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.

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!

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.

Shimen was not a good fit for me for several reasons. Buckland has offered me several other options for schools, but they seem to be bad fits for similar reasons to Shimen. Ultimately, I’m a city girl. I had a good time finding out about small-town China, but I feel that all I will accomplish in six more months is to realize that I really don’t like small towns. Especially small towns in which I don’t speak the language.

I love China. I love the language and the people and the cities and the small towns. I do not, however, love teaching EFL. I love teaching, but there’s a reason I didn’t minor in English…I hate English. There’s a reason I didn’t certify in lower grade levels…I have to be able to reason with my students (something that’s impossible with low-comprehension, low-participation Chinese students). The negatives outweigh the positives here.

I’ve also been extremely lucky in this term as far as travel opportunities. I have been to Shanghai, Suzhou, Changsha, Liuyang, Changde, Hanzhong, Xi’an, Yangshuo. When my mom and stepdad come to visit, we are going to Beijing, Nanjing, Huangshan, Harbin, and Xi’an. After they are gone, I will go to Lhasa and Chengdu. I will have been to almost every place I wanted to go in China in around 6 months. I have been so fortunate to have that opportunity.

For all these reasons (and of course, more), I have decided that after I travel this Spring Festival, my time in China is over. I don’t want to continue to teach EFL, and I’d much rather leave China while I still love the country than stay another six months and risk getting bitter.

I will be coming home to the US around March 4th (I haven’t thought far enough ahead to factor in the time-changes – I leave Beijing on March 3rd). I will, of course, keep you up to date about my travels with my parents, and my impressions of America and China once I’ve left the Middle Kingdom.

It is a bitter-sweet parting, but I think the decision I have made is for the best.

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!

I could not resist taking my picture with these girls. I was so happy to see Christmas decorations that I actually giggled out loud while I was looking for my bread. There were actually tons of Christmas decorations up – I want to know where they got them. But that’s the only place I’ve seen decorated for Christmas at all. I’m really sad that I’m missing all the Christmas stuff at home, but that’s why I’m going on vacation, right?

9 days until I leave on my vacation and I’m getting really excited. I kind of alternate on different days from being excited about my trip and depressed that it’s still kind of far off. I can’t even pack yet – I’m using my backpack for class this week. I’ll be meeting up with Matthew Muller of Pathology of Wanderlust fame in Changsha, and we’ll be taking a trip to Shaoshan, Mao’s birthplace, the day after Christmas. I’m really excited about that. Hopefully I’ll be able to get into the Hunan Provincial Museum on the morning of the 27th, but we’ll see. If not, I’m going through Changsha again to leave for Spring Festival, so I’ll have time then (and I have 7 days before my parents get into China, so I’ve got all the time in the world). Then it’s on to Chengdu (maybe) and Xi’an! I’m really excited about this whole thing.

This week I have been extremely lazy in class. Last week’s American music class started alright and then devolved into crazy students (as it does every week). This week, I was talking about movies, and with my first class, which is also my best-comprehension and best-participation class, I tried to do a fill-in-the-blank with movie vocab, like “camera” and “scenes” and “actor” and “extra”. Apparently, the clues were too difficult and they didn’t know about 2/3 of the vocabulary, so it was a total flop. I scrambled to get them and the class afterwards to describe the action of some movie clips we watched, but they weren’t getting it. I have thus devolved into letting them watch part of High School Musical for listening comprehension. I don’t feel so bad about this because so far, every class has seen the first 45 minutes in their other English class, so obviously their Chinese teachers are using this movie and technique as well! So we skip to the last part they saw and go from there. I think for my very last class we’ll finish watching the movie before I say goodbye.

- I high-fived a kid in my class today because of his answer. Students had to tell me in a complete sentence why they liked or did not like a song; he gave me three sentences. “I like Michael Jackson. This song reminds me of Michael Jackson. I like this song because it reminds me of Michael Jackson.” Hilariously, the song in question was Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” But A+ for the sentences and the logic train!

- I think I’ll be able to write at least two, if not three lesson plans tonight. These lesson plans associated with American culture are easy to write and intuitive, and so far the music lesson is going well.

- I think part of the problem with this situation is that I teach the same lesson 15 times. I’m sure that my attitude towards the lesson must go down after Tuesday or so, so Thursday and Friday are usually less successful. I’m not exactly sure how to combat that – I know I’m supposed to teach it like it’s brand new every time, but that’s very difficult. Hey, maybe that’s why I hate acting…

- I was told that in traditional Chinese medicine, oranges dry your lips out. I did, as a matter of fact, have serious chapped lips until about a week ago, after I finished the last oranges in my fridge. Hm.

- Christmas is coming. I listened to Christmas music while I did some of my work over the weekend. I will probably do that once a week. I never ever thought I would say this, but I miss hearing Christmas music blaring over the speakers in every building I enter for a solid two months.

