East is Relative

Pushing my luck

I don’t know how this keeps happening. But I won’t question it. The school has scheduled Grade 1 exams for next week Monday and Tuesday. This would mean, given Christmas, that the only day I have to teach next week is Thursday (because Wednesday is already my day off). John, my fellow foreign teacher (or, as he says, “international teacher” because it sounds better), has offered to teach my Thursday classes next week, which means I will leave for vacation on Friday night or Saturday (that is, in two days), and travel for SIXTEEN DAYS until coming back on January 4th. This will result in, I believe, only 5 missed days of classes on my part (personal days which I won’t be paid for).

Of course, it isn’t all lucky. It gives me 2 days to plan, and unless the school can front me some of my December pay (I find out tomorrow if this is possible), I’m still stuck on my Y1900 budget that I’d saved for the 11-day trip over Christmas. Of course, I have access to my money at home, but I just sent home half of this month’s salary through Western Union, about a week ago. Unfortunate timing; I could have saved some of that money, too. But schedules are often changed last-minute in China, and hey, what else am I doing? I love having the ability to be flexible – I think when I get home it will be a little shock to get back into the every-minute-is-scheduled lifestyle I had. I like it that way, actually. I like having something to do all day long. Having only 12 scheduled hours a week (15 hours if you count the two 10-minute meals I have every day six days a week) is really boring.

Good thing I have all this travel to keep me occupied! I’ll probably be going back to Yangshuo; Buckland will put me up for free, so I’ll only be out the travel and food (and the billions of touristy things I’m sure I’m going to buy because that’s how I roll). I’ll be there until December 24th, and then I’ll head back to Changsha for my aforementioned Christmas plans. After that, it’s on to Hanzhong to pick up Laura on the way to Xi’an for the aforementioned New Year’s plans.

I thought about using the extra time to go to Chengdu or Wuhan or some other place I haven’t been yet, but I think Yangshuo will be a nice re-charge in the middle of what has already been a long winter (even though it hasn’t really been cold per se). I’ve just been sitting around Shimen, only leaving the school campus when it was absolutely necessary. Part of this is because it’s been rainy. Part of it is because it’s convenient to stay on campus – they serve three meals a day (two of which I eat – I can never get up for breakfast), and if I don’t walk out to the street, I won’t buy pop, so I’ve been almost entirely pop-free for two months. Just a can here and there. This is much different from my at-least-three-cans-of-Coke-a-day habit back home. Now I drink tea with leaves and flowers in it. I don’t know if I can go back to teabags after having flowers floating in my hot water.

Anyway, good thing I started packing early when I did laundry the other day! Off I go to plan!