Round Three

With two years of life in China passed, I now find myself experiencing cyclical moments for a third time and I cannot help but pause and mark the reality of this. Somehow, me…this normal, average person…is beginning a 3^rd year of existence in China. Bizarre. Here are my random thoughts:

1. The simple fact that someone lives in China does not make them intrinsically cool or open-minded or fun. We get treated really special over here, our students give us a lot of attention and typically act as though they might kiss the ground that we walk on…but it doesn’t mean anything. We are not that cool. Some people are very cool people, some people are very interesting people, but moving to China does not automatically grant you any personality value that was not already there within.

2. I miss our puritanical compulsions towards sanitation and order sometimes.

3. I still miss driving.

4. I care much less about the workings of Western pop culture (or did until everyone just came back from a summer in the US and are referencing movies and songs that I didn't know existed!).

5. Yes…but. In a nation of so many billions of people, it is impossible to generalize. For every statement that I have probably ever made (or will make) there is always an exception. Sometimes the exceptions to a generality compose an entire province, sometimes the exception is still larger than the entire population of the U.S., sometimes it seems like an exception simply because “I know a guy who…” Anyway, we all make these statements all the time about “China,” or “the Chinese” as explanations for something or other…and we’re always immediately partially incorrect. There are a billion angles to this harmonious nation, and two years in Wuhan have revealed a few of them…but only a few. Nothing on this blog can give a definitive view of The Great China…just like a foreigner spending 2 years in Kingsport, Tennessee would be not fully equipped to comment on all of America based on that experience.

6. There’s a line in one of my favorite “songs”…it’s an inspirational speech set to music that came out in 1999 or so called “Wear Sunscreen” that says, “live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.” I think about that sometimes as I find my interactions with some veering away from the southern hospitality and gentility of my upbringing. Wuhan is not NYC, but it has more people and is notorious in China for being a city of tough, hardened personalities. The dialect even sounds angry. Though my friends who I’ve met from Wuhan have all been so kind and giving and lovely in every way, a case study of street scenes alone would show a sharp-edged urban environment of people driving hard bargains on the street, working any angle to get ahead, pushing, shoving, and yelling at those who get in their way. Perhaps this urban mentality has worked its way into my thinking, or maybe I’ve just lost patience with some of the more intrusive aspects of being a foreigner here…but I find myself forgoing southern gentility in favor of blunt, direct, forthright assertions these days.

My first year, strangers would walk up to me on the street and ask to “make friends for to improve my englishes.” They’d follow this request with persistent requests for my phone number. Back then, I would politely offer my email address instead, or explain that I’d love to be friends but I’m very busy but maybe they could come to the school’s English corner and see me then, or that my phone was not working so I couldn’t share it with anyone...etc. Now, I just say No, Thank you. If they persist, I say No, Thank you. If they persist louder, I turn, stare them in the eye, and say No. Thank You. (ok, ok…it sounds really bad—but I’m only really really direct when they get really really up in my face—which does happen on a semi-regular basis)

7. I have to fight harder to keep a humanistic worldview sometimes. US and THEM gets into my thinking too often…. it’s just harder putting it all into practice when you’re such the outsider here.

8. Absolutely everything that is done in China can be partially…sometimes fully…explained by the following: There are a lot of people in China. When new foreigners move to Wuhan and are filled with so many “Why?” questions, I'm sometimes tempted to just repeat each time as a response, “There are a lot of people in China.”

9. I’m very very very American. And Southern. It’s deep down in me.

10. This is my last year in China. Of course, nothing is certain, but I feel highly confident that this chapter of life is coming to a close. I’m ready for this to be my final round of things in China and to start considering where the next chapter should be…right now it’s looking like India!

The truth is that along the way, there are days when I am absolutely confident that this is exactly where I am meant to be, there are days when I feel so utterly exhausted by the struggle of life here that I can’t remember why I came, there are days when I think I could stay another 3 years, there are days when I think that it might be best for both me and China if I just quit it all and leave tomorrow.

Before I first came to China, I went and sat on a cliff overlook in SW Virginia that has been a thinking spot for me through the years. I tried to take a moment and enjoy who I was at that precise time, the Lucy-before-China. Because I assumed that moving to a land so completely opposite would have to change me somehow. I didn’t move here for that change, I wasn’t searching for anything; I was just following where I felt I should go.

