Overnight train ride to Margao

Feb 20th

Haikus

hearts all aflutter

the aroma of old spice

everything is good

snoring breaks the peace

"Hey, Stewart! Sleep on your side!"

valium slumbers

ever serpentine

beast of screaming steely bones

insatiable

the beaches of sand

golden shifting heart of love

fish swim aglitter

....and my favourite - in two parts...

the sideways rocking

tossing and rolling machine

destroying balance

impatient bladder

sway and misdirected stream

oh woe is her shoe

In Alleppey

Feb 13th

The houseboating was amazing!

.....and so was this conversation.....

Tynessa: Connor!! There's a bee in here!! I can't deal with bees!

Connor: No worries. You deal with the spiders and I'll take care of all the bees.

Tynessa: (goes into the bathroom)

Connor: TYNESSA!!! WORST POSSIBLE SCENARIO!!! IT'S A BEE LOCKED INTO A FIGHT TO THE DEATH WITH A GIANT SPIDER!!!

Fort Cochin

India - Feb 11th

As Tynessa and I wandered down the tourist-laden streets of Fort Cochin, we encountered a group of boys heading back to school. They became all smiles and hellos as they approached, giggling. They seemed to be around 11 or 12 years old and so as one boy walked towards us with his hand stretched out I immediately thought "Korea" and High Five". I geared up to return said high five and was therefor completely shocked when he swooped in for a chest grab instead. I turned to shake an angry finger at him as he and his friends took off at full speed.

Ah well, I hope the kid at least earned himself a full months worth of bragging rights.

roll on over to her mangled vine
winding fingers

tracing
a
path

through some inborn hedgemaze

it's alright

you've all tumbled over to the other side like a SPLASH
you've pooled together in a frenzy

the waiter watches like a sailor who doesn't know how to swim
and all the girls are dressed like 50's housewives

...and maybe they are, really...

six gins in and you dive on in
like it's nachos

no use trying...
you've already shined them in with that headlamp grin
rigged up for nighttime fishing

About a week ago, me and my co-workers put on an English camp at one of our schools. After introducing the "games" event and then demonstrating how to properly put together a mean burrito, one of the teachers at the school informed me that I was Queen of the English Camp.

I guess dreams can come true.

Melamine-a-rific

One of my schools gave me a mini candy machine as a welcome gift a couple of weeks ago. After eating most of the M&M's in the machine, I learned about the recall issued on them due to traces of melamine.

There's only a small handful left....

....and I really want to eat them.

I'm also reminded of an e-mail a friend sent me a few weeks back where she shared a dream she'd had about me. In the dream, a doctor told me that I had high cholesterol (which, unbeknownst to my friend, is true). The doctor was then concerned because I had apparently ingested some kind of poison.

Which brings me to my worry about the M&M's.....looking much too delicious in their little poison apple red machine.....

English Lessons

As I was waiting an hour and a half for my train to Seoul, a little boy sat down next to me. I was frantically trying to sort out my daily lesson plans for the entire month of October and so I didn't really notice how keenly interested the boy was in what I was doing...until his head was bent so far over my page that I couldn't read it anymore. I looked at him, slightly annoyed, as I was obviously trying to work. He just kept right on doing his thing until he noticed me staring at him. Then, instead of moving so I could continue working, he grinned at me all chesire-like and started reading my page out loud, "Study directions. Places and direction phrases. Ex: How do you get to the hospital?" He looked fairly pleased with himself and beamed at me with eyes that read, "I know English! I know English!" It was absolutely impossible to be annoyed at this point, and also quite obviously apparent that he would keep staring at me unless I let him show me just how much English he knew.
So, we played hangman for a good 15 minutes...his mother quite happily allowing him to hang out and play strange games with a random foreigner in the train station...and I, quite happily distracted from my tedious lesson planning...until their train arrived and they had to go. They were about halfway to the gates when the little boy turned around and ran back over to where I was sitting. He stuck his hand in his pocket and handed me a Kit Kat, sideways grinned, and then ran back to his mom and off they went, leaving me in smiles.