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.
Showing posts with label loneliness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loneliness. Show all posts
Friday, December 17, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
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.
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