of Spanish words) and disgruntled and annoyed they’d shout back at him in Spanish to go home. Finally, irritated beyond belief and in a final play to get rid of this tenacious American, they huddled in a group and came to the joint agreement to let him through. It seems that the minute they ran up against this hippie they also had two choices: to let him through or to be consistently annoyed until they let him through. Most, I’m sure, where wishing they had avoided the hassle and just gone ahead with the first option.
But the war had not yet been won. The young hippie made it across the border but hit a second customs checkpoint in which the reaction was pretty much the same: a customs official started shouting and waving his arms about indicating that there was no way they could take the speakers through. The hippie decided to try a different approach.
“Iglesia!” he started yelling back in his painfully thick American accent. Iglesia means church and this was, rather fortunately (as you shall see), one of the handful of Spanish words that he knew. Then he pulled out his $20 dollar bill which had safely made it through the first customs check and tried to give it to the official. It’s difficult to say why the official felt moved by this obviously oblivious American’s shouting of this single word, but he pushed the money back at the young man and waved him through. As the hippie breathed a sigh of relief and made his way deeper into Mexico he couldn’t have imagined that this would be the smallest of the big adventures that awaited him.