Burmese Material Girls

Blogo-licious Readers:

Mongeera Ow, or hello there, as they say in Monland.

I write to you as I sweat in my bedroom, preparing to turn in early tonight, at 10:30 in place of the regular 11 pm. It has been a warm past few days, which has allowed to me to add the word “atau” (hot) to my ever growing Mon vernacular. (Note: I came to Thailand having checked out Thai CDs from the library, purchasing a Thai phrasebook, and fully expecting to come back well versed in the language. It turns out that my Thai will very likely be quite struggling when I return, and instead my Mon skills will be pretty awesome, which is unlikely to get me anywhere on a resume, but then again the rest of my life has far from centered on being coherent to others, so why start now…)

Although rainy season is upon us, it has been an undeniably dry and thus warm few days, causing me to shower a total of three times a day in place of the regular two. While in theory sunshine is wonderful, in reality here the rain provides a much-needed breath of cool air. When heavy drops come they seem not only to clear the air of the moisture that clings to you at all times and in all places, but the water seems to clean the plants, the trees, the people, the mangy dogs that roam the streets, and the stray motorbikes that have been left without cover. After the rain everything seems pure and energized. People emerge from the awnings where they have hidden for the past 15 minutes and what was a ghost town just moments ago springs to life. The sun often emerges immediately after rain as though it is denying that it ever left us. This close tie between sun and rain leads to predictable and beautiful rainbows over this tiny town.

The most wonderful part of the rain is when a huge deluge comes. It really seems as though buckets are flooding down upon you. One way to describe it would be to imagine the craziest rainstorm you can remember— that moment where you asked yourself if god was mad at you ‘cause man! This rain is strong! THAT is what happens here around once a day. While it may sound scary, it’s actually quite peaceful. The rain that pours on the tin roofs leaves you unable to hear even the person standing beside you speak. It forces you to pause, to reflect, to wait. You’d be mad to up and leave your building, and you’d be unsuccessful if you attempted to pass the time with a conversation. It’s just you. Waiting. For the rain to stop.

So my true purpose of writing was to share tonight’s activity: a birthday party. We held it for the adorable Htaw Lai (pronounced “toe lie”), one of my most advanced students, and certainly the shortest. She turned 23 today. The party consisted of a surprise which revved everybody up quite a bit. Hushed conversations took place all day in which fanta-purchasing, sign making, and ice cream flavors were discussed. It was adorable. While my students had told me that a typical birthday involved “feeding ice cream to your friends,” I figured that this phrase translated to providing ice cream for friends. Tonight I discovered that a Mon birthday tradition is sitting in a circle on mats as the birthday person literally shovels ice cream into the mouths of all friends and family present. It’s amazing. Then a good deal of force-feeding people impossibly large scoops of the melty-stuff ensues by whoever is feeling most confident. We share a total of one spoon, which is pretty great too, provided no one has a life-threatening illness.

What started as quaint force-feed party quickly morphed into a dance soiree inspired by my teaching the class Madonna’s “Material Girl” a few days ago. After the fifth time we repeated that “only boys who save their pennies make my rainy day,” I felt it was time to move onto another staple of American dance parties: rap.

All of my female students grabbed each other’s hands as we jumped around in a circle havanageela-style and they learned the best dance moves a white, suburban Jewish girl could offer.

After a warm and ridiculous thirty minutes which involved mainly me jumping around and my students declaring how “chan lan,” (beautiful) my “moves” were, we switched off the ipod, arranged ourselves on the floor and the students sang a traditional Mon song for their skilled dancing buddies to move to. I saw two traditional Mon dances, the slow variety, which is, indeed, INCREDIBLY slow, and the “fast” variety, which moves more at the rate of a slow-dance in our terms.

I felt pretty great as I watched these awesome women singing and dancing around me, seeing them feel so comfortable with these words that poured easily from their lips and the moves that were second nature to their bodies. How incredible that this is just that same old, comfortable thing to them, and to me, it is something completely new and beautiful.

I felt as though I was in some promotional video for a cultural exchange program, what with the beauty and friends, and the ice-cream force-feed.

Ah no. Here I said I’d go to bed early and already it’s 11:05. Ah well.

To papaya salad-

LK

Ps. I love the blog comments. Keep ‘em comin.