Recently Facebook has become the ultimate double edged sword in my life, as I'm sure it is for many people, especially those who have recently moved, graduated, or taken up lives that don't immediately involve all of their friends from kindergarten through graduate school.
On one hand you have easy access to pictures and information about the most remote of your friends and relations. Want to know what your best friend from 3rd grade is doing this weekend? Facebook her! Want to see pictures from your cousin's best man's son's bris? Facebook him! Want to see how your ex's adopted bichon frise is adapting to the climate in Miami? FACEBOOK IT! Seriously, the vicariousness of the social networking site is rapidly becoming a shared life, accessible to all, and potentially edging out any need for true physical or emotional closeness (yes, blahblahblah, rave on oh technophobic one). Don't get me wrong, many a long night in the dorms has found me glued to the computer screen hoping that the power doesn't go out again therefore eliminating my ability to see all 56,765,454,345 pictures of my friend's sister's cousin's new ficus plant.
On the other hand, if you happen to be living on the "other side of the orb", as my Uncle Frank puts it, Facebook's instant message, instant update-ability can occasionally be more painful than pleasant. In the last hour alone I have discovered that yet another friend from high school is married....to another friend from high school, one of my former co-workers just shaved her head, and one of my best girl friends when I was 17 might actually be a boy friend now. Not only that, but I have seen full color, photographic proof of all 3 of these examples!
When I was 9 or 10 years old I was rummaging around in some boxes that had just come out of storage and had been relocated to the basement of our new house. Mostly it was old teaching materials and file folders from when my parents lived in Taiwan, but somewhere among the factoring binomials worksheets and whiteout I found a 20 page listing of alumni updates from Simsbury Public High School, Class of 1968. It didn't take me long to locate my mother and read her short update about how she was married, had two children, and lived in Singapore. The rest of the paragraphs were of a similar ilk- married with three kids, recently started his own business, breeds ferrets, etc. I remember my mom telling me how interesting it was to be able to know what her classmates were doing almost 20 years after they had all graduated, but that she didn't really need to know about their recent job promotions or the house that they just bought. Can you imagine the sensory overload that would have come about if the 20 pages had also included "personal" and "contact" information, as well as a list of favorite books, movies, and television shows, and a huge variety of pictures recording intimate moments in the life of their children's ant farm?!
And yet, as much as I criticize, I also contribute. I have a photo album with pictures from my life and travels in India. I self-indulgently blog about all sorts of stuff that may or may not be of any interest to anyone. I sometimes feel like if it wasn't for Facebook I might be completely and utterly disconnected from any vestige of my former life before I moved thousands of miles away.
Can you tell that I'm a bit torn about this matter?
One of the most painful issues that I have struggled with recently has been my ability to watch all of my friend's and loved ones lives via the computer screen without actually being able to participate in any real way. A friend of my from Bloomington just had a baby and I can look at the pictures but I can't hold her. My nephew is getting married in a few weeks, and I can't be there for the ceremony. I missed out on two of my favorite events from college- Rock and Roll Prom and Women Exposed, and all I can do is Facebook the pictures. My experience is not unique- plenty of people have given up one facet of their life when they begin creating a new one. In my case the loss and the gain are both huge. I have seen the aarti in Haridwar at sunset. I have greeted the Maharaja of Jodhpur. I have seen monkeys viscously attack a goat in the middle of a busy intersection....but I haven't seen my parents or any of my American friends in over 10 months. I celebrated Christmas and New Years and Easter alone. I haven't drunk tap water or eaten a burrito or worn shorts in public for longer than I can remember and all of these little things start to build up after a while. And who do I have to blame? Who has a well placed finger in their face? Whose choice was this anyway? Right.
I understand the significance of leaving home so that you can come back. I understand that I'll be glad that I did this when I am old and arthritic and can't leave the house anymore. I understand the importance of the journey as opposed to the destination, but didn't Dorothy click her heels and end up back where she began? Oz might be in technicolor, but dream or no dream she ended up settling down in Kansas. In my weaker moments (y'know, when I want a glass of wine, or some decent underwear, or some PRIVACY) I wonder, "why not expedite the process and click my heels now"?
