Hello from the new laptop! My school gave me 1000RMB to put towards a new computer so I decided to just go for it and get a small one for 3500RMB. Somehow, I'd always assumed that "Computer City"  as it's called in Chinese would be far away but I've walked past it before on a long day when I just wandered through the city. For as much as I've growled and let things get to me that I shouldn't have, getting a birthday party invite out of the blue from the kind computer staff (who can't have been much older than me, or younger) reminded me of some of the wonderful things that come your way as a foreigner in Zhuzhou.

I've basically given away my weekends. I do an extra bit of teaching on Saturday mornings in exchange for lunch and cooking lessons here and there and on Saturday afternoon I also do an English Corner with primary schoolers. On Sundays, my one consolation is that I'm not teaching tai chi. I just get to be the student as shifu walks me through each step and teaches me a new warm up with each class. Then it's back to the work week. I love getting the last minute news that I have a day off on Monday or Friday. A day to sleep in and be tied to no one. Getting involved in something through clubs or volunteering is one way I try to work with my reclusive and introverted tendencies, but I still value a day of nothing at all. Maybe 4 years of living in a country where everything is closed on Sunday has influenced me too. I still find a small voice in my head that tells me that I have to get everything done on Saturdays despite being in China. It's funny to think of the things that stay with you when you've lived in another country for a while.

I've been stuck. In a lot of ways, I feel like I've lost sight of things and forgot how important it is to just focus on what's in your hands when things become less than ideal. A part of me knows it's a natural part of living in another country over time and that watching the novelty and the honeymoon period of adjustment fade is both frustrating and an opportunity to put things in perspective. Some might say the frustrations are just part of developing a more realistic/fuller understanding of the place I live in right now. I find myself getting a little vicious at times about things that are so small. Like when I go shopping for electronics and people try to find me something "more fashionable" or tell me I actually want this in red, not black, because I'm a young girl (but I'm a young girl almost always in dark jeans and something black). Or tired of last minute changes (though it's mostly OK, if I go to school and my class is cleaning, I had nothing else planned anyway so I may as well relax). I feel like I've never quite hit the high and fulfilling feeling that pushed me along last year, not to the same level or with the same frequency. On the other hand, Zhuzhou is constantly changing and I find new friends and people who fill my life and expand my understanding of life in China. There's P, the Uyghur man I wrote about last time who sells nan (at times, still looking for something romantic while I'm not sure). There's my neighbor who used to live in Dubai for work and now makes dumplings while creating spaces for people to practice speaking English. There's the Hui family from Lanzhou who greet me from their pulled noodle shop every time I pass. My "mom" and "dad" who run the tea shop where I get my caffeine fix and a lot of practice in speaking Chinese. Actually, I'm sure everyone on my street says hi to me now since I frequent their shops. It's kind of on purpose. One of my most rewarding travel experiences while I was in college was the summer I did an internship in Dublin, Ireland but found myself pulled into the songwriters and poetry community after joining a writers group. Since then, I've made an effort to frequent a place and be known or join something while I'm abroad.

It feels like there are things opening up to me only now, though I wonder if I should continue given all the swings and cycles I went through this time. A part of me says if I leave and try something else and find I want to be here teaching after all, then it's better to come back with purpose having other experiences with me. A part of me wonders about my chances of coming back if I leave. At times, I love this city and its surprises. At times, I'm anxious because I haven't been in the US for more than 3 months at a time for the past 6 years and there are times when I feel like an anthropologist rather than a local (to be fair, I think back on everything I learned about intercultural communications when I'm here in China too: high context vs low context culture, long term vs short term, Edward T. Hall's Silent Languages...). I also know how much I still haven't seen and keep finding. I feel like I've accomplished a lot of what I had in mind when I first signed up. I tried teaching, I grew in public speaking, I exercised a lot of what I learned about myself and intellectually while here, I've been finding my way in the Chinese language, I've made friends, and I've looked at one of my biggest anxieties (that I really was so sorely out of touch and spent so much time with books in some ivory tower that I had no real skills to offer to anyone anywhere) and seen it was nothing. I saw Xi'An and the terra cotta warriors, I fulfilled someone's prophecy that I would climb the Great Wall, I saw Guangzhou and Zhongshan, I started taijiquan, and after 4 years in Switzerland thinking hard about where I come from and where I've been, I found my way to a position where my own interests and education fit neatly with someone else's questions. I still have a ways to grow, but I've found confidence in my time here as I learned to trust myself and value things about myself I never considered to be real skills or talents. I know one of the most difficult things in going back to America when I was in college was coming back with the person I found while away, and occasionally feeling that with everyone's expectations from the past I couldn't always find room for that person. But that's also a comfort. To know that whichever direction I take from here on out, I take that person I found with me and all she's capable of. For all of its frustrations, I'll always be grateful to China for helping me find that person.

