Feature Photo: powerbooktrance Photo: giuvax

If you’re like me, you find yourself putting off everything you should be doing by reading translations of obscure Russian idioms or working out the subtle differences between various usages of cabrón.

You probably get giddy over new words. You lose yourself in fantasies of learning Portuguese…then Thai…then Swahili…You’re a sucker for languages, love the puzzles and the logic and cultural revelation behind them. Love extrapolating philosophies and perspectives from ‘em.

Since I am a massive language dork and a sucker for procrastination via language blog, I will enable your geeky habits and pass these language sites along to you. This is my culling from Bab.la’s list of the Top 100 Language Blogs of 2009, plus a few of my personal faves.

Photo: buenosaurus

1. The Linguist

I listen to this guy talk about language acquisition while I make chili. Seriously. If you ever wanted to be a linguist, or just longed to listen to one wax poetic on the internet, this is the site for you. There are videos and posts about everything from basic French grammar to how language learning is like drinking overflowing cups of sake.

2. The English Blog

Jeffrey Hill’s blog for English learners and teachers uses current news, videos, photos, and strange found gems from the internet to analyze and discuss English. Don’t let the learning-English aspect turn you off. You can find videos about cranberry growers in New England, violins in China and the making of Twitter Lit, plus links to language articles around the web.

3. Tofugu

Great for Japanese language and culture. Whether you’re paranoid about chopstick faux pas or you get a kick out of transitive and intransitive verbs, you’ll feel at home here. Offers snark and the basics of Katakana.

Photo: Pink Sherbet Photography

4. Omniglot Blog

Love the “mystery language” recordings (makes language seem strangely beautiful and detached from meaning) and the hodgepodge of interesting info, from Welsh words for “gruel” to cross-cultural terms for the moon.

5. Separated By A Common Language

Ever received that look of confused disgust when you call an aubergine an eggplant or a lift an elevator or a jumper a sweater, or vice versa? Oh, how I like nothing better than a dorkier than dorky conversation with a Brit about the difference between cookies and biscuits. This blog, run by an American linguist in the UK, explores all the finer differences between British and U.S versions of English.

6. Fluent In Three Months

Benny the Irish Polyglot’s site is helpful for unconventional language learning tips, like how to get rid of your English accent. (“Bone-jurrrr!” anyone?) While I’m skeptical that a foreigner can ever “become Brazilian,” as Benny attempted, I like some of his hints. He is very much of the get-out-there-and-talk-to-native-speakers and learn-by-travel philosophy and promotes this on the site. Good for people who find themselves spending most of the day gaping in confusion, starting from scratch with the language learning process in a foreign country.

7. The virtual linguist

Recent entries include a post on the origin and history of the word “merry” and an overview of new additions to the Oxford English Dictionary 2009. My favorite: “remembery: a written commemoration (now obsolete); a person’s memory, or the thing remembered.” Great for writers.

8.Mr. Verb

“Language Changes. Deal With It. Revel In It.” So reads Mr. Verb’s banner. Here you will find a linguistic slant on everything from Sarah Palin to Scandinavian dialects, plus an abundance of interesting links.

9. Lenguajero

A genius Spanish-English exchange site. The site offers users a chance to meet native English or Spanish speakers and practice speaking with them. It also allows users to write on a new topic everyday and have their writing reviewed by native speakers, and to create their own “smart flash cards” and review them.

10 .Wordia

I love Wordia. I mean seriously, I sink back into my chair, give up on finishing that tedious email, and click on definition after definition. This is what words should be, right? Individual to each person, tied to distinct personalities. Addictive.

China doesn’t hesitate to crack down. Photos by Richard.Fisher.

A British man who was caught smuggling a suitcase of heroin into China was put to death this morning. The British government reacted with vigorous condemnation, while the Chinese defended their right to apply the law.

While many Western democracies have given up the death penalty, China executed at least 1,718 people in 2008, by far the most in the world.

Whatever your feelings on the morality of the death penalty, the biggest story here is China’s increasing tendency to tell the West to piss off when it comes to their domestic policies.