I don't think that I'm destined for Kansas, but am I destined for India either? Maybe for now, but in 10 years? Like so many of my post graduate pals I'm finding myself buried under an avalanche of wedding invitations, birth announcements, and housewarmings, often sent out by friends and family years younger than I am. My mom told me about how difficult it sometimes was for her to still be unmarried at 30 when many of her friends already had children entering middle school. Still, the moral of the story was always 'wait until you're at least 30 to get married, and don't even think about children until you can afford a college fund', and I get the feeling that I'll do right by my 2nd genetic destiny to wait until my 30's for any sort of serious co-dependency (my 1st genetic destiny being to leave home after graduation for some hot, far away place that no one back home can pronounce correctly...check!) It is deeply ironic to me that I am parenting 17 children at the moment, but with no baby pictures or birth certificates for my efforts.
So here I am in my apartment in Mussoorie, faithfully plugged into the internet which tells me all about everyone's lives, but can't take me out on a date or make me a cocktail (at least not yet). It's times like these that I like to remind myself that it could always be worse. I could be married and pregnant and wishing I had the time and the freedom to travel somewhere exciting...somewhere like India.
I can't say that dorm parenting is a terribly difficult job; not in most respects anyway. Unlike teaching I don't have to create lesson plans or grade papers and most of my evenings are spent chatting about school and reading with the kids in the lounge. The job does have its down sides, though. My schedule is totally nuts and I have to deal with problems like "who keeps leaving their underwear in the shower" and "I haven't poo'd in 5 days...is that normal?", but mostly I feel like a glorified camp counselor (which is perfectly ok with me).
Maybe because it feels like I'm back at camp, I took to this job pretty quickly. I like to think that I have a pretty good relationship with all of the girls in my unit and I really do care about all of them and enjoy the time that we spend together. Still, despite the good relationships that I have with the kids, there are a few areas where I am not entirely sure that I am the best candidate for the job....or maybe I am.
Take, for example, the issue of swearing. Right now there is a MANIACAL CAMPAIGN against swearing in the middle school. There are posters and fliers and an entire anti-swearing brigade. The good news is that the campaign was started by the students, but the questionable news is that I hear these kids swear all the time (so really, whose idea WAS it t begin with?) On one hand I agree that middle school is a good time to encourage habits of speech. What I've told the girls on my floor is that when you become an adult chances are pretty slim that another adult is going to hear you swear and tell you, "AHHH! Excuse me young woman, but I don't ever want to hear such foul language come out of your mouth ever again! You're lucky I don't wash your mouth out with soap! You're grounded, etc, etc, etc." What they will do, however, is silently judge your intelligence and ability to function as a polite and mindful adult. If you get into the habit of dropping the F-bomb in all of your conversations, who's to say that you won't let a string of profanity rip during a job interview? I can't be in their rooms at all hours monitoring everything that they say to each other, so it's really a decision that they have to make for themselves. The problem with this situation, as I am sure you have guessed, is that I end up feeling like a HUGE hypocrite half the time because while I don't necessarily swear like a sailor, I do allow a few choice words to slip into my conversations with other like-minded adults. I think that swearing is an adult skill that needs to be honed and matured over time. Swearing can open doors and help relationships develop, and some of the world's funniest and most popular people swear up a storm and are applauded for it, so it can be confusing for kids who are trying to develop their own sense of verbal values. The bottom line is that it is always a good idea to air on the side of caution and just keep swearing to the times when you know that there is no possibility of offending someone.
Another related issue is where to draw the line. What exactly constitutes cursing? Does "hell" make the cut? What about "sucks"? What about any number of profanity substitutes (ex: "What the fish?!" and "Oh SNOT!"). I was shocked the first time that I heard someone here say that my supervisor had "chinky" eyes. Apparently the word "chinky" is entirely appropriate around these parts, but it still makes me shudder every time I hear it.
