One of my students, a 10th grader always looked so gloomy in class and church. So I may have decided to cheer him up by grinning wildly at him everytime I saw him, until he started blushing. Then I would tease him about the slightly guilty smile he would always make. He would insist that it wasn't guilty, but I told him I knew better. But on our visit to Managaha, he and I took a picture together, and he made a REAL smile. The kind that wasn't guilty. I, of course, made a huge deal about it, which then embarrassed him some more and he started blushing again.
But here it is, my student and I with real smiles.

Street Market

Street Market is pretty much the coolest thing Saipan offers. Every Thursday night (except for a couple weeks when the government shut it down in an attempt to manipulate citizens into approving a new casino) in Garapan, the tourist village of Saipan, Beach Road fills with vendors selling Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Chamorro, and Thai food. Almost every booth will sell you a dinner for $5, usually with 6 different items of food, or else you can hop around, grabbing 1 item from several different booths, for $1 each.
The food is very often very good.
But I'm not here to tell you about that.
One lovely night, Miss Blackwell, Mr. JJ, and myself took some students down to Street Market. We grabbed our food (Go with Chamorro, so GOOD!) and made our way into the outdoor pool area of one of the resorts. Fiesta, to be specific.
It wasn't as quiet of a location as we might have expected. On the other side of the pool, under a shelter, was a group of Japanese partyers. At first I thought it might have been a rehearsal dinner, but I soon realized that was not correct. First, the group was skewed towards males, and then the partying seemed just a trifle too enthusiastic for a rehearsal dinner.
This analyzation was proven correct when all of a sudden about 5 guys whipped off their shirts and shorts to reveal nothing but Speedos.
Not something I was exactly prepared for.
But then, I wasn't really prepared for it when they pulled off the Speedos too and proceeded to jump into the pool.
Nope, definitely wasn't prepared for that.
[pictures omitted]

Should I have labeled this blog NSFW?

So Beautiful. So Awkward.

One day my 12th graders began telling me that I was so beautiful. This is a ridiculous statement anyway, but even more so in a culture more beauty-obsessed than in the United States, so I responded,
"I know that's not true."
"No, no," they hurried to explain. "Not outwardly beautiful. Inwardly beautiful."
"That's more like it," I said.

The Library

At my school, not only do I teach Conversational ESL, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade literature, and music, I also work for a couple hours in the school library. This is not quite an idyllic an assignment as one might think. A library may not be the best place to employ people who speak English as a 2nd language. One of my jobs has been to sort catalog cards (yes, we still use those on the island of Saipan), and so I have the privilege of authoritatively informing you that about 80% of the cards have errors on them. I'm not just talking of disformity* of formatting, which is entire. Many of the errors are spelling errors, but not all. Some cards have subjects in the author or title line. Some cards leave off half the title of a book. Some cards include only the first word of the title. Some cards list dust jacket illustrators as authors. Some cards list authors who in no way coincide with the book.

My favorite card had 3 different spellings of the author's name, accompanied by an indecipherable title and vague publication information. I tried Googling every possible spelling of the author's names with the two words of the title I could make out, "Abraham" and "times," but I was unsuccessful. When I pointed out this card to a fellow library worker, she got a little upset with me. I'd tried telling her that the title on the card was no such thing, and she kept gesturing impatiently at the title line of the card. I tried a different tactic.
"It doesn't mean anything," I said. "It's nonsense."
Yeah, that didn't work.
I asked if I could see the book, but I was told that I wouldn't be able to find it since the book was entered this summer with many other books that had yet to be shelved.
So much for the book by John Dee, Dea, or Dec.**
The title and author cards provide another problem. Each book should have both a title and an author card, filed separately under its respective categories. Notice the word should. While sorting through the author cards, I found a good-sized handful of Title cards in the mix.
"Not a problem," I thought, "I'll just set them aside and file them in with the Title cards when I go through those."
Tiny problem. There wasn't a duplicate Author card misfiled in the Title card place. No, I had 2 Title cards. Or sometimes just 1 Title card, in the wrong place. The reverse situation worsened. Whereas I might have only found 5-10 Title cards per letter in the Author section, I found 20, 30, 40, Author cards in the Title sections.
Sigh.
I've told you a lot about the library. But actually, I could have summed up my entire library experience in one story.
I was typing a borrowers card when I realized that the source card was incorrect. First, the editor was listed as the author, a common enough error, but this was a magazine and it was listed as a book. To top it off, the periodical was listed by its title, with no mention of the issue title (which it clearly had) or volume/date identification. So I brought it to the librarian and pointed out these errors to her. She dismissed both the author/editor and the book categorization confusion, so I submitted, but I tried convincing her that she needed some issue identification.
"This is a periodical," I said, "so you can't just file it by its name, since there are other issues."
"But we only have one issue," she said.
"I know," I answered, "but we may get another issue, and then what will we do?"
"If we get another one, then we will pull this one from the shelves and then we will have to get it a new number and reprocess it."
"Okay," I said.


