On the other side of the Classroom

September 9, 2009 at 12:55 am (Thoughts, Uncategorized)
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Today I had a very interesting experience. For my very first class I attended English Communication. The teacher was an American lady who spoke very carefully and simply to us “foreigners.” Even though we were a class of two native speakers – me and a Canadian girl – and around 8 Koreans, a handful of Chinese, a couple Indians, some Southeast Asians and one Serbian with various degrees of English ability from almost nothing to fluent, we all had to take a rigorous writing, listening and reading comprehension test. T’was an almost identical test to what I would have handed out in my formative years as English teacher.

Then, the blue-eyed blonde cheerfully and professionally explained that this would not count towards our grade but was simply for her personal use to evaluate our needs. Brilliant! And of course this didn’t deter my classmates from laboriously writing the test with strained looks and using every possible minute and various scrap papers. I surely got a taste of my own medicine today; I saw exactly what sort of innocent-looking tyrant I really am.

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Take a Look at This!

July 19, 2009 at 10:04 pm (Uncategorized)
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There is a horrible thing going on in Spain. The government is going to allow a foreign company to mine for uranium, thus destroying a beautiful natural areas in Guadalajara and Zaragoza contaminating rivers and lakes and habitats of people and animals in dozens of towns in one of my favorite countries. The website, which is featured under important websites on the sidebar of this blog page now has an english language version, which my Wednesday night language group, The Bilingual Association of McMinnville has provided. Please click here and check it out and sign the petition to help put an end to this environmental threat.

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Relationships with the opposite sex

June 14, 2009 at 4:01 am (Uncategorized)
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I’m not sure but I’ve been thinking about it alot lately since I returned to the states. Here it seems people my age are much more concerned with their relationship status, getting in a relationship, maintaining it and taking it to new levels. This preoccupation with an attachment as I willl call it is less present in Europe. There I felt like if you met someone it was great, if not life was still great. Things happen in their own time and maybe the older societies are more aware that the infatuation only lasts a short time.  

So in Asia I started feeling for the first time a supreme sense of independence like if I remained a spinster or more specifically a female monk, I would not have anything to regret. In Spain this year the same was true, I was indifferent to the idea of romance because I really do believe we can find complete fullness within ourselves. But when I returned to Portland a few weeks I instantly realized that those who were like me (single) seemed to be scrambling for that missing peice as if their life was only half full until they could find that one other persoon who would somehow make them complete.

I met with an old friend from highschool last weekend for coffeee and I noticed she was preoccupied with guys and trying to set me up with one of her friends. “I know I talk a lot about guys,” she admited, “but everyone needs to find that special someone.” This startled me, was this so? I brought up the fact that Apostle Paul and John the Baptist among innumerable other saints had no need for a relationship. She agreed, but said still in our day and age we do.

I had another interesting coffee chat with a friend today who told me that the reason we were all in this dash for “love” is that many look to a significant other as protection from the scariness of today’s world.  Also the pressures and costs of jobs and apartments are alleviated by having two. I said that I prefer not to have attachments. They keep me from being able to be free to travel.  He said I was the opposite of many people who are obsessed with being in love, I on the other hand fit into the category of running away from it. Is it true? Maybe.

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Travelling without Restaurants

