With the year closing up and my departure for the summer approaching, I find that as I write this post about the last stop I made (somewhat on an impulse) I'm also thinking of California and how I learned to situate where I came from in relation to the rest of the world. In part, this is because I feel that Xi'An doesn't get the recognition you might expect for a city that's been the capital many times over and situated by the famous terra cotta warriors. On the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, someone mentioned the terra cotta warriors, someone else asked where they were located, and then I was asked if I knew how long it took to get there by plane (I had no idea). When I first arrived in Lugano, the natural question all the students would ask each other was "Where are you from?". I quickly learned that "Saratoga" or "Santa Cruz mountains" doesn't ring bells too often, but that "San Francisco" or "Bay Area" were good points of reference. Once, a classmate surprised me when I mentioned that I was from around Silicon Valley and he mentioned Cupertino. It turned out that when he got his iPod, the clock/timezone was set to Cupertino and he'd always assumed that Apple was located there. (1 Infinite Loop!)

Anyway, I'd really been looking forward to Xi'An. I wasted a year telling myself I'd go and finally reasoned with myself that a 20 hour train ride back to Zhuzhou was worth it. Any memories should outlast a 20 hour train.I was on major nerd mode thinking about everything in the area: Wu Zetian's intact tomb (the sole woman in all of Chinese history to actually take on the title of Emperor for herself and currently subject of an expensive drama starring Fan Bing Bing), Qin ShiHuangDi sealed up under a hill with his mercury rivers and supposed model empire (tomb to be opened in 20 years, not sure what they'll do about the mercury), Ming dynasty walls, the Muslim quarter and its beautiful mosque (so different from what I've seen in Turkey or Morocco), and the endless supply of lamb. The Tang dynasty is at times referred to as a golden age of Chinese arts and culture, something tourism certainly tried to capitalize on with Tang dynasty shows and trinkets all around, but I spent more time dreaming on than shopping. This was the city that Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, was based upon, where the Qin emperor who gave his name to China was buried, where Yang Guifei distracted the emperor from his duties, a key point on the silk road, a city with Ming dynasty walls and a subway system. I only had a few days before running back to Zhuzhou. I hated that I couldn't do it all, but I wasted a year trying to find an entire free week to see it all and I would have kicked myself for not going after two years. 

I went with a group arranged by the hostel I was staying at. I generally prefer to go on my own time, but in this case I didn't want to lose a day by trying to figure out buses and other things on my own. As we wandered from through the 3 pits that they've opened, I found myself trying to grasp the scale of it all. Sometimes I wonder if the special place numbers seem to have in Chinese culture isn't partly trying to navigate such a big place with so many people and so much history. As I was preparing to come to China last year, a lot of people said "China is going to be the opposite of nice clean Switzerland". They talked about the cleanliness of the streets and the things that are done just so. But for me, it's scale. I looked at all the little labels on pieces of shattered clay men and thought of "Ozymandias": "Look on my works ye mighty and weep". When I look at those labels and think of the archaeologists coming in to work after the tourists have gone for the day, it seems fitting. Ozymandias is about the fall of empires and the emptiness of those words in the desert, but I could see the Qin emperor shouting that line at the ones who dig, sort, clean, and label the things they find around his tomb. His daily dose of mercury cost him the immortality it was supposed to give him, but in death all these years later he is not alone or forgotten.


After making the obligatory stop to the terra cotta warriors, I paid a visit to the Big Goose Pagoda where Tripitaka translated the things he brought back from the West. "Journey to the West" was one of the books we read during my freshman year of college, though it was the Arthur Waley translation titled "Monkey". I loved digging through the notes and understanding what conventions Wu Cheng En was making fun of. It seemed fitting that I had come to Xi'An during the year of the monkey, though the pagoda and surrounding temple had little about monkeys. It was really about the scrolls and Tripitaka/Xuan Zang's journey. I also couldn't help thinking about the previous year when Modi paid a visit. The ties with Xuan Zang going to India and coming back to China were obvious enough, but I've also heard rumors that Modi's hometown is somewhere near where Tripitaka visited.

Tripitaka has inspired others before me to travel, I felt a thrill of pleasure while reading Ella Maillart's "The Cruel Way" and Peter Hopkirk's "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road" and finding how many others I'm connected to through this man's 17 year journey. The Monkey King tends to steal the show in the story "Journey to the West", but I've been learning to appreciate the flesh and blood man who set out on that journey.

Xi'An ultimately seemed like a place where a lot of things I'd seen or picked up on or read about came together and I sorely wish I'd had more than 4 days at the end of break to take things in. Perhaps I will go back someday and visit Wu Zetian's tomb and the springs where Yang Guifei is said to have ruined the emperor and weakened the Tang dynasty. So many powers, so many stories. With the conclusion of my spring festival travels, I resolved that the next round should help me finish off the capitals seeing as thus far I've made my way to Beijing, Nanjing, and Xi'An. Hangzhou and Luoyang stand out as the next big places, and thankfully for me, Henan province where Luoyang is located is also home to Shaolin Temple and Kaifeng (a little pocket of Jewish history in China). Go north (and west)!

