East is Relative

I haven’t died…

…it’s just business as usual. Got through the holidays and all, and I’ve done the unthinkable. I’ve bought a place. Well, technically, my brother and I have bought a place. It’s a nice little two-bedroom condo in the same suburb I grew up in. I felt like it was more financially viable than renting and it was stupid to keep moving from place to place to place, especially since a teaching job is not looking very plausible in the near future.

The economy does suck. And the budget cuts from state services (including schools) suck as well. I’m lucky to have a job (and when I say *a* job, I mean the several jobs I’ve had since I returned from China). I started waiting tables in March when I got home. I got a temporary summer teaching job and moved to central IL for a few months, and transferred to a nearby branch of my restaurant and kept both jobs all summer. After that teaching job did not turn into a full-time regular-school-year job, I came back to the suburbs of Chicago and got a day job at my dad’s software company. This will hopefully become a full-time position soon (as I’m currently at 30 hours a week there).

For financial reasons, I’m still holding on to a second job, but after a few months of working 7 days a week almost every week, I decided I needed to figure something else out. I quit the restaurant and got a different part time (nights and Saturdays) job that gives me Sundays off. I finally have a weekend, something I haven’t had (barring China) in a long time.

Anyway, I’m settling for the time being. The teaching job hunt is still on, though I am absolutely not getting my hopes up for anything – that way lies madness. Last year I applied for 85 teaching jobs all over the country, got three interviews and walked away without a classroom. By the time I realized I’d have to settle for subbing, I didn’t want to look at another application, let alone fill one out.

I would really like to move on to the career phase of my life. I want to teach. I’m getting so frustrated with the career hunt; but as I said, I’m lucky enough to have a job or two, so I’m trying not to get discouraged, regardless. I’d really just like to get into a classroom, even for a few years, so I can apply at some international schools again.

The place that my brother and I have bought is not a long-term living situation by any means. Neither of us plans to stay here for the rest of our lives, or at least, we don’t plan to live together here for very long. We’re both in a financial position to buy the other one out, and we each have roommate options if we decide to rent out one of the bedrooms while the other moves away. Given that, this is actually a pretty flexible “permanent” living situation.

I don’t even mind staying in Illinois, if it means I can be making a living at my career. Fingers crossed on that. And if I can get a job teaching, I guarantee I’ll be spending my summers travelling everywhere I can. Within a year or two at my current jobs, I’ll be in a financially comfortable place. Given the typical rate of pay for teachers, I’d be in an even better position, so I shouldn’t have any trouble saving for trips.

Anyway, I’m trying not to think too much about it. I really do love our little condo and I think it’s a good baby step for both of us. We’re like Junior Homeowners, it’s kind of awesome.

Who knows where the future is headed? I just hope the education system turns around (though I’m in the worst damn state for it…)

The wanderlust

Last night I got in my car and drove around northern Illinois for three and a half hours. I ended up in Wisconsin, and accidentally stumbled upon Lake Geneva. When it was getting late, and I thought I might turn around and go home, I pulled into a bar parking lot on the spur of the moment and went in to have a drink. After the beer had been poured (but before I drank it, thankfully), I realized I didn’t have my debit card with me, so I thanked the bartender and apologized, and left. As I got to my car, half-embarrassed, half-exhilarated, I laughed loudly to myself. If any cops had been around, I would have gotten a breathalyzer for sure.

This drive was just what I needed. Lately, things haven’t been going according to plan. I’m not teaching, I’m not living in the city limits (rather, I live in the suburbs), I haven’t moved to Atlanta or Seattle or San Diego, and I haven’t been doing theatre. Not only that, but I’m in the middle of attempting to buy a condo (still in the suburbs), which is a big step, and can sometimes sound like a jail door.

As I laughed (a bit crazily) to myself last night, I felt a sense of comfort. What I’d really been missing was some kind of travel adventure. I missed getting on the back of a moped taxi with Aimee in Changsha, with the two of us holding on to all my luggage for dear life. I missed going out for jiao-zi in a bank parking lot at 2am in Xi’an and talking to the random late-night diners. I missed walking through street markets in every city I went to, eating lamb kebabs and dried fruit.

Getting in my car to drive and just going wherever the road took me was exactly what I needed to reasonably satisfy my wanderlust for the time being. Of course, I can’t waste a half tank of gas every day or week or month, but at least it was good to know I can get the feeling back, if only temporarily.

On another note entirely, here’s an ABC news video about teaching English in China; it’s not entirely accurate to the situation outside of the big cities, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/learning-english-china-12155885

This is via Two Americans in China, a blog written by two new Buckland teachers.