May 7, 2009 at 9:00 pm (Uncategorized)
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There is no more need for restaurants. I dont remember the last time I ate at a restaurant (shh! Igor), Maybe a chinese one in Orgiva a month ago. Since then is been a delicious array of open fires, soup kitchens and more recently hotel-made raw food. In Granada frequenting comedores with a small gang of cave-dwellers and our dogs.  The city wrapped its cobbled streets fast around me for five days until I escaped one lowered radiation waved morning and flew south to the coast in search of my father again. I landed in Tarifa and was feeding off scaps of things a Moroccan and Polack scavenged and threw on a grill behind a shoddy stone house. Then two days later I hit the beach loaded up with store-bought products just in time for my dads birthday and my open-fired feasts from India, Thailand and Spain.
I made the decision to go to Morocco and to my surprise my dad decided to join. But of course, as is his slow easy-going style we made a few stops along the way. First stop: a devious bunker next to the beach where its inhabitant, an amiable Slovenian lurked at the endof a dark passageway with enchanting end of the world conversation and some excellent spicy tomato soup. The next day we bused it to Gibraltar and there I couldn’t resist fish and chips on the street following a hot soup kitchen meal of paella and bread served with English humour.  These places are almost addictive and full of fellow low-budget travellers. We spent the next day on the boat surviving on crusty bread and tuna into Ceuta in Northern Africa, crossing the border by foot and walking most of the day down the Mediteranean coastline of the mysterious land of Morocco.
The very first evening we were welcomed by a Moroccan family with two lovely little children. The wife prepared some traditional lentil soup followed by mint tea and desserts. I taught the kids a little yoga and made a list of spices to add to Asia Here!  We said goodbye the next morning and walked further down the coast stopping in another small town that all taxis skip. We rested for three days in a pension with a balconey over-looking the busy center and there I decided to start practicing the art of raw food.
Every morning we have been eating Kollath breakfast which is so simple it seems silly to even explain it and almost baffling that I have never discovered it sooner. It consists of whole wheat flour soaked in cold water overnight in one countainer and dried fruit like raisins, dates, figs, etc. soaked in another container. The next morning you drain the wheat and add the fruit and their liquid along with nuts and fresh fruit and lemon juice from one lemon. Delicious and the healthiest breakie I have ever devoured.
Yesterday we arrived in the big city of Tetuan with old winding labyrinth market full of every ingredient on the planet. So we started making Cus Cus for dinner. The soaking time is spell-binding. Zithin five minutes we have a cold tabouli. So next time I come around ask me about either my Ayurvedic or Raw Food lessons.  I am now 100 percent gas-free, self-sufficient with no need for any restaurants, take-aways or begging.  Better not tell stove or gas companies about this one, imagine if everyone realized that the key to health lay in their own hands with just a bowl, a knife and the most accesible items known to man. Ah water, what divinely inspired simplicity. 

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Spanish Caravan

March 8, 2009 at 9:51 am (Uncategorized)

“Andalucia with fields of gold, I have to see you again and again…Yes I know you can, take me, take me, Spanish caravan.” 

Here I am almost back on the road going back down south to Andalucia. This time to a tiny village in the mountains to experience once again life on a commune. I packed the bare minimum things but my bag is still as heavy as ever: a few clothes, my cookbooks and Indian spices and asian sauces, massage books and a new tent. How did it get so heavy? Hmm…I guess less is more. But I can;t help it now. My computer shall stay in Madrid along with all other entertainment materials. My amazing friends Melissa and Mirella act as my watch guards in this gigantic chalet where I have lived in a sun-swept attic room for the last three weeks. And now embarking on a journey I know not what it will bring, but joy and satisfaction fill my heart as adventure is not waiting but it is here already, just as everything is, but change is enlightenment.

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poor city life

February 25, 2009 at 1:49 pm (Thoughts, Uncategorized)
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So I’ve been in madrid for three weeks now. The city of the fast walkers, and nervousness! I never realized how nervous everyone is here, or maybe it just seems that way after being in a bit of a peaceful state, physically and mentally. People also are not in the moment, they walk rapidly not really paying attention to anything but their own thoughts and what’s directly infront of them. No one meets your eye, I suppose that’s just the way of this concrete world. People hate their jobs yet they are scared to travel anywhere for fear of losing them! Everyone is caught up in this daily grind and though I’m not there, I feel guilty for not wanting to live out my days like this. I suppose the office is an intriguing place for some, the thrill of accomplishment gotten from achieving a project or difficult assignment and the applaud and envy of boss and co-workers. It’s like its own little gladiator stadium, you do or you die. And now with the crisis and lost jobs many feel like they might as well sacrifice themselves to the lions, if only this was ancient Rome. I feel now more aligned with the spiritual path rather than the worldly one. As Amma, “the hugging saint,” said in Darshan:

Because there are two types of education: “Living,” meaning your job and “life” which the gurus teach. In the materialistic world teachers teach practical things. In the spiritual world some things aren’t clear.”

