Shallow Trenches

In August 2005, I found a unique way to kill an hour in my parents’ basement.

Setting my digital camera on a tripod, I took a couple hundred pictures of a rock, a crumpled piece of tissue paper and a pair of metal scissors, which I later strung together into the very short (and soundless) stop animation film seen below:

To my surprise, this 19 second experiment has piqued the interest of my older elementary school students to such a degree that their websites, of which they had been exceedingly proud, became instantaneously passe.  And so two of my classes have begun creating storyboards for what are sure to become masterpieces rivaling the best cinema Tim Burton has ever produced.

Animating otherwise inanimate objects is a lot of fun.  (Secretly, or maybe not so secretly, I’m more impressed by the students planning to animate and anthropomorphize their food than those who plan to use Lego figures as stand-ins for live actors.)

Give it a try.  Here are some basic instructions for creating a stop animation short using the free Windows Movie Maker (as we plan to do).

First Baptist Christian School

Have I told you this story before?  The day after I returned to Canada following a year in Vietnam, I received an email asking if I’d be interested in teaching computers in the Cayman Islands.  I replied immediately.  I was interested.

Three days later I was interviewing for the position of IT administrator and computer teacher for both First Baptist Christian School and Montessori by the Sea. I accepted an offer the following day and began the rigorous process of applying for my Cayman Islands work permit (requiring police checks, HIV screening, references and more).

Amidst the hectic preparations I had little time to savor the flavor of the oft-repeated words I was forced to eat.  Despite my adamant insistence that I would never become a teacher, that’s exactly what I was becoming.

My parents took every opportunity they could to laugh at me.  For the most part I shrugged it off.

But here’s the part that would be even more embarrassing, were I the kind of person who was easily embarrassed: I’m actually enjoying it.  Yes, even when I have 22 kindergarten students in the computer lab, some crying, others clicking their computer mice incessantly and at random, with never fewer than half a dozen of them shouting my name at once.

In my classes (which range from kindergarten to grade 8), we’ve designed web pages, held team typing contests, ripped apart floppy disks, and will hopefully start making short stop-animation movies with digital cameras before Christmas break starts in just three weeks’ time.

Since Mr. Durksen is obviously my father’s name, my students call me Mr. Brent.  I find it’s a nice balance between informality and repect.

Today, the last Saturday of November, I set out in my recently-purchased kayak for a four mile trip along the coast near my house on Grand Cayman. Shirtless, slathered with sunscreen and already somewhat sore from yesterday’s inaugural launch, I headed for the harbour in George Town, the capital city of this 22-mile long island.

As I try to do from time to time, I reminded myself that I live beside the ocean in the Caribbean, and that I am still wearing shorts only four weeks before Christmas.

It’s hard to resist the urge to rub it in.  I seem to be failing here.

I have felt atypically productive in the last few days, knocking a few nagging items off my to-do list (finish writing report cards, renew my car’s expired registration, book my return flight to Cayman after Christmas).

While I’m in this productive mood, I thought I’d take a few moments on this hot, sunny Saturday morning in November to post some pictures from the last five months.

From Vietnam, Rachel, Anna and I returned to Pennsylvania for a bookend to our year.  MCC has all of its SALT volunteers return to the site of their orientation sessions for a re-entry conference (or dis-orientation session), to prepare us for the challenges of reentering our home communities.

A family reunion was next on the itinerary after I returned to Canada. This was my first time meeting my youngest nephew, and only the third time I had seen his older brother.

Despite having perhaps unrealistically high expectations for the reunion after spending a year away from my extended family, the week we spent together at a Christian resort in Ontario’s cottage country came remarkably close to meeting them.

Next up: photos of Cayman. But that post will have to wait; there are Pirates’ Week celebrations happening on the island today, and I intend to check them out. Perhaps even take some pictures.

My mother, among others, demands to know why I have stopped taking pictures.

A fair question.  The answer: I haven’t.

I feel I need to catch up here before I can move on.  After posting arguably my best photograph to my Flickr account, I have taken 2,384 pictures without uploading a single one.  It’s not that I haven’t taken anything worth showing; I have been too busy moving from Vietnam to Canada to the Cayman Islands to take another look at my final months in Asia.