Missing pieces

After having been away from the blog for a long time, I just read the post I wrote a week after having returned home. I can’t believe I said, “I don’t really miss China.” I do miss China. A lot, actually. It comes on strong, at strange times. I miss the food, or I miss being on a train eating dried fruit, or I miss speaking Chinese (okay, I really miss speaking Chinese). I especially miss traveling. I’ve been home for two months, and given my in-China passage of time, I would have taken at least two or three trips by now. I’ve gone down to Bloomington-Normal (where I went to college), two hours away, a few times. And I had a teaching job interview 4 and a half hours away. And I took a train down to St. Louis. But given that I’ve been all those places before, it doesn’t really feel the same.

I miss being an outsider in a culture where I’m supposed to be an outsider. In China, I didn’t really have issues of self-esteem, and being cool or liked or fashionable on a daily basis wasn’t a concern. Of course, I spent a lot of my time alone and didn’t have many friends, but even that was alright. I liked being on a bus or a train and being alone with my thoughts while the other people carried on with their lives around me. My inability to understand the language made me a bystander by nature, but even if I’d understood Chinese, people were unlikely to talk directly to me. They stared, of course, but few directly addressed me (except in Tibet). If I wanted to be left alone, I would be left alone.

Of course, that’s not saying that people are bothering me here; but I am much more actively involved in daily goings-on in America than I was in China. I didn’t realize how much I would appreciate having no schedule or obligations until I came home and had to interact with other people’s schedules again.

It boils down to this: I spent my life from ages 5 to 27 getting increasingly busier and more involved. From 2000-2009, I was in various colleges, involved in classes, extracurricular programs, fundraisers, student organizations, majors, double-majors, minors, part-time side jobs and social activities. I was going non-stop. I had homework and side work and personal work and I was just so busy all the time.

I have always chalked it up to my own preferences; I say, “If I didn’t have something to do all the time, I’d go crazy.” And in China I complained about having nothing to do; but now I’m starting to think that was a knee-jerk reaction, and it was just me adjusting outside of my comfort zone. Since my return, I still haven’t been able to get myself back on a real schedule. I forget things. I missed an appointment (something that’s not happened in about 5 years). I keep misplacing lists. I can’t seem to get myself back on the schedule or rhythm that I had before I left. And I miss not having to be on a schedule. I miss being able to decide at the drop of a hat to go to Sha’anxi province on an overnight train.

I’m starting to feel like the decision to leave China was not the best one; I think I panicked and left. It’s okay that I did that. But I should acknowledge it for what it is. It was scary to be without a schedule or a plan from 7am to 10pm every day. And now that I’m back to social obligations and work obligations and family obligations and all obligations, things I always said I couldn’t do without, I’m finding that I really did enjoy not having them for awhile. I’m not saying I want to go off the grid and be a solitary nomad for life; I’m just saying that I should be taking advantage of it now.

I still don’t have a teaching job for the 2010-2011 school year, and I’m going to be applying abroad if I can find an international school. Unfortunately, many international schools require two years of teaching experience, so I might have to wait until I’m a littler further in my teaching career. Given the terrible state of teacher’s jobs right now, though, it may be easier to go abroad again in two years, especially if I get a job in a district that fires and re-hires first-year and second-year teachers to keep them off of tenure. It just means I have to get a teaching job, no matter what.

Either way, I want to go back to China, or to another country, and try again. I’m not homesick anymore; I’m abroadsick.

My trip by the numbers

I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, but haven’t got around to it. Here’s my China trip by the numbers, just as a point of interest:

Days spent in China: 201
Days spent on vacation: 75
Classes taught each week: 15
Hours of classroom time each week: 12
Students taught each week: 825
Number of days before I got used to spicy Hunan food: 4
Number of days before I started to prefer spicy Hunan food: 7
Cities visited: 13
Sleeper bus rides: 1
Plane rides: 7
Bus rides: 9
Train rides: 23
Highest ground altitude: 5079m
Total attempts to see Mao or his birthplace: 5
Successful attempts to see Mao or his birthplace: 0
Books read (including audiobooks): 13
Balls of yarn purchased: 80+
Balls of yarn lost (and then hand-delivered to me in Changsha): 8
Socks knit: 7
Stitches knit onto my sweater by a Chinese woman: approx. 100
Number of days I went before eating McDonald’s: 176
Number of times I ate McDonald’s after that: 20

Settling back in

Of course, everything’s the same and everything’s different. My niece is two years old now, and she has an awesome vocabulary. After we saw each other the first time, she remembered who I was and now shouts of, “Come on, Thea!” echo through the house, leading to a puzzle or a book or a fairy tent. I missed her quite a bit.