So I was taught to be practical and make a decent “living.” But I don’t really want that type of life, so instead I’m an impractical vagrant. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I’m happy, but at the same time it makes me difficult to understand, which is fine with me. Others argue that I’m sloppy, I much prefered the Indian way of sitting and sleeping on little more than the bare dirty floor. People live in a world of fear I think. Scared of being poor or attacked by terrorists or their families and of dust, of the unknown and of other people’s thoughts. I wish we could live without fences, that there was no worry of thievery and of the sun burning us and of bad intentions. I suppose I am an over-trusting person, I don’t assume anyone would want to take anything from me, but like with everyone it’s happened a fair share of times – from my jacket to a mcdonald’s transformer to my purse – people have taken many things and I’ve also witnessed the grief of those who’ve had more than possessions, but irreplaceable journals and photographs, the remains of memories lost in time, so to speak. And so we have to be vigilant, even the tent in Bolonia had to be shut and tied up to keep the cats out. But I suppose I’d rather have less expensive possesions and less worry, less money and less choices of how to spend it, less drama with relationships and jobs and less chances of wasting my precious time on this earth. This life I feel truly is a gift, as the old Buddhist saying goes, we have less chance of being born as humans than a dolphin has of coming to the ocean’s surface through a ring. Now I want to embrace this life and be thankful for all the wonderful people I’ve encountered and so many unique experiences. I could write a thousand books about it. And not one would be boring. I don’t think boredom can exist, not when you realize the unlimited potential of this moment.

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El Camino from Tarifa to the Caves

February 9, 2009 at 2:36 am (Uncategorized)
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 I came from one of the coldest winters perhaps in my lifetime in the states. From beautiful lush rural Oregon to the gotham lights of Manhattan and the french side of Canada, quirky but cold, and then straight to southern Spain. Surrounded by retirees and package tourists I descended the plane in such a sweaty daze with my snow jacket and striped legwarmers feeling strangely out of place in this resort-scaped palm-lined paradise. What am I doing here? I swallowed, took a deep breath and remembered I wanted to see my dad. He had somehow found his ideal place somewhere nearby. And I would discover the ambience changes as quickly as well as, me. 

It was a three-and-a-half-hour bus ride from the big city to the sly port town of Tarifa. My dad met me at the bus stop and we first went to the supermarket to stock up for a week in the wild and then started on the journey which takes just half an hour by car on the highway but is an overnight feat on foot. 

 Watch the walk to Bolonia if you dare!

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Into the snow

December 22, 2008 at 9:21 am (Uncategorized)
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Don’t do, just be. That’s my conclusion after tonight’s meditation session. I guess there is a lot of truth in the saying: “be the change you want to see in the world.” I was able to focus not just on my breathing but on the subtlies of my movements: the tiny vibrations in my hands and the position of my spine, right down to the beating of my own heart. My experience keeps changing each time I sit, but it’s intriguing and also I’m amazed by how comfortable it feels just to sit there doing nothing, perfectly at peace with myself. Since my parents are off work now, we’ve been doing it in the morning and night at 9:50. It basically keeps the whole day together like a thread. I’m also snowed in. Immersed in one whole foot of snow we trampled through a christmas tree farm near our house to try to glimpse a view of the valley, but instead we saw only snow-capped barren trees caught set amidst a romantically foggy backdrop. It is quite beautiful. But, at the same time I am trapped by this loveliness with nowhere to go, just like the song…”since we’ve no place to go…” Maybe I need to stop thinking about where to go. Snow defintely has a grounding effect forcing you to stay in this moment, this place, whether you choose to or not. 

Christmas is coming. And the black bird is humming. Carols we sing. The clock goes bing bing. 

I see snow. Santa said ho! ho! ho! It is a nice time of year. See me here! 

My journal, December 21, 1988

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Adventures in cooking

December 14, 2008 at 8:12 am (Uncategorized)

 

Cooking Ayurvedic Food

Cooking Ayurvedic Food

Well, since I’ve last written some major things have happened. I launched my little spice and tea enterprise!!!