This past month has been full of surprises. My life is feeling a little like the picture book "Fortunately, Unfortunately". You know, the pages alternating between color and black and white as a boy who is falling from the sky discovers he has a parachute but realizes that he's getting closer to shark infested waters.

Let's get the big one. I'm on my tablet tapping away with my thumbs because my computer was stolen. I've spent enough time on all the details of what I found so I'll just say that I only lost my computer, I'm lucky my backup drive and iPod which were also on my desk were still there (though I wished I'd synced my Dropbox and backed up more recently), the school has offered to help partly pay for a new one, and we're looking at options for the security and living situation of future volunteers. Aside from moments where I can't sleep because of a noise or heightened awareness when I come home and look to see if anything is different, I'm fine. I feel safe, it was partly my mistake for not locking the second door and changing the battery in my security camera so I'm extra careful about those now. I lso feel that since my computer was already taken well...they got what they wanted?

On a happier note, I found a Tai Chi instructor and I've made arrangements for weekly lessons. I decided to go with Yang style. I always thought I'd really want Chen style, which the instructor also teaches but both were quite hypnotizing and I started thinking that a style with emphasis on consistently slow and even movements may suit me better than alternating soft and hard movements. I may still try out Chen style, I think it would be valuable to learn about the oldest style which still retains more of the martial aspect of Tai Chi. The instructor was very nice, very direct, and very patient. He had short white hair, but a very youthful face. He even gave me a ride home and I enjoyed the cherry blossoms on the west bank of the river.

I also made a new friend. I haven't known him long, but it's a friendship I find myself valuing more and more for so many reasons. For one, I sense that he initially asked to exchange WeChat information to see if there was any romantic potential. We struggled to communicate through WeChat messages as I realized that I prefer written words so that I don't mishear anything, but he couldn't read Mandarin and was limited to leaving me voice messages. I went back to the grilled lamb cart downtown where he works and worried a little about whether I invited some pushy new creep into my life or if I'd get some thing about cold women like times when I've tried to express my disinterest in a romantic relationship. He asked me directly if I wanted a boyfriend. Not being able to explain that I'm not against it but it's not my top priority, or that it's easier for me to be friends and build trust over time, or list off any of the disgusting experiences I've had while traveling alone, I just said "I understand the question, but I don't know how to say it..." He gave a small nod and didn't push. It made me so happy when I realized I wasn't going to have anything on my hands like the man in Switzerland who told me how much he missed his good Japanese girlfriend and put his hand on my leg when I just wanted my train home. Or the man who asked if "horse penis" was a turn on the first time I went to Scotland. No demands, no anger, no shaming. I felt myself opening a little more and asked where he was from. "Hotan" he answered. I asked about his ethnicity, not wanting to make assumptions and he carefully said "Uyghur". As I spoke I realized that despite the large difference in circumstances between an American in Zhuzhou teaching spoken English and a man from Hotan selling lamb kawwap in Zhuzhou, what I did share with him was a language in which neither of us were native speakers. He knew 3 things in English and I knew pretty much nothing about the Uyghur language, but I knew what it was like to be far away from home and being proficient enough in another language to get by. He asked me if America was beautiful and  if Zhuzhou was beautiful. It seemed that even if I wasn't sure about anything romantically, we both wanted to know enough about each other to not break ties. I kind of liked that since we were both limited to simple Chinese, we were forced to speak directly and be as clear as possible. I decided to try reaching out a little more and taught myself to say "hello" in Uyghur (yaxshimusiz) the next time I saw him. 

The rest more or less comes down to E.M. Forster's  words to "only connect". The next time I greeted P. (his pseudonym from here on out), I did so with "yaxhimusiz" and got a small smile and an invitation to sit on a plastic red stool behind the grill in return. Every now and then he turned and we'd stare for a bit, the questions forming in my head must have been taking shape in his judging from the way his head moved. I confused the customers who tried to give me their money for nan and lamb and I confused some of the othersame behind the grill. P. had to tell one of his friends that I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying. When he got a break from the rush, we established each others names and ages. He looked startled when he found out I'm 4 years older than him and I'm not sure if that's what made him ask if we could be friends. We spoke about each others languages, taught a few simple words to each other, asked about each others homes, and frequently just sat and stared at each other trying to figure out if there was a way to form the questions floating between us. We established that we both knew the word piao liang, and our conversation sounded quite cheery as we talked about beautiful things. Hotan was beautiful. Zhuzhou  was beautiful. America was beautiful. The weather was beautiful. I also found we both liked music, but we both had to concede "wo  ting  bu  dong" (roughly "listening not understanding"). Perhaps it was due to the language barrier, but I really enjoyed how honest and direct P. seemed. It really did seem that we were just two people who didn't know much about each others worlds and were  trying to figure each other out.  When I left, he asked when if I'd be back again tomorrow.