And now two years in, I’m not sure that I did change all that much. I believe much more in the possibilities of alternative lifestyles (uh….meaning, lifestyles that vary from the typical school-college-work-marriage-mortgage-kids-retirement path that so many of us are taught is the way of life), I am more confident in myself, more sure that it has been His Hand all along doing something with my life, I know myself more… I’ve learned a lot, I’ve practiced a lot, but in all, it’s not something that changed me so much as it’s been something that forced me to put into practice all the things that I have always been. Sometimes I’ve failed at that. There are some weaknesses that have come out in the process that have been given too much time and nutrition that I have to eliminate. But overall, the past two years have been vibrant, crazy, lovely, absurd, and wonderful.

And now I have one more year—round 3—to seize and try to do to the fullest all the things that I came here to do. I have one final year here in China to try to be someone who brings joy into this spot of the world, who reflects light into dark places, who learns to give her time and energy to others. We’ll see how it goes!

This was funny

This is a funny post from Wired.com...which I don't normally read but was intrigued by the title:

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

posted by Nathan Barry on the blog "GeekDad." I'm not sure if the link I just made is working (our internet is still royally blocked in all sorts of ways over here)...so if it doesn't...copy and paste this:

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-things-your-kids-may-never-know-about/

I found it pretty funny and related to a bunch of these...though I'll confess that many of them were just from my days in elementary school before the changes came about. Here were my favorites from the list:

-remembering everyone's telephone numbers
-not knowing who was calling you
-laserdisc (we had one of these in our middle school classrooms....hilarious)
-Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
-Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive (in our family there were no turns....just NPR alllllll the way from Virginia to Texas)
-Using a road atlas to get from A to B. (ok...I still do this sometimes...but yeah, mostly I'm all mapquest when I'm home)
-Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time (when electronic things don't work, including my cell phone and macbook, I still try to blow on them...it works sometimes!)

This concerns me:
-Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
Are Hershey's no longer coming in silver wrappers??? What's going on over there????

Anyway...it made me smile. Hope you enjoy the bit of nostalgia. Any additions of your own?

Summer whatnot

So the summer is finally beginning to wind down and I finally had a day off after a round of 21 straight days worked (most of them being 7.5-10 hour days too!). I have 4 days left of work for this month, then hopefully settle into a more regular schedule in September.

It's been a crazy summer but overall one that was what I needed. I'm mostly settled into my apartment, though I still have one box and one suitcase left to unpack...we'll save that for my next day off...3 days from now. Here are some comments from life on the 20th floor:

--I get deeply, irrationally pissy when people from floors 2-5 use the elevator. After two years living in a 5th floor walkup, I've become a bit critical, I know. But seriously...if they don't have bags and aren't infirm, quit holding me up! Not that I wouldn't have used an elevator to get to my 5th floor apt if I had had one, but come on...I paid my dues.

--my complex has these great walking paths all over the place, a pool, and I have roof access with a view of the lake. It ALMOST makes up for the fact that my windows directly face the building across from me..very limited view.

--speaking of the view, I suppose there might be an age where being able to see naked people when you glance out your window might have been a funny thing...a novel thing...something. But 25 is not that age. It's annoying and gross. From my couch, a glance to the right gives me view of 9 floors worth of communal dwelling, windows lighted at night, curtains never closed to hide away any intimate moments that may need to be hidden. Sometimes this is amusing...seeing a couple fighting in a hallway and then seeing both sides of a closed door as the woman inside waited for the man, who was leaning hopefully against the outside of the door, to leave. Other views...well...they aren't so amusing. I don't want to see all that business...but I also don't want to close up my own curtains either...it's just too dreary with them shut. (although I at least have the courtesy to close them before I shower and whatnot...oh well.

--another note on the view: *before you read: I need to share--this is NOT as bad as it seems it's going to be. Just follow it through* Ok, so one afternoon I was watching 30 Rock and enjoying a cup of mint tea when I saw, hands down, the most awful thing I've ever almost seen in my life. I had been looking at the liveliness of a plant that sits by my window when the corner of my eye caught something white and about 5ish feet long hurling downward past my window. I screamed one of those nightmarish inhaled screams/gasps/shrieks and froze, pulse racing, knees and arms beginning to shake. I really think I've never been more terrified--as one of those out-of-body, primal forces moved me to the window to make sure of what I thought I saw. Thank God, literally, what I instead saw was a striped white and pink towel, that though once was falling downward had now been lifted again by the wind and was floating around somewhere near the 8th floor now. It must have been hanging to dry up on the roof when the wind set it free, letting it fall past my window and causing the deepest shock that I've felt in a while. Maybe it hadn't even been falling so fast ...but out of the corner of my eye, the glimpse I saw was enough to make me think the worst. It's made me add a request to my YARPs at night...please let this building never experience the thing I thought was happening...

