An American in America

September 1^st, 2011.

It’s been exactly six weeks since I got home.  This last week was a bit strange for me; my facebook feed filled with farewells from friends (I like alliteration today, apparently) headed back to China. They’re starting their second year now. I could be too, if I wanted to, but instead I’m here.

‘Here,’ at the moment, is my parents’ house, and ‘here’ will likely remain my parents’ house until January or so. When I got home, my plans for this fall were unclear. My friend and I had planned to live in Virginia together, but unfortunately the housing didn’t work out, which left me with a choice to make. I looked into heading up to DC, and I thought about spending this whole year in Berkeley, but ultimately I realized that what I really wanted, more than anything, was family time. For the last six years, I’ve seen my parents and sisters about once a semester, and after I begin grad school, there’s no telling where I’ll be or how often I’ll be able to get home. So I’m here now, and, for the most part, glad of it.

Of course, I’m still processing China. Not a day, or an hour, I think, goes by without me thinking about my students, my TFC friends, my old Heqing stomping grounds. I wonder what Pengtun is like now and how much it will have changed by the time I see it again. And yes, sometimes I wish I was still there. But mostly I don’t. Mostly I just find myself grateful for the time I spent and for the time I’m spending here.

Here is singing in a choir again, meeting my Dad for coffee, going to the gym with my Mom, going shopping with my sister, cooking for everyone. Here is bike rides, like the ones in China but longer and far less beautiful but somehow still deeply satisfying. Here is scrapbooking a year’s incredible experience, studying econ so I can take the foreign service test, keeping up with Mandarin. Here is still unemployed (for now), but here is a research project at the museum, volunteering as a Hebrew School teacher and musician at the synagogue, helping with an interfaith youth group my sister’s a part of.

It would be pretty great if I could say that all my pre-Yunnan inhibitions and social awkwardness were vanquished by a year where I was always out of my comfort zone and got used to it, but alas, I fear that my constant exposure to risk in China made me crave even more comfort than usual. I think that’ll change though. Ultimately, I think that, although I am an American in America, I’m also an American in flux. I don’t have both feet on the ground quite yet. And, for now at least, I’m ok with waiting. I’m ok with taking time to figure things out. Yunnan taught me nothing if not patience.

So, this is it. The last entry. However, I do intend to start posting on my food blog soon. So, for anyone who’s interested: Em Bakes. I’ve been cooking up a storm down here in Georgia. Stay tuned, folks. And thanks for listening. Your constant support, through email and skype and comments and facebook and everywhere, meant the world to me.

Over and out. 

Mumblings of a Country Bumpkin

It’s getting harder for me to keep my languages straight.

In the past couple weeks especially I’ve found myself using more Chinese words when talking to family and friends back home and I’ve found myself in more situations with local teachers, and my students, where I’m about to start speaking English. Part of this, at least on the English-instead-of-Chinese end, is connected to the fact that I’ve been trying to use more English in the classroom, beyond what my kids are capable of understanding, just to get the sound in their ears. But let me tell you, it feels pretty darn silly to be standing in front of 40-something tweens, in the middle of a grammar explanation or the like, only to find oneself needing to stop and recalibrate.

You know what else feels silly? Trying to eat spaghetti with a fork and spoon. It’s so much harder than I remembered! This is my reward, it would seem, for eating everything except oatmeal and soup with chopsticks. The thing about chopsticks is that they’re very good for multitasking. The fork-and-spoon spaghetti was a delicious pasta primavera I ordered for lunch at a café in Lijiang. I’d gone up for the day to get some major lesson planning done, and I succeeded—a whole week’s worth of lessons in 3 hours. The cappuccino probably helped. But, anyway, I was working as I ate, which is not uncommon for me. What made it difficult is that spaghetti with a fork is more or less a two-handed operation. You have to twirl it on the spoon, and then what do you do if you get too much? It’s so much easier with chopsticks, where you just pick up what you like, slurp it in, and, if necessary, use your teeth to cut it off. I might eat like a country bumpkin, which I suppose I am here, but at least it’s less embarrassing than trying to shove a huge mouthful of spaghetti into my mouth while praying that the fancy Chinese tourist sitting two tables over keeps looking at his cellphone and not at me.