I've found myself opening up a little more each time. Despite my concerns about looking like a ticket to America and some of my past experiences being alone in another country, he's never laid a finger on me or done anything inappropriate. I've also wondered to what extent my physical appearance has played a part in all this. I didn't get the usual run of questions about being American while looking Asian, but P. doesn't  resemble what most people think of when you talk about Chinese people. I haven't mentioned I'm mostly of Han descent and I've never been asked. But this whole experience has made me happy. I've learned some complicated lessons while in China, and to bear this in mind while also becoming friends with someone else who is away from home and trying to get around on a limited vocabulary just makes it all seems so special.

"Only connect!"

To think you can make a friendship from a handful of words in a language native to neither of you. I don't know where I will be this time next year, but this is a lesson and a relationship I want to keep close to myself and remember what simple things are still possible in a complicated world.

Hello! I've been away for a bit with school and all but I haven't forgotten this blog. Spring has come to Zhuzhou, things are in bloom and it's beginning to get warm. The countdown to the zhongkao has begun and there are signs everywhere telling students how long they have until the big high school entrance/placement exam. In the meantime, I've been fighting off the urge to dream about other things and other places as I figure out where to go from here and remember I have a job to do. I saw something listed for an English and Spanish teacher in Foshan, and I have to keep asking myself if I'd be in China to teach again or if it's less about teaching than it is about travel. I'm thinking of going to western Hunan for the next break I have and seeing Fenghuang and Zhangjiajie. On a more extended break, I might be interested in Henan province and checking out one of the tai chi schools where you can stay and train for a month. But back to spring festival:

Hanoi surprised me. I realize that since I was only in Hanoi when I was in Vietnam my observations are limited but I wasn't expecting it to be as open as it was. One of my guidebooks told me to get a VPN for things like facebook, but no one needed it and facebook wasn't blocked at all. I ran into a number of tourists from America and Europe as well as backpackers with dreads. Aside from pho and banh mi, I honestly didn't know much about Vietnam but listening to some of the people around I sensed that I wasn't alone. When I visited Hoa Lo prison, it was pretty empty throughout. The exhibits related to when it was a French prison holding Vietnamese prisoners were quiet. There was a middle aged American couple ahead of me in one room filled with shackled mannequins and I was surprised and kind of embarrassed when they stopped for a photo with all the fake prisoners. I was completely alone in another exhibit with sensors so that patriotic music followed me everywhere as I read about independence. When I got towards the end where they had things about war with America and John McCain's flight suit on display, I was surprised to suddenly find myself surrounded by people. A video played in one room, with footage very purposefully put together as it alternated between destroyed cities and hungry children and American prisoners smoking and playing cards. In the subtitles, it referred to the prison as "Hanoi Hilton 'Hoa Lo'" with quotation marks as if it were actually the Hilton and "prison" was just a nickname for a comfortable war time stay. The parting words were "Goodbye, uninvited guests. How lucky you were to be in a Vietnamese prison." Those are strange words to leave with as a tourist in a former prison. Aside from that, I never faced any issues related to my being American. If anything, my being American caused people to tell me prices in dollars even when I paid in Vietnamese dong. When I paid for my visa, I also had to come to the airport prepared with USD. When I flew out through airport at the end of my trip, the prices were all listed in USD and I struggled to work through the math so that I could spend the last of my dong.

Having read enough about Vietnam to know about its relation to China (and enough Chinese to see the connection between "YueNan", Vietnam, and "NanYue", an old kingdom that spanned parts of Southern China and Vietnam) I was kind of excited to explore connections and traditions that still seemed strong down south. I also had the great opportunity to see how they do the lunar new year in Hanoi so I got to see the city done up in lights, the flower markets, the fruit trees strapped to the backs of bikes, women and children in bright clothes and ao dai, people paying visits to different temples and the smell of diesel as people poured in (or out) to see family.

​After over 20 hours of being squished into a seat going from Xi'An to Zhuzhou, I finally came back to my apartment. I thought I'd have more time to ask questions and get work done before class on Monday but before I knew it, I'd passed out at around 4 or 5PM and woke up thinking it must be late since it was dark out and kind of quiet. My tablet said it was 6AM the next day. Whoops. I've got my gas started up again and Zhuzhou was dry for a while but now it's good and wet again. I've been lazy, kept some frozen buns and dumplings in the freezer to make sure I had something to eat whenever I got back so I've been making that for my meals. I also decided to message my liaison to see if I had class tomorrow. The answer is yes, 4 of them, and do you have the textbook? So I need to make a lesson plan and figure out what 4 classes I'm going to tomorrow. Ugh. I need another day to recover from that train ride. I don't quite understand why people go up and down the cars trying to sell stuff to people who paid for the cheapest tickets. In one memorable demonstration, a man in a railway workers uniform looped a belt around the luggage rack and stood on the little table in front of me while tugging and leaning back to prove how strong the belt was. The hard seat slow train experience is frequently not recommended for long trips, but I've done it about 4 times by now anyway, passing the time with people laughing at you or shouting "kan bu dong!" as you fill out 20 pages in your notebook, read a book, or try to talk to the people you will be close to for hours. On the bright side, this seems to get easier every time. Time seemed to fly by, but I was also better prepared than previous times.

