Parami Project Completion

Dear Friends, Artists, and Donors,

Thank you for your generous contributions and help throughout the summer. I am pleased to announce that the Hong Kong Exhibition concluded with a grand total of $1500 USD in contributions, which was send via MoneyGram to the Parami Learning Centre in early September.

Due to a fortuitous donation (of leftover construction gravel), the school was able to put together a functional makeshift road to allow for safer transportation during the rainy season.

After some discussion with the school in regards to use of the funds, we decided on constructing an assembly hall, which can double as a girl's dormitory if needed. The assembly hall is now completed.

Pictures to come!

Florence

Global Art Exhibit's Hong Kong Exhibition Series: Online Catalog

100% of all donations go to the Parami Learning Centre for Burmese refugee students in Mae Sot, Thailand.

Professional Photography Collection
approximate photo sizes: 8 by 11 inches, matte finish, hand cropped to camera dimensions
all display pieces are mounted on white or black cardboard, 10 by 14 inches
only one copy of each photograph is available for sale. $20 USD/ $140 HKD each

Digital design piece by Ron Kwok is 30 by 72 inches (2.5 ft by 6 ft), ink on tarpaulin, matte finish. $100 USD/ $700 HKD


Student Artwork Collection
L collection: large size, 11 x 15 inches. $40 USD/ $280 HKD each
M collection: medium size, 11 x 7.5 inches. $20 USD/ $140 HKD each
P collection: postcard size, mounted on colored cardboard, 6.5 x 10 inches. $10 USD/ $70 HKD each



All donations come with free gifts and a lot of good karma!

All prices listed are suggested donations. Shipping is approximately $2.50 USD, $20 HKD. Personal delivery or pick-up at any of the HKES venues can be arranged upon request.

After donating via Paypal, please email your address and the name of the pieces you want to FlorenceOn@gmail.com, if you wish to receive any art pieces.

Example:

Amount Donated: $85 USD

Email contents:

Mailing Address:
John Smith
123 Forest Road
Los Angeles, CA 90210
USA

Art pieces desired:
1. L03
2. M42
3. "Neighbors, Florence On"
4. "Cambodian Dawn, Michael Jaung"

Emails will be replied to within 24 hours of receipt.

Thanks!

- Florence

Hong Kong Exhibition Series

After spending 8 weeks as a science and English teacher at the Parami School in Mae Sot, Thailand, Florence travels to Hong Kong to fundraise for the completion of Parami School's new campus.

Parami School is facing eviction from its old campus, pending sale of the property. There are currently no funds available for the completion of the new campus.

The Global Art Exhibit's Hong Kong Exhibition Series is for the benefit of the Parami Learning Centre. The minimum target is to raise $12,000 HKD ($1,700 USD) to finance construction of a road for the school. The desired target is to raise $40,000 HKD ($5,000 USD) to finance both a road and a girl's dormitory.

Over 250 unique art pieces are available for sale. All pieces were donated for the express purpose of this exhibition, and will not be reproduced. Student and professional artwork will be on display at the following venues:


Olio's Restaurant
G/F, 21 Wing Wo Street
Central, Hong Kong
Wall display, Monday Aug 17 - Friday Aug 21

Theatre Hair Salon
1/F Radio City (up elevator to Floor 1)
505 Hennessy Road
Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Wall display, Monday Aug 17 - Thursday Aug 27

DYMK
16 Arbuthnot Road
Central, Hong Kong
Wall display, Friday Aug 21 - Sat Aug 22
Happy Hour Special, 8pm - 10 pm both nights

__________
Aug 17.
The Hong Kong Exhibition Series begins today! Original student artwork and professional photographs are now on display at Olio's Restaurant (G/F 21 Wing Wo St.) and the Theatre Hair Salon (1/F Radio City, 505 Hennessy Road, next to Sogo)

Today's photography displays include works from
Liz Branham
Shang Chen
Rex Dillon
Michael Jaung
Christopher Lee
Gita Ramamurti
Laura Saboie
and me, Florence On

More photographs will be put up tomorrow! Also, tomorrow afternoon, come and have a look at a gorgeous graphic art piece specially designed by Ron Kwok for this event. It's huge.





