A Short Letter Home: Bashful

Friday, June 01, 2007

Bashful

One month to go--the countdown begins. Okay, in one sense, we already did. I didn't notice when exactly, but a while back when something annoying happened, we started muttering, "Just x more weeks." But that doesn't strike me as a proper countdown. A proper countdown, in this situation, would be in days. But we haven't started counting days at all. We're not eager to leave by any means.

But leave we must, and this is the month of farewell. If last year was any indication, it means a number of graduation parties or farewell dinners. The first one will be this Sunday and it's one I approach with a bit of trepidation. It will be the first time that we actually socialize with the street dancers.

I've mentioned the dancers before, the guys who danced on the street corner, back in the day, and eventually moved operations over to a local park. They bestowed membership tags upon us and we eventually settled into having a dance night once a week. Well, that's been about the extent of our relationship with them. Last year, we did try to trck down some of the music to which we danced and so brought some students along to talk to the dance leader. She gave us a list of song titles and also mentioned something about inviting us to dinner or a picnic or something. Nothing materialized, but that was okay. They continued to let us massacre their dances, and that was enough.

Time passed, new songs were added to the repertoire, so this year we again hired Gail to be our translator and asked for more song titles. This time we mentioned that we were heading back to the States for good and the dance leader definitely wanted to have a get together. Her exact idea was a bit unclear. She apparently wanted to have us get together with a small number of "good dancers", so we could dance and they could videotape the whole thing. What was unclear was whether the vid was for us to remember them by or for them to use to promote the group. It seems that our being regular participants in their dance circle has given them some face or something. When we pinned down the details, we discovered that there would be dancing and dinner.

So now we have a dinner party awaiting us and I'm nervous. I mean, I always have a great time dancing and I'm fascinated by this group. I have a zillion questions I'd love to ask them. But at the same time I know that when I sit down with one of them, I won't be able to articulate a single one of them. I don't want to come across as a fool to these folks I admire. (I had the same problem when I had an opportunity to chat with Eva Moon of Balkanarama. Once I got beyond "you guys are great," I didn't know what to say.) Of course, one of the advantages of being a lao wai is that people might think your foolishness is just a cultural difference. So maybe I might be able to pop out a question or two. We'll have to see what kind of nerve I can work up.