I don’t really miss China. I think I came back at the right time – I had an experience and squeezed the life out of it, and I left when it was over. I can always go back to China (and will always want to – there’s so much I didn’t get to see), but I did what I planned and I did it well. Maybe I’m still in shock-mode, though, we’ll see what happens.

Jet-lag has been a bit of a nightmare. I only slept 3 hours my first night home, and I’ve slept wonky since, sometimes taking naps, sometimes sleeping for 10 hours, sometimes only 4. I think I’m getting closer to normal sleeping hours, but I only got 5 last night. The real big change has been the diet. You don’t realize how much of a difference eating dairy makes until you’re not doing it. As soon as I can, I’m going to switch back to not eating dairy. I felt so much better in China (my friend Liu Fei said the same thing while we were there – she felt tons better just from what we were eating). I’m allowing myself a little indulgence time to enjoy things that remind me of home (I can’t believe I haven’t eaten Mac and Cheese yet, that’ll have to be remedied soon), but after that, I’m going to go back to a more-Chinese diet. I just ate so much better there. Less-processed food, fresher ingredients, no chemical additives (except pesticides, I’m sure, but you can’t barely escape that anywhere).

Now I’m in full-on job mode (or I would be, if I could get my computer to work and get all my paperwork back together and in one place). I’ve moved back into my grandfather’s house and unpacked several boxes; frankly, I’m hoping I’ll have to pack them back up soon, because that will mean I got a full-time job and an apartment of my own. I’m working on updating and fixing my resume and portfolio to prepare me for teaching interviews. This weekend, I’ll be traveling down to Normal to visit some friends, including a current teacher whose district is retiring 85 teachers next year, so I’ll be trying to do some networking and resume-dropping while I’m down there.

Other than that, it’s a matter of trying to get back into my rhythm. I always had a schedule and a rhythm while I was here; I definitely didn’t in China (classes were on a schedule of course, however variable, but they only accounted for 12 hours a week). I still don’t have a schedule here yet, and that part’s a little disconcerting. Of course, it’s only been a week, but even that feels like a long time.

I already got a summer job; the place I interned at during student teaching has asked me to be a camp counselor for their theatre camp this summer. It’s only minimum wage, but it’s 40 hours a week, and that’s more than I’ll get at an hourly job. Now I just have to find a way to make money until June 14th (when it starts), and still also apply to teaching jobs, possibly all over the country (I’m not limiting my search to Illinois). Let the career begin!

Home again

I arrived safely in Chicago yesterday and had some good deep-dish Chicago-style pizza with my dad, stepmom and brothers. Pretty awesome way to arrive in America, I’d say.

I’m still processing about everything. It was weird to get dimes back as change in the Seattle airport (the common Y1 coins in China are a lot heavier). It was weird to see people waiting to get on the airport tram until after everyone else had gotten off. It was weird to see people driving in the lines on the streets (when I picked up my car, I was worried I’d forget the rules of the road; I didn’t). Things are just…weird right now. As is to be expected. I’m going to go into full-on job hunt in the next few days. I need some serious cash to pay my credit card bill, student loan payment, car insurance, and cell phone bill. I’ll also be applying for teaching jobs for the 2010-2011 school year. Wish me luck on that. More news as I really start to interact with America again.

Also, Chengdu pictures have actually been added to the photos page; I had uploaded them to flickr, but didn’t put them in a set, so they weren’t showing up. Sorry for that. Also, all the videos I’ve taken (8 total) have been added to the “China Videos” set, as well as the set for the location where they were taken, so if you want to look at those, you can find them both places now. There are videos from Chengdu, Lhasa, Hanzhong, Yangshuo (the Return of the Laowai set), Changsha (the Round 2 set), and Shimen No. 1 Middle School. enjoy!

The deep breath…

…before the plunge.

Waiting in Beijing – surfing the internet. Can’t go see Mao’s preserved body tomorrow (as was the plan) because they’ve closed it for maintenance from 3/1 to 3/20. Blast.

Uploaded all the photos from Chengdu. Photos page is now up-to-date with all my photos. When I get home, I’ll upload the rest of my mom and Josh’s photos from our trip.

Now I just have to remember where I put the box with all my clothes in it…oy.

Lhasa

What can I say about Lhasa? I’m finding it very difficult to find the words.

