Found In Ceylon

So yesterday, I’m reviewing one of my students’ government-issued English textbooks and find this phrase in one of the graphics: “Damnation puppies! Adorable, for sale.”

But I’m just being picky. The English textbook is actually not too bad–it is replete with vibrant colors and innovative exercises. It just goes way over the heads of any Rohana student. Never mind about that.

School started last Tuesday, 2 January. Two kids showed up: Pasan and Ishara. I wasn’t too thrilled because I was hoping to treat Liz to the sight of a bustling deaf institute, not a showing of To Sir, With Love to kick off a teacher’s discussion. Of course, it didn’t help that the 3rd was a poya full moon holiday, which leads me to just wonder what was going through the Ministry of Education’s minds when they arranged the 2007 academic calendar.

It wasn’t much brighter the following Friday when the total number of students present finally broke into the double digits only because two of the day students decided to come…after school.

About half of the students returned by last Monday, 8 January, and now I think we’re at 75% capacity seven school days after the term began.

Actual classroom instruction has yet to reach the secondary department because we’re all trying to figure out a new system of arranging our classrooms. For time immemorial, the second floor had been divided by four-foot-tall partitions into grade-based rooms – Grade 6A, 6B, 7A, 7B…11A and 11B. The students would sit tight through all eight periods while the teachers (i.e. the Sinhala teacher, the science teacher) rotated among the classrooms.

Now we’re opting for a subject-based arrangement–a Sinhala room, a Maths room, a science room, a Buddhism room, and so on. This has presented interesting challenges because now every classroom has to be able to accommodate the largest class (as of press time, it was 7B with nine students but that is likely going to change). We do not have enough desks to accomplish this, nor do we have enough blackboards or teachers’ desks for the increased number of classrooms overall. Extras have been ordered and should come sometime this following three-day holiday weekend (Monday is Tamil Thai Pogal Day).

I have been assured that normal education will start again next Tuesday the 16th. Yeah, right.

Jill and Peter, two volunteers who devoted one year of their lives to the renovation of the Rohana Special School, are returning that very day, and I am reminded of this august occassion daily. The children have gotten so excited that I had to squash rumors that Sophie was also joining them or that they were coming back to stay for another year. I, for one, cannot wait to meet those two obviously wonderful persons.

Sadly, it’ll be just for half a day because I go up to Colombo that afternoon. No, I don’t love Colombo that much to visit it for the fifth time in as many weeks, but I’m catching a flight to Detroit of all places.

My cousin Harrison’s bar mitzvah is next week and I’ve made a point of not missing this one (or I won’t see another family one for at least fourteen years!). So I’ll be back on your hemisphere for a week, and then I return to Sri Lanka 25 January.

And I’ll stay put here in Matara until next June. This decision may have been taken lightly, but the truth is I feel like I haven’t been such a great teacher the last few months with my inexperience and the steep learning curve getting in the way. I’m looking forward to being a much more effective educator the next several months and really help the children make leaps in their English education (I truly believe that they will).

Four months in Sri Lanka really isn’t enough! I can’t wait to make this number turn into nine.

The children are, of course, delighted to hear that I’m staying, and tell me that I will absolutely love April and May which are chock-full of holidays. May, and the weeks leading up to Wesak Poya Day is like Christmas for the Sinhalese. Even the sign for May alludes to the string lights that blanket this island (for a few weeks I thought they meant fireflies, which sounded so cool).

I recently received a couple of letters and loved them so much (even the holiday card from my former employer) that I have posted my mailing address in the Contact Me page. Not a subtle hint, but the message does gets across, doesn’t it?

We’re sitting on our balcony at the Amaya Reef hotel in Hikkaduwa. I will warn you that the hotel’s website is a superb example of the manipulative power of photography, but the pool is really that pretty.

I think that it’s time to write a blog, so I grab Liz’s BlackBerry and ask her what the title of this blog should be.

“What about ‘Rule of Four?’” I suggest idly. She’s reading the Caldwell and Thomason book now after blazing through four other books during the past week and half. We did have a lot of down time in our van traveling among ruins and knee-and-calf-muscle-shattering mountains so our literary thirst were more than quenched.

“I miss college,” she says with a start. The Rule of Four takes place wholly within the environs of Princeton University so it’s bound to trigger nostalgia for those good ol’ Animal House days.

“I should have tried harder,” she adds.

“Me too,” I say. “I shouldn’t have gotten that C in Technical Writing.”

“Screw you. You graduated with high honors.”

“Highest honors,” I remind her. Then I tell her I will write exactly this exchange for the blog.

After she admonishes me for proclaiming her self-admonishing words to the world, she returns to her book.

Literature becomes reality and I think how great it is that we’re sitting together in a balcony overlooking the Indian Ocean, ready to greet the New Year (by the Christian reckoning; the Sinhalese and Tamil people celebrate theirs in April) in about seven hours.

No matter where you are in the world, I hope you are all doing the same, marking this occasion with the people you care most about. As long as that’s true, you’re at home.

Happy New Year!

Liz arrives tomorrow–sometime between 3:15 PM and 5:15 PM, depending on which website you check. I really cannot completely express how much I am looking forward to her visit. As remarkable as it may sound, she will be the first full-blooded American I will have seen in three months. But that’s not why I’m so excited (I could care less about nationality if it wasn’t for that stupid accent-lipreading issue).

I sorely want to talk to another person–if that person happens to be my bestest and lifelong friend, then, all the better–in my language without always trying to make myself understood. Whether it’s in spoken English or signed Sinhala, it gets exhausting after months and months. I imagine all the words boiling and bubbling and spilling out of myself as soon as I see her exit the long corridor at the passenger end of Bandaranaike International Airport (CMB for those of you who are avid aviators).

I’m so excited to show her off to the Pointe Sud crowd, to my deaf friends in Matara, to the Beach Inns, to the Rohana community, to Mr. Abeygunawardana the principal, to Thusarra my three-wheeler driver, to Indika my scuba diving instructor, to Duminda and Jamna the computer shop proprietors, to Rosy in the rebuilt tsunami village of Madiha West, and more. I cannot wait for them to be astonished at how alike we look and how cool it is to watch us furiously speak to each other in ASL.

I’m crying even as I type this–it’s overwhelming to even think about it. I really can’t wait to see Liz and travel a new country–a new side of the land I have grown to know and love the last three months–with her.

We will be visiting the following locations: Colombo, Matara, Kandy, Sigiriya, Polonnuwara, Pinnawela, Sri Pada (Adam’s Peak–read Jenny’s stirring account of her climb up the sacred peak), Nuwara Eliya, Galle, Hikkaduwa, and all the assorted sights within each location. Put Ambalangoda, Ratnapura and Yapahuwa on that list as optional locales if we’re feeling up for it. Some may notice the absence of Anuradhapura, but it’s pretty far north and I was told that the very ancient city is harder to appreciate when compared to the younger Polonnuwara.

It will be a grand trip!

My cochlear implant is broken. No, not the part inside my head–just the external, behind-the-ear processor. Luckily I think I’m getting a replacement next Thursday, couriered across two oceans by Liz, no less! It has caused a fair amount of self-questioning about my status as a deaf person–prompting me to write a blog for DeafDC.com.

Please read Deaf Identity, Interrupted. And despite the tone of this blog, I really am not a poor, tormented and hapless soul–I’m fine, really! My balance is definitely off, so navigating on the roads as a deaf, stumbling-over-myself person does make it a slightly more harrowing experience, so I’m sticking to the three-wheeler for now.