This has pretty much consumed my time – packing them into bags, concocting new tea blends and practicing recipes for my upcoming indian/thai cooking demos. I didn’t think anything could excite me as much as travelling. Well, it’s still slow but I’ve managed to sell over half my tea collection and several curry spice packs. I haven’t been this excited about a profession since I began teaching English and could create all my texts. But with this gig I can create recipes, teach people and improve health and well-being. Cooking, as corny as it sounds is fun! I see it as a form of meditation because it requires an extreme amount of mindfulness, especially when you’re measuring ten or so spices carefully out to make a complex dish. Just one slip of the mind and you destroy the entire creation. I remember back when I took a home ec. class. I think it was in 6th grade or so and I used to be constantly making mistakes. The first thing we made were cookies and I put 2 cups of salt in place of sugar so we had to compensate with sugar and it ended up grainier than a sandbox. I think I made a disaster of every dish we ever made in that class. My dad has always been an inventive and passionate cook in the house so my mom and I left it to him. I never touched a stovetop again until sophomore year of college. My parents had gifted me a big fancy microwave the year before and I left it with some turkish student who was staying the summer. When I got back to NY he had taken off and I was microwave-less and had no choice but to pick up an easy recipe book and get to work. I made strictly pasta and hamburgers. Typical uni grub. When I graduated I moved to the city as a poor grad in a closet-sized apartment so I expanded my repertoire a bit to include barbeque pork rib (can’t beat ny bbq) and I suppose I was a master sandwich maker after 3 years working at the food court’s sandwich bar. But, largely I ate chinese take-out like most new yorkers. Even when I moved to Spain I stuck to scrambled eggs and potatoes to whatever the Spanish ate in the morning, which was basically nothing or a cookie or churro. I never even tried a paella in Spain. I had two dinner parties which were disasters. This is embarrassing but I had no idea garbanzos had to be soaked so I threw them in with the rice and tried to cook luncheon salmon without being able to read any of the packages and my dinners simply became excuses to hurl undercooked bullet-strength food at each other. 

The next year when I was 24 I went to live in Slovenia with my semi-estranged family. My critical cousin gave me hell when she discovered what I was eating. Having eggs for breakfasts and sandwiches for lunch was simply intolerable for someone who held a Slovenian passport. So I had to start eating with her Slovenian food. I never took to it, it seemed like a less-diverse blander version of American. But I did like the salads. Pumpkin seed oil slathered on roasted potatoes and fresh greens was just my thing. So I negotiated a parcel of the garden and started raising my own mouth-watering salads. Feeling healthier than ever I took my diet home and then went to France. France was the grounds where my culinary skills really started to flourish. I don’t think anyone can call themselves a cook until they can make a miracle happen. Other people see some rice and stale tomatoes and a true cook will whip up a fantastical feast. In France I was camping with my then boyfriend and I decided to teach a little frugality to a rich boy. I don’t know why but I made it a rule that we would never eat out. So instead we bought a little burner and one single small pot. Somehow every dish seemed to be scrumptious, maybe being extremely hungry had something to do with it but food never tasted so good. In New Zealand I dabbled with all kinds of things and started making tea with a wild bush called kava kava. It is slightly bitter but excellent with lemon and leaves you feeling slightly euphoric. Still, my menu was either tuna or salmon, tomato sauce or milk and veggies, basically whatever I could scrape up. Basic but more than edible. 

My favorite food, Indian, has always been seemingly unattainable. Something I had to shell out for and tolerate an upscale ambiance in order to enjoy. I guess that was one of the reasons I went to India. To indulge in my favorite food as much as I could. Unfortunately, most of the restaurants disappointed. This wasn’t the delectable buttery spicy rich delicacy I remembered from the tacky 2nd avenue row in NY or Lavapies in Madrid. This was just survival food, like in any country and anyone could make it. The best food was cooked in the Indian homes where Indian wives and mothers initiated me into this unbelievably simple art. The secret to good curry was revealed to me in a dawn of awakenment like when you have your first fluid conversation in a foreign tongue after months of studying. This took not months, but a night of watching two elegant saree-clad women preparing a meal. I couldn’t believe for myself it could be so simple. There had to be more to it. Sure you can continue adding more ingredients but once you have the right spices everything comes together effortlessly. Thai food has been another new food foray. Five months in Thailand, but I only finally took a cooking course my last day or two. It was actually a bit disappointing to find all the complexity and exoticness is revived by using just a few bottled sauces. I should add a good mortar and pestle is also necessary unless you want your blended drinks tasting like chili peppers. Beating things was a bit of a theme my last few weeks in Thailand when I started making my own facial scrubs with wild plants. Dabbling with nature has been one of my lasting joys. Everything we need is right under our feet when, and if, we walk outside.