Speaking of noodles, sad news. My favorite kind of rice noodles here, ersi, have never had an amazing shelf life, but until recently they’d last 2 or 3 days after purchasing and before molding. No more. I bought ersi Saturday morning, made dinner with them that evening, and then intended to use the remainder for dinner on Sunday…only to find a speckling of green and white spots. Alas. Summer is in many ways a wonderful thing, but it means that food purchases must be smaller and more frequent, although I can always go to the cafeteria and buy vegetables if I find myself unable to get into town.

Getting into town is seeming less and less an “event,” however. Earlier in the year, I went in about once a week, sometimes twice (on Friday and Sunday) and usually spent quite awhile wandering about. Getting into the city typically took 15 minutes of waiting for a bus and standing crammed up against all the other riders, and walking from the bus stop to the grocery store to the outdoor market and back to the bus stop required at least an hour or so. However, with my bike, getting into town takes 15-20 minutes of pleasant peddling along back village roads, and zipping about Heqing takes hardly any time at all. It’s nice to feel as though I can go in on almost any weekday I like, even weekdays when I have evening class. So as long as it’s not pouring down rain I imagine I’ll continue to get into town much more frequently during the rest of the year.

Unfortunately, the rain seems to have arrived. I want to go into town this morning, and I suppose at some point I shall bite the bullet and just go, but the deluge is making me less than inspired.

In other news, my kids can beat me at basketball. That’s not entirely unexpected, but it’s humbling nonetheless, particularly when, in the course of beating me, they manage to accidently knock me to the ground, legs flying in the air. Granted, I pretty much ran right into my sturdiest and strongest boy, so I guess I asked for it. I grinned and let two concerned girls pull me back to my feet. My head hurt, but my pride ached more.

Hooray for Bubble Tea! (and other musings)

I have said, on many occasions, that a good number of my issues with living in China might be resolved if only there were a coffee shop closer than an hour away.

My dear friends, one of my most desired standard-of-living wishes (up there alongside “toilet” and “shower” and “oven”) has come true! Sorta.

It’s not actually a coffee shop. It’s a bubble tea shop. Really creamy, thick, sweet-but-not-too-sweet bubble tea. There are many CEIers relatively obsessed with bubble tea, but until January (when this place opened) Heqing didn’t have any that didn’t taste like plastic. We didn’t know about it until last week, when Arianne went and told Hallie, who went and told me, etc. We met up on Friday and ordered, settling at a table upstairs. While ambiance isn’t necessarily the shop’s strongest suit, that one table on the tiny balcony is a place where it will be absolutely lovely to grade or read or whatever in the future. Plus, bubble tea! They have a relatively large small cup, which goes for 5 kuai here and would likely go for close to 5 dollars in the states. The other awesome thing is that this gives us a place to hang out in the city, where, really, there aren’t places to just go and sit unless you’re at a restaurant. So, hooray on all counts.

As we set out from the tea shop, the workers there—young guys probably around our age—asked if they could take a picture with “the first foreigners to come to their store.” So we posed, Backstreet Boys blasting from behind the counter, as they took several shots. Such is life for Americans in Heqing.

At this point, all five of us are entirely accustomed to attention, desired or not. Most of the time it’s just fine. Sometimes it’s funny, like when little kids I walk or bike by stare at me as they would perhaps a UFO. Sometimes it’s embarrassing, like when my bike falls over as I park it in front of the yarn store and before I can right it myself I find a small pack of nearby shop owners coming to my aid. Sometimes it’s annoying, like when I’m walking along, having not-a-very-good-day, and teenage construction workers say “Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.”…you get the idea. Or when I’m standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus into town and the cars that sometimes have seats in the back for passengers and sometimes have pens in the back for pigs slow down such that it’s quite difficult to tell whether they’re stopping to pick me up or simply pausing to gawk for a moment.

Sometimes it can be a source of entertainment, if I’m bored and engage just for the heck of it, like when folks in Dali take pictures of us (not subtly at all, I might add) and I encourage them, in my best enthusiastic and sarcastic tone, to take more. Sometimes it’s endearing, like when I take the scenic route back from town and end up pedaling randomly around villages trying to make my way to my elusive pepto bismol colored-home, which locals are more than happy to help me find. Or when I’m in the vegetable market buying ersi and ask a question of whomever I’m buying from, which all 5 of the noodle sellers try to answer at once.

