When We Leave and What We Leave For

So here’s the plan, as of November, 2007.  In about a year’s time Kathryn and I will take a CELTA course at International House, Portland; in early 2009 we will move abroad, and teach English for several years; while we are away I will write periodic installments in this online diary as a way of storing up experiences against the day when our memories really begin to give out.  It’s my determination (in this context a determination is stronger than an intention, but not as strong as a promise) to make some sort of meaningful entry every week or two, perhaps including photos as appropriate.

I should say a brief word here concerning the scope of topics I intend to address.  Simply put, I will here record things that would tickle me to read about if a friend of mine were living in an interesting country while I was still stuck at home on Bainbridge Island.  I will try to pick out those unique phenomena that really give a sense of place and make it clear that one isn’t in Kansas anymore, so to speak.  As much as possible, I will avoid things that can be found in travel books, though this intention may strain me some—good travel writers, after all, are also looking for evocative and unique phenomena.  But let me give an example of the type of thing I would write about.

            When I was in the army in the early 1990s we lived in Johannesberg, a tidy and attractive German village of perhaps 200 souls.  During our tenure there, a white caterer’s truck would pull up beside the farm across the road every Wednesday and Saturday morning and give two short toots on its horn.  At this signal, ladies would emerge from the various houses in our neighborhood, and would stroll out and congregate near the rear of the truck, smiling and swapping idle theories on the latest blood-curdling murder/suicide in the village.  Just kidding, of course, but they could have been saying such things—my German never was very good. 

 

In any event, the driver would soon lift the panel on the back flank of his truck and behold—here was a well-stocked bakery, warm and fragrant, with fresh, chewy breads and sweet, sticky buns right there at our sidewalk!  It was an ice-cream truck for grown-ups.  During our two years in that village the toot-toot of the bakery truck never failed to thrill me and cause me to think, “How amazing—fresh bread brought to my front door.  What a wonderful idea!  But why can’t they take the next logical step and start bringing around some of that superb beer they brew throughout the land?”

            So that’s the type of thing I hope to record.  What I hope not to record is the mundane events of day-to-day living that make most diaries such dull reading, e.g. “Rain today. Chicken curry for supper again last night, though not as hot and cumin-heavy as the curry we had last Wednesday.  Mr. Truong continues to make good progress with his participles—almost none are dangling anymore.”  Trust me: I shall have shot myself long before I begin inflicting that sort of thing on anyone.

            I don’t know that there will be much to post here before our departure in 2009—perhaps a few notes on our preparations to clear out, especially if something takes a turn for the disastrous.  But look for things to become considerably more lively in this space thereafter!
--originally posted 11/2007