- This should not be misinterpreted to read that I miss the cold, because I absolutely do not under any circumstances miss the cold. But it was strange listening to Christmas in December when it hasn’t really been brutally cold once. It’s been chilly some days (and it’s always cold in my apartment; the cement building can’t seem to warm up no matter how sunny it is), but it hasn’t been cold. And it really hasn’t snowed (except for a little drift overnight during a cold snap last month, and that was gone by lunch). Pair this climate with central heating, and I’d be set.

- I’ve been ripping through books and audiobooks lately. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and listened to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, and listened to the first two books of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (which I’ve read before, but it’s nice to listen to while I’m knitting – I forgot how much I miss that story). I’ll move on to the third book tonight after I finish lesson planning. I’ve also started the introduction (by Hayden Carruth) to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea. I don’t know much about the book, but I’ve always liked going into things blind. I know Sartre was an Existentialist and wrote a bunch of plays (which I haven’t read, shamefully), and I know this isn’t a play. Other than that, I’m going in without prior knowledge. Wish me luck.

- I’ve also been logging my book reading on goodreads.com, and I totally dig it. Check out my profile to see what else I’ve read or want to read in the future. You have to sign up for an account to see detailed info (and if you do sign up, add me as a friend!).

- I’ve become social network insane. I’ve been linking so many things to my facebook and myspace and twitter and tweetdeck and LinkedIn and goodreads and all that stuff that soon, I’m going to create a hole in the space-time continuum and the Department of Temporal Investigations will come after me.

- Bonus cookies if you get the nerd reference in the previous item.

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.

Here’s the bad news first. You will always be on display. You can’t walk down the street or across your own campus without people pointing, staring, giggling, shouting hello at you, following you around the store when you walk in, etc. You will feel like you are performing in the classroom instead of teaching. You will not be taken very seriously by the students or other teachers. If you want to teach, you won’t have the skills to communicate what you need to get across unless you are fluent in Chinese. The students will talk through your class and worse. Many times, even the Chinese teacher in the classroom will not make them stop. You may find yourself trying to shout over them just to teach a simple lesson. In my case, when I had to start shouting, I just stopped teaching. The Chinese teacher in your classroom may not know enough English to get your ideas across or directions for a game or assignment. So you not only dumb down the lessons, you have to get super creative with ways of presenting that they will understand easily. Even if they are capable of more, you can’t get it to them. And in your off time, the students will want your time or be in your personal space. If you are living on campus, this is especially true. I have had them open my windows and pull the curtain back and start saying “Hello” into my apartment. I have been pimped out to Chinese teacher’s friends to teach their kids English. I have been left to fend for myself for a week at a time with no knowledge of the town, the language or a phone.

The good news is I lived through it just fine. For all of the frustrating, irritating, lonely, disgusted, confused moments, there are just as many that are interesting, new, intriguing, fun, different, fulfilling, and challenging to compete with them. You can go down the same street everyday, and then all of the sudden, one day, out of nowhere there is a vendor selling suckers that he is making right before your eyes into animal shapes. You can decide to take a shortcut home through an alley you’ve never seen before, and there is a whole world going on back there you never even imagined. Vendors, shops, neighborhoods and people all the same as the ones you have been seeing and yet, somehow a little different. That alley has the fish swimming in a wading pool out front and the shop owners cutting them up for you to take with you. It has a row of old men outside on stools bent over little tables playing what looks like checkers but with large wooden discs. You can wander one block away from the main street one day where they have erected a monument to the West called KFC and find a bustling old world style market place. And if you venture even further past the city limits, you can experience the mountains, wildlife, history, and beauty, some of it reminding you of home and some of it only what you have ever seen in coffee table books.

You don’t rely on the same instincts or talents that you did back home. You discover you have new ones. Much of your old self just won’t apply here. You develop, learn about yourself, and hopefully, grow. You don’t follow your same old routines, but you start to develop new ones with what you have around you. You don’t think about the same old stuff, because there is so much new stuff to understand every time you walk out your door. You don’t get bent out of shape about the little things that bothered you before. There are new bigger things to get worked up about…or to try and understand and not get too worked up about. You will not be in control of most of what is happening simply because you have to rely on others to speak for you. They may not say what you want or need to be said. They may have other ideas, and in that case, those ideas will be articulated because it is their language to use freely.

It’s ridiculous to think you will be completely prepared for this experience unless you have already done it before. There may even be fundamental philosophies you hold about your life that may need to change to adapt to this new existence. An example of that in my own case is that I have had to stop bringing 110% of myself to the job like I always tried to do back home. It’s enough to do a little and to see almost no result. This is not about productivity and efficiency. This is not to say, I don’t try to give my best in the classroom, because I do. But, when the result is sadly off the mark, it does not mean more hours at the drawing board to make sure it works next time. It involves trust that the three ring circus I call a classroom full of kids are fine whether I get them to understand the words in my language or not.

It’s difficult to explain how you may feel or what you may encounter. You may need to look at it like a marriage, that for better or worse, you will stay with it. With this commitment, you are free to have bad days, so you can get through to the next day which may just be the most fascinating day of your life so far.