*no, it's not a word. But it could be.
** Googling did produce a result for John Dee. He's a mathematician and physicist from the 1600s. Not my guy.

Twenty-Three

A couple of weeks ago I had my twenty-third birthday. Twenty-three always seemed like an important age to me, far more than 21 or 18 or 30 or [take your pick]. I'm not sure why, but maybe it had something to do with the plans I had for myself growing up.
Life dreams were a big thing for me. It wasn't the career so much that I obsessed about. I've known ever since I was about 5 that I've wanted to teach and write for a living. (To clarify: Once, for about a month, I wanted to be a virtuoso violinist, but then I realized I lacked the technical ability or the ambition. And then there was my constant fascination with being a spy. It had nothing to do with an interest in gadgetry or adventure; I just have always wanted the balance of information to tip on my side). Anyway, my life goals, then, were often time and location goals.

From the ages of 10-16 (circa), my life plan looked like this.
Graduate from high school one year early.
Go to college at 17
Graduate at 20
Go to grad school at 21* (same year as graduation; it's how my birthday falls), and finish the summer before I turn 23.

Ah, 23. What a magical number you were.

Somewhere in the middle of high school I decided I wasn't going college a year early. I didn't even want to. So the life plan got pushed back a little. But that was okay, I'd still be halfway done with my graduate program, and looking out for the career of my life.

Then, the summer before my freshman year in college, I decided to go through college attempting two majors. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't going to be shoving that into four years. Four and a half years was the smallest amount of time I could manage, so I knew I was going to graduate a semester before I turned twenty-three.

That's okay, I told myself, graduating from college is an epochal moment, and twenty-five is not a bad age to finish a first masters. Then there's a doctorate, of course, but that's the kind of schooling appropriate at any age.

And then somewhere in the last year or two of my college education, I decided that I wanted to travel more, see the world, and experience new cultures. The masters program could wait until I got back.

So here I am, in Saipan, having just graduated from college, teaching English to a bunch of Chinese, Chamorro, and Korean students, (oh yeah, and one Russian), with no immediate plans for a graduate program, and with a frequently postponed life plan.

But that's okay. I've always like the number 27, and that seems like a great age to finish a graduate program.



*At Oxford; Balliol, to be specific, where I could meet the love of my high-school life, Peter Wimsey.

The Greatest Story That Happened to Me Ever

During my two weeks of ESL camp, I taught a Taiwanese girl whose English name was Vicky. She was pretty shy and cute, about 11 or 12, and obsessed with Chinese pop music and Justin Bieber. One day, during a break, I noticed her reading a familiar-looking book, albiet in Chinese. Upon closer examination I discovered that, yes, it was New Moon. I have read the first two Twilight books, so I thought I would ask her about it.
"Do you like that?" I asked, "I've read that. In English, of course," I added.
Her eyes got so big and she started excitedly asking me about it. I tried telling her the names of the series in English, and tried to ask if she was more Team Jacob than Edward, but then we ran out of time, and class had to begin. It was the last time I thought about the encounter until . . .

The next morning, as I'm coming in, Vicky was sitting with her guardian-for-the-trip, an older Taiwanese girl who was observing the English teachers. All of a sudden they both started chattering at me in a mix of Chinese and English. But one sentence came through.

"You wrote this!" (holding up a copy of New Moon)

Well, that explains the huge eyes.

"No," I explained, with enormous shaking of my head, "No, I just read it. That's all."

They didn't believe me.

"See," I pointed to the picture of Stephanie Meyer, and then to my own face, "This is not me."
"Oh, so you translated the book?"
"No, I can't speak a word of another language. I just read it. In English. Everyone reads it where I'm from."

The older girl caught on. "Oh, yes, it's very popular in Taiwan."

The next day or so, Vicky came to me during a break time and asked me to sign her book. I sat down, and once again, compared my face with Stephanie Meyer.
"This isn't me, you understand. I didn't write this."
She nodded her head.
"I just want you to sign it," she said, once again offering the book with a plaintive face.
I sighed, and signed,
"Dear Vicky,
I'm so glad we've read the same book in a different language!
YOUR TEACHER, RuthAnn Ledgerwood
(emphasis added in my mind only)

So, was that the end?
No.

A couple days later, in Writing class, the students had to write a letter to me. Vicky sent this letter to me that said,
"I like your books very much. You are a very good writer. Can you tell me where to get them in English? Taiwan doesn't have very many English bookstores."