FYI:
Photographs are $140 to $200 HKD suggested donation each ($20 to $28 each, 1:7.06 exchange conversion).

Student artwork comes in three sizes:
Postcards $70 HKD, $10 USD
Medium: $140 HKD, $20 USD
Large: $280 HKD, $40 USD

Online catalogue coming soon!

All donations come with a free gift and a lot of good karma. Send me a message, call 6297-1327 (HK), or email FlorenceOn@gmail.com if you want to make a donation.

Interested donors, venues, and artists, please contact Florence at Florence@globalartexhibit.org or florenceon@gmail.com

Border runs and familiar faces

This is my non-resident pre-med adviser from Harvard College: his name is Chris Lee, and is currently working on policy development in response to HIV in the migrant population in Thailand. He is working in Bangkok for the International Organization for Migration this summer, and came to Mae Sot on Monday with his colleague Michael, who is working on a swine flu preparedness project. They came the Mae La refugee camps to gather field data, and I caught dinner with them at a local (and delicious!) seafood restaurant when they were still in town.

We talked about medical school (he is my pre-med advisor, after all), the merits versus drawbacks of summer research, neurobiology and nerve regeneration (my field of study), taking time off before medical school, MCATs, taking patient histories, advisers, summer funding, Korean crab preserved in chili and deliciousness, why Michael hates Beijing accents, the Master's in Public Health Program at Johns Hopkins, health policy research, practicing medicine, and everything else worth talking about when you meet you pre-med adviser half way around the world in the middle of the rainy season near the Thai-Burma border.

It's interesting how limited my memory span seems to be; for the last month, I've felt like I would be perfectly content to spend a good three or four years here, just teaching and living with the students, seeing them through high school and hopefully into college. When I am at school, I hardly have time to think of existing elsewhere on the planet, and at home, the recollection of school is but a faint dream...

I've been seriously considering staying here through the semester, but I was suddenly reminded of the cost of living here but a few days ago.


As I am a highly intelligent human being, I decided to not check up on visa requirements and related information until three days before my departure from the states. It turned out that the visa process had a turnaround rate of approximately 4 business days. I am therefore here on a one-month tourist visa, extendable by 15 days with each border crossing.


The Myanmar border is only about 20 minutes away by car, so on Wednesday I hopped onto the school truck headed over to the border. I walked across the bridge, was tailed by a very nice English-speaking interpreter name Kyaw Htun who offered me the services of a bike-taxi after I got through the Burmese customs, strolled around the street immediately leading into the bridge for a couple of minutes, then walked back to Thailand. It cost 500 Baht.

This is less than a visa, and the experience was interesting; I'll have to make another border run come July 29th, and was considering taking a day trip to Singapore until I realized there were no flights departing from the Mae Sot airport... Oh well. I'll just head over to Burma again.

The Great Bamboo Shoot Hunt

So today is the first day of "Buddhist Lent", which means a number of things, including:

1. No school on Tuesday and Wednesday, so Monday's class was quite the mess. All of the 8th graders decided not to bring their books to class, as they assumed there would be no classwork. There was a random visitor sleeping in my class and distracting the students, and no one was really paying attention. After my class, the kids watched two hours of Charlie Chaplain, then lunch, then campus cleanup and nearby-monastery cleanup.

Some lady at the monastery got to talking to the Thai teacher, and she asked if I could teach her kids English on the weekends for a month- not for salary, but a gift at the end. II think this is owing to the fact that I am a volunteer, but it was still awkward to hear) They went to Thai school, so would not be able to attend our regular English classes at Parami, and she did not make a reference to attending the teachers' classes Tuesday Thursday and Friday. Reluctant to give up my weekends with the kids, I refused...

Then we all headed back to campus and played two hours of football. I slipped in the mud in the first two minutes (mud is very difficult to run in) and spent the rest of the game trying harder not to fall rather than doing a decent job playing.

Pushed another truck out of the mud, showered, and spent three hours washing the mud (and a random strip of white gum) off my white shirt and black skirt.


