Riley Yuan

Yesterday, during the daytime, it was blazing hot. Today it is hot again and cloudless. But early this morning it was overcast and yesterday evening it rained for the first time since March. Not a heavy rain, but enough for the neighborhood to start steaming and the dirt alleyways to bloom with petrichor. It is mid-August as I write this. I have gotten most of the way through my first proper dry season in a part of the world where dry season exists. I am told that we still have another two mont...

Yesterday I received in the mail a copy of Scott Elledge's biography of E.B. White from a graduate student friend of mine at Berkeley who had found the volume at a used book sale. Actually, he texted at least a month ago to ask if I would be interested in having the book and it arrived here in Kupang at least two weeks ago, but I have simply been procrastinating. The day before yesterday, I finally mustered up the energy and initiative to go pick it up from school, where the package was being ...

The papaya tree in the alleyway outside my window, where my host family hangs their wet laundry to dry, is now nearly as tall as the neighbor's house. It appears to be still growing too—at the tip of its not-quite-wrist-thick trunk stands a confused cluster of miniature, celery-green branches and leaves, all of which are still tender and pointing straight up and in each other's way. It is especially this last quality—this density at the apex of new plant-growth—that creates the feeling of urgenc...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara School break is much shorter in Indonesia than in the United States. Technically, we only have the month of June and half of July off. But boredom sets on more quickly here. Locals seem to agree too, even without having the same standards of comparison as I have. I have been asked several times when I will be going back to work. "The middle of July," I say, "but who knows when classes will really start." They nod knowingly and invariably add, "Aduh, lama sekali" ("Wow...

Kupang's primary form of public transportation is the bemo. I know locals who have not ridden one since they were in grade school, having opted for the ubiquitous scooter as soon as they were old enough. Still, just as many depend on them to get around in a reasonably timely manner. The bemos thus ply a brisk, daily trade, transporting throughout the city people and goods, young and old, and, on occasion, unoffending animals. I once rode alongside a chicken who happened to be resting in the croo...

Kupang's primary form of public transportation is the bemo. I know locals who have not ridden one since they were in grade school, having opted for the ubiquitous scooter as soon as they were old enough. Still, just as many depend on them to get around in a reasonably timely manner. The bemos thus ply a brisk, daily trade, transporting throughout the city people and goods, young and old, and, on occasion, unoffending animals. I once rode alongside a chicken who happened to be resting in the croo...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara One morning several weeks ago, as I walked through the front gate at school, I noticed one of my students, Albert, loitering by some parked scooters about ten feet to my right. His class was starting in ten minutes. I was on my way to retrieve a whiteboard marker before going to it. I knew, however, the instant that I saw him, that he would not be there, and passed wordlessly by. Of the three boys in that class whose attendance on any given day is a toss-up, Albert i...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara I have spent the better part of the last three months trying to figure out how to accurately describe local school culture to an American audience—trying to think of some metaphor that will singlehandedly account for every class missed, ear twisted, uniform tucked, speech delivered, and empty hour wiled away in a breathless classroom at midday. It is hard to sum up. The school I work at is not like a poor, rural high school in America, transmigrated to the tropics. No...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara Since arriving in Indonesia, I have made a habit of asking my local counterparts about their underlying reasons and motivations for learning English. The answer is almost always that English is a "global language" and that knowing English makes one more "competitive." There is nothing at all confusing or ill-fitting about this answer in and of itself. But after hearing it so many times, it can start to sound canned. A few nights ago, over dinner, one of the other Engl...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara In high school, I asked a Vietnam veteran-turned writer who had come to speak if he had ever killed a man in battle. My teachers and classmates were aghast. I don't remember what the speaker's response was. But I do remember its tone—a little reproachful and mostly weary. The memory is mortifying and I have all but pushed it out of my mind. It did not even resurface last Fall, when I was reading Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried with my own sophomore English cla...

I tell people that I'm from Boston, but I actually grew up in the suburbs, thirty minutes outside of the city. And it's the suburbs that I involuntarily recall sights and smells from when I think of home. To most people the distinction is inconsequential. But when escaping that sheltered suburb and making it out in the "real" world has always been a point of honor, the distinction matters. I say "Boston" not only for the sake of convenience, but also because that is where I want to be from. I d...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara I tell people that I'm from Boston, but I actually grew up in the suburbs, thirty minutes outside of the city. And it's the suburbs that I involuntarily recall sights and smells from when I think of home. To most people the distinction is inconsequential. But when escaping that sheltered suburb and making it out in the "real" world has always been a point of honor, the distinction matters. I say "Boston" not only for the sake of convenience, but also because that is w...

Most students at SMAN 5 Kota Kupang live inside of the city. A few in the 11th and 12th grades are originally from small villages further inland, but have already moved in with relatives within the city boundaries. As of last year, the government has mandated that no public school student shall attend a school farther than 3km from his or her residence. The point, evidently, is to prevent overcrowding at "preferred" or "reputable" schools and to create a more equitable distribution of the studen...

It is nine o'clock at night and I am writing this from the desk by my bedroom window. Outside, "it is raining," as E.B. White once put it, "to beat the cars." Except that in my case, it is raining to beat my brand-new mountain bike, my host family's forlorn motorcycle, and our collective, corrugated-tin roof like a drum. (In a tropical country with a wet season, where motorcycles seem to outnumber cars by about five to one, people either vegetate indoors during a storm, or don a poncho and speed...

Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara This afternoon, Bapak Jon was changing the mandi water. We had all been using it for about a week and what was left in the tub before he started to empty it out was about a foot deep and very hard, with dirt, drowned mosquitoes, and other debris floating throughout. I would have happily bathed in it, just to escape the heat. But before I could do so, at around four o'clock, Bapak was at it with a bucket. I was sitting on the front porch at the time, reading, and proc...

This afternoon, Bapak John was changing the mandi water. We had all been using it for about a week and what was left in the tub before he started to empty it out was about a foot deep and very hard, with dirt, dead mosquitoes, and other debris floating throughout. I would have happily bathed in it, just to escape the heat. But before I could do so, at around four o'clock, Bapak was at it with a bucket. I was sitting on the front porch at the time, reading, and proceeded to watch him carry the w...

Kediri, East Java Brief remarks that my supervisors asked me to deliver to students at a local junior high school on the morning of Nov 26th—national Teachers’ Day in Indonesia. Today is Teachers’ Day in Indonesia. So this morning, I have been asked to say something to you about your teachers and who they are. Your teachers are many things. They are people who have to get up in the morning and get dressed and boil themselves an egg before they go to school. They are working people who must ...

Brief remarks that my supervisors asked me to deliver to students at a local junior high school on the morning of Nov 26th—national Teachers’ Day in Indonesia. Today is Teachers’ Day in Indonesia. So this morning, I have been asked to say something to you about your teachers and who they are. Your teachers are many things. They are people who have to get up in the morning and get dressed and boil themselves an egg before they go to school. They are working people who must earn a living and d...

In one week, my fellow Peace Corps trainees and I will “swear-in” as full-fledged Peace Corps volunteers and disperse throughout the provinces of East Java, West Java, and East Nusa Tenggara to begin our two years of service. I will deliver the following remarks at our swearing-in ceremony, translated into Bahasa Indonesia. A few weeks ago, the director of Peace Corps Indonesia introduced us to the acronym "EPIC." It stands for "empowerment," "protection," "integration," and "connection." And...

Boston, Massachusetts A fire truck rumbles down a cramped street in Chinatown and pulls up in front of an old brownstone. Its alarms have been sounding off all afternoon. The first and second floors are occupied by three different Thai-Vietnamese fusion eateries—Pho, Bahn Mi, bubble tea, etc. The upper floors are nondescript but probably consist of dingy apartment and office space. A few windows are boarded. A few more contain rusting AC units. A lone pigeon struts and bobs on a sill. In the ai...

Boston, Massachusetts A fire truck rumbles down a cramped street in Chinatown and pulls up in front of an old brownstone. Its alarms have been sounding off all afternoon. The first and second floors are occupied by three different Thai-Vietnamese fusion eateries—Pho, Bahn Mi, bubble tea, etc. The upper floors are nondescript but probably consist of dingy apartment and office space. A few windows are boarded. A few more contain rusting AC units. A lone pigeon struts and bobs on a sill. In the ai...

Putney, Vermont I like to be on the road. I have a strong sense of direction and decisive instincts. I scan signs, watch people, and walk quickly. Confusion is inevitable. Movement is key. It's the stopping, staring, and wringing your hands that makes you lost. As long as you move, you are getting closer. There is another benefit to being a little bit reckless and overconfident while traveling. Because it's counterintuitive and taxing on your instincts, it intensifies the pleasure and relief y...

South Hadley, Massachusetts At the beginning of my sophomore year of college, my parents moved from the suburbs of Boston, where we had spent my childhood years, to Chandler, Arizona, where they would be able to escape the New England winters and be closer to my father’s place of work. They drove our old van across the country in September of 2012, spent a few months settling in, and, naturally, invited me to stay with them in Arizona over Christmas break. The thought of keeping my disastrous F...

When my friends and family ask me to describe The Putney School, my current home and workplace, I sometimes brag that the “school doesn't just have a dairy farm—it is a dairy farm.” What I mean is, we don’t just keep a couple of cows to show off on admissions tours. Milk and English are equally important at Putney. And in order to graduate, students have to shovel dung in the cow barn for at least one full trimester, just like they have to take four years of English. Going to class in the morni...

During my senior spring at college, I was a teaching assistant for the Cornell Prison Education Program. My students were nine inmates at the medium-security, Cayuga Correctional Facility in Moravia, New York. Every Tuesday night at six o’clock, they would swagger into our classroom and guffaw: “Yo Mr. C! Riley! What the fuck was up with that story?” Then, they would spend the next three hours pounding both the texts and each other with such withering salvos of street smarts and home-grown intel...

The last of the summer volunteers had flown out in the morning. Scott, the cafe's owner, lived in another neighborhood of Cusco with his family. The two cooks had gone home for the day. So I spent the night of August 4th, 2013 alone in The Meeting Place. In a way, I’d already spent the whole summer trying to be left alone—trying to forget that I was failing classes and on academic probation. In June, I told my parents that I was getting straight A’s, and that was the last they heard from me for...

The last of the summer volunteers had flown out in the morning. Scott, the cafe's owner, lived in another neighborhood of Cusco with his family. The two cooks had gone home for the day. So I spent the night of August 4th, 2013 alone in The Meeting Place. In a way, I’d already spent the whole summer trying to be left alone—trying to forget that I was failing classes and on academic probation. In June, I told my parents that I was getting straight A’s, and that was the last they heard from me for...