Regardless of my personal views on the issue, I'm supposed to be the moral authority on their naughty language, and that probably isn't the most effective plan. Yesterday a girl told me that one of the boys in her English class uses the word "gay" all the time as a synonym for "bad" or "disgusting". I take much more offense at someone saying that something is "gay" or "retarded", and yet no one has called him out on his behavior. Also, recently a few boys were caught sending inappropriate e-mails using their school accounts. A big hulabaloo was made about their language, but what struck me the most was the blatant objectification of their female classmates (ie: "You've got the hots for dogs like So-and-So.") This matter wasn't totally overlooked, but in listening to the boys complaining about their punishment it is clear that their only concern is how unfair it is for them to be in trouble for cursing and there is no remorse for, or understanding of, their lack of respect for their classmates and peers. How about a "No Objectification Campaign"? What about a "Young Feminists" club? Not on your life.
Another issue that I am frequently called upon to legislate is personal hygiene. Apparently, all of our middle schoolers are supposed to look, smell and act fresh at all times. Talk about dreaming the impossible dream! I'm sorry, but it is just not in the nature of the adolescent to be fresh, even when they are directly involved in the act of taking a shower. The thing that really riles me up about this is the fact that as a dorm parent in the girl's dorms I am constantly being told to remind them that "they need to be applying deodorant before and after school" and that "So-and-So's hair was looking a little bit greasy today, so she probably needs to take a shower more often", while the boys dorms stink to high heaven and no one seems to care. Again, I am called upon to be the hygiene police when my own hygiene can be iffy at best. I haven't exactly shared the following information with anyone here, and I probably shouldn't be admitting it now, but right up until I moved to India and began my "professional life", I didn't really wear deodorant on a regular basis, especially not the stuff that actually works (who needs Sure when you have a CRYSTAL?!) In fact, if it wasn't such a huge deal at this school, I STILL might not wear it. Putting all of those chemicals that close to your lymph nodes strikes me as extremely unhealthy, especially for girls ages 11-15 who don't really smell that bad anyway. I've been thinking about going back to my habit of using tea tree oil instead of deodorant, but the truth of the matter is that people, especially kids (ironically enough), pass a lot of judgement on those of us who don't take great efforts to eliminate their natural body odor. If you smell, people assume that you don't bathe or that you are dirty when the truth is that we would all smell the same without all of the chemicals.
Issue number three on the list of things that Ms. Jen probably shouldn't be in charge of enforcing is a silent, independent, and purely homework related study hall. Every night from 7-8 the students are supposed to sit at their desks and work without interruption. These are the rules of study hall as they were explained to me.
1) Absolute silence.
2) No trips to the bathroom.
3) No group work.
4) No food.
5) No drinks.
6) No reading books that aren't assigned for homework.
7) No questions unless they are directed at a consenting dorm parent.
8) No music.
9) Studying can only happen in a chair at a desk. No work may be done on beds or the floor.
10) Homework and review of school materials ONLY.
I'm sorry (actually, no, I'm not), but these conditions are just ridiculous. Yes, some people study best when they are in a sensory deprived environment where they can commune with their books in absolute solitude, but there are a great many people who learn best when they can study in a group or listen to music or take breaks to, y'know, PEE. I'm sure that if the powers that be were witness to study hall in my unit, they would go into shock. I allow them to use the restroom without even asking (GASP!), listen to music on headphones (NOOOO!), study quietly with friends in the lounge (SCREAM!), and worst of all, if they are done with their homework I not only allow, but encourage, them to read a book JUST FOR FUN (NEVARRRRRRR!) and they can sit wherever the hell they want. This is in DIRECT violation of a rule that was explained to me in no uncertain terms. Oooops. If they wanted someone to enforce silent memorization at the detriment of reading, they REALLY shouldn't have hired a librarian.
To be entirely honest, I can have this kind of study hall because none of the girls on my floor are struggling academically. They all have excellent grades, so I can be a little bit lax about study hall rules. If I was working in the boys dorms this would not be the case. Still, we can't claim to know exactly how a person is best able to study, and even if we put them all in a big room where their every move was monitored, we can't FORCE them to learn. You can stare at the same page for 24 hours a day without learning a thing. I figure that as long as they aren't hurting their roommate's chance to study to the best of their ability, they can do whatever they like. It's their grade, not mine. Sitting down to study for an hour every evening is an excellent habit to develop, but when you hit high school, opportunities to study don't always present themselves in neat little blocks of time where everyone is going to sit silently and avoid urinating so that your train of thought isn't run off its tracks. If I was the queen of the world I would offer optional study hall every night in dorms, make selling deodorant to minors illegal, create a mandatory lecture series on famous women in history, and encourage girls to get dirty, be loud, and eat as much chocolate as they want. Unfortunately, I am not the queen of the world and I am in for a royal butt-kicking (wait, is "butt" a curse word?...) if anyone finds out how I run things here
And that I used to wear mini skirts and Doc Marten's and work at a liberal, feminist, volunteer-run bookstore with a bunch of queerdo anarcha-punks?