2. Last night was the full moon, so I went to temple with the kids again. This time I purchased enough incense to go around, but forewent the orchid flowers. For some reason, the lady at the shop only took 3 Baht from me instead of 23 Baht for the packets of incense and candles, and insisted that I was "finished paying" as I tried to hand her the 20. It wasn't even a language barrier thing (Kyaw Eh, another teacher, and her husband were there too, explaining, and I think the lady just didn't want to take my money. Kyaw Eh had told her I was the English teacher a little earlier, I heard).

Anyway, there were 12 of us, and a lot more other people at the temple as well. I ran out of incense to distribute after the first little temple "deen" (or "dian4"- Chinese for the littler deity houses within the greater temple compound) and a monk comes up to me and starts talking... I ask a student to help interpret for me, and the monk figures out that I speak English, and he asks, "do you need more of this?" while pointing to a handful of packets of incense.

Actually, I did, and he gives me the incense, then comes back again with more than enough to distribute twice around to the children.

I also remembered to look up my day of birth- January 22, 1989 was a Sunday. Thank you, New York Times date citing methods! The Sunday Buddha gets his own special deen right next to the collective other-days-of-the-week Buddhas, and is standing surrounded by disciples. Good times.

I thanked Guan Yin, and on the way out, handed the rest of the incense left over. Theme of the evening: free incense for teachers! Thanks, karma!

3. Bamboo Shoot Gathering in the forest today! I was at first reluctant to go (Florence in forest = mosquitoes will feast! or so I thought), but upon hearing that everyone else would be there, I figured, well why the hell not? I would get bitten at school, in the house, on the road, etc. etc. anyway, so who cares if I collect a couple more in the forest? Shoot.

Luckily enough, the mosquitoes did NOT flock, thanks mostly to a fire built by the stream where we set up the bamboo stripping station. I tended to the fire at first because I had nothing to do (the guys with their boots and uncanny ability to walk in mud did the bamboo hunting, along with Ma Mon and Le Le Win), then after Htwee Nge explained that the smoke wards off the bugs, I fed the flames like my life depended on it. Of course, this leads to the fire burning out rather quickly. The teacher with the lighter was of course in the forest.

I hung out on a rock outcropping/mini waterfall/ledge in the stream thing with Htwee Nge and another female teacher from the high school, stripping bamboo shoots. The guys eventually came back full-force and helped us finish the mountains of shoots off, and then they went for a swim. Due to the phase of the moon, I did not partake in the swimming, which is a bummer. Oh well.

We hiked out back to the road to wait for the truck home, but Min Lwin and Kyaw Myint did not end up returning for us until an hour and a half later. In the meantime, I learned how to slingshot properly (almost), saw what a durian and beetlenut tree look like, found a Bodhi tree (yay Buddha!) and tried/failed to catch a couple of purplish gray butterflies.

We made a pitstop at the reservoir on the way back (was it for me to see? who knows), and then rolled on home. More laundry time.

4. Traditionally, this is the time when traveling monks are supposed to find some sort of sheltered place to stay for the next three months. As it is near the middle of the rainy season (in South and Southeast Asia), the monks stop traveling in order to avoid tramping on the farmers' budding crops, which they may be unable to see through the mud and rain.

Monks who already have a permanent-ish post are expected to continue to stay put and preach to lay followers. Lay followers are to practice the 8 Noble Truths, to refrain from excessive and inappropriate behaviors, and to meditate in temples.


So: Celebrate (in moderation)!

Rain and Technology

As it is the rainy season, it rains just about every day, and most days it will rain two or three times. Today, I woke up rather late (8 am; and I think my brain was unhappy from the 10 hours of snooze time…) spent the morning drawing in the pagoda with the boys, Thin Thin Nyunt and Au Gu Le. The girls left after a while, and I practiced my Burmese letters, then tried to draw the house.

I went with Ko Myo and Kyaw Eh to the restaurant right next to the house for a bowl of Cambodian noodle soup. Sneaky as they are, Ko Myo paid for the noodles as I was still eating, and Kyaw Eh bought us a bowl of papaya salad (shredded green papaya, beans, tomatoes, kale, and a LOT of chili + fish sauce poured on top). We were all sweating from the spiciness within a couple of bites, and I was very glad I had brought my water bottle.