No matter how loudly Britain howled, the Chinese were never going to bend the rules for a drug smuggler. Chinese determination to resist foreign pressure has serious implications for global attempts to deal with all sorts of pressing issues…like climate change.

What do you think about China’s stubbornness in the face of foreign outrage? Please leave a comment below!

Feature Photo: roland Photo: jensen_chua

Coming to Korea as a vegetarian is a little like going to Nashville if you hate country music. There’s not a lot that’s going to interest you. More omnivorous folk will enjoy Korean barbecue (galbi) and an astounding array of seafood. But vegetarians (in particular vegans) will have a much harder time of it.

For those who can compromise a bit (by, say, picking the pork out of their rice ball) Korea won’t be so daunting. But if you’re more committed to your salad diet, it’s not going to be easy. There are three main problems for vegetarians in South Korea.

Ignorance.

Photo: anja_johnson

There is no word in Korean for vegetarian and the concept is often quite foreign to Koreans. Even my employer, who lived abroad for years and knows what a vegetarian is, will cheerfully offer me fish, chicken, spam, or tuna and is always quite surprised and sad when I turn it down.

Restaurants rarely make provisions for vegetarians, and special orders are not accepted. This is different in foreign friendly and ethnic restaurants, but the vast majority of restaurants here feature the same menu, the same interior, and seemingly the same adjumma (married woman) waiting at the door.

The Sheer Prevalence of Meat.

Every meal here, nearly, features some part of an animal. (Often a part of an animal that is quite surprising to Westerners). Even Kimchi, fermented cabbage, is so frequently made with shrimp or fish sauce that it’s off-limits. Soups and broths will have everything from chicken stock to floating fish heads.

Photo: anja_johnson

You can apparently find vegetarian kimbap, (sushi) but it’s not easy (I haven’t actually found it in 10 months). Even rice isn’t quite so safe–it too is often enhanced with small shrimp. The one true veggie-friendly dish is bibimbap, a mixture of rice, vegetables, and chili sauce. Vegans though will have to ditch the egg and sometimes it has ground beef.

Culture.

The language barrier is, if not insurmountable, a real challenge. Koreans are not as used to hearing broken Korean, and communication can be haphazard at best. Harder still is the Korean custom that you eat what is given to you. There is no such thing as “hold the onions” or “can I get tofu instead of cheese?”

This is by and large not culturally permissible here, most particularly in Korean restaurants.

Photo: anja_johnson

Those three challenges are foreboding, to be sure. But there are also three corresponding things you can do to surmount these obstacles.

Cook.

Cooking for yourself is fun, and the pluses are obvious. It’s cheaper, you get exactly what you want, and you know what you’re eating. Find an E-Mart or Homeplus and you can stock up on staples like rice, pasta, produce, marinara, chips, salsa, peanut butter and jelly, soy milk, and baked beans.

A problem with this is that you can’t read the ingredients on anything, and so things like instant noodles or really any pre-packaged food are out. Something else to keep in mind is that there is a high probability that you will not have an oven, so be prepared to take a year off from baking.

Photo: anja_johnson

Also, make sure you check the expiration date–they will sell things a year or two past here. Nonetheless, it’s quite easy, affordable, and pleasant here to cook up some pasta or stir fries.

Explore.

Ever so slowly, the numbers of veggie friendly places are increasing. You can get really good soy cream at a scattering of Soy Delicious outlets throughout Seoul. The artsy district of Insadong has vegetarian restaurants, though I find them to be expensive and not all that nice.

Also in Seoul, there’s a vegan bakery in Mok-dong and a vegan restaurant in Sinchon that sells everything from veggie burgers to mandu (Korean Dumplings). The restaurant also sells mock-meats, vegan bread, vegan ramen, and other goods that you can take home. Itaewon, famous for its rowdy nightlife, has half a dozen Indian buffets and a foreign food market where you can find lentils, chickpeas, oatmeal, and extremely frostbitten tempeh.

Embrace Pringles.