This week I’ve begun to appreciate a little more the non-academic impact I’m having on my students. Some of it connects with the “Oh my god, a white person!” thing. We had our midterms yesterday and Thursday, and, as such, every teacher was assigned 5 periods of proctoring (11 hours in two days. Oh joy, oh bliss.). Since the classes are shuffled for testing purposes, each room had three kids from my class. When I entered the room I was assigned to one evening (don’t you want to take exams from 6:30-8:30 PM after having already taken 3 during the day? I know I do), a girl in the corner covered her mouth and practically leapt from her chair. While her reaction was the most extreme, it was very clear that other students also took interest in my arrival. Then I saw one of my boys and greeted him in English with a “Hey, Kendall.” He looked up with a nonchalant “Hey Miss Emily,” and then went back to his geography textbook. Rowan walked in a minute later and asked me if I’d be proctoring. We chatted briefly about the test he was about to take and he went to his seat. Then Peter strolled by the window, yelling “Miss Ou!” (the first character of my Chinese name) on his way to his classroom.

My kids know me. And in 20 years, whether they’re working in Beijing or farming in Pengtun, they’ll have had the experience of knowing an American (and a left-handed one at that. I still catch kids trying to take notes with their left hands occasionally) at a very young age. I’m not saying it’s going to shape their lives, but it has value, especially for folks immersed in this homogenous community.

I’ve also remembered, this week, that I love them. They’ve been driving me absolutely bonkers, and grading their last big test made me want to break into the bottle of Jack Daniel’s I have in my kitchen, but I do love them. It helps that I’ve been loosening up more in the classroom, even as I’ve gotten stricter in terms of reporting to the principal. I like to have fun with my kids, and I like to be silly, but for much of this year I’ve been pushing and pushing myself to emulate my very stern local counterparts. All that’s really succeeded in doing is making me angry and my kids rebellious. So I’m trying to, for lack of a less clichéd term, be my normal teacher self again. Stay tuned on how that goes. It’s certainly put me in a better place mentally, so that’s gotta be worth something.

The weather’s changing again. We had nothing but blue skies, with some chubby puffy marshmallow clouds, for months. But over the last few weeks we’ve swapped all-day blue for blue mornings (mostly) and a gradual blowing in of big clouds and rain. But the thing about living in the basin here is that it can look like it’s about to downpour and not spill a drop, or it can be partly cloudy and pouring. Arianne and I discovered this last weekend, when we went biking in the hills around her school and got pretty darn wet when the seemingly more-blue-than-grey sky opened on us. Luckily, lushly green rice paddies look just as lush and green while wet, and my camera didn’t get messed up. Unluckily, my school doesn’t like rain, or at least thunder. The power goes out a lot—not for more than a couple of hours, most of the time, but a lot…like right now. At 8 PM on a Saturday night…. No, I am not making this up. Thank goodness for my lovely Mac’s ridiculously long battery life. Now where did I put my candles?

Moral Ambiguity

Sometimes I think about what would happen if you put last July’s Emily Cohen and me into the same room. I’m the same person, if hopefully a little more mature and a little wiser and with a few more life skills, but there are things about me that have most definitely changed. There are stances I’ve taken and things that I’ve done that last summer’s me would never have considered. Some are rather ridiculous, like the fact that I, Emily Cohen, now wear eye-liner and lip gloss almost daily (nobody is more shocked than I, I assure you) so that my kids will think of me as a little older and thus take me more seriously. I also bake, knowingly, with bleached flour. Some are stupid and dangerous, like biking on mountain roads without a helmet (sorry, mom!), because bike helmets just don’t really exist in China, and perhaps not washing all my veggies as meticulously as I might. And some continue to make me wrestle, resigned but not content.

I remember so clearly during the very first week training reading an essay by one of Pengtun’s former fellows about corporal punishment in the classroom. He wrote eloquently about his personal moral struggle with how to handle behavior problems in a system that prizes physical over all other forms of discipline. He decided that he would bring students to the lead teacher and to the principal, where they would almost certainly be hit. Reading the essay, I remember understanding his logic and respecting his decision but firmly convinced that I would never, under any circumstances, make a similar call.

I have. I have on not just one or two but on a number of occasions. I’ve brought kids to the lead teacher. I’ve brought kids to the principal. I have grabbed kids by their upper arms and collars to make them stand up. I have collected lighters and knives by using pressure points. I’m not proud of any of this, but I’ve learned this year that there are times when, to a certain degree, it can be necessary to bend one’s personal ethics in order to better mold to and positively impact one’s environment. I know, I know, that sounds really bad, and where are the boundaries? Does allowing my kids to be hit this year mean that I’ll make the same decision regarding my own children in 10 years, or that if I end up teaching in the States I’ll wish I was allowed to strike my students?