Later, I found that I did not screw the cap back onto my Sigg properly, thus my phone had drowned. Great. (One day later, to my surprise, it started charging when I plugged it in- and then fried itself to death as more leftover moisture fogged the screen. Good going, Flo. Smart you are.)

Also, the internet doesn’t work well when it is raining. At least it isn’t hot, though. Maybe I should cheap out and pull a Skylar and simply not purchase a cell phone while here in Thailand, though I will probably need it for Hong Kong. Oh money. I guess that's what it's for, right? :(

Ko Myo also took an interest in typing, so I've been giving him mini typing lessons. Kyaw Eh is much more thorough when he practices typing though, and will type every line three or four times to make sure he has it down. I will have them hashing out 50 wpm before I'm gone, hopefully!

Lights out, music up

On Friday night, the power shut off around the house for about an hour. The blackout started some time after dinner, so around 7:40ish, then resumed at around 9. Summertime in California translates to roughly 9pm sunsets, but over here, the sunrises rather consistently at 6:00am and sets by 6:40 or 7pm. The luxuries of living at the equatorial line abound.

Anyway, Kyaw Eh and Ko Myo (two of my 3 eighth graders) usually do their homework out in the pagoda. By usually, of course, I mean that Kyaw Eh has been out here doing homework at night pretty much every weeknight since I’ve arrived, and since Ko Myo moved over to board at the old campus Tuesday, he has been joining Kyaw Eh outside. Which means it is no longer too awkward for me to come hang out in the pagoda too, since I don’t have to worry about intruding on Kyaw Eh’s “alone time”. Intruding on both of them is much easier.

Back to Friday- the boys were copying some Burmese text out of a book for homework, and I was too lazy to do any more lesson planning and not patient enough to wait for the internet to start working, either. I therefore took out the guitar I’ve been practicing with (restrung two days ago, with the help of KE, 90 Baht, and my bicycle) and was sitting rather lamely on one end of the bench while the kids hovered over the book closer to the other end. Just as I was lighting some incense to keep the mosquitoes away—lo and behold— the electricity shut out.
Someone came and asked me for the lighter, some candles went up, and the girls (who usually study inside the house) came out and joined us on the pagoda. Kyaw Eh, with all his determined work ethic, tried to continue copying his text by candlelight, but as I fidgeted awkwardly with the three chords I could hardly play, the cheery-faced kids asked me to sing something…

I botched up the words to some Chinese songs, did worse with the chords, and handed the guitar over. We ended up singing the rest of the night away by candlelight, and when the lights went back on, it was more fun to flip them off again to continue singing. Good times.

Ngoo chin de.

Do you know how with some people, you can pretty much perfectly pinpoint the moment that you two become friends?

Meet Kyaw Myint. He is one of the office staff, does not speak English very much, and is quite awesome. One night last week, I ran out of bug repellant (I had been using OFF! DEEP WOODS!, which meant that I smelled like poison and I still got mosquito bites all over the place), so I asked ML and Jasmine if they would be going to the market at some point the next day. ML tells me to go with Htwee Nge that night, as she is always looking for an excuse to get out of the house anyway. We end up at the local Tesco with A-Pu (Htwee Nge’s father), and after some poking around, I found a nice bug-repellant lotion that smelled like flowers, versus a second flower-smelling one that cost slightly more.

Upon returning home, Kyaw Myint helped me close the gate behind the truck. My student Kyaw Eh was also outside, and asked something vague along the lines of “what did you buy, teacher?” to which I replied, “Chin gai de. Seya-mat ngoo chin de.” Kyaw Myint laughs at this, and repeats “Ngoo chin de! Hahahah!”

With that simple phrase, a couple of mosquito bites and my desire to cry, we were suddenly friends. Joy!

The bug-repellant lotion has about the same effectiveness as the poison spray, meaning that I am averaging 3 to 4 new bites per day. In the beginning, I was bandaging the bites so I wouldn’t scratch. I ran out of band-aids rather quickly.

Sigh.

Ngoo chin de.

Movie Night

On the weekends when they are free, Min Lwin and Kyaw Myint will take a projector, laptop, and speakers over to the new campus for movie nights. I piled into the truck with the kids boarding at the old campus, we drove over, and after rearranging the mats and benches in one of the kindergarten classrooms, commenced to watch the Lion King with English subtitles. It was 8:40 at night, pitch black outside, and I was in no condition to stay awake after the Scar-playing-with-mouse scene. I foolishly reclined and pretty soon was dozing off to the amusement of the students.