Now that I'm back and in a better position to reflect on the past month, I decided to write about Beijing. Actually, part of why I've never been is because I was always kind of worried I'd just feel lost in a big city. I knew the Forbidden City was there, I knew the Great Wall was up there...but for some reason, it just never appealed as much as some of the other parts of China. It was a pleasant surprise to find that it wasn't as horribly overwhelming as I assumed it would be. It helped that I spent 5 days out there with a list of major things to do and remembered that when I went to London, I had to break things down by picking a neighborhood or a monument to explore from each day. I was surprised when some people told me 5 days was a lot. A man from Bordeaux told me he came for a weekend to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, then came back because the Forbidden City was closed. I guess for some, that's essentially Beijing.

Being in a part of China that receives more travelers from abroad was in some ways, pleasant and in other ways a little frustrating. More people spoke English and switched when I struggled (though they would ask questions or mention in passing that I looked Asian and the most tactful tended to say "But your hair is black"). I was a little less of a mystery. At times, people would hear me speak English and ask me to translate as when I went to an hour-long opera show that was clearly made to introduce people to the different roles in traditional opera rather than run through an entire show. At the venue, you paid different prices for a ticket which determined the kind of seat you got. When you went inside to sit, someone would look at your ticket and how much you paid and direct you to a seat where you could enjoy a pot of tea and some snacks. I paid the cheapest (180 RMB) and was directed towards a seat in the back where I watched as others came in and tea was brought out. One woman kept moving around after one of the staff showed her to her seat and saying "I want to be here...no...maybe here...no..."and the other woman working there followed her and spoke in Chinese, telling her that she couldn't just sit anywhere. They came towards me as I was reading, and the woman who kept moving around asked if I was alone, if she could sit, here, here, or here, and because I was speaking in English the other woman who had repeatedly told her what seats she could and could not sit in simply pointed and said "Ni shuo yingyu" ("You, speak Chinese"). To be honest, I repeated what the woman selling tickets had told me, watched her body language, and the only words I knew for sure were "280 yuan" and "180 yuan". I felt terrible because I know a real interpreter would be careful to fully translate but I wasn't a real interpreter and it seemed simpler than watching them run all over the theater. She finally sat down next to me and I got to hear about her travel plans for two weeks. It was fun to talk to her at first, then tiring as I listened to her itinerary and her thoughts on what I was and wasn't doing ("You're not going to do kung fu? You're not going to do taichi? You're not going...?"). She was going to see and do everything, and I had to admire that and it made sense for someone who only had two weeks. I shamelessly bought an Irish coffee at a Beijing opera venue because I'd been standing out in the cold beforehand and didn't enjoy such things in Zhuzhou. At the end of the performance, I left and she was still busily going over her map plotting out how to cover as much ground as possible in Beijing.

In a lot of ways, I enjoy talking to other people who choose to come to China. They are often other young people on their way to something or trying something out here. I like to think it takes an interesting person to choose teaching here, given all the ideas people can have about China. But over my travels, there were times I got tired. People who would say it was a shame that my parents didn't teach me Chinese, people who hoped I could help them translate something, and people who didn't quite grasp what I was doing in China or what my situation was like often made me want the relief that came with disappearing into a crowd of other dark-haired people. My anonymity here is one of the things I love and the better I become at Chinese, the better I disappear into the crowds here (most of the time). People thought I worked way out in the countryside surrounded by rice paddies and when I said that I worked in a city people asked me about factories and I would mention that it was industrial and that we had "foggy" days but since I taught at a private school where students pay 5,600 each term to attend this wasn't a part of the city as immediately familiar to me. Then they would ask about parents and look confused when I told them I didn't know any more than one parent who worked for the city. Even in speaking with others who taught or worked in China, it became quite clear that the life I lived was very different from the lives of those who worked in Guangzhou, Beijing, or Shanghai. I've always sensed that, but I only realized that fully when I spoke to others whose experience of China was limited to big cities such as these and who had no idea what pleco was (an app that works as a dictionary) and didn't discover that they couldn't use Google translate in China until it was too late.

