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?

On Hobbies

I’m an interesting personality; when I took the Myers-Briggs test my senior year, I actually scored the exact same for introvert-extrovert. That meant that according to their scale I should default to introvert, but unlike many introverts (who perhaps know themselves better), it’s sometimes hard for me to remember until it’s too late that I’m not happy when I don’t get alone time regularly. Yesterday was a bad day in more ways than one (although the first bad day I’d had in a week, which was excellent!), and I’m pretty positive it’s because I’d spent almost no time alone in the previous several days—maybe even a week. I recovered by hanging out in my room for a couple hours, playing a computer game I mostly reserve for “get me OUT of here” moments, writing in my journal, playing penny whistle, and singing my heart out.

This might not be the most fascinating post for most of you, but yesterday’s me time (and the incredible discovery of rice cooker baking) got me thinking about my hobbies and what can transfer to China easily and what can't. It's an interesting process for me to figure out. So, in no particular order, here’s (some of) what I like to do in my free time:

Write fiction
Write nonfiction (journal/blog)
Read
Cook
Bake
Sing
Play music
Knit
Go for walks
Bike
Hang out in coffee shops

Writing (both fiction and nonfiction) is the easiest hobby to keep up with, because I don’t need anything but my brain, my hands, and either paper and pen or a computer. So far, I’ve done a ton of nonfiction of writing and very little fiction. I’ve still been plugging away on the story I started last summer, but progress is slow. I’m assuming that’s mostly because there’s been so much going on in my real life I haven’t been as drawn away into the one I made up.

Reading…well, that’s a little more complicated. I brought three non-Chinese books from the US: "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," "Ender’s Game," and "The Meaning of Life," which is one of those books with cute pictures of animals that my Mom got me. Obviously, those are all comfort books—ones I’ve read many times but know I will want to have on hand for sad days. While I was in Kunming, I bought two more books: A trilingual copy of "The Little Prince" (English, French, and Chinese), which I think will be great to work through in all three languages; and Bill Bryson’s "A Walk in the Woods," which I’ve been meaning to read for years. I haven’t started it yet, since I’m trying to “save” my books for when I need an escape, but I think it’ll be the mix of light and meaningful that I’m looking for. Once I get through "A Walk in the Woods," things will get a bit more complicated. There are going to be 6 Americans in Heqing (2 at my school and 4 at 2 other schools), so hopefully we’ll be able to trade books. I know there are bound to be some English books in Dali and Lijiang, since those cities have become more touristy in recent years, but I feel like I might end up doing a fair bit of reading online. I seriously considered buying a kindle before I crossed the Pacific, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I love books.

Cooking and baking we’ll have to see about. I am intrigued and hugely excited by the rice cooker possibilities (in case that wasn’t obvious), but I will miss things like muffins and scones and cookies. We’ll see though. In terms of cooking, I think I’ll be cooking a bit differently than I did when in the States. That being said, I can’t wait to play with all the possibilities and flavors I can find here that were distant at home.

Singing and playing music. I’ve sung almost every day for most of my life, and I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t in a choir/voice lessons/something vocal. I have a serious need to incorporate music (especially singing) into my existence, and when it doesn’t fit in naturally I have to make it fit. Of course, making it fit isn’t always easy when you’re busy all day and can’t get a practice space to yourself. I do have a tuning fork with me, so that’s nice, but I can’t exactly belt when my roommates are in. Yesterday they weren’t, so I did, and I felt so. Much. Better. I need to remember that throughout this year. I do hope to teach music at Peng Tun though, which might fill most of that niche. As for playing music, I love having a penny whistle because it’s so portable, it’s very low maintenance, and it sounds good by itself or in a band.

Knitting. Wow, well this one is the shocker. I don’t remember a lot of knitters from my time in Beijing, and I certainly don’t remember seeing any yarn shops (although my favorite mittens are from Tibet). Since my arrival in Yunnan, I’ve seen three yarn shops! One was in Kunming, and two were here in Lijiang. The Aiyi (caretaker) of my dorm is almost always working on some project or another. I brought some yarn with me and a bunch of my own needles, but it looks like when I deplete my stock I’ll be able to easily get more. I’m also really hoping that this will be an “in” for me with some of the local teachers. Colin (my OSM) says that the women teachers are always knitting during faculty meetings and the like. Maybe we can trade patterns! I’d love to learn how to knit what they do, and it’