Friday, January 18, 2008

Rambo the movie

I'll be going inside to a camp of internally displaced persons in eastern b---- to conduct a malaria workshop. It's pretty close to the border, but it's also only 10 minutes away from three b---- army camps. And we have to cross the river accompanied by either the thai border police after greasing their palms (i think that's the term) or the ethnic armed group. Thousands of people fleeing their villages now live in this camp. There have been major military campaigns in northern k---- state, which has resulted in 6 of our program sites to cease operations. There is speculation that many more clinics and villages will become inoperable this coming year as the b---- army plans to push force a ceasefire with the k----. It's bizarre that my life parallels this ridiculous movie coming out, the same weekend I'm heading in. I will be incomunicado for about 9 days. Will write when back! Then i'm going up to chiang mai to see this movie for myself.


link to rottentomatoes RAMBO

LYCM!

Monday, January 14, 2008

Language lessons finally

I'm embarrassed to admit, but after so many years I've finally committed to learning urmese.
Today I learned how to read and write "the fat elder sister dances every night". MAMA WA NYA NYA KA. Easy, right? And I can also say "Really, I'm not lying!" TE GEH MA NYAAR BU! You're probably thinking that these phrases might not be the most practical, but you never know when these might come in handy for me. It's actually a really beautiful language to the ears, one that ranks high up there for me like the Dutch language. And like Korean, you have to memorize the different gender/age titles and conjugate the verbs according to who you are and to whom you are addressing. And although it's difficult to write the letters, I always get a kick out of looking at the words. Each character reminds me of people in different positions because there are a lot of circles and sticks. And then there's the character that...OK imagine a guy naked, lying supine, knees up and you're looking at him from down below, as if you're an ObGyn. Always get a kick out of that one... OK, back to practicing the script and working on some malaria data.