"Try Amazon.com," I told her.

Lost in Translation, 1

My two weeks of teaching were for ESL Camp. The camp was dwindling in numbers, so the last week I actually taught by myself, to a group of kids from about 7-16. Their English levels were completely different, so it was a bit of a challenge, and they weren't exactly motivated in any way, but overall it was a good experience.

On the first day of the last week, I had the students write me a letter about themselves. One of the oldest boys (about 16) whose English was also the worst wrote me this:

"You are tall and skin white. You are common."

I actually have no idea whether he meant that as an insult or a compliment. I'm not sure anyone really could know. But I do know, that although I have been called many insulting things, I've never felt quite so insulted as when he called me common. What does that say about me???


I don't know, do you think Koreans consider commonness positive?

My First Room

My potential apartment mate was not arriving for a couple days, so in the meantime I was being housed in one of the college dorm rooms. I'll admit that even my adventurous heart sunk a tiny bit when I walked into an extremely dirty dorm room. I don't mind thin mattresses, peeling paint/wallpaper, or holes in the wall. But in one thing at least I am my mother's daughter: Dirt is bad.

At first I didn't want to let my new towels or sheets touch anything, but the alternative, of course, was that I had to touch things, so the linens lost out. Since my body was still adjusting to the time difference (15 hrs, by the way, from CST), and since I refused to let myself rest during the day, I was ready for a full night's sleep at about 6:00 or 7:00 each evening. On this evening, that was somewhat of a relief, otherwise I may have focused a little too much on, well, uncleanliness.

On the next day, my proper sensibilities had returned, and I realized that all this little room truly needed was a good scrub. Which I could give it.

I went to a little Chinese-American store next to the school where I picked up an extremely expensive bottle of Lysol (I would have been willing to use a non-American product, but that only came in wipes, and I needed solution for serious cleansing power). I donated one of my new clean washcloths to the project. Three hours (and a good deal of Lysol) later, I had come as far as I reasonably could. And then this curious feeling of ownership stirred inside me. Now that I had cleaned it, the room was mine. And then I began to get all Woolfian about the fact that I was all alone, and I had a lock on the door, and I could think and read and write anything without having to be disturbed. I began to smile fondly upon the wildly-leaking shower, the broken toilet seat, and the plastic picnic table. I may have still frowned at the spots I could not scrub away, but I was grinning at the wonderfulness of it all: I have a room of my own.

The Snore

On Saturday night, I woke up vividly and immediately at 12:40. Someone was snoring. Not a grunt-like snore, one of those slightly louder-than-heavy-breathing snores; the intake of air, the pause, and the spiral of released air. My first thought was that Cathy had arrived, and they had put her in my room by mistake. But no, she wasn’t even supposed to come for another hour or so, although I jumped up and checked the other beds. Of course, I realized, I have the only key and I locked the door (which I ran to check), so no one could get in. I must have just dreamed it. So I lay back in bed, and listened to the other ambient noises. Cars driving by, birds chirping, the steady whirr of the fan . . . there it was again. Breathing in, breathing out. Was it outside the window? Why was it so loud? Was it my fan? But my fan had its uninterrupted buzz (I’m sorry, I already used whirr, and I don’t think any other words describe fan action). And why was the sound so creepily human?

So I turned my fan off. The sound disappeared. I turned it back on, nothing, and then . . . there it was.

I HAVE A SNORING FAN.

Chinese Hospitality

I slept for a good portion of that first day, and had gone to bed for the night at about 6:20 pm. Imagine my shock, then, when twenty minutes later, when I was already in the midst of a relatively deep sleep, someone came in and woke me up. Obviously my reflexes are non-existent when I sleep or I should have been concerned about the fact that someone was coming into my locked room (which I erroneously assumed I had the only key for), but I just sort of bewilderedly answered questions until finally realizing that Lucy, the lady who moved me in, was concerned that I had not eaten dinner and was taking me to dinner. She took me to Subway, because she wanted me to eat something I would recognize, and bought me an ice-cream-like product* for dessert. She told me that in China, where she is from, they believe that if your stomach is full you have no room to be homesick.

I was touched.

And I didn’t feel homesick.



*In my experience, Asian cultures struggle a bit with the whole dairy product thing. But it was still good. Just not exactly ice cream. Or custard. Or frozen yogurt.

A Bad Beginning

It was, truly. I have always tried to preserve the romantic ideal of traveling abroad, but if one were to judge a beginning, one must judge that mine was bad.