Anyway, when people weren't looking to me for translation or to tell me it's a pity I couldn't speak Chinese I found I really liked Beijing. (I've been trying to remember if I ever pulled aside a white American while I was in Europe and told him his parents should have taught him Gaelic/French/Spanish/German/Romansh/etc. It's possible I have?) I stayed around Xinjiekou in a hostel down a hutong and it was fascinating to see the different buildings as I went around the city. But I also couldn't help wondering what it's like to live in one, what plumbing and electricity must be like. I remember how in Italy, people would sometimes talk about wanting to remodel or do something to their homes and all plans would be stalled or completely canceled upon discovering some ruins or medieval structure or something. China has a lot of history, but that story isn't quite so common as buildings go down and come up quite often. I can't help thinking of Okakura Kazuko's The Book of Tea when he talks about impermanence and wooden buildings and one particular building that must be rebuilt every twenty years. After 4 years in Europe and being asked to "read" monuments and spaces, China has kind of challenged me because it doesn't always fit so neatly into what I learned after going through so many museums, past so many fountains, restored churches, and murals. At times, it's more the idea than the actual building. When I went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, I knew it had a lot of restoration work (the toboggan ride didn't strike me as a Ming dynasty), but I knew there was a wall there with a history and a purpose. It'd be cool to go out to other sections or "wild wall" where restoration work hasn't been carried out. I finished all of Peter Hessler's books during my travels and couldn't help thinking of "Country Driving" as I wandered around. There weren't many tourists, and it was icy which was beautiful but a little dangerous at times as patches in shadow wouldn't melt away.


I found myself surrounded by an interesting group as I went up with people from America, Brazil, and Amsterdam. I listened to a father and son speak to each other in Dutch and Mandarin and thought of all the times I accidentally stumbled into a Chinese community in Europe and the silent exchange that would go on, the studying of faces, the unasked questions, the careful dialogue in Spanish or Italian, the recognition, and confusion that took place. On my way down, I spoke with a woman who had been doing graduate work on education and gender and teaching in Foshan. We traded WeChat/Weixin info and tried to meet at the Summer Palace the next day but we entered from different sides and wound up exploring alone but communicating off and on so that we finally met at the Fragrant Buddha Temple in the middle before she had to leave for a late night flight. The Summer Palace was beautiful, unlike most of what you will find written of Empress Dowager Cixi who in the 19th century used funds that were supposed to go towards the navy in order to restore the Summer Palace. Once on TV, they had a special thing about tofu and how Cixi supposedly liked the tofu for her stinky tofu to be really fresh and the host cracked some joke about "national stink". There is one boat on Kunming lake, but it doesn't seem terribly seaworthy and a lot of guides (such as Lonely Planet) make some comment on Cixi's one naval contribution.

Aside from the stops everyone makes in Beijing (the Forbidden City/Palace Museum, which is only more amazing when you realize how much is closed off to the public) I also enjoyed the Yonghegong Lama Temple and Nanluoguxiang, a great neighborhood for hutongs, souvenir shopping, and getting something to eat or drink. I went back twice for a "Hutong Pizza" and I wonder how many other women show up alone to eat a 10" pizza. The first time was no big deal, the second time, I got an appetizer and a pizza and the man kept coming back and asking if it was delicious, if I was OK, and if I was going to finish it. He should have seen me eat a duck after I skipped lunch and went to the Great Wall. I'm amazed no one said anything to me then, but I wonder what they were thinking.

Oh, and the food. Some people have told me they're glad the Cantonese came and influenced Chinese food in America but as I travel around China I've really come to enjoy all the things I never got much exposure to both in America and as someone with roots down south. Last year, it was crossing the bridge noodles in Yunnan and this time it seemed to be Beijing's "baodu", a tripe dish in broth which was perfect for walking out in the cold at night. I knew the prices would probably go up in Beijing and Shanghai as compared to Zhuzhou, but I was still surprised by the cost of food at times. I had a great time on Wangfujing food street where I enjoyed a hot bowl of baodu, some lamb skewers, and fried ice cream. Vendors would sometimes pick up on my accent and just switch into English. Occasionally, they mentioned that I looked kind of Asian or that I had black hair. There was something comforting in realizing that even though my foreignness didn't throw people off as badly as in some places I've been, people still had questions and I still had well-rehearsed answers. I didn't have any good answers for the man who sold me lamb and told me that the grilled scorpion was also very good. I admit, they looked very crispy but they were also over 20 RMB per skewer. There were lots of things on sticks I'd never seen grilled on sticks before down Wangfujing street, it was obviously a kind of novelty food place as well as a place for traditional foods so there were souvenir shops and lots of people but it was kind of fun. At one stall, a man would ask what you wanted and the other man would prepare it while singing your order which made a lot of people stop and laugh. When I realized this was at the other end of the street where they had a large foreign language bookstore, I was kind of in heaven. It'd been a long time since I had any access to so many print books in English, but I held off on buying any since I was traveling out of one backpack and would still be traveling for a while. You think hard about what you're willing to carry for weeks at a time when you live out of a single bag. It's also the reason I skipped out on a qipao in Shanghai, with the hopes of possibly getting something cheaper in Zhuzhou.