In order to catch up to where I am now, I first need to close out my year in Vietnam.  One final collection of photos, hastily selected and lazily labeled, is now online for your perusal.  I promise the near future will bring Caribbean updates at least somewhat more regularly.

View the album: Goodnight Saigon

I am sitting on a bed inside a condominium on the Cayman Islands. Right now I am listening to the gusts of Hurricane Gustav blow belligerently against my shuttered window.  It’s night already, so even if I were to draw back the metal shutters, there would be little to see.  Still, I’m tempted to step outside to take some dramatic pictures.  The lights in the condo are flickering; I expect we’ll lose power shortly.

Another quick geography lesson may be in order. The Cayman Islands are situated 240 km south of Cuba, northwest of Jamaica.  The islands are best known for their two major industries: offshore banking, and tourism.  The sand is white, the ocean is clear, the SCUBA diving might be the best in the world.

But this is no vacation.  I’m here only five weeks after leaving Vietnam to start a new job.  Not in the financial sector, alas (those jobs tend to be lucrative), but in education.  I will be working for two private elementary schools – one Baptist, one Montessori – teaching information and communication technology (though I most often just say “computers”).

The relaxing “downtime” I had planned for August never came. I first heard about this job from a relative the same day I arrived back in Canada .  Three days later I was considering a job offer.  Three and a half weeks after that I had my work permit and was on a plane to George Town, Grand Cayman.  In between I made a trip to cottage country in Ontario for an extended family reunion, and a trip to Manitoba to sort out and dispose of the things I had left there before going to Vietnam. Doctor’s appointments, chest x-rays and blood tests somehow all managed to fit in around my travels, in time to file my work permit application with the Cayman government.

School starts in four days (it should be three, but school will stay closed Monday as we assess the damage from this hurricane), and I will be ready.  I expect teaching 16 classes a week to students from kindergarten to grade eight will be a breeze.

A breeze not unlike the one outside my window right now.

Does anybody remember the “song” Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) that filmmaker Baz Luhrmann unleashed on the world in 1999? A litany of advice to young people originally written by Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich, read by voice actor Lee Perry over a remix of Quindon Tarver’s “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”, it was undoubtedly the strangest thing to hit the radio that year.

In our end-of-term report to MCC, we are asked what advice we would give to a new volunteer coming to our assignment location. I had plenty. If you feel so inclined, put on your Romeo + Juliet soundtrack and read the list below aloud.

Don’t be afraid to say no to people who want free English lessons (there will be plenty), but don’t assume that everyone who wants to speak English with you is looking for free tutoring. Make friends. Buy a cheap cloth mask to protect your lungs in traffic.

Wear a helmet.

Respect their ancestors. Play sports. Learn enough Vietnamese to understand the logic behind illogical English. Don’t leave home without a raincoat.

In traffic, don’t look back, and stay away from buses. Forget what you were taught about how to cross the street: that doesn’t apply here.

Drink the coffee, it’s wonderful.

Don’t worry too much about food safety or hygiene. Don’t worry too much about anything. Use Skype to call family and friends. Try ruou can at least once. Sing. Learn one or two slang phrases in Vietnamese and use them judiciously.

Always give the benefit of the doubt to someone who is rude to you; what they are doing might not be rude to them. Don’t queue politely unless you have all day. Be generous with your personal space. Read good books. Drink lots of water. (Boil it first.)

Host visitors halfway through the year to rediscover the strangeness and excitement of your new home. Take pictures of motorbikes laden with live animals. Take videos of the traffic. Don’t show them to your parents until you’re back home.

Share your anger and frustration with other foreigners; help each other realize you’re being too harsh. Buy pirated DVDs. Scan your USB drive for viruses. If none are found, use better antivirus software.

Collect stories.

Consider your worst experiences to be your best stories and start laughing about them. Don’t assume your stories are interesting to others; tell them to your most critically honest friends first. Keep a blog. Write more often than I did, but don’t put off having fun out of an obligation to write. Bring a good pair of headphones.

Some of this advice might be useful, some might not. Some is obvious, some might not make sense until you’ve been here a while, and some you may decide is dead wrong. Take what you can use, ignore the rest, and enjoy the year.

Chuc may man!