The plane flights were lovely. Really. The only one that was a bit crowded was the small plane from Milwaukee to Houston. Although my time in the airport was barely enough to get me to the gate for last call to Tokyo, it was still unrushed. My Tokyo flight was the long one (14 hours), and the seats on the 777 Boeing (or is it Boeing 777?) were spacious, with plenty of leg room. Best of all, I had an aisle seat with no one next to me. Over by the window was a girl stopping in Japan who did her best to curl into a ball for the entire 14 hours when she wasn’t playing Bookworm on the entertainment system. Ah yes, this entertainment system was much better than I imagined. On my flight to China several years back, we didn’t even have our own screens, and 3 movies played, Big Momma’s House 2, King Kong, and Glory Road. This entertainment system had TV show episodes (The Tudors, Castle, The Mentalist, 30 Rock, The Office, Project Runway, Jamie Oliver, etc.), gaming (which I’ll admit I did not investigate closely), music, and over  150 movies. Not just tiresome new releases like The Bounty Hunter (which I did see someone watching), but also Classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, Adam’s Rib, La Dolce Vita, and World Cinema like La Vie En Rose, Babel, and a staggering amount of unimpressive Japanese and Chinese cinema. I watched one of those, Look for a Star, a story of a billionaire who falls in love with a dancer, hiding his true identity as a Very Rich Man, until midway in the story. When she finds out, there’s this whole King Cophetua and Beggar Maid thing which possibly could have been resolved had it not been for the real screw in the works . . . his company wants her to sign a pre-nup.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course. It’s just my shareholders.”

There were two romantic subplots with billionaire’s chauffeur and his chief CEO person. The chauffeur’s story was a tiny bit boring, as he struggled with whether or not he could accept this lovely woman he meets on a blind date who has a daughter.

The CEO, a woman who obviously is too stressed by the demands of her challenging, high-profile job, obviously needs that man who will see past her Wicked Witch (her nickname) exterior and care for those strangling insecurities under the surface. In her case, the perfect man is the substitute electrician/handyman who drills and pounds at inconvenient times outside the hallway, and then protects her from a cold by giving her bare feet a towel to stand on. He also gives her tea from his village, and paints a talisman of their love, while struggling with his own securities about their different socioeconomic positions.

I have gone on too long. To conclude: All three subplots resolved at a reality show (game?) called something like Trust in Love, or Take a Chance, or something like that.

And then, I believe, there was dancing.

Look for a Star was not the only film I watched, but I’m afraid it may have been the most memorable, more so than the 3-hour Italian masterpiece by a director who sings music I do not hear.

My flight to Guam does not bear mentioning; although when I got to Guam, myself and a scattered few had to wait outside for the gates for almost 3 hours because after a certain time they just close the whole gate thing down, opening up after midnight. I had never heard of such a thing, but I think most people aren’t really interested in manning Gucci stores in the airport with almost no customers. Our flight left at 2:30, and I was set to arrive in Saipan at 3:30, after almost 30 hours of traveling.

Well, I did arrive, and so did my luggage, safe and sound. And then I waited on the curb for 45 minutes, while no one picked me up. And then I went inside and tried calling everyone I could think of, on the world’s most expensive pay phone. Seriously. $100 later, I still had not connected with anyone on the island, and so I sat in the airport for the next 3 hours or so, too tired to even think straight. I really had not slept much on the trip, about 5 hours split into 45 minute segments. I really was not in a convenient frame of mind, I’ll admit. One does try to have a good attitude, but after no sleep, little edible food, and way too many hours since a shower, it’s a little bit difficult. Anyway, the plan I settled upon was to wait until daylight and take a taxi to the school when I could be sure someone would be around. Even in my sleep-deprived state I could tell this was a good plan, although 4:00-in-the-morning-despair required a few desperate tears shed, much to the consternation of the man running the little convenience store inside the airport. (Never say I don’t tell all).

It was a mistake, of course; someone forgot to let someone know who was supposed to let someone else know that that was the day I was coming in. And there’s no way I could count the number of apologies I have since received for those couple hours. Also, it led me to me getting a nicer place to stay in for the first day. And the world’s happiest no-hot-water shower. So I can still consider traveling idyllic, right?

My New Life

For those of you that don't know:
I have just moved to Saipan to become an ESL teacher.

For those of you that don't know (and don't be ashamed because no one ever does):
Saipan is a commonwealth of the United States. It's part of the Northern Marianas Trench, and is closest to Guam, then the Philippines, then, I think, Japan. The official language is English, but most of the people that live on the island are not native English speakers. The island has a multicultural demographic; the natives are Carolinian or Chamorro, and then Chinese, Japanese, and Russian immigrants make up the other large parts, with a smattering of Taiwanese and Korean.

For those of you that don't know:
I had been looking for an opportunity to teach overseas, but nothing seemed to be working out until this opportunity arose. Although I technically am still in America, I definitely overseas, and so excited about the next year of my life.