On to more pleasant topics:

I went and got my hair cut today. Over a year ago (May 2008), I had my hair chemically straightened here in China. It was ok, nice to not worry about humidity and whatnot, but my hair always looked really lifeless, so I decided to let the "perm" grow out. It's been weird because as my hair grew, the top part grew in curly/wavy, but the bottom lengths were still stick-straight. Today, my hair had finally grown enough that I was able to get the last of the permed hair cut off. It's nice to be back to natural. Anyway, at the hair salon, I really liked the product that we used to curl my hair, so I bought a bottle. The back of the bottle is so classic Chinglish that I had to share. Beware, there is randomly placed, nonsensical cussing underneath:

Funny Hand
Characteristic: The special shape formulation
canbe made alive with texture in curly hair,mo
re Imply to moisten the formulation speciallyc
an be quickfor fuck of Curly hair compleme
' humidity,is lustrous and vivid and bright
the curly hair.It still imlles to do not gl
ue toget fed up with the formulation s
-pe cially making your show hair it is
clear diy todo not glue to get fed up
with increment luster, increment cu
-rly haira degree.

*spacing, spelling and grammar left the same....ohhhh China.

Cooking Cereal?

Ahhh...the awesome stories that we collect while teaching English in China.

For the past few weeks, one of the courses I teach features coteaching; I am paired with a Chinese English teacher and together we share the teaching responsibilities for our class. During the course, my coteacher, Maggie, shared this story from her first week in America (she lived there for about a year):

One her first day in America, Maggie was introduced to her home and town by a fellow Chinese citizen living and working in her her town. This new friend took Maggie to WalMart and helped her find items to get settled into her new American life. One of the first items she showed Maggie was a box of cereal...saying that it would become one of her favorite American food products. Maggie bought a box or two and went on with shopping.

The next morning, Maggie prepared her first American breakfast. She poured the cereal into the bowl, boiled some water, added it to the cereal and began to eat.

At this point in the story--I began to laugh uncontrollably. Maggie joined the laughter. Our class waited, confused. No one understood why this might possibly be funny.

Maggie then went on to explain the joke. After trying her first bite of cereal, Maggie called her friend and asked how she could love it so much. The friend didn't understand. Then she asked how Maggie had prepared it and also began laughing.

Anyway--we then told the class about cereal and how we eat it for breakfast. I thought we did a good job explaining, until I recieved this email tonight. I thought you guys would enjoy:

I bought the kind of oatmeal you and Maggie mentioned in our class when she told us her first breakfast in America . I think I cooked it according to your description. I put some in a bowle and poured some cold milk into it . I waited for about 5minites. But it seemed the oatmeal stayed the same as it hadn't been cooked. I sure I bought that kind which can be cooked with cold milk . so ,what's wrong?

Tomorrow's the big day: Eclipse 2009

Sorry it's been a month since I last posted...I'm on the 10th day of a stretch of 16 straight days in which I'm working 7.5-10 hours a day...so blogging isn't exactly on my mind! But with all the excitement, I had to update:

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- The longest full solar eclipse this century, lasting 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some areas, will plunge cities, including Shanghai, into darkness as it passes over India and China tomorrow.

OH YES, my friends, I'll be experiencing the wonder of TOTAL ECLIPSE 09!! Tomorrow morning we'll be experiencing the darkness of a total eclipse, and WUHAN is right in the line of shadow.

Ok so, of course, I was one of the last to know about the eclipse...well, except for the poor farmers who have never heard of such a thing, and will probably have a major freak out tomorrow morning! Anyway, for about a week, I've been noticing these "3D" looking paper glasses being sold on the street. I guess I've been in China for too long, because for quite some time I just walked past them without thinking much of it..."Oh, China's into 3D now...maybe it's like when the SuperBowl halftime show was in 3D and we all got the glasses attached to Pepsi bottles...whatever." I really just figured that there must be a hit 3D movie out or something...

