Saturday Night on my Couch

It’s 9:01 PM, and I’m scrounging around for something—anything, really—to do. Today was our “Friday,” and thus my day began with a test for my kids and a bunch of grading for me. They did much, much better on this one than the last one; I wish I could believe it was all because of my teaching and their studying, but I suspect there’s cheating involved. I only caught one today, after all, and I normally get three or four. Anyway, that, and a meeting I marginally understood concerning teaching English at the elementary school, comprised my morning. For lunch, I had four more of my students to my room. This was the second group I tried, and, man, they were worse than the first. Getting them to talk was painfully awkward in every imaginable way. Longest forty-five minutes ever. I’m still glad I’m doing this, just so my kids can see me out of the classroom and look at random pictures of my family and stuff, but I need to get them to respond to my questions with more than the bare minimum.

The afternoon was also mostly class prep. Grading tests for me means doing a fair amount of data analysis. I always want to know how my kids are doing, as individuals and as a class, compared to their last test. Plus I’m trying to get their overall grades to date figured out, which means accounting for missing assignments and whatnot. Excel and I are becoming pals.

Anyway, since my four students left after lunch, the most exciting thing I’ve done is make chocolate chunk zucchini bread for dinner. Now, don’t get me wrong—chocolate chunk zucchini bread is exciting, especially when it comes out of the rice cooker in one relatively-attractive-looking round instead of in delicious but messy chunks—but it just feels like something’s missing here. I spend a whole lotta time alone, and I am getting lonelier day by day.

I really am an introvert/extrovert cusp. It’s easy for me to be overwhelmed by social situations, but I also notice their absence in a major way. During the STP, I sometimes found myself wanting nothing more than to have a few hours to myself, but now I’ve been pushed to the opposite extreme. I spend most of my time here alone. I teach with my kids, of course, and I attend faculty meetings on Mondays. I usually speak with my CEI coworkers at least once a day, and we go out for dinner a couple times a week. Mark and I have nice post-night class conversations on a regular basis. My coworkers really are very good coworkers. They’re all three of them responsible, smart people. However, we’re still working on the “friend” side of things. And that’s the problem.

I need friends. Going from Minneapolis, where I lived with two of my best friends from college (one being my boyfriend) and had a number of others within close reach, to rural China is, well, a bit of a shock to my social system. I assumed, naively I suppose, that a magical bond would form between me and my three fellow CEI folks and that we would find ourselves hanging out and tackling this world together. However, my coworkers keep to themselves quite a bit. I don’t blame them—to each his own—but it means that I don’t feel entirely comfortable going and knocking on their doors every time I’m bored. We have had a lot of fun times together, and I am trying to entice them into group activities that don’t just involve food, but it’s definitely a process.

So what about getting closer to the local teachers? Well, two issues there. One, of course, is language. When it comes to my Chinese, I get awfully frustrated awfully easily, and spending extended periods of time attempting to communicate with somebody I can’t understand at all is just not my idea of fun. In fact, it usually makes me want to cry. I’m quite friendly with the teachers, but our relationships at this point largely consist of such heartfelt conversations as “Are you going to teach?” “Yes, I am. Did you just teach?” “Yes, I did.” Add a shower of smiles and nodding and you get the idea. I expect that as the year continues, and I start to break through the cipher that is the Heqing accent, I will have better conversations, but for now it’s slow-going. Even when communication is no longer as grave an issue, however, I anticipate trouble connecting. The fact is, I’m an American. I’m the first American girl most of them have probably spent any amount of significant time with, and, as such, I am the stereotype and the oddball at once. I’m on the lookout for ways in which we can relate and connect, and talking about our students and about teaching strategies is a nice opener, but that won’t cut it in the long term.

So I’m alone a lot, and I’m lonely a lot. I knew to expect some loneliness when I came out here, but expecting and experiencing are two entirely different things. I have more time than I can comfortably fill with my hobbies of journaling, blogging, and cooking (and my not hobbies but still time-sinks of “The West Wing” and Chinese-dubbed Disney movies). I’m trying to make myself study Chinese more, but a lot of the time I’m so sick of language struggles out there that I don’t want to make them the center of my attention in here. Yes, I realize I need to get over that if I’m ever going to improve, but what can I say? My will power isn’t the best these days. I’m looking for a new hobby—something unconnected to Chinese, and preferably the computer—that I can turn to when I need to combat unhappy, alone feelings. I do a lot of nonfiction writing, but fiction writing has been mostly eluding me since my arrival, so that’s one thing I’m working to pick back up. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions. Also, mail! Packages would, naturally, be amazing, but from what I understand they’re also relatively expensive. Letters, however, are not! Here is my address:

欧阳旭／Emily Cohen,

中国云南省大理州鹤庆县

彭屯中学／草海中学 （671500)

P.R. China

I promise replies to any and all communication received, however long it might take to get here and back again.

Hopefully, these lonely feelings are just part of my overall “slump” that I will, again, hopefully, be coming out of before long. I’m just shy of three months in China now—about a month and half of which have been here—so a “leveling out” period can’t be too much farther away. Right? Encouragement/advice, anyone?