People lied down in the motorcycle lanes on the streets to do prostrations on their way to Jokhang Temple and the Potala Palace. I saw a statue of the Buddha that some Tibetans aspire to see once in their lifetimes, and make great pilgrimages to see. I spoke in depth with our young Tibetan tour guide, who muttered Buddhist prayers as we entered temples and chapels, and fiddled with his cell phone headphones, unlike his elder counterparts, who all carried strands of 108 prayer beads to count their mantras. I was physically touched by several smiling Tibetans, who wanted nothing more than to say hello, or to tell me my bracelet was beautiful, or to shake my hand. I was greeted with, “Tashi delek,” by dozens of Buddhists who were swarming the temples and monasteries to celebrate the Tibetan New Year.

Part of me knows that I must be romanticizing Tibet, as is so common for Westerners. I can’t help it. I’ve posted up the pictures and I think for awhile I’ll just let them speak for themselves.

I took a 34-hour train from Xi’an to Lhasa, then a 44-hour train from Lhasa to Chengdu. I’ll start my real touristy-stuff for this city tomorrow. I went on a huge yarn crawl yesterday and bought my weight in wool (washable and other). I’m pretty excited about that. I think I just need a few days to process Lhasa before I really comment on it.

Major updates

Photos that I said I had uploaded before have now actually been updated. Sorry for the confusion.

I’ve updated my Location map to include the places I’ve been recently, and Suzhou and Shanghai, which apparently weren’t on there from my National Day trip.

I’ve updated my Destinations page to include a bunch of new places I want to see the next time I come to China (largely influenced by UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list).

I’ve updated my UNESCO Sites page to include the places I’ve been in China.

I’ve written a post at the lostlaowai.com blog called “The laowai relapse,” which recounts some of the craziness of having my parents visit China.

Lots of updates!

Arriving in Lhasa

That night, I still hadn’t received my ticket to Lhasa, and I was supposed to leave at 8:45am the next day, so I sort of panicked. I called the travel agent and she told me that they thought they had bought the tickets, but were wrong, and I’d either have to go a day late or take a train at 4am and transfer trains at a different city – they told me this at about 11pm. I was freaking out, pretty much, because the schedule until I leave China is pretty tight, and if I went a day late to Lhasa, everything would have been really screwed up, and I didn’t think 4 hours was enough time for me to decide to take this other train and have to make a middle-of-the-night train transfer. As I was weeping on the phone with the travel agent, though, she told me someone had bought me a ticket last minute. They bought me a soft sleeper instead of a hard sleeper, and the company covered the extra costs since it wasn’t my fault that there was a problem in the first place. What a relief. But I had to get to the train station earlier than I planned, because the train left at 6:51am, not 8:45am.

I slept really fitfully, because the food I’d had right before I went to bed was really spicy and didn’t agree with me, and I’d had a few beers, and the room was really overheated again. I was pretty much sick all night, but I made it out of the hostel in time to get to the train station with only a few minutes to wait to get on the train. I’m really not sure what I ate, because I was sharing a dish with my friend Rob, the bartender at the hostel, but it was home-cooked something. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but boy was it not. Once I was on the train, I was sick a few times in the bathroom, but I managed to get to sleep around 8am. I slept for most of the day and through the night, to wake up this morning feeling much better.

This particular train ride from Xi’an to Lhasa is about 34 hours, and we haven’t stopped very often. It was nice to just be able to sleep. I also started drinking a lot of water to try to help stave off altitude sickness, which is common for people traveling to Tibet, because the elevation is so high. Altitude sickness is essentially what happens when you don’t have enough oxygen to breathe. If you don’t take medicine to help relieve the symptoms of altitude sickness (which I didn’t because I didn’t have any medicine to take), you’re supposed to drink a lot of water to help your system process as much oxygen as possible. There are some oxygen tanks on the train (I saw one person using it earlier this morning), but I’m trying to avoid that – a lot of the things I’ve read say that if you use oxygen you’re just making it worse, so you should only do it in an emergency. Anyway, I’ve only had a few moments where I was short-of-breath, and I’ve had more water in the past 24 hours than I’ve had in the last 3 days. Other than that and some very mild nausea (but not actually getting sick), I’ve been alright. A few deep breaths also seems to help.

I arrived in Lhasa this afternoon around 4:30pm and met up with Donovan, Taylor and Sarah for a few days of exploring Tibet. Sarah’s been sick from the altitude, but Donovan and Taylor are fine. We’ll see how it works out, wish me luck. Touring starts tomorrow!