I don’t think so. I remember conversations at the Minneapolis public school where I worked where teachers lamented phone calls to parents, because they knew that reports of bad behavior at school would result in hitting at home. Nonetheless, at school, there was no hitting. At school, there were other punishments, a system that maxed out with expulsion rather than slapping. There were also reward systems, a relatively new concept for my students. This year, I’ve implemented an extensive rewards system that’s been largely effective for my good kids but hasn’t succeeded in curbing bad behavior. For that, as it was with the teachers at my old school, I’ve needed punishments.

Since September, I’ve tried a plethora of American-style discipline techniques, ranging from seat changing to lectures to holding students back after class to texting parents to extra homework to sharing treats with only well-behaved students to kicking students out of the classroom into the cold in the middle of winter (I lived in Minnesota for five years. Yunnan cold is not cold). Some have been vetoed by the administration of my school, others by the lead teacher, leaving me with few options and even fewer that I’m capable of enforcing without help. Calling on this help risks corporal punishment for my impish students; not calling on it risks an utterly chaotic classroom for my engaged and dedicated students. I’ve come to the difficult decision that the latter is worse.

These kids have been hit by their teachers since they were in first grade—swats on the legs and top of the head for not paying attention, strikes on the hands for incomplete homework, being dragged by the ear or hair from classroom to office for bad behavior. Hitting is technically illegal, and hence it isn’t regulated. Although I’ve never witnessed this, I’ve heard stories of students slapped across the face, thrown to the floor, hit so hard they dropped out of school. My poorly-behaved students do not take my ‘lighter’ punishments seriously. If I were their only teacher I would probably have more success, but the 1-4 hours of the school day that are left in my care aren’t enough to mitigate the other 10-13 spent with hitting teachers.

I will never hit my students. I’m actually, according to CEI, not allowed to hit my students. I will, however, continue to bring my kids to teachers who take reports of bad behavior as cause for physical punishment. I have moral qualms with this, but I have deeper moral qualms with the notion of a few badly-behaved children keeping the other 40 from being a part of a classroom conducive to study. My students are products of their school environment, an environment that, unlike school environments in most of the United States, includes hitting. I don’t like it, but like so many other parts of rural education in China, I’ll work with it.

Monday Musings

It's funny how, when you're a teacher, you can spend so very long writing a lesson plan, or filling in a behavior chart, or painstakingly cutting photocopied dollar bills from the confines of their white borders, and have absolutely no idea if your work will pay off. As it stands, I've planned my classes for the next day and a half and have until the end of the week sketched. This is pretty darn good; I'm a rather last-minute planner, for the most part, and as a less than detail-oriented individual, going from rough sketch to fleshed-out plan (with points A, B, C, etc) always requires effort. Luckily, on Monday afternoons we have faculty meetings, a multi-tasker's paradise, during which I half-heartedly listen and whole heartedly scribble away all the intricacies behind such phrases as "Come to visit Bridge Street," and "Take a walk through the park." Our current unit is on, you guessed it, directions and neighborhoods. It should perhaps be pointed out that I still struggle with directions in Chinese, and French, and every other foreign language I've taken. Those pesky little prepositions. And imperative sentences. Woof. I'm doing my best to keep things simple to remember and prod my students along without driving them, or myself, to frustration.

I feel in some ways as though I'm back in college-- never done with work, and always concerned, to some degree, with whether or not I'm doing things right. I guess that's common to many jobs. It's not the best feeling, and having a group of 46 students to critique me two or three times a day can be a bit wearing. Last year was hardly a no pressure zone, but I felt like my job ended when I walked in my front door after a day's work; things were compartmentalized, and although I thought and talked about my students a ton (as I'm sure both my former housemates would attest), work was a part of a well (or at least better)-rounded life. In Pengtun, work is life. In college, work was life too, but work was generally more fun. I miss it, and I'm really excited to start grad school, if I can get in, in Fall 2012.

