Our Cozy Ghetto Abode

Is it an oxymoron to say that our abode in the ghetto is cozy?  When we first moved in, we felt a bit claustrophobic and termed our new surroundings "the ghetto."  We live in a huge danchi--a group of apartment buildings.  There are 25 buildings in our city block, with about 750 apartments--one, two, and three-bedroom.  Beyond our block, there are many more danchi.  Hence, the term ghetto.

 There's an elementary school within this city block, so there's a playground, and some buildings are identified with animals.  Our building has the horse, with elephant and gorilla nearby.

After what Bob calls "the Cynthia touch," our apartment is now cozy in its own way.  We are still lacking wall art and decor, but for the moment, maps suffice.

We have three bedrooms, although two are too tiny for a bed.  My "office" is 8 ft. x 8 ft., with a hand-me-down love seat, where meditation and computer time happens each morning.

Bob's studio is 11 ft. x 7 ft, just enough room for a table to paint on and the electric keyboard we found at a second-hand store called "Hard Off!"

Our kitchen and adjacent bedroom is where we spend most of our time.  It's the only part of the house with AC and heat.  The university gave us two beds that were each four feet wide, taking up most of the 11 ft. x 8 ft. room.  It took about eight weeks to get a full-sized bed, a big improvement in our life.

Because our bedroom is the only room with temperature control, it also serves as our living room.  Two chairs and a coffee table help make it functional.

The bathroom set-up in Japan is wonderful, with a separate room for the toilet, the bath, and the sink and washing machine.  Bath water is heated and filled with a digital control.  A voice recording and music comes on when it's ready.  The Japanese bath is superb!

The kitchen is a happening place, as the homemade bread and cinnamon rolls attest to.  Though we don't have an oven, Bob learned to use the small microwave's convection oven for baking.  Every time he makes bread, about twice a week, he gets a big "YUMMY" from me!

Having dinner guests seemed impossible at first with nowhere to sit except at the kitchen table, but once we got over the fact that our dinner guests would be seeing our bedroom/living room while they ate,  we realized that we CAN entertain.  Folding chairs, good food, conversation, and our favorite dice game "Quixx" make for a fun evening.  Life in Japan is challenging, but life is also good!

A Break from the Heat

With temps and humidity in the 90s, our day trip to Gandate Park was a welcome break from the sweltering heat.  Thanks to our friend Reiko, we were able to experience greenery unlike anything we've seen since our arrival.  Our 12-hour day trip began with lunch at a soba noodle restaurant overlooking a river.  It could not have been lovelier.

After lunch, we headed to a watering hole where the icy water of the Hida River refreshed us.  Bob could hardly believe I took the plunge so quickly, since I'm usually timid around freezing cold water.

Next was a walk through one small section of Gandate Park, where a volcanic eruption created Mt. Ontake 54,000 years ago.  Waterfalls fill the park, and each one we saw (and listened to) was stunning.  The rainbow over the last waterfall we visited was an added gift.

After four months in Japan, we finally got into an "onsen," a public bath--Japanese style--no clothing allowed.  Men and women have separate baths with indoor and outdoor pools of natural hot spring water.  It felt so good!  We then ended our day with a stop in Gero, a tourist town famous for its hot springs.  Throughout the charming downtown area, there are foot baths, where you can stop and soothe your feet in the hot waters.  Heavenly!

My Fun-Loving Students

A few days ago I bid my students farewell for the summer, but not before taking pictures!  I think the photographs show how fun-loving my students are.  I've really enjoyed working with them and look forward to next semester, which begins in September.  (Between now and then it's administrative work and "research.")

The first group of students pictured here with me will not be here in the fall.  They, along with 32 others from Chubu University, will spend a semester at Ohio University, being taught by my old colleagues.  I truly love how small the world is.

I had seven classes this semester: reading (x2), listening and speaking, reading and writing, story writing (fiction), conversations around the world (basic conversation class), and news casts (where students produced various types of news programs and TV commercials in English).  Fun times!

Sakura of Japan

Now that my first semester in Japan is nearing the end, it's time for a blog post from our new location. Bob and I are living in a suburb of Kasugai, a city in Aichi Prefecture, where I'm teaching English at Chubu University.

What could be a more fitting start than to show the beauty of Japan's cherry blossoms?

The "sakura," as they're known in Japanese, were in full bloom a couple weeks after our March arrival.  Having a picnic under the cherry blossoms is a long-standing tradition in Japan and truly stupendous at that.

Bob and I thoroughly enjoyed strolling around those first few weeks, taking in the beauty of not only the cherry blossoms, but the azeleas and forsythias as well.

By the way, in our family, the forsythia is known as "For Cynthia," a name my brother coined when his children were young.  He told them that the yellow blooming plant was called "For Cynthia."  I still love that!