Aye Chan Aung, one of the boarders who goes to the nearby high school, asked me to give her an English name. For some reason, I first thought of Isabelle, which would have been my name if it wasn’t Florence (I much prefer Florence. In retrospect, it was pretty thoughtless of me to try to give her my reject name.) She looked reluctant, so I suggested Elizabeth (after the queen!), but it seemed difficult for her to remember the name, which I took as a bad sign. By the time we got to the scene where Scar leads Simba into the dried canyon, I finally figured it out: Alice.

“What do you think?” I asked. She smiled and agreed that she liked it.

I checked out for most of the rest of the movie, collected a couple more mosquito bites, and came to in time for the credits. Nothing like the Lion King for some good weekend entertainment.

What day were you born?

So the kids took me to temple on Saturday evening after dinner. I had just finished a day of cooking, which seriously consisted of waking up around 5:40 to the birds and the dogs, going to market at 7, shopping around and hunting for prices until 11:00am, making lunch foods until 3ish, then after doing my laundry, I made dinner until 5:30, 6ish… lunch was fried rice and Kung Pao chicken, whilst dinner was sour soup with catfish. I had never spent so long cooking before. I would blame it on the unfamiliar terrain, but Thin Thin Nyunt, Aye Chan Aung, and Kyaw Eh helped me navigate the marketplace (btw, just bc the kids are locals doesn’t mean they know the prices of things. better to go with adults first to see what fair prices look like).

I spent maybe 300 Baht on the food, which took all 3 of us to carry back. I think I may have paid more than I should have for the durian (40 per kilo, so 80 for the thing), and everything else seemed fair upon We also got some gorgeous orchids for temple later that night, which were only 10 Baht per 7 stems.

But the food turned out well (miraculously), and even though it took ages, I was pretty content with spending my Saturday in the kitchen. Luckily, Htwee Nge came back in time to help me kill the fish for dinner, which she accomplished by taking the stone pestle and whacking their heads with it as they were still in the bag of water we got them in after purchase. I hoped that being vegetarian during the academic year would garner enough good karma for me such that fate would not be too angry with me for causing the downfall of these three catfish, and all the other animals I have eaten this summer at home and abroad…

After dinner, I got changed (and hoped the smell of death was not following me) and went with the students to the temple down the road. I put on a purple ta-meh (Karen traditional sarong-wrap), but some of the kids were pretty much already dressed in their pajamas, while the rest of them were in shorts. They told me there was no dress code, but I insisted that they not bring their shower towels along...

At the temple, there were shrines for Hindu and Muslims gods, along with the expected Buddhist ones. The kids asked me what day I was born, and I told them January 22, but they wanted the day of the week, which I did not know. I then called home (it was 5 am in California, I am a terrible child) and of course my dad and mom had no idea either. I will do the math when I am not so lazy, but as it is the era of technology, and I am more than likely to mess up the leap-year math, I will Google it some other time.

Note to self, and to travelers: know the day of the week of your birth, it’s useful for Buddhist prayers.

Burmese Hospitality

So I arrived here exactly one week ago from Bangkok. It was 5 in the morning, pitch black, raining like mad, and I was quite the hot mess by the time the bus pulled into the station. I called Mr. Min Lwin, the headmaster of the Parami Learning Centre, and he was rolling my suitcase into his truck bed within ten minutes.



When I arrived at his lovely house, which is also the nursery and kindergarten campus, a young boy in shorts and a rain jacket rolled the blue gates open (Kyaw Eh!) and took my backpack for me, whilst Min Lwin lugged my suitcase up the stairs. I was delighted to see that the stairs and top floor were completely made of hardwood, and everything was quite tidy. He then went into one of the rooms, and came out with a young teacher.

"This is July," ML tells me, "Do you mind-- share the room with her?"

Of course I didn't mind! So I went into the room with her (which is actually three times the size of my room - bigger than the master bedroom at home), and as we sit on the floor doing introductions, we find out that she is 30 whilst I am 20, so she points to me with her hand and says "Nee-mat", then points ot herself and says "A-mat".

