Peter Hessler's "River Town"

I just read this, a year after I started this blog and nearly a year since I last wrote in it. But I'm concentrating on my thesis now and have started reading and taking notes again. I'm not going to do as before and post after each chapter but I will just list all my notes here by page number.

Here goes:

I didn't start taking notes until page 70, but before then I can say i knew this was going to be good from the start. In the "Author's Note" he writes: "Rather than an inquiry into a source or a destination, this is an account of what it was like to spend two years in the heart of the great river's current."

I want to do things differently, to be sure. I want to tell more of the story - who were these volunteers before, during and after?

He also writes that this book is a mix of things he wrote in China and things written after. I think it workd for the most part, but after a while it seems random, in a distracting way. I will look to the things I wrote in Timor, but I think I will only use bits and pieces, ideas, really. I'm not that writer anymore.

p3 - He starts the book as his character approaches his site in a boat. Again, I want to start earlier.

p70 - he's trying to learn the language with "a vague goal of reading a newspaper." I had that same goal in my education office. I marked up the papers with stars and definitions.

p73 - he has a bad basketball experience playing with the faculty. I had a good soccer experience playing with the faculty (and with others). He loved running, as he was a runner, and I loved soccer, ditto.

p75 - he took language classes - we taught english to family (we didn't have a formal tutor but everyone we met taught us) and we did the english radio, with guitar accompaniment

p80 - local drinking traditions- TUA!

p93 - my one soccer game and the goal i scored vs his big race? The girls game we coached was one of my only real achievements (coaching the frisbee team was another)

p117 - he tells of the slow boat ride. our boat to Atauru was much different - fear

p135- Chinese 'gods' are politicians - like Timor's Xanana - godlike

p139 - friendships - Peter and Adam, me and Jay, Bek and Sarahs P and C. He doesn't go much into it but more than in any other PC Memoir. I plan to make relationships a theme.

p139 - he mentions speaking pidgin Chinese with Adam. WE did the same with tetun, putting an 's' to make something plural...

p140 - he began to wander around the city, go to the same places and he became friends with the owners. WE did the same with Loja Manufahi and Melki and Lius.

p149 - he took a trip alone up a river. we were always planning trips - biking the island, climbing the mountains - but we only got to climb to the base of Kablaki

p155 - Day of Pure Brightness like Santa Cruz Day and climbing Remelou

p165 - Sports Day (he ran, got sick and never ran again) - the games at Same, including our sideshow girls soccer match

p181 - portugal in SE Asia - Macau in China

p198 - touches on his religion - "I'm Catholic" - but only slightly. I want to talk more about my 'broken road'

p205 - ah, he talks about writing! He mentions how he takes notes during conversations and how he spends his morning at his writing desk. I very much like this, very much.

p238 - he says his chinese name, Ho Wei, was a new identity for him. Was it the same for us? Was I Maun Challes? Was Bek Mana Bekah?

p255 - we had two incomes - money went to rent, we had a problem changing 20s and had to buy in bulk - boxes of deho tuna, water bottles, supermei noodles

p294 - illnesses - he plays them down (even a busted eardrum). I will not play our illnesses down. They were a big part of the experience. I mean, healthy Americans getting sick all the time. I found a book that may provide insight - Hope Endures - about a nun who got sick and realized it wasn't worth it (she also worked in Timor after leaving and becoming a doctor)

p295 - "I no longer thought of myself as being alone." I never felt that, did I?

p297 - a little boy is scared of PH - our kids were not, except for the twins - oh, i loved the kids. i've got to include them.

p329 - his dad visits. our parents planned to. Jay's friend Lisa did...

p388 - "For two years I had never been bored." Well, damn. I was always bored.

p396 - as he concludes, "I had never had any idealistic illusions about my PC service in China..." That's amazing. Though I knew I wasn't going to save the world, I did, oh yes I did daydream about big things - rebuilding the soccer fields, making the map...