My students are rather unpredictable, growing more-so by the day. A lesson plan that might keep them quiet and engaged one morning could lead to utter chaos the same afternoon. My kids all know the phrase "Everybody. Shut. Up. Now!" Oops. At least they don't know that it's any worse than "Everybody quiet!" Nonetheless, I've been trying to supplant it with "Simmer down!" (I figure that whatever phrase they associate with me being loudest and widest-eyed will be the one they try to replicate, and both because I don't want them telling each other to shut up and because I think the notion of rural Chinese kids telling one another to "simmer down" is hilarious, that's my new angle.) I've tried shouting, whispering, kicking kids out, storming out myself, ignoring bad behavior, bringing poorly-behaved students to school administrators, etc. My current rewards system, using the aforementioned fake American money, has been working relatively well for the good kids, but unfortunately isn't curbing rotten behavior. Only hitting seems to do that so far, and as I'm not allowed to implement that, well....

As much as I appreciate the differences from my life in the States, I also appreciate what I can keep the same . Desk, computer, school books, notebook, warm beverage (usually green tea, but I got so much lovely American stuff in my holiday packages that I've been favoring chai and cocoa lately). Often enough, streaming MPR (that's Minnesota Public Radio for you uninitiated folk) or some other music. Lesson planning, yes, but comfy lesson planning.

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.

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.

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?

L'Shana Tovah

It’s Erev Rosh Hashanah—the beginning of the Jewish New Year. I got out of class about forty minutes ago, at 8:30 PM, and came back here to my room, to do whatever prayers I could. I don’t have a proper prayer book of my own, but I found a rather unallowable copy of a mahzor online and downloaded it. Of course, most of what I’m doing this Rosh Hashanah would be considered unkosher by many. I’m not attending services, I’m working, I’m on my computer, and I’m praying completely by myself. I’ve lit Shabbat candles alone on many an occasion, and I’ve done Hanukkah alone, but being without a Jewish community for the High Holy Days is new for me.

This isn’t my first time celebrating in China. When I studied abroad, I attended services at Kehillat Beijing, a liberal alternative to Chabad. It was an almost entirely ex-pat congregation, with some folks just around for a year or two and others who’d spent most of their adult lives in China. I remember being surprised by the familiarity of it all, from the prayer books to the food to the little kids in kippas running up and down the aisle. Although I didn’t go to services regularly during that semester, I really appreciated the welcoming people I found there, and if I ever move to Beijing I’ll definitely get involved.

The last two years, of course, I’ve been in Minnesota, where I was given the incredible opportunity to lead services at Mac. I learned a good chunk of the Conservative mahzor and was able to spend the time with a community I truly love. I miss that now, in the same way that I missed my childhood congregation in Virginia when my family moved to New Jersey. At this point though, I’d take almost any Jewish community.

Judaism is very much a communal religion. Technically, you’re not even supposed to do many prayers without a minyan—a group of ten people (or ten men, depending on how Conservative you are). I’ve never spent a Rosh Hashanah I can remember without a service of some sort, without a group of people who share some background with me. I’m the only Jew in Pengtun. It’s quite possible I’m the only Jew in Heqing, in fact. There are a fair number of Israeli tourists up in Lijiang and down in Dali, but as far as I know nobody put any sort of Rosh Hashanah thing together.

I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m sad. It’s just…quite different, especially when contrasted with the last two years. As is the case with everything here, I’m having to make adjustments, decide on my absolutes, and find a balance.

So, in terms of Rosh Hashanah, I decided it wasn’t a good idea to skip my classes. I could have, fairly easily, switched with another teacher, but I felt like without the justification of services there was no reason for me to do so. I'd only be alone, instead of with people, and when you're celebrating the birthday of the world, I think it makes sense to be with people--even my little Chinese students. (Yom Kippur’s different. It’s a Saturday this year, but if it weren’t I would definitely skip.) As it happens, Thursdays I have all my classes from 11:15-3:45, so the morning and later afternoon are completely free. I plan to do what I can in terms of replicating a service in my room tomorrow morning, although I’m missing some key components (like, you know, a torah. And a tallit. And a shofar. And a congregation). Aside from that, I’ll probably take a walk next to the lake/marsh by the school. I’ll take some time to feel the world.

The weather’s changing. It’s back to grey and white today, but Monday morning the clouds were made of wisps, licking the tops of the mountains. We could see them properly—surrounding Pengtun, scratching the sky, sunlight catching on patches of earth. Monday night, Mary and I took a walk out to the road that runs by the rice paddies behind the school. It was pitch black, enough so that we had to be careful not to fall into the rice paddies, and the heavens were full. I’ve grown so accustomed to cloudy nights that the number of stars I could see took me by surprise. Blue skies, and starry nights, never fail to make me at least slightly more cheerful, and while I’ve never forgotten what a special place I’m in, Monday made it easier to keep in mind.