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"Nee-mat is younger sister, a-mat is older sister," she says, with her lovely Burmese accent, where she speaks more towards the top front of her palate.

A few minutes later, after gathering my shower stuff (boy was I sticky), I tried to figure out the proper bathroom etiquette. Big tub of water, small tub of water, squatty potty, no TP, three plastic tubs of different sizes, green tiles on the floor, two water scoops. TP was not normally provided in China, either, so I was prepared for that. But how would I shower? The tubs were filled with clean water- I could not just step in- and where was the drain?

I asked July where the water goes. She said something about the hole and the toilet.

I spent the next hour or so washing in a big plastic tub, then laboriously scooping the soapy water into the toilet to drain. Later that day, I noticed a hole in the wall that served as a drain, located behind the toilet...

Anyway, I digress- I met Min Lwin's wife Htwee Nge (A-Mat, later Mat-Mat), Great-Grandmother (A-Poa), Grandfather (A Pu), Jasmine, and Kyaw Myint later that morning.

There is a banana-stalk and fish-paste noodle soup that they serve every morning with various condiments, which costs 5 Baht (about 15 cents American) for the students who come to eat, and also gets packaged into little plastic bags and delivered to parents who have ordered them. I can now rubber-band little plastic baggies of food like no other.

That night, I found a mosquito net set up for me, and July was not in the room by the time I went to be (all the lights were off everywhere else, too...). July was sleeping in another teacher's room, and when I asked her later about why, she said "so you can sleep well," with a big smile. I was riddled with guilt for kicking her out of her own room, and even more so when I realized I had the only mattress in the entire building (it's rather large- queen sized, I think, and firm).

The students stand at attention at the beginning of class, and say "Good Morning Teacher, How Are You Today." in unison and do not sit down until told to, then at the end of class, they all rise and say, "Thank You Teacher, See You Tomorrow (or Again), God Bless You." I've been wondering if I ought to ask them about the God part (I think most/all of them are Buddhist), but have not had the guts to bring up religion to the class yet. I guess religion is a touchy subject in the states, though probably not so tricky here.

If I am not fast enough, the students or the other teachers will bring me my lunch, and buy me special foreigner food (bread and butter for breakfast, with milk tea), and not let me help with the simple chores. However, with enough speed and sneakiness, I managed to assert my desire to do my share, with some success.

I made dinner for everyone Sunday evening- it was bun rieu, the Vietnamese noodle soup with a tomato broth, and I don't think that they trusted me to do a good job- they had 6 cups of rice cooked.

Htwee Nghe took out two tiny portions of clear rice vermicelli and asked me, "Is this enough?"

"Noodle soup," I said. "Where are the noodles? Of course that's not enough."

"Can we eat it with rice?" asks Jasmine.

"Umm... It won't taste as good. Didn't you say there were noodles, like the ones from the morning?"

"I think we ate them all yesterday. What if I eat it with half rice, half noodle?"

"NO! IT'S A NOODLE SOUP! NO! NO! NO!"

I never realized how offensive it is to have your culinary attempts questioned and nearly sabotaged. They went to get noodles as I finished preparing the soup with some of the kids peeling stuff away. Skylar, the Canadian volunteer, helped to shred some of the vegetables for the soup.

By the way, don't you worry about our little rice vs noodles spat. Jasmine, Htwee Nge and I got very close very quickly (I am Ne Mat -Li, little sister, since Day one-half, when I decided to try to learn Burmese), so we w ere smiling the whole time the goaded me, and as I threw my mock tantrum.

The noodles were a success. I love bun rieu! Sky is going to cook French food for us next Sunday, since he worked as a sous-c hef at a French restaurant for a year. I hope he is able to find cream and tarragon at the store and markets. It will be exciting!

Anyway, I wake up every morning at 5:20 or 5:30am, as the dogs howl starting at 4am. I do not have to teach tomorrow, but I should probably go to sleep. The students and the rest of the boarders wake up by 5:15am, and it is very difficult to sleep in the heat once the sun rises. And the dogs will howl.

Mingala a nya ba!