At around 5pm today one of the dorm supervisors came into the office wanting to know if we had a stretcher in the building. Apparently one of the school employees had badly injured himself and needed to be brought to the hospital. I told him where the stretcher was and then went to the dorm medicine cabinet to grab some gloves and gauze. One of the other employees and I ran to the end of the parking lot where a crowd had formed around a man who was being held up by another employee. Another staff member had put some gauze on his neck and he told me that he had cut himself. I put on gloves and took a look at the cut, which wasn't terrible but looked pretty bad. It seemed like he had cut his neck from one side to the other and it was also abundantly clear that the man was unbelievably drunk. There was blood on the collar of his shirt and he wasn't very alert. At this point I was wracking my brain trying to remember all of my wilderness first aid training. I was standing on the side of the road surrounded by about 15 Indian men all asking what happened and if he was ok and what they should do. I took his vitals and applied more gauze and pressure and made sure his neck was supported. When the cab came myself, the injured man, and two other employees rode with him to the hospital. He bled through the gauze on our way there so I added more and kept applying pressure and taking his vitals. When we got to the hospital we got out and the rest of the employees who rode up in another car helped to bring the man into the building where I related the situation to the nurse. The doctor came and we moved the man into another room. (by the way, when I say "moved the man" I mean we physically carried him without a stretcher from the car into and around the hospital) I waited for a while in the casualty room and then left when it was clear that I wasn't doing much help by standing around. I walked into the adjacent room and was immediately surrounded by about 10 guys wanting to know (in Hindi) if the man was ok. I told them that he was fine and then we all stood there for about 2 minutes not saying anything. Me...and 10 Indian men. Waiting to see if their friend was dead or not. Eventually one guy ushered them all into the hallway and I tried to follow but one of the guys told me that I should stay in the room and wait. 15 minutes later the doctor came out and told me that the guy had nicked one of his arteries and that he was still super drunk, but that other than that he was ok. I told him what I had seen and answered all of his questions about whether or not I thought it was a homicide or a suicide or an accident. Another employee came in to see how everything was going and he seemed pretty upset about the whole situation (understandably- I was kind of a wreck too). The doctor said that he had to keep the man for observation and to make sure that he sobered up. I helped 6 of his friends lift him on to a gurney and wheel him to the elevator. By that time someone had called a cab to take me back down to dorms.
The whole event lasted a little over an hour, but it was one of the most insane and mind-boggling situations that I've ever been in in my entire life. The most interesting part about the whole scenario was that I was the only person who put on gloves. Maybe I'm being over-protective, but this is the stuff that nightmares about disease transmission are made of. I haven't heard how the guy is doing, but I'm assuming everything is fine....or at least it will be until he sobers up and realizes that he's probably lost his job. One of the other employees told me that he was already on probation for drinking and that this isn't going to look good on his record. The worst part is that this man's wife is an aya (or maid) for families around Woodstock, and that realistically most of her income goes into feeding his alcohol addiction. There have been programs through the school to help raise awareness about drinking, but this guy must have slipped through the cracks.
I guess that the moral of the story is that all of those years of CPR and first aid training (including that WFA course and lifeguard training) finally paid off. Thanks Wilderness Medical Institute!
A few months ago I was rounding up the last of the middle schoolers on Ridgewood Field (the open sports area near dorms) when I noticed that there were a couple of high school boys loitering around holding bundles of clothing and looking...well...suspicious. It was rare enough to see high schoolers around middle school dorms, but a few had moved in to a house near by while their dorm was being renovated, so I didn't really give it much thought for the rest of the evening. Still, it was odd enough that when I ran into their dorm parent the next day I asked in passing if the boys were out late for any particular reason. Caleb sort of gave me a weird smile and said only that they were working on a "project" for the talent show. As strange as the whole situation was, the incident didn't come up again and I forgot about it entirely.