To make a long post short, Beijing seemed to have everything: all kinds of food, all kinds of architecture, books...but is it so surprising that it should have all that as the capital? Despite my initial thoughts about just feeling lost in some big city like the first time I went to Paris or London, it didn't seem to take me long to latch onto some places and find my way around them, especially as I got more familiar with the subway system. I love subway systems, especially after taking a good look at the intersection near my hostel and seeing the left turn lane all the way over on the far right lane. But really, it grew on me. There were a lot of times when I would go see a temple or something and just drop all my other plans to go for a walk and study all the buildings until I started feeling tired enough to want a coffee or something. Which is something of a prelude to how I spent my time in Vietnam, which is incredible for its coffee culture. When I had my fill of tripe, duck, and buildings, I made my way to the airport and met a woman catching a flight to San Jose. I wish my Chinese had been good enough to hold a conversation, but all I got was that her son worked in Silicon Valley and stupidly all I could really say was that there were a lot of Chinese people there (but it's true...). We wished each other well when we parted ways and I went to Hanoi thinking of home and how many times I'd known people on the other side of that story, people who had left home or people whose parents had left and the classmates I had who identified themselves in different ways. I couldn't help thinking too about how proud she must be to have a son who made it through the system here in China and found work in another country. Not because America is perfect, but for all the success it represents to have made it so far. I hope she had a happy new year.

The first of two new year's is here and right now Xinhua West Road is an interesting mix of sparkly eyed Santas that with their big blue eyes, small flowers, and lots of red manage to fit in with the red decorations coming up for Spring Festival. He makes quite a pair with the god of wealth, Cai Shen, who's been making an appearance in shops here with his black beard and mustache, bearing a gold ingot and surrounded by all kinds of symbols of prosperity and fortune.

 Well, hey. It feels like forever since I last wrote something. I've been feeling a bit brighter recently. Remembering that I chose to come back because one of the things I enjoyed was how much more my students would say each week and all we'd get to talk about, getting a little more, and the approaching Spring Festival have probably all helped.

Since the last time I wrote, I've enjoyed the Sheraton Thanksgiving buffet over in Changsha, visited a youth correctional facility, gone to an amusement park, finished all of Jessica Jones and Master of None, heard the investigation on my bank account was completed (charges confirmed to not be mine, as anyone who knows me would probably think it's a little out of character to spend hundreds on shapewear), finished giving out my second formal exam (which went well, no tears or alcohol), and recovered from some nasty cold which had me badly congested. There were times I knew someone had farted in the back of the classroom but couldn't really smell it, I just watched everyone go "ugh!" and make faces as I circulated. I was thrilled when I cleared up enough to smell my site mate's orange.

So I guess I'll step back to Thanksgiving week. On Thursday, I got to enjoy the Thanksgiving buffet at the Sheraton and I took the day off so I just relaxed and wandered a bit. There's a small coffee/tea shop called "Seven Teas" across from the middle school where WorldTeach holds orientation and it's a popular spot to grab something to drink while adjusting to the humidity. I paid the woman who works there a visit and she was happy to speak with me in Chinese for a while and even pulled out some green tea mixed with peanuts from her hometown and sat with me for a while before I left. Dinner was a whole 302 yuan this year, but I was looking forward to something other than steamed eggs, a stir-fried vegetable, and some rice (a standard dinner for me, and pretty cheap since an eggplant can easily feed me for two meals). I wound up staying the whole time from 5:30 until about 10PM with WorldTeach friends and caught a really late train back to Zhuzhou. I don't think I slept until 2AM and then I had to get up again for the school trip which was leaving school sometime before 7. Actually, I had been asked to go the day before (when most of the English teachers were going with the first group of students) but I was a little annoyed about asking for Thanksgiving off and facing the idea that I would have to change my plans at the last minute. I heard I would go with class 1416, but my liaison told me to go with 1411 because they heard I was going with 1416 and got jealous. Then an English teacher appeared on the track where we had lined up before getting on the bus and said her boss told her to look out for me so I could please come with class 1415 instead. My helpers in class 1411 started whimpering so she let me stay but did come back a few more times to see if she could convince me to come with her because her group leader was insisting that I be with an English teacher.

