A New Day

After my last post, people really stepped up to offer comfort. So thank you for the comments, for the emails (of which I still have half a dozen lacking replies), for the e-hugs. It’s amazing to remember just how much I’m loved.

Just over three months ago—July 15^th—I stepped off of a plane in Beijing. Since then there have been a good number of moments where I wanted nothing more than to step back on. That’s to be expected, but, frankly, I think I need to be done with that stage. I need to choose between feeling sorry for myself and feeling committed to Pengtun, between resentment towards the relative ease of my family and friends’ lives in the States and acceptance of the simple knowledge that for the next two years life is going to be harder than what I’m used to.

Every day, I need to remember that I’m here. I’m here for reasons that I chose and for the possibility of reasons that would reveal themselves to me only after arrival.

I’m here to teach, not only expanding my students’ knowledge of English but opening their eyes to a part of the world they might otherwise never encounter. I’m only one American, it’s true, but that’s one more than most if not all of my kids have met before, and it’s one more than they might ever have met depending on where their lives take them. The same is true for some of the teachers, and for many of the farmers and other workers in Pengtun. Barely a day goes by when I don’t encounter curiosity or confusion from locals. Elderly women in traditional Bai clothing smile and shoot me thumbs up as I jog by the lake. Construction workers call out “Hello!” on my way to (and back from) the shower. Small children standing on the back of their parents’ and grandparents’ motorcycles stare and whisper. I educate by my mere presence. As the only non-Chinese woman in a very Chinese place, locals’ opinions and views of the Western world, and the women who call it home, are affected by their interactions with me.

I’m here to teach the teachers, too. I can’t change the system of Chinese testing that’s meant to lure top kids to the surface and leave the rest drudging along lake bottom. I can’t fix the local English teachers’ pronunciation if they aren’t interested in practicing, and I can’t improve their classroom technique unless they want to make changes. However, I can show them that there’s more than one way to run a classroom—that, even while preparing students for their tests, you have the option to prize independent thinking and understanding over rote memorization. I can show that I don’t tolerate cheating and that I won’t accept the notion of my lowest ten or twenty kids just not being able to learn. I can express my discomfort with the use of corporal punishment and affirm that I will neither hit my kids nor send them to be disciplined by another teacher who will.

I’m also here to learn. I’m here to acquire Mandarin proficiency and to figure out how to interact in a place where I can’t communicate fluently or even consistently conversationally. I’m learning about how to be an effective teacher, and every day I’m learning more about just how crazy my native tongue is. I’m seeing how most of the world lives. I will never be Chinese, and despite the adjustments I’ve had to make in my life I will never experience the same kind of existence as most people in this place, but I do get a taste of it. I’m learning to make due, not necessarily with less, but with different. One really can get almost anything in the States, and in rural Yunnan there are many products that aren’t available—hence care packages containing cocoa powder and dried basil, and baking adventures replaced with rice cooker adventures. Ultimately, most of what I’m learning I’m probably still not aware of myself. I imagine it’ll take some time after I return home to process, sorta like I processed Mac last year.

I’m here to explore my own limits—to see how far I can and want to push my comfort zone. Never in my life have I been so consistently surrounded with situations that make me uncomfortable. I’m shy with people I don’t know well under the best of circumstances, so the fact that here I not only spend much of my social time with people I don’t know well but with people I don’t know well and with whom I have trouble communicating is terrifying indeed. Whenever I want anything, be it directions, advice, or a price; I have to ask with a language that doesn’t come naturally to me. At this point, I don’t have the vocab to order my usual small skim lite-whip mocha at a coffee shop. That’s fine, as there are obviously no coffee shops around here, but it’s just an example of how a simple interaction—something I never, ever have to think about in the States—transforms into a task that I would have to plan for in advance or use an obscene amount of gesturing and explaining to accomplish. I’ve lost my Stateside anonymity: the ability to be out and about without the eyes of others focused upon me. I am, in a very real way, a Pengtun celebrity. While from a young age I sought the spotlight (acting, anyone?), as a young adult I’ve loved situations where I can just be. I can do that here, but knowing that while I’m being me I’m being watched takes some adjusting to.

I’m here for awhile but not forever. That’s a big one. I’m here for two years—a long time, perhaps, considering that I’m all of 23, but not a lifetime. I’m not an immigrant, seeking better than the place I left, knowing that a return to familiar surroundings is almost certainly out of the cards. Ultimately, I’ll be going home, back to the States, back to comfort and ease and all of the things I’m missing now.

Of course, it won’t all be comfort and ease; in fact, if things go as planned I’ll be hitting the books once again, in one field or another. Life there will have its challenges and its shortcomings too, and I expect there will be moments, many of them, when I want nothing more than to step back on the plane again. But I’ll deal with that when I get to it.