So the talent show rolls around and there are a series of videos that the high schoolers (mostly boys) have put together as spoofs of the previous year's performances. Apparently there were quite a few girl group dances the year before, so the boys decided to capitalize on their success. Here's the product of that night spent out on Ridgewood Field looking sneaky:
This dance is based on another Korean girl group named "Girl's Generation" that includes 12 (yes, 12) performers. There were only 9 guys in the video, but I think that they did quite well considering the circumstances (a cold night near the middle school dorms wearing their girlfriend's clothing). I wasn't able to upload the youtube clip of the Girl's Generation original, but here's the link if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eodFU4b237s The similarities are pretty staggering.
The middle school girls would kill me if they knew that I was giving away their secrets, but this video is on CONSTANT rotation in the dorms. They know the names and ages of ALL of the guys, as well as all sorts of random facts about them (ie: "See that one in the yellow skirt?! He went to ITALY for winter break! Isn't that SOOOOOO COOL!") Not gonna lie, I think that the video is HILARIOUS and I applaud the guys for stepping outside of the gender binary in the name of interpretive dance. Bravo!
One of the dominating ideas that seems to be firmly fixed in the minds of westerners is that all Indians enter into arranged marriages whether they want to or not. While the practice isn't uncommon, it certainly isn't the archaic ritual that many of us think that it is. When we hear "arranged marriage" many of us imagine 12 year old girls entering into an eternal union with a middle aged man who she has never seen before. From what I've gathered, this happened in the past but is extremely rare these days, and more importantly, illegal. What is common, however, is betrothal- unions between two adults encouraged by their parents with their best interest in mind (typically the two families are from from the same caste, socioeconomic background, or geographic area). Both people are given the ultimate choice and say in the union and ultimately, if the betrothed are just not interested, the union goes no further. There are variations on this theme, and many of these "arrangements" are actually engineered by the betrothed. There are also tons of people who enter into love marriages, eschewing family and tradition, and leaving betrothal in the dust.
Still, many westerners find the act of "arranging" a marriage in any way, shape, or form to be absolutely insane. American-style love involves love THEN marriage and that's the only logical way to ensure a happy future. We turn up our noses at the thought of getting married and growing to love each other after vows are exchanged (and honestly, I'm one of these people). Still, for all of this nose turning, we need to examine exactly how we go about marriage under a bigger microscope. I read a book recently called, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris. His main thesis is that dating is an unreasonable approach
to relationships and that the best path to finding your life mate is to use your singleness to its fullest until the time that God brings your partner to you. His ideal formula for relationships that lead to marriage is: friendship-deeper friendship-courtship with marriage in mind-engagement-marriage. If you're anything like me you looked at this formula and laughed....loudly. Still, when you sift through some of the weirdness and fundamentalism, a lot of what Harris has to say makes sense. He notes that most relationships go directly from instant physical attraction into dating, skipping friendship altogether which begs the question, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" And more importantly, "Will you still want to be married to me when I'm old and saggy?" If you begin with the end in mind, you can pretty easily divide your pool of partner hopefuls in half (not to mention friendships that are based on little more than a need to network).
Being the ever-faithful researcher and librarian, I did a quick search online for pro-betrothal sites and articles and came up with a veritable treasure trove of information that goes above and beyond Harris's book. Here are a few of particular interest:
Ladies Against Feminism
http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/
Yes, you read that right. Ladies Against Feminism. Everything you've ever wanted to know about the roles that men and women are predisposed to fulfill. I think that they've come under enough fire from liberal radicals (like me) that they've created a pretty solid introduction to their site (the "Start here, please!" button on the main page). The thing that gets me is that in my mind feminism is about women making choices for themselves, and many of these women are CHOOSING to be subservient to the men in their lives....sort of reverse psychology.
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Visionary Daughters
http://visionarydaughters.com/category/girl-guy-relationships
http://visionarydaughters.com/category/preparing-for-marriage
Created by the Botkin sisters, this whole site is FULL of information about "honorable" relationships and how to prepare for marriage. They are also the creators of the documentary film "The Return of the Daughters" about young women who are choosing to spend their years after high school (many of them are homeschooled, so the years after their done with formal education) at home preparing to become wives instead of going to college or seeking a career.
