They say journals are good learning tools. I am documenting a few things I have learned from the past few weeks.
I am done with my fieldwork with a group of home-based women workers. They are highly skillful. They can create doormats, jewelry boxes, fashion accessories, and other crafts.
If you have a group of women who are senior and who practically know more than what you know, what else can you possibly contribute? So what we did we made a series of workshop with topics on gender and personal development. It was also one way for us to get to know them more as part of our community immersion. We at least tried to be creative and resourceful.
share your dreams with vision board
Lesson learned:
You do not have to “teach” so that others can learn.
We don’t develop people, people develop themselves (Julius Nyerere)
As cliché as this may sound but experience is the best teacher. There’s nothing like spending time with the community.
Skill/s gained:
How to think on your feet
What can be improved:
Let the hands do the work
Activities that keep your hands busy fosters better participation.
We did a gender sensitive training for kids. Gender and sexuality for kids? It’s quite heavy and serious themes for children but there’s always a child-friendly way to do it. We had three main activities. First, we asked the kids to draw body parts of boys and girls. And they had a nice sketch of body parts. Second, we let them categorize photos of toys or items according to gender. Third, we asked all them to draw specific jobs like doctor, teacher. It all boils down on three points:The only difference between boys and girls is their body parts. Boys and girls can like the same things. Girls can do what boys can do.
My group mates in Feminist Pedagogy
Skill/s gained: Patience! Haha
Kids are more challenging compared with adults because they show you that they’re bored or uninterested. There was one participant who did not want to do the drawing activity and when we asked him why, he just replied “
Tinatamad ako (I’m lazy)” That was brutally honest!
What can be improved:
On my end, I think what needs to be improved is time management. They have short attention span.
And have some extra kindness, fairness and friendliness
My professor in one of my MA classes asked us, ” What do you think about romantic love?” I said, “I think romantic love is overrated.”
I was bitter but I was able to validate my opinion when Nicholas Sparks just filed a divorce. It was the worst heartbreak ever. If swallowing more personal heartaches could save his marriage, I would just to keep that fantasy.
If I am going to use my feminist lens, I think romantic love is used to oppress women. In fact the romantic love we know characterized by euphoric feelings is too modern. This true love is that kind of love that is pushed by Victorian era. The bourgeois ensured their bloodline by picking one woman for one man. It makes women long for male validation. It makes the ideal kind of love unattainable, inaccessible. It makes love an achievement when it should be free. As stated by Janis Ian, love was meant for beauty queens.
My academic reading reflects real life drama
I don’t want people to think negatively about love but I am selling the principle of love in its basic and universal form. There are principles that are worth fighting for but the principle of love encompasses all principles that is good for humanity.
But what is love? My idea of love is theological and philosophical. They say love is a social construct. It means many things to many people. We are living in a world where we like to deconstruct ideas. But when someone tells you “I love you,” it’s one truth that you wish is absolute.
found this on my way to school
I look back at the book of 1st Corinthians 13 and other passages in the Bible that show love to figure out if I am loving. I have heard this many times. When I was a kid, I whispered, “Oh that’s no-brainer! Isn’t it natural for a human being to love?” But growing old, watching people come and go, gaining experiences, losing trust, I just come to a conclusion love is expensive. I discover that only a few people can love me that includes my mom and dad and that my capacity to love others is also limited. And I have no problem with that. Knowing that only a few people can truly love me sets the bar on how I love people.
What I’d like to highlight in 1st Corinthians 13: “It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” “Self-seeking” means that we should not try to seek what we will gain or benefit from people. We love for the purpose of loving alone. If you are counting the rewards and perks of gaining people to love, that is not true love.
Love does not keep records of wrongs. Love does not have quota for how many mistakes the other makes. You just love and forgive those who make. We love not to prove that we are better, more righteous, smarter than the other. We choose love not to please ourselves but to please others.
Nothing is written in the book that love is mutual. As what Shakespeare said, “Love is not love that bends with the remover.”
The most beautiful and most difficult in the biblical view of love is the principle of sacrifice. Love calls for a sacrifice. When soldiers put their lives at risk, that is love.
Photo from Michael V instagram
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. “ – John 15: 13
The way Christ demonstrates love……
Photo from: heiscomingblog.wordpress.com
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we laid down our lives for our brothers and sisters. “-1 John 3: 16
Love is expensive. Love is not as shallow as giving extra food, extra cash, extra time. Love is not giving what we have in excess. Because when it is just an extra of what we have, there is no sacrifice. In Mark 12: 41- 44, between the rich people who gave large amounts of money and a poor widow who only gave two small coins as offering, the poor widow has put more treasury than all others.
In the course of love, we make ourselves vulnerable. Christ made himself vulnerable. He became human and died for our sins. We love the unlovable. We love even our oppressors. We love the ugliest. We love the people who exploit us. I have to agree if people say that Christianity is a religion of death and martyrdom.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?– Matthew 5: 43- 48
It does not matter who we love but how we love matters.
When Jean Valjean was dying , he and Cosette in Les Miserables, sang : “To love another person is to see face of God” There are many religious people who are vigilant in criticizing others but they forget how to love.
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. “-1 John 4: 8
I will make your feet sore
You will receive many smiles.
But One will be the brightest
Maybe from a Thai, maybe from a farang
Wat Pho
We will take motor rides
in highways
in alleys
There is danger
But there is liberation
We will ride a tutuk
It will take us to many places
including a jewelry shop
And if they know you have no money
Just tell them I’m here
to find an engagement ring
Then I’ll pretend and say
“I change my mind”
Trust me,
It’s a scam
Grand Palace Photo by Rima Granali
If you want to have a sign from heaven,
ask for a bird to come near you
I will take you to the nearest park
and call a flock of pigeons to gather around you
Then..
I will ask you, Have you heard about the movie The King and I?
There’s a line, “Will you be my new romance?”
And I will point you to Grand Palace.
Grand Palace Photo by Rima Granali
We will travel along Chao Phraya River
we will survey the Old Bangkok
and notice it is a city of rainbow
where red, orange, yellow are alive
where the person next to you is pale
and your driver is made of bronze
We will visit Jim Thompson’s house
If you ask me if I want to live there
“No, I don’t want to live in the past.”
Jim Thompson’s House
If you want to cry but you just can’t
I will let you eat the spiciest food
If looking into the elephants’ eyes hurts you
Just look at me
and you will laugh
We will climb the highest temple
Wat Arun
We will climb all the temples of Ayutthaya
Photo by Rima Granali
We will never stop climbing
Photo by Ted Dy
until I hear you catching breath
Wat Phra Mahathat
There, we will wait for the sun to sink
for the ruins to be at peace
like scratches of pain healed
Wat Phra Mahathat
We will see ruins and say they make a beautiful disaster
Wat Phra Si Sanphet Photo by Rima Granali
We will smile at the camera without thinking that this sight
is a place where many have rebelled and died
we will not think at all
We will not be weary
even if our feet will tell us
even if our stomach will grumble
We will just be happy