2012--Highlights and Lowlights

Highlights
• Sunny days and vigorous walks during our month in Egypt between Kuwait and Sri Lanka
• Yoder Family time in July, my niece Kimberly’s wedding, my great niece Caitlin Mae’s birth
• Gravelin Family time in July, Bob's brother Todd’s 25th anniversary, Bob's great nephew Levi’s birth
• Bob walking the Camino de Santiago in the Spring
• Bob learning to walk again after our accident and his broken leg
• My brother-in-law Mike Leininger coming to help us out after our accident
• The support of our parents, siblings, and friends back home during our days of recuperation
• The amazing animal kingdom we have experienced—snorkeling with sharks, hearing elephants in our backyard at night, seeing unusually large bats, watching a snake eat several frogs trapped in the electric meter box, observing monkeys and peacocks on a daily basis, bird watching
• The sounds of the jungle outside our windows
• Eating the largest and most delicious fresh water prawns ever
• Our trip to the Maldives for work—coral beaches, fish BBQs, motorcycle rides on the islands
• Meeting wonderful people wherever we go, and sometimes meeting kindred spirits
• Reading Charles Frazier, Ann Patchett, Robert Knox, Stephen King, and Bessie King Yoder, to name a few
• Watching “The Way,” “War Horse,” “One Day,” and, to name a few

Lowlights
• Bob breaking his leg, being laid up for three months, and all that a broken leg means in a person's life
• Broken ribs—I couldn’t breathe, cough, sneeze, bend, lift, sleep on my side, or help Bob
• The most amazing hospital experience we’ve ever had
• Three months with no breeze, six months with no rain
• Long evenings and sleepless nights (due to the above)
• Mold growing everywhere once the rainy season hit, with even higher humidity than before
• Power outages again and again and again and again
• Hauling our stuff all over the world again and again and again
• The unfathomable eco system inside our house—ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, fleas, flies, flying termites, frogs, geckos, mosquitoes, moths, rats, scorpions, silverfish, spiders, ticks, tree frogs, wasps, and voluminous nameless bugs
• Understanding the expression “ants in my pants” in an all-too-real way
• The snake in the yard that slithered through Bob’s legs at what he says felt like 100 miles per hour
• Construction following us wherever we go
• Roads in disrepair and the difficulty of travel in Sri Lanka
• Missing my flight from Egypt to the States because I had Bob’s passport instead of my own

A Few Random Statistics on Sri Lanka

Here are a few statistics, mostly from Sri Lanka’s Central Bank, Economic and Social Statistics, 2012, a few from conversations with friends.

• Sri Lanka’s population is 20 million.

• 76% are Buddhists, 9% are Muslims, 8% are Hindus, and 7% are Christians.

• The average household has four people.

• The average life expectancy is 75 years.

• Unemployment was three-and-a-half percent in 2010.

• The median monthly income is $200.

• 33% of the work force is in agriculture, 17% in manufacturing, and 15% in trade and hotels.

• ¼ of a million Sri Lankans migrated for employment in 2011, mostly to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the U.A.E. 52% of those who migrated were male, while 48% were female.

• Sri Lanka’s biggest exports are textiles, garments, tea, rubber, and coconut products.

• Anuradhapura, the city near our home, has no rain for six months.

• Humidity during the six-month dry season is 60% during the day and 90% at night.

• Humidity during the rainy season (Nov and Dec) is 80% in the day and 95% at night.

• 80% of household cooking is done with wood, 16% with gas, and 4% with kerosene.

• 55% of household garbage is burned or buried, 22% is dumped outside, 15% is hauled away, and 6% is processed for fertilizer.

• There are 32 institutions of higher education in Sri Lanka, 15 of which are government-funded universities, where tuition is free for students.

• Rice is the staple food in Sri Lankan, eaten three times a day by many Sri Lankans.

• The average adult consumes 20 to 25 pounds of rice a month, costing 10 to 15 cents a pound.

• Rice accounts for 17% of the average household monthly expenditures.

• There are fewer than one million internet subscribers in Sri Lanka.

• There are 18 million cell phones in use.

• The preferred mode of suicide (though uncommon) is drinking insecticides and pesticides.

Our house is a very very very fine house

I’ve always liked that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.  One of the joys and challenges of moving a lot and living in different countries is setting up house, and trying to make it a fine house, again and again.  Bob is kind of tired of that, but I still love it!  Bob says that one of my talents is making a home cozy.  This time around, that process has been particularly challenging.

With only four more weeks left in our home here in Sri Lanka, we’re starting to think about packing up once again.  We’re thinking back to the things that we’ve gotten used to in this home, some of which we will miss and some of which we will not.  Here are a few of them.  (Our internet service, unfortunately, does not allow me to upload photos at this time.)

• The kitchen, dining room, and bedroom floors are cement, painted red. 
• We defrost the freezer every few days because ice builds up quickly with this humidity. 
• Our kitchen cupboards were not custom-made by my brother-in-law, but they do the job.
• We don’t have drawers in the kitchen, but silverware standing up in a plastic container works.
• There is no hot water in the kitchen, so we boil water for washing up greasy dishes.
• We bought a semi-automatic washing machine.  I feel like we’ve gone back in time, but it’s kind of fun to manage the spinning cycle and it’s easier than washing clothes by hand, which I did when I lived in a convent in Egypt.
• The mattresses are all made of coconut fiber, so we bought a foam mattress for our bed.
• We use cardboard boxes for night stands beside our bed, just like in college.
• The windows are opaque, so to get a view (and to keep bugs out), we put screens on some of the windows.
• Half of our outlets are plugged and unusable because of the dirt the ants bring in.
• When we first moved in, there was an entire eco system living inside WITH us.  After months of effort, we still have bugs, but nothing like we had early on.
• When we first moved in, we burned our garbage, since that’s what our landlords do.  Now our landlords take care of that for us.
• Our landlords are constantly burning something, sending black smoke inside our house.
• With the rainy season and extreme humidity, MOLD is now growing everywhere—on our sandals, our clothing, our sofa, kitchen towels, wooden spoons, coasters, used tea bags, refrigerator, in the cupboards.  I’m still working on that one!

We vacationed in Sri Lanka two years ago.  That’s when we grew to love the country.  But we’ve been reminded that traveling in a place and living in a place are two different things.  In any case, it’s still amazing to have lived in this house in the jungle.  We will not forget it.