I did, also, make honey cake today. It came out surprisingly well, all things considered. It’s certainly not as good as an oven-baked one, but my little rice cooker is a fighter. I had to use instant coffee though, and I didn’t have vanilla, or lemon juice. Oh well. It still tastes good. I have an apple on reserve for tomorrow as well, and, of course, more honey. There will also be a rice cooker challah in the works at some point in the near future. I’m a bit more nervous about how that’ll turn out. Needless to say, it will not be a pretty braided loaf, but maybe I can spiral it…?

I was thinking, earlier this week, how amazing it will be to have not one, not two, but three New Years in this place. Rosh Hashanah is the first, and then January, and finally the Chinese New Year—which will be mine: rabbit. I’m provided with a lot of good excuses for reflection. What kind of a person do I want to be this year? By the time the year of the rabbit rolls around, what do I want to look back and smile at from the proceeding months?

The answers to some of those questions are obvious. I want to be a person better equipped in terms of linguistic and cultural understanding, and I want to be a better teacher. I want to have mastered the art of cooking pancakes on a hot plate. All of those things, I think, will develop naturally, just by virtue of my being here (and loving pancakes). But I also want to be more outgoing. I want to embrace my world here in a way that, so far, I’ve been reticent to. I want to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable, in such a way that what’s uncomfortable for me now stops being such.

For now, I’m lucky to be able to take these ten Days of Awe as true time for thought.

Morning Musings

Mornings are quiet times here in Lincang. I’ve just had my breakfast of a steamed bun, a hard-boiled egg, and a glass of warm soymilk (because apparently the store isn’t planning on restocking yogurt any time soon), and now I’m sitting in the library. I’m done with my class prep, so I’m just futzing around on the net for a bit before heading over to training in half an hour. There are a few other folks in here readying their classes and skyping/emailing folks back home (speaking of, I do have skype. I don’t want to post the name up here, since this is an open site, but if you want to connect let me know and I’ll shoot it your way. I love talking with folks!) Mornings can also be my most homesick moments, if I haven't gotten emails overnight (which is the day during the states). Most of the rest of the day is too busy.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that the library is one of two places that we know of on campus that have wi-fi. The other is the computer lab downstairs. Our rooms don’t even have outlets—just two fluorescent lights—so the library and lab have also become our default power strips, with everybody jostling for plugs. It sounds more cutthroat than it is, and my computer is pretty much brand new, so I can make it last for a long time without a chord.

I’m looking out a window over well-clipped school grounds and dorms, with mountains and clouds not too far off in the background. Actually, a lot of the clouds are hovering well below the mountain summits. Andrea, CEI’s CEO, is in town for a few days, and he mentioned that Yunnan (which means “south of the clouds”) is also an abbreviation for two words that mean “colorful clouds”—a much more apt description. You can get a sense from my pictures of why that is, but unfortunately my camera’s not the best.

This morning also marked my first ibuprofen since arrival, because my calves still hurt like crazy from our stairmaster hike the other day. The mobile medicine cabinet is being put to good use, although I haven’t had to take anything for my belly for the last three or four days. Last night I even ate a little of the egg-tomato-MSG dish, to see how it did, and I was ok. I can’t exactly say I’m thrilled that my body’s no longer upset when I pour MSG into it, but considering the alternative….

It’s amazing how quickly you get used to life conditions around here, or probably anywhere. Things like having no power or net in our rooms, having hot water as a likelihood but not a certainty, using the bathroom without a western toilet, eating only prepared or packaged food, never ever drinking tap water…it’s still annoying, but after a week or two you think about it much less. And really, when it comes down to it, life is pretty consistent. My bed here, wooden board for a mattress or not, is a bed. My food,however differently prepared, is often made up of ingredients I use regularly in the states—things like eggplant, tofu, rice, cucumber.

That matters to me. It matters to me that I’m able to wake up and see the same calendar I had hanging in Minneapolis, the one I bought with my family in Charleston last summer. It matters that I’ve got a Harry Potter book and Ender’s Game sitting in my room, that I’m wearing clothes I got in the states. These are all material things, and normally I don’t care about that kind of stuff, but when it comes to distance from people I care about and places I love, the material takes on more weight. I know that, as time passes, I’ll get clothes here, and a new calendar, and a new toothbrush. But hopefully by then I’ll feel more settled into myself and this place.