I had a lot of people saying they would help me to understand what was going during the trip since we were going to a correctional facility to hear some young boys talk about what got them into the facility. However, when we got there and were seated in the auditorium (back in Changsha again) both my students assistants looked surprised when I asked them what the boys were saying. Only two came out and spoke, each with a shaved head and a grey uniform on. Both talked about getting into trouble with gangs and killing a boy. One told students to love their families. Another spoke about how the grandparents of the boy he killed came to visit him and see how he was doing in the facility. Then it changed to performances by the boys.

The first was a short skit. A boy gets into an argument with his dad and rips up his homework (I think) and runs out into the streets. He bumps into a group of boys who surround him and start pushing him. It finally builds into one of the group getting stabbed after which red and blue lights flash all over the stage with the sound of sirens playing as the boy makes a run for it but ultimately gets caught. From there, it went into a dance and some singing. ( A song called "Dad I love you", I think.) After that, they cleared off the stage and brought out a keyboard and we were treated to a performance. And it ended with a popular song I've heard on the radio here before we were told to move out a class at a time.

I sorted out some of my feelings and thoughts. When I heard we were going to the correctional facility, I assumed it would be a pretty stripped down thing. A plain room, maybe a mic, just young boys taking turns talking about what they'd done. I wasn't really expecting a warm auditorium, bottled water, dancing and pop songs. My first reaction when they started the skit was that it seemed interesting, unexpected. From there, I couldn't help thinking the pop songs were kind of weird, but maybe it was nice to see them doing things my students do at school even if I couldn't help noticing all the shaven heads, grey uniforms, and similarly stoic faces. I thought this must be a nice break for them since I imagined their lives to be pretty regimented. Maybe it was important to not only talk about what they'd done but to remember other things about, things that made them more human. But on my way out, I saw how many buses full of students were waiting for their turn to come in and see what we had. I began to wonder how many times a day or how many times in a year they do this presentation among other questions.

After the correctional facility, we went out for lunch and headed to an amusement park. It felt like a strange thing to follow the correctional facility. Oh, and since I didn't get much sleep I wasn't feeling great, I ran out of tissues and the other teachers said I needed to wear as many layers as they did or I'd get a cold (but it already seemed to have me). It was fun, it's been a long time since I rode a roller coaster or swings, but I was also afraid some ill-timed sneeze would leave me with a face full of mucus on a cold day. We spent the rest of the day out there before going back to school and the teachers all headed out together to get dinner at the Huatian Hotel, which I guess the school paid for as a kind of gift for the teachers taking charge of the students that day. The other teachers went out of their way to find something Cantonese for me, which I thought was both funny and sweet.  It was a pretty good start to my weekend, but I was really excited to go home and pass out. The cold was pretty bad on that following Tuesday, when I had only morning classes so I went home and played dead after lunch. What was supposed to be a short nap turned into me waking up past 7PM, running out to get dinner, and going back to bed for another 8 hours. I must have really needed rest and water.

Now that my head feels much clearer, I'm looking forward to Spring Festival. I'm looking at going to Vietnam, Shanghai, and possibly Osaka to see an old friend who is also teaching. I wanted to do Xian, but the train tickets going to Xian are already gone. The only ones available are the trains that are leaving. I really wanted to go to Yunnan again,but I have this list and it's taking me towards the East rather than the West side of China. The ice festival in Harbin sounded really cool, but I think I've had enough of cold and wet already and the idea of going all the way up to Heilongjiang isn't super appealing (though it looks pretty). I've been powering through test corrections, watching Netflix, feeding my tea habit (at the moment, I've been drinking a lot of Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong/Lapsang Souchong because they smoke the leaves during processing and it's great on cold rainy days), and reading a ton of books. Huan Hsu's "Porcelain Thief", Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (last 500 pages and pretty much all the major characters are dead now), and "Successful Classroom Management". I've also caught up on the China History Podcast while correcting, which has been great. I'm sorry to say I still haven't put in a ton of time on improving my Chinese but I do notice my conversations are getting a little longer and a little more sophisticated. It's certainly a step up from my first few weeks last year as I tried to remember my high school Chinese and pointed at things while saying "Zhege" ("this") and rubbed my fingers together to ask how much it cost.

Again, I'm sorry for the long space between updates. My original intent with this blog was to do something each week within 500 words or less but I haven't been very good at that. I don't even write in my pen and paper diary as much as I used to though I feel better in general when I take my thoughts and put them in there at the end of the day. Sleep better when my head isn't full of things, all electronics have been shut off for the night, and it's just me writing for myself. You know, write out questions or ideas without worrying about what others might say like I would have to when I post things online, remember mundane things without filling someone's feed and all that. For a while, I guess I forgot that my tendency to reflect is one of my strengths. In the future, I'll do a little better to keep posts coming, especially over Spring Festival. For now, I will leave you with the Christmas tree that's been set up across the street:

I seem to have missed my weekly updates for a bit. Honestly, there hasn't been much to write home about. I got angry with my exams, both that I put so much into them and that my students clearly weren't doing as well as I hoped. That would have been enough but they failed to show any proper test-taking manners at all. I confiscated a dictionary, two cans of Rio (a sweet kind of cocktail mix, it's about 5% alcohol and comes in different flavors like rose and whisky, peach and brandy, rum and lime etc.), and a crib sheet. I had tons of noise and threatened to make them take the exam a second time for behaving so poorly on this one. Kids cried, I went home tired and sick of assessments and despising the idea that I'd have to grade them all too after pushing myself through this.