To be honest, you will probably be hungry a lot. If not either at home or one of the foreigner friendly zones, finding something you know is vegetarian is often not possible. You can usually find fruit for sale on roadside trucks, and occasionally 7-11 will sell yubu (Korea’s answer to inari) but often you may end up with a best-case scenario of snickers or potato chips.

If you can plan ahead and bring food, this will be best, but it’s often difficult to always be prepared.

Finding food you can eat as a vegetarian may be one of the biggest challenges of your time in Korea. But there are options out there if you’re willing to put in the extra effort.

Photo by jrkester. Feature photo by kalandrakas.

After teaching English in Japan with the JET Program for two years, I saved enough money to travel in Southeast Asia for over a year and launch my career in travel writing.

I lived rent free, didn’t work very hard and sent home about $1,500 per month. Since I got paid in yen, the dollar to yen exchange rate was important: most of the time it was around 110 yen to the dollar.

This morning, for old times sake, I checked the dollar to yen exchange rate and nearly jumped out of my chair. 90 yen to the dollar!? Damn!

Seems like English teachers in Japan must really be making bank these days….

Or not.

In a discussion forum on the popular Japan ex-pat website Big Daikon, a career English teacher recently posed the question:

Is the EFL Gravy Train Running Out of Steam?

Like most discussion on Big Daikon, the conversation is frank, crude and informative. For example, one poster writes:

It used to be that the unqualified teachers could make a living on a Nova salary, but it’s becoming increasingly harder to do that. Even if the salary isn’t so bad, I don’t think they keep teachers around as long anymore. The genki dipshit teaching circuit is not a stable industry anymore.

Destinations

Community Connection to Japan

The Big Daikon consensus – 127 posts and 1 colossal tangent later – seems to be that Japanese schools are a lot more particular these days about hiring qualified applicants for English teaching positions.

This is probably good news for Japanese students and for good English teachers – but bad news for ‘punks on a lark’ who spend their days in the teacher’s lounge posting on websites like Big Daikon.

Community Connection

The challenging job environment in Japan makes it important to do lots of research before applying for a teaching position. How to Get a Job Teaching in Japan lays out the basics and is chock full of quality links.

For general information, Matador’s focus page on Japan has a wealth of entertaining and informative articles about life in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Separate spheres. All photos by Irargerich

Last week my section of Cathay Pacific flight 882 from Hong Kong to Los Angeles was full of refugees from Myanmar, a nervous group of 39 men, women and children bundled up in winter coats, each clutching a plastic bag emblazoned with the logo of the International Organization for Migration.

During the long flight, the man next to me – an ethnic Chin – struggled with his in-flight entertainment system. Finally, he got a movie to play – a Beverly Hills 90210 sort of film, featuring wide-eyed blonds flirting with country club pool-boys and shopping on Rodeo Drive.

Fractured clouds

Watching the man watch an idealized vision of America as we cruised over the Aleutians, I thought about the the transition he would face adapting to life in the real America. How would he reconcile the gaps between expectations and reality?

He didn’t speak any English. He was going to the state of Washington.

No matter how well this particular Chin refugee dealt with the transition to life in America, he would have to adjust to being a foreigner in an unrelentingly foreign culture and environment.

The concept of ‘being foreign’ is central to the experience of travel, but mainstream travel media rarely seems to address it head on. The British magazine The Economist recently published a thoughtful meditation on being foreign. One line was especially resonant for me, as I thought about the refugees, exiles in a foreign land:

For the real exile, foreignness is not an adventure but a test of endurance.

We voluntary travelers are so fortunate, in so many ways.

Community Connection

For a look at the challenges the refugees overcame before getting on the plane to America, check out the article Waiting For Life to Begin in a Burmese Refugee Camp.

Clearly, refugees need a lot of support here in the States. Does anyone know how to help out? What nationalities are being resettled in your area? Please leave a comment below!

Wishing you peace, warmth and happiness, wherever you are in the world!

For last year’s Christmas thoughts from a war-torn part of Asia, check out Kachin Christmas: Finding Faith in Myanmar.