The only concrete concepts I can leave you with are these:

1} be more flexible than Gumby

2} be more open-minded than Buddha

3} be more prepared than a Boy Scout whenever possible

4} be more improvising than MacGyver

5} be more ready to be “on” than a film star

6} be more independent than a sparrow

7} be friendlier than Miss Congeniality

With all that said, you can also get ready to experience the world, other people, and yourself in a new way. Be prepared to feel more alive than you have in years. This is no pleasure trip for the meek and uncommitted. This is a real opportunity to be immersed in a culture you won’t understand and take for granted. It’s a chance to uncover hidden truths about you. It’s a time to explore and feel adventurous. The challenge of the job alone would be enough to reshape you. But there is more than the job to challenge your mind, body and senses everyday. It’s overwhelming and exhilarating at the same time. Take in what you can and then step away and process. Then jump right back out there tomorrow and do the same thing, because if you were at home, none of this would be a reality for you. So join this reality while you have the moment in time and then take it all back with you later. The good and the bad, the beauty and the filth, the frustration and elation will all be yours to keep forever.
Signing off with no regrets,
Laura, (Liu Fei)

October 27, 2009

The other foreign teacher, John, is also sick, and has it much worse than me.  He went to the hospital today for some “injections,” which is something all of our helper teachers keep encouraging me to do (at least three times a day they’ve been calling me – “Are you alright?  Maybe you should go to the medical center for injections.”).  This is not something that sounds enticing to me.  My friend Aimee says “injections” are usually just a saline wash to “clean” your blood – but I also know that the best cure for a flu is sleep and fluids, and since it’s been more than 2 days since the onset of symptoms, it’s not like medicine will do much anyway.

I’m not interested in going to the hospital unless I have no other choice.  This is pretty much the case in the US, too – I just hate going to the hospital.  I could do without the incessant phone calls checking in on my health, though.  I figure, as long as I still feel okay to teach (which I do – I taught 5 classes today without taking anything and I felt alright), then I’m fulfilling my contractual obligation, and nobody can force me to go to the hospital.  I wish I could get rid of the stuffy nose so I could pretend like I feel perfect, though, and get the The Foreign Teachers Are Sick Brigade off my back.  Nobody’s on the The Foreign Teachers Have No Social Lives Brigade, I notice.  Still no KTV for us.  Lame.

I’ve been using one particular format lately.  I pose some questions or a writing prompt.  The students have 10 minutes to write their thoughts, and I walk around the room to make sure they’re doing it – about 50% of students usually get a good written answer down, 25% get a little started, and 25% don’t do anything; I’m not giving them a grade, so I can’t really give them grief.  Then I give them 5 minutes to discuss their answers with 1 or 2 other students.  Then I ask the questions out loud and ask for volunteers to answer them – and suddenly, the brilliant writers and chatty conversationalists clam up and I’m stuck in a neverending cycle of dead silence.

I stare around the room at the tops of heads; everyone has put their nose to their desk and it’s suddenly like I don’t exist.  I have to tell you, I’d take my swearing, impolite American teachers to this silence any day.  I know that they are not used to speaking up in front of class, but we’ve been working on this for eight weeks now.  And the reason I have them write the answers first is so they don’t have to come up with the answers on the spot.  But apparently, having the words in front of them doesn’t help.  It seems like it’s only gotten worse.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to teach.  But it’s hard to feel like you’re teaching when the students stare at you (or away from you like if they can’t see you, you’ll go away) and refuse to respond.  This Halloween lesson uses music, a movie clip, and the kids getting out of their seats.  This is rare, because there are so many desks and piles of books in the classroom, there’s barely room for me to move around by myself and most of the aisles are too blocked for me to look at individual student work.  Even with all these changes to the usual M.O., however, I had a dead silent class again this morning.  I showed the “Nightmare Before Christmas” clip (with Chinese subtitles to help my low comprehension kids), and then asked, “So, after watching this, what do you think Halloween is about?”  Most of my other classes at least mumbled something like, “Scary things.”  This class just stared at me.

I’m sure I’ll figure something out, but I’m feeling like we’ve backslid a lot.  The novelty of having an American woman as their teacher has obviously worn off, and they’re losing interest.  We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.

I’m well aware that the school has no control over this; China is notoriously power-deprived (despite the Three Gorges Dam).  But that doesn’t make it any less taxing to stare at the overhead projector that refuses to work and hand-write your PowerPoint on the board with chalk (thank goodness for laptop batteries with a decent life).  I used to print out the PowerPoint slides in a little outline just in case of this problem, but I’m running out of ink and I’m trying to squeeze the life out of the ink cartridge in this printer.  I also intended to write “backup” lesson plans that don’t require any technology, but I haven’t gotten around to it.  Nothing I can do about the power problem, but it’s certainly irritating.

Except tissues and acetaminophen, apparently.