December 17th

It’s December 17th, 2010. (My kids actually just learned how to say that. Supposedly, at least.) I don’t remember what I was doing on December 17th, 2009 or on December 17th, 2008, but December 17th, 2007 was quite literally the longest day of my life.

December 17th, 2007 began with karaoke. There was a student deal for the place near my campus in Beijing: if you entered after midnight, you could have a room for 60 kuai a person until 6 AM. So, around 12:30, my American friends and I made our way over to meet up with our Chinese roommates. Our roommates had moved out of the dorms the previous day, but we all wanted to see one another once more before heading home. We sang, we danced, we hugged, we took pictures aplenty, and, around 4, we started wandering back to our dorms to catch a couple hours sleep.

The morning was full of last-minute packing, a cab ride to the airport, and hours of waiting. Many of the kids in my study abroad program were on the same flight to Chicago, from where we’d split up for our domestic legs. We left Beijing in the afternoon and got to Chicago, according to the clocks, a couple hours later. In China, of course, it was already the next day. The flight was a bit delayed, and customs took awhile, so after I got through and transferred to the domestic terminal, I only had enough time to grab a tall-skim-lite-whip-peppermint-mocha at a Starbucks kiosk before boarding my next plane. America hit me in all of its holiday glory (and a huge boost of caffeine).

The flight to Atlanta I don’t remember in the slightest, but I do remember finding my parents. They were waiting for me at the place where most people exit security. My plane, however, had landed elsewhere, so I came up on them from behind. We drove home. I went to sleep eventually. It had been December 17th for almost 36 hours. Christmas Eve was a week later. I felt I’d been gone for so long, and I was happy to be home.

It’s December 17th, 2010. I’ve been in China for just over five months—almost a month and a half longer than my entire semester abroad—and I’m not on a plane right now. I’ll be on a plane in a month, but that plane will be to Thailand (!) and I’ll be back here about 5-6 weeks later for another semester that won’t end until mid-July.

It’s hard to be gone during the holidays. I’ve skipped Thanksgiving a lot, and there have been years when, due to how early Hanukkah’s fallen, I’ve been at school the whole time. But I’ve never skipped Christmas. Yes, I realize that I’m Jewish and that I’m considering rabbinical school, but Christmas to me has never been a religious thing. Christmas is fresh pine needles, our Christmas Eve candlelit tea party (more aptly described as a cookie party, though, to be fair, we do always have a cup or two of tea with our huge platefuls of sweets), singing carols around the piano (yes, we actually do that), being woken up by my sisters and tiptoeing to the living room hearth to experience that once-a-year feeling of a fully stuffed stocking.

I’m still not sure what I’m planning on for grad school (it’s down to either Rabbinical School or a masters and maybe Ph.D in early American history), but I do know that people matter to me more than I’d realized before. For a variety of reasons, I’m not visiting the States over the semester break, but once I get back home more permanently I’m going to make a much greater effort to travel and see people I care about. Obviously finances and obligations like school/work will make it impossible for me to travel whenever and wherever I like, but I’m considering trying to live within driving distance of my folks, and, if I have a year before grad school, I’m determined to spend it somewhere where I already have family or at least one close friend.

Although I won’t be home for Christmas this year, nor will I be alone. All of the Heqing fellows are headed to (surprise surprise) Dali, where some Lincang fellows will apparently be rendez vousing as well. I’m sure it’ll be a nice weekend, that we’ll eat good food (like cheese!) and walk around and enjoy ourselves. The Heqing fellows are doing Secret Santas as well, so that’s always fun. Our big break, however, doesn’t come until mid-January, so it’ll be back to school on Monday December 27th. I suppose in the states there are plenty of people in a similar boat who won’t get a month off later, so I still consider myself quite lucky.

There’s no doubt that I’m doing better here than I was a couple months ago. My language still isn’t improving at the rate I’d like, in my classroom I’m still having discipline and motivation programs galore, and relationships with the other teachers are rather slowly forming, but I know there’s been progress. Ultimately, I see next semester as a chance to start again, at least with my kids. There are some things I really, really need to establish better, and I think a new semester will be a great chance to do that. For now, I’ve got just shy of a month to get through two and a bit more units and review like crazy for the Final. Earlier this week, I made each kid write down his or her goal for the Final and gave them my goals. Surprisingly, most of my students seemed to get what I was after, aiming neither too high nor too low. I made them write their goals before I showed them the ones I had in mind for each of them, and most were within 10% of each other. We’ll have to see how it goes. The Mid-Term was a disaster grade-wise, but I’ve changed my teaching and testing styles fairly dramatically since, so hopefully that will prove helpful.

This weekend will mostly be a working one, but I’ve got Christmas music galore, I’ve bookmarked “Love Actually” on one of the movie streaming sites here, and I’m learning how to knit toe-up socks. I’m also greatly anticipating not one or two, but, at last count, four holiday packages currently winging their way across the Pacific. I am so loved. And once I get my parents’ peppermint extract, peppermint hot chocolate and mochas are so happening.