So maybe I’ll stick with this little business of mine, especially if there’s so many people like I was who don’t see the light past the microwave tray or drive-thru window. I guess this could be considered almost a mission, converting people to a forgotten way of living and introducing new cultures at the same time. Today I was shut out from bringing my merchandise to a rummage sale by a mean-spirited woman. It really did get me down, mostly because I had forgotten that there are still people out there who don’t care about anyone and have no idea how to treat a fellow human being. I quietly avoided an argument and walked out of her public demonstration of power gone bad and the all too common same-sex ill-will. <Why oh why can’t girls stick by each other??> I went outside and decided to pray for her. I sincerely hope she finds peace and enlightenment. Could good healthy food cure her? I’m not sure. But I am starting to think that a person’s diet mixed with meditating daily can work miracles. Diet is a key point that effects how we think and behave. If our stomach hurts from those chips or our head is aching from our coffee addiction it is going to hinder our ability to act with grace and composure or to even say an encouraging word to someone who could really use it. So maybe this could become a way to make the world a better place or maybe every little thing we do in life is important whether we realize it or not. So that’s my new thing. So anyone who wants spices and tea or a lesson or just a free meal, get in touch with me.

“What is here is everywhere, what is not here is nowhere.” Therefore, Asia Here! (inc.)

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Ten things to learn from Asia

October 24, 2008 at 12:45 am (Uncategorized)
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I went to Asia with the desire to learn from the culture. As simple as that. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was something missing in the sleek “we are the world” western package I had been purchasing all my life. So here it is, a list in no particular order of some of what I consider the most important things I learned over these nine months in India and Southeast Asia.

Spiritually:

1-Yoga – I studied for about two months total both in Rishikesh, India and Chiang Mai, Thailand. I discovered how life-enhancing yoga is and why the west is becoming obsessed with this long practiced simultaneous excercise of body and mind. My favourite asanas (postures) are the head stand and padastasana (touching your toes) and doing surja namaskar twelve times during sunset has also proven rejuvenating.

2-You cannot convince someone who isn’t ready. Each person will realize the truth eventually in their own time: The words of my herbal guru in northern Thailand. I have difficulty realizing this because I want so much for people to realize the pure joy I have found. But I guess teaching by example is the best method.

3-Meditation – I cannot extoll too much the virtues of meditation in every aspect, and when I found out it was used to treat even the most serious diseases like HIV and cancer, well you can’t argue against it.

“Sit, then as if you were a mountain, with all the unshakeable, steadfast majesty of a mountain. A mountain is completely natural and at ease with itself, however strong the winds that batter it, however thick the dark clouds that swirl around its peak. Sitting like a mountain, let your mind rise and fly and soar.” – Sogyal Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Practically:

4-How to cook a decent Thai dish. Taking a cooking course individually with a Thai lady was one of the most practical things I did. I’m able to cook an array of healthful tasty foods like pad thai, tom yum, green curry, etc. Atleast I can work on American’s waistlines if I can’t alter their mindset.

5-Giving a Thai Massage. I took an intensive two week course and also learned from my guru some useful “lazy yoga” techniques and practice my Indian head massage. Massage is really almost a magical art like meditation bringing you into another state of mind.

6-Raising a baby. Ok, I didn’t have a baby, but I raised a puppy from one day old to opening its eyes and walking. I learned to give myself fully to another being, including waking every two hours for feeding, pooping, sharing body heat and otherwise caring and nurturing for a helpless creature as, I suppose a mother does. It’s a lot of responsibility and I can only wander and be grateful of how my mother was able to do it for longer than two weeks. India provides this opporunity plentifully as the idea of owning a dog is non-existant and strays abound.

7-Medicine and the power of tea-I tried every type of tea I could get my hands on. Indian chai, Thai cha yen to Darjeeling and Oolong blends. I learned about certain powerful herbs that grow in the jungle or simply everywhere like Bai Bua Boke (gotu kola) and Tongkat Ali. I watched how a giant papaya leaf could be used as a cast on a foot injury and alternative techniques and mantras could have unintended consequences. Herbal medicine is absolutely fascinating.

Randomly:

8-How unneccessary a chair is. You can sit anywhere, the world is your chair. I’ve never spent more time eating, drinking, talking, listening, playing everything that we do can be done on the bare ground and tables as well are mere luxuries.

9-It’s the process of work, not the results that count. I learned to take breaks and deep breaths and work mindfully so that the entire work process can actually be enjoyable and unrushed. We are only as hurried as we believe we are. 

10-It doesn’t matter where you are or how far you travel, you will always feel and be the same. The real difference lies within. ~V

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