But no, they're not 3D, they're SOLAR VISION glasses. Wearing these foilish covered glasses will allow all the Chinese to stare safely for about an hour and a half at the slowly diminishing and reappearing sun. This definately beats the "pinhole in a cardboard box top" method that I remember from my childhood.

I think that there was actually a full or almost-full eclipse when I was in kindergarten or first grade in the US. I'm not sure and I'm too tired to look it up... Anyway, all I remember from it was a SEVERE distrust in the people who told me I'd go blind from looking at the sun ("But I stare at the sun all the time....like this!!" "NO LUCY!!!"), and the annoyance of looking at the shadow of a pin hole in a shoebox lid waning and waxing when we could've just looked up and seen the thing for real.

Anyway, I'll be teaching tomorrow morning when it hits, but I'm sure such a momentous occasion will call for a break from classes....so I'll be sure to take pictures of the fun. For now, pray for our retinas and sanity as we experience TOTAL ECLIPSE 09!!!!!

When it rains, it pours

Sometimes it all seems to pile up.

When I logged onto the internet today--I quickly found that all Google-related web services are now blocked over here. This means Gmail, Gtalk, Google Search, Google Translate and a billion other services that I use on a daily basis.

So--to keep count, here's the roundup of items blocked by our lovely Great Wall:
-Google and all its wonders
-Blogger (ok--that's through Google, but I'm still listing it separately)
-YouTube
-MySpace (occasionally, when they're in the mood)
-Twitter (I don't really care about that one)

the list probably goes on and on--these are just the ones that I've noticed. I'm not placing any personal feelings about this blockage on here--just sharing that it's blocked. Also--that I obviously am able to function despite the block.

Finally--I received this warning from the US Embassy yesterday. I thought I would share:

June 19, 2009

The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to the quarantine measures imposed by the Government of China in response to the 2009-H1N1 pandemic that may affect travel to China. This Travel Alert expires on September 30, 2009.

Current quarantine measures in China include placing arriving passengers who exhibit fever or flu-like symptoms into seven-day quarantine. Although the proportion of arriving Americans being quarantined remains low, the random nature of the selection process increases the uncertainty surrounding travel to China. The selection process focuses on those sitting in close proximity to another traveler exhibiting fever or flu-like symptoms or on those displaying an elevated temperature if arriving from an area where outbreaks of 2009-H1N1 have occurred. We have reports of passengers arriving from areas where outbreaks have occurred (including the U.S. and Mexico) being placed in precautionary quarantine simply because they registered slightly elevated temperatures.

In some instances, children have been separated from their parents because either the parent or the child tested positive for 2009-H1N1 and was placed in quarantine for treatment. This situation presents the possibility of Chinese medical personnel administering medications to minors without first having consulted their parents.

The Department of State has received reports about unsuitable quarantine conditions, including the unavailability of suitable drinking water and food, unsanitary conditions, and the inability to communicate with others.

Travelers to China are reminded that all foreign travelers, including U.S. citizens, are obliged to follow local procedures regarding quarantines and any other public health-related measures. The U.S. Embassy will be unable to influence the duration of stay in quarantine for affected travelers. The Chinese government will not compensate people for lost travel expenses. Travelers to China are urged to consider purchasing travel insurance to protect against losses in the event they are quarantined.

For more information on U.S. Government policy during a pandemic, and for travel safety information, please see the State Department’s “Pandemic/Avian Influenza” and “Remain in Country” fact sheets on www.travel.state.gov. Further information about 2009-H1N1 Influenza, including steps you can take to stay healthy, can be found at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control website at http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/, the U.S. Government pandemic influenza website at http://www.pandemicflu.gov, and the World Health Organization website at http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html.

I guess I'll just say that I'm wondering if maybe I should've come home for the summer after all. It's gonna be a long day!

Worth a thousand words

Everything is still blocked up over here, so I can't post pics to my blog. Maybe eventually we'll get access back, but I'm not holding my breath. If you'd like to see pics of my latest adventures, use these links to see my facebook albums:

Hiking and Camping on the GREAT WALL!!!!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044098&id=147800610&l=b2d0fb06ff


My Birthday:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043302&id=147800610&l=abf4e2c99f