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.

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.

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:

​Time for that weekly update again…well, I’m getting ready to give my second exam and I think I made it too easy. We’ll see. I’m still waiting for feedback on October’s assessment and I’m going to do a practice test in early December so that everyone is ready for the final in January. I think next semester, I’m going to do something more informal like a written in-class assignment that they turn in (a letter with recommendations for solving a problem, a short story, etc.). 
I gave my first F to a class and am now preparing my speech/a time to discuss with my students why my job is hard to do without them. I really need to sit down with them and get the ball rolling on what changes need to take place. I also need to get on top of some things that have piled up, like filming myself teaching, getting everything corrected and given back to students and other things that are part of the job.
We have a class trip coming up around the 26th/27th. I’m going to up close to Dong ting Lake (which Hunan gets its name from, since the province is “South of the Lake” although Dongting is inside Hunan). The teacher last year said it was a very moving experience. Among the things students do is a visit to a prison where they listen to young inmates tell their stories. It will be a unique experience for sure.

Otherwise, it’s been quiet. I had a second break-in attempt since coming back to Zhuzhou this year, pushed harder to get my camera repaired after last year’s incident, discovered that it will cost me a sizable amount of money (but thankfully not the 2000RMB I was originally told), put aside 300 yuan for the all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet at the Sheraton in Changsha, and ate the rest of my extra money because China unleashes the snacker in me like nowhere else I’ve been. Recently, I’ve been eating a lot of táng yóu baba (糖油粑粑, a small cake made of glutinous rice and fried with sugar in the oil). The smell of chestnuts is everywhere, which reminds me of Ticino and watching the trees change there.

​I’ve also been eating seasoned grilled lamb skewers I confused the family that runs two carts selling grilled lamb skewers covered in spices. It didn’t sound like the man was speaking Mandarin when I asked how much for a skewer and no one really knew how to approach me. Even, less so after I said I was American. I’d like to go back since I know the meat is fresh (the goat’s head and the legs are usually sitting on the street next to the cart and has made innocent passersby scream every now and then, and I’ve seen a mountain of hair behind the head too). I just need to get over these awkward exchanges since no one really knows how to respond to me. I’m in this ethnic limbo I guess.

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.

Here we go again. This past week, the Foreigners in Zhuzhou group held their first volunteer teaching day. As always, it's interesting to go to new places (often very lovely places) in Zhuzhou that I likely would not have seen otherwise and catch up with others who teach or work in Zhuzhou. though foreign teachers in China isn't all that new (I even read once that "my year teaching English in China" is a cliched genre), I still consider it kind of a strange and unique time that there are so many who come to China to do so. And the people that come here often have interesting histories or talents that they bring with them.

Highlights:

• Though bingo was a bit rough at first, and it took students a while to catch on, once we got going and those who understood were playing the competition really started to build. In a few classes, I had 8 jump up at once and shout "BINGO"! I think it's just a really fun word for the students because they repeated it every time I said it while explaining the game.
• Volunteer teaching this week: It's always fun to do this. When you're no longer special or the novelty to your students that you once were, it can be really refreshing to walk into a classroom, be a new face, play games or teach idioms for a day, answer questions, and be the special guest. Maybe I should have just used one of my old lessons. Last year I played charades with a few classes but since we got the same verbs over and over again I wasn't sure that we were really having fun. This time, I taught a lesson about color idioms but it seemed a bit much for the first class (who also needed a bit of time to warm up to me, and were probably pretty self-conscious since their school sort students out into high and low performing classes and they had already been identified as weak in English). The second class ran with it more, but they were also 9th graders and a year ahead of the others. And of course, I left time for questions. We took a photo together, a student asked for a hug and I said "Sure, why not?" and they got me to sing the alphabet so they'd know about some of the differences between how they sing and how we sing it.
• Running around with other foreign teachers for a day. I'm not super social, I tend to move around a lot on my own on a whim. For better or worse, some don't think highly of me skipping out on going out for drinks at night or other stuff but I know from experience that for as much as I love seeing everyone, I eventually hit my limit and start thinking about going home, reading a book, watching a movie, or writing another lesson plan. Volunteer teaching allows me a space where I can meet others in Zhuzhou on some common ground and know that even if it's an all day thing, there is a set end where I can recover alone with a notebook, pen, and some music. I feel like I'm finally at a point where I've learned to manage my introverted tendencies with everyone else's need to see me come out more. The company is great, but I don't always have something to say. It kind of weirds people out when I'm quiet for too long.
• I met the mom of one of my students. She says he talks about my class. She didn't know I was his teacher last year too. She said he never talked about oral English. But that may also be that last year, I had a lot to learn and unfortunately, his class was one I didn't see much because I always seemed to have things come up on Thursdays. It's cool to know that he talks about class at home, but now I wonder what other students say to their parents.
• We made "pumpkin pie" on Friday too. Though it turned out to be pumpkin batter that we pressed into cakes with our hands, rolled in sesame seeds, and fried. I actually ate all of them before dinner, and still had room for dinner. I guess mine looked especially good. I soon found myself among hungry people and one woman was excited when I said she could eat one.