The kids also had sports day. Each class was assigned different countries and they all had to dress up in a way that represented those countries. I got a little uncomfortable when a student asked for help in dressing like an American Indian. I told him there are many kinds of American Indian and that he should look them up to try and understand that you can't just dress in the "common clothing". I know it was only for a fun day at school, but I decided if nothing else, it was an opportunity to introduce him to a more nuanced understanding. If he ultimately had to dress up, he was at least going to do it with something more than a stereotyped view. I never saw the costumes so I have no idea what happened there. I had Friday and Monday free while the kids competed on Saturday and Sunday and spent Halloween night in Changsha seeing familiar faces.

I got a package from home, which was nice, and my site visit was more or less OK. The field director is really wonderful and it's always great to catch up with her. I told I've had a harder time getting started/motivated with lesson plans and everything else. I guess because it's my second year, I know my classes are noisy and I struggle a lot with assertiveness and not everything is new and exciting to me in the same way. I've been reflecting a lot on what's changed/what's different between my first and second year as well as the additional challenges of teaching 8th grade. While they do know more English, they also have more subjects and teachers are more likely to feel pressed for time so you have to fight for your classes every now and then. That wasn't ever an issue for me last year, but I remember my site mate feeling pretty unsupported when she taught 8th grade last year. What especially rubbed me the wrong way this past week was when I showed up to my Friday class and was told that they weren't having oral English, they were having biology. Ouch. Not only did they boot my class, they didn't even bother telling me about it until I showed up at the door. I flat out said "I only have this class once a week. I'm having class." My poor assistant ran off and told the biology teacher who relented even as other students tried to explain the situation to me. In the end, I made myself comfortable in front of the blackboard and got my class as planned. I felt kind of bad, I know that midterms are coming up and the biology teacher's been really nice to me throughout my time in Zhuzhou but for me, I came to fulfill my commitments and would rather not be moved around without any kind of consultation like that.

Outside of school, I wandered the city a little with my site mate and got some stinky tofu. The woman at the tea shop asked me to help her with a bottle of fish oil pills from Canada since the label was in French and English and she didn't know how many to take each day. I tried to tell her one side was in French and that Canada has more than one language, but she seemed a little confused and asked if the bottle was in "Jianada yu" ("Canada language/speak"). The important thing is, she's not going to overdose on fish oil while I'm around. 

All around, I suppose that emotionally it's been a bit like the weather (which doesn't really transition from hot to cold as much as decide that it's going to fall starting now, it might be hot again, then it'll go back to being cold and wet). I was really excited when the first rain came in and am now back to steeping and re-steeping my favorite tea, Tie Guan Yin oolong. Since I know the area a little better, I seem less inclined to run around on a rainy day too. I've definitely gotten up and said "No" after looking out the window a few times already. I'm dreaming of going back to Yuanyang with its sunshine and its terraces that each have their special times of day. I'm also dreaming of seeing old friends in Vietnam and Japan, in addition to all I haven't seen in China. I don't seem to have as much free time as I did before since I have to push myself a little harder. My voice seems to have been taxed quite a bit too over the past year. Since I was sick for a while, I thought it was just the last bits of cough that would eventually leave and I'd project like before. It's not that my throat aches, it just doesn't carry like it used to so I had buy myself a microphone/speaker thing so everyone can hear me during class. I'm feeling a little miserable, but for now there's not much I can do except tinker with the new toy and keep drinking that weird bitter stuff the lady at the tea shop gave me. I still don't know what it is, it does seem to do something to my throat but doesn't completely restore it. Then again, I remember hearing someone say once that they "distrusted American medicine because it worked too fast so it's probably got something dangerous in there". So I guess it's something I need to take more regularly to see more notable results?

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with this blog. I have a list of topics to cover but on a lot of days, I just kind of feel like I have nothing to say. The highlights don't seem to come as readily, though I still get them, and with the knowledge that I have to give an assessment every month comes the sense that I need to put the material first, so the activities are a little less adventurous than before. I'd like to think I'm getting back to that creative streak I finally managed to hit around November of last year. The 8th graders are going on a class trip next week so perhaps I'll finally have something to really write about within the next two weeks.