Here's a link to the movie's trailer:
http://visionarydaughters.com/return-of-the-daughters
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Vision Forum
A site specifically for families that includes tons of books, articles, and products which encourage a return to the "traditional" family values of America's forefathers (I wonder if fathering children with slaves is mentioned...)
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Quirkyalone
This isn't really in keeping with the "how to's" of marriage and relationships, but it is a more open-minded look at being single and liking it. I was encouraged by what this site had to say about enjoying the time that you spend alone while still maintaining a swinging social life. I can't honestly say that I lead a quirkyalone lifestyle (my many, many ex's will agree), but it is something that I strive to.
I know that I'm allowing my own biases to enter into this information, but like most things that lean a little to far to either end of the spectrum, it needs a little bit of applied critical thinking. Still, when we consider the kinds of marriages that some Americans see as being ideal, it puts marriage in India in a whole new light.
The other issue that many Americans point to in regards to marriage is India is the use of a family's caste, or social status, to determine who and how you marry. Most Americans see this as absolutely repugnant and antiquated, while we as Americans do the same exact thing without the inflammatory title. Think of how many people you whose parents would absolutely go insane if they wanted to marry someone who was African American or Hispanic or white or a recent immigrant. Probably a lot. What about families with money who would never even think of encouraging their child to marry someone whose family was in serious financial need? What about parents who disown their children for falling in love with a person of the same sex, or parents who are constantly trying to set them up with people from their church or synagogue when they know that their child follows a different faith? What about this suggestion from a biblically inspired marriage website:
"Christians need to make sure they have a clear understanding of the person they may marry before becoming engaged. The Bible says that Christians cannot team up with and live in harmony with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14-15). A Christian teaming up with an unbeliever almost guarantees that the Christian will be pulled away from Christ because, as the Bible says, "bad company corrupts good character" (1 Corinthians 15:33). The only way to have a God-honoring, stable foundation for a marriage is to be firmly grounded in one's faith and make sure that the potential partner is equally dedicated to God." http://www.gotquestions.org/engagement.html
As someone with "unequally yoked" parents (one Assemblies of God and one Catholic) who have been married FOREVER, I can honestly say that this is not always the case (if ever).
Here's another gem- In all of my marriage research I found a wedding photographer who lists the following criteria for employing him:
-No Sunday weddings
-First wedding for bride and/or groom
-Valid marriage license
-No alcohol
-No dancing (except between the bride and groom)
-Modest attire for bride and bridesmaids
-Absolutely no same-sex couples or attendants
*I am only currently accepting conservative Christian weddings. If your wedding doesn't meet the criteria, don't worry- there are lots of other highly skilled photographers available!*
This guy is entitled to his own opinions, but if that isn't discriminating based upon lifestyle and background, I don't know what is.
All of this said, I don't think that there is any wrong or right way to get married or enter into a relationship. For every successful and loving betrothal there is sure to be a successful and loving unmarried, gay, alcoholic, strapless, pagan couple. I think that the point is that we need to re-evaluate the way that we evaluate other people's choices, especially across cultures.
(All of the cake toppers are from http://helyn.com/)
http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/browse/Home/Apparel/Womens-Intimates/Panties-Briefs/Covered-Waist-Comfort-Leg-Briefs/D/30103/P/1:100:1010:10230:100490/I/f06281?evar3=BROWSE
Before
After
[The subtitle was originally going to be, "Don't worry mom, my insurance covers optical!"]
Pretty much genius, if you ask me.
Another exciting development in my life is the online photo blogging project that my lovely friend Meagan and I have started. The basic idea is that each week one of us posts a challenge to the other in the form of a photography subject. Each of us has to post a picture that illustrates this challenge as per our side of the world. The project can be found on blogger at:
http://deshenchanted.blogspot.com/
As of right now nothing has been posted, but the first challenge has been set: taxi stand or taxi. I already have a photo in mind, so stay tuned to see how it all turns out.
Cleans out horniness AND whitens?! WITH FRUIT?! SOLD!
