East is Relative

No Thanksgiving in small-town China

I had no formal Thanksgiving this year. Dinner in the cafeteria included potatoes, though, which sort of counts. And I told one of the Chinese teachers, who knew about Thanksgiving, that I was thankful for the opportunity to teach in China, especially as a woman traveling alone. Of course, the real point of Thanksgiving, for me, has always been spending time with my family. Frankly, for most holidays, I couldn’t care less what we’re celebrating, as long as it gives me an excuse to hang out with as many of my relatives as I can manage. The fact that I come from a blended family has always meant that any holiday has been a whirlwind of driving back and forth between various relatives’ houses; last Christmas, I celebrated at seven different places in less than 24 hours, including my best friend’s house, both of my parents’ houses (each place twice), and two of my grandparents’ houses. In the past, I have joked about (or complained about) the holiday rush brought about by this situation, but the truth is, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am the luckiest person I know – I can count off the top of my head at least 48 people that I see on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, all of whom I love and all of whom love me. These are not distant relatives that I’m talking about; they are all close family members who are dear to my heart, and I miss them a lot. As such, not having Thanksgiving was a serious loss. I didn’t really feel depressed, but I’m sure as it gets closer to Christmas, I will start to feel it.

To fend off this holiday sadness, I’m going to be planning a vacation. The foreign teachers are given Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off – this would be two Fridays off in a row, two three-day weekends. Unfortunately, you can’t really do much of anything in 3 days by way of traveling away from Shimen – most places are a full day on the train, and due to the bus and train schedules back from Changsha, the nearest hub, my return times are pretty limited. I’ve asked for the Monday-Thursday of the week in between the holidays off (as well as the Monday after New Year’s), and the school gave me permission today. I’m in the rough stages of planning to go to Changsha to meet some new people for Christmas, going to Chengdu for a few days by myself to test my hand at traveling alone in a nice big touristy city, heading to Hanzhong to see Laura for a day or two, before taking her with me to Xi’an to celebrate New Year’s and my birthday (January 2nd). And to make matters even better, Judy, another Buckland teacher who I got along with really well at orientation, shares my birthday, and lives near Xi’an. So we’ll be having a joint birthday celebration before I take off on January 3rd to return back to Shimen. Talk about a holiday trip! I was hoping to also grab a few other fellow Buckland teachers, Eric and Meghan, while I was in Chengdu, but Eric’s parents have changed their previous travel plans and will be visiting them over Christmas.

And once I get back to Shimen on January 4th, it’s only a month until my mom and stepdad arrive on February 5th in Beijing and we go on another crazy trip for the two weeks that they’ll be here. We’re planning on seeing Beijing, Xi’an, Suzhou, Nanjing, and Shanghai. Because we’re crazy.

On an unrelated note, my internet has again been in-and-out, due to both my Great Power-Save Initiative, and the installation of a new VPN that should give me greater access to websites. It’s been a rocky start, but I think I may have the thing working now.

Next time I sit down to the blog, in a few days, I’ll write about my current lessons; they’re going really well, and I’m quite proud of the idea I came up with for the rest of the term.