A local man examines the bombshell, now used as a prayer bell in rural Laos.

From 1964 to 1973, American bombers dropped over two million tons of bombs on rural areas of Laos, a fiery sideshow to the conflict in Vietnam. About 700 lbs of bombs were dropped for every man, woman and child in Laos.

Here’s a detail of the writing on the bomb.

Some of these bombs failed to detonate on impact but are still active, and continue to kill and maim civilians today.

Often, people are killed while trying to harvest scrap metal from the fallen bombs.

Bombshells are now used as flower pots, as boats and as stilts for traditional Lao homes. The prayer bell bombshell in the photos is located at a temple in rural Khammoune Province.

You can visit the temple on a trek in the Phu Hin Boun protected area.

For more information on the legacy of the secret bombing of Laos, check out COPE, a remarkable organization based in Vientiane.

Other good resources include the films Bomb Harvest and the fantastic (unreleased) documentary The CIA in Southeast Asia: The Most Secret Place on Earth.

Learning about the massive bombing of Laos was an transformational experience for me, and the inspiration for my American Manifesto.

Feature Photo: Lin Pernielle Photography Photo: arwen-abendstern

“You can’t bring that to the table here,” he said. My boyfriend wasn’t talking about forbidden fruit. He was pointing out my tendency to visibly (and sometimes audibly) wallow in negative emotions publicly. My habits are taboo in a country where negativity is frowned upon and open emotional expression of the depressing variety is kept to a minimum. I am in Thailand, after all- the Land of Smiles.

Negativity- particularly anger- is not openly expressed or even discussed in many Asian cultures. In Thailand, complaints about cold weather, discomfort or weariness, can be considered rude. You are to keep such complaints to yourself- if you are tired, go to sleep. Otherwise, it is polite to mention it in a joking, laughing manner.

Most offensive to Thais is the expression of anger. Arguing with your lover loudly and publicly, waving your hands, and generally losing your cool (and losing face) is considered barbaric and rude. This may be the single most important fact to learn about Thai culture, and yet it has taken me almost a year to really get it.

Photo: dolspics

I tend to lose myself in emotion and forget to refrain from a whole gamut of negative expressions- complaints, criticism, sarcasm, argumentative words, and sullen disassociation. This openness is not the result of a desire for attention or melodrama. Rather, I find it very difficult to put on a happy face in the company of others when I am feeling down.

Despite my persistent efforts to remind myself of what is culturally appropriate, unreserved expression of negative emotions is not an easy habit to break. Like all humans, I have been conditioned by many things. I come from a background where volatility and conflict was the norm. I still find it difficult to control the volume of my voice, even in the midst of a crowded restaurant.

So these challenges are a result of my personal history- genetics, family, and personal experiences. Yet I am by no means unique in my tendency to display emotions in forthright and even dramatic ways. Having lived with Americans (and Europeans) of varying backgrounds, I have observed a wide range of explicit emotional expressions. Slamming doors, shouting matches, and flying objects are frequent expressions of anger within my culture. Furthermore, it is not at all unusual for these behaviors to be acted out publicly.

Photo: Fran Ulloa

Many Americans are desensitized to aggression in its many forms- passive and active; mental, emotional, and physical; subtle and stated. Likewise, feelings of depression and despair are hardly censored. Of course these feelings are present in the life of any human being. Yet for many Americans it is incredibly normal and natural to express them in hyperbolic, dramatized ways.

In contrast, the Thais avoid conflict at all costs. Whether annoyed, embarrassed, or angry, they smile and chuckle. I’ve heard travelers describe the Thais as “happy stoners” or insinuate that they have no cares or worries. Nothing could be further from the truth. The seemingly carefree, cheerful, and accepting Thai attitude that so many tourists comment on is highly enforced through social, familial, and cultural conditioning.

This popular conception of the famous Thai smile neglects to specify that the Thais have many smiles. Far from uniform, each smile belies a different emotion or attitude.

I had heard this before, but it became truly clear when my boss was upset with me due to what seemed to be a miscommunication. I had not followed one of her “suggestions” for teaching my Creative Writing class, and had not dressed according to her taste (first I was too formal, then too casual). I believe her dislike of me also stemmed from the way my emotions were sometimes written all over my face when I came to work.

As we sat and talked in her office, I noticed how hard she was straining to smile. Her skin seemed so taught, the corners of her mouth ready to wilt at any moment. Her voice took on a scarily unnatural tone of politeness. As it became clear to me just how pervasive the smile was within Thai culture, I began to think of the different smiles I could remember.

Photo: AlphaTangoBravo

There’s the “I am ripping you off” smile, the “thanks for stepping on my shoes” smile, the smile concealing smoldering and utterly repressed anger. There’s the smug smile, the smile of the superior, the sexy smile, the embarrassed smile (followed by a coy giggle) and of course, the smile of genuine kindness and goodwill.

In Thailand, will you be smiled at by a Nurse while standing in the hospital waiting room in agony. A smile is the standard expression for every emotion, yet it is not difficult to detect the real, underlying emotion driving it.

According to many scientists, all humans share the same basic emotions . The concept of the universality of human emotion was first explored by Darwin in his work “The Expression of Emotions in Humans and Animals”. He theorized that emotions were biologically based and had an adaptive value.

Currently, evolutionary biologists and psychologists tend to agree that human emotion and facial expression of emotions lean towards universality. It is what anthropologists term “cultural display rules” that determine what is expressed behind closed doors and what is a socially appropriate expression.

Photo: lisa_at_home2002

Cultural display rules are enforced by pressure from all levels of society. As part of a collective culture, Thais are generally under pressure to suppress feelings of negativity and anger. Unlike individualistic cultures like that of the U.S., in which emotions are perceived as highly individual, in Thai culture feelings are seen to be entirely linked and interconnected with those of others. This accounts for the disgust and feelings of offense aroused when Thais are subjected to someone else’s negativity.

Knowing this makes it just a little easier to smile when I feel like screaming. I have slowly begun to step outside my cultural bubble to begin to understand- and respect- these cultural differences in emotional expression.

My journey for peacefulness began when I met Nick, early Friday morning on a dirt path outside the travel lodge.

He stood alongside the tuk tuk, quietly chatting with three other guides who would accompany us on our two day trek through the Tham Panchan cave in central Laos. Wearing a neon t-shirt, board shorts, and a leather cap he looked like a nineteen-year-old Lao version of Paul McCartney.

A bombshell is used as a prayer bell at a temple in Laos.

About an hour later we walked on a narrow dirt path, passing through jungle and open fields toward an expansive horizon serrated by magnificent limestone formations.

It did not take long for conversations to sprout and soon our American voices were noisy enough to drone out even the ubiquitous, high-pitched whine of the cicadas.

I walked alongside Nick and practiced a little bit of Lao as he fluently spoke English.

He occasionally pointed out which trees, flowers, and insects were poisonous, but mostly we spoke about our families: what our parents do for a living (“Po het nyang?”) and the ages of our siblings (“Lao annu jack bee?”).

After my repertoire of conversational Lao was exhausted our conversation turned to Nick’s Buddhist faith.

“It is all about peacefulness,” he told me.

“Every day, when I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed at night, I focus on my breathing for fifteen minutes. This makes me peaceful.”

I have attempted meditation in the past. More often than not, I am unsuccessful.

Sometimes I fall asleep, but usually I find myself forming mental checklists of tasks to be completed. Or I think about past conversations, turning words over and over in my mind, agonizing over what I should have said or done.

My mind becomes stuck in either the past or the future. And once I’ve reached this point, I simply cannot stay still.

Trekking through rural Khammoune province, Laos.

As we walked out of the jungle and into the fields, I asked Nick if he ever has difficulty staying focused.

He paused before answering my question. With each step we took, moth-like insects fluttered from the prickly grass.

“It must be hard in America,” he said. “There is so much noise.”

Indeed, there is. Day to day life back home is driven by a “places to go people to meet” mentality – cars honking, people shouting, alarms beeping – all fostering feelings of impatience, intolerance, and isolation.

We dwell in our own spheres of self-importance and find ourselves disconnected from the natural world and from each other.

I had to remind myself: I am in Laos. I closed my eyes and listened.

I heard my own footsteps upon the dry earth. I heard a twig snap as an animal moved through the brush. I heard the intertwined chirping of birds and insects.

But mostly, I heard the overpowering sound of the group’s ceaseless chatting, a disconnected stream of conversations, most of which concerned American pop culture.

We were bringing our noisiness to a place where it did not belong.

For the rest of the day, I listened.

We walked through caves that look like castles and swam in lagoons with water bluer than the cleanest pool at the most prestigious country club in all of the United States.

Cooling off in a lagoon halfway through the trek.

By sundown, it dawned on me: I will pass through this earth only once.

I resolved to be a part of it.

Two days later I lay awestruck beneath the night sky. The dark blanket above was dusted with more shimmering stars than my eyes could possibly see.

Better yet, there were no cell phone towers, no blinking airplanes, and no satellite dishes.

I listened to the sound of silence and heard a splendid symphony: the intermittent chirping of insects, the gentle hush of the breeze, and the soft sigh of my breath as I exhaled.

Destinations

Community Connection to Laos

Breath in. Breath out.

I felt my body sink into the crevices of the ground, the dry grass no longer prickly.

Breath in, Breath out.

I focused on the infinite dark spaces between the stars.

Breath in. Breath out.

The sky was my blanket and the earth was my pillow.

I fell asleep, the palm of my left hand touching the earth while my right hand rested upon my heart.

Community Connection

The trek Anna writes about in this essay is described in the Matador article Trekking Central Laos.

You don’t have to go all the way to Laos in order to find peace. Check out The Importance of Quiet Time During Travel and 20 Basic, Fun, Sexy Resources for Beginning Meditators.

Both Anna Mack and Matador editor Tim Patterson were in Laos on the inaugural Mekong Semester gap-year program. For more on study abroad in Laos, check out Where There Be Dragons.

Feature Photo: star5112 Photo: aline salazar

Spanish fits me like a worn pair of jeans, whereas French makes me feel like I’m at a wedding in a freshly ironed dress, trying to stand up straight.

French feels confining. It’s about the aesthetically exquisite, the barely pronounced “s,” the impeccably executed “r.” Done well, the latter is a subtle feline purr. Done American-style, it’s a loogie struggling to come up. There’s just no room for error.

Ah, but Spanish encourages flexibility, improvisation. It’s all curves and individual style. It’s those jeans that love your hips and your ass, it’s a series of dance moves which can make even the most flat-accented gringo seem precious and endearing. It lets you take it for a ride, chilled out, adaptable, whereas French says – you will take me here, now, when I want, how I want. You fit me.

Spanish simply dovetails with my personality. For me, a cool, blue Latin American morning is synonymous with travel, and Spanish is synonymous with the joy of speaking another language. I love running in Mexico and seeing a beat-up pickup truck full of Santa Claus piñatas, and I love the way people at parades stop and offer me a swig from a bottle of mezcal. I love the way you can slide words around in Spanish, drop the pronouns, add -itos and -isisimos to exaggerate and emphasize.

Photo: pasotraspaso

In Spanish it feels like I can play, mixing my own language cocktails, and this is more than OK – it’s desirable. And from the very beginning, people are indulgent with these creations. You can make the world’s most undrinkable mix of triple sec and vodka and Kahlua and people will toast you for the effort.

“Hablas español!” the Ecuadorians said admiringly when I was still bumbling my way through the basics of “cómo estás” and sticking pronouns in all sorts of awkward places.

But also, I just like the sound of Spanish. The big potbellied “o” of gordo. The little scurrying feet of ahorita. The up-down lilt of ideal like the crest and fall of a wave. The mantra-esque sounds of mañana and lo que sea. The drawn out, three-step, melancholy fall of tristeza. The a’s and o’s that float at the end of words. And of course, the unbeatable r’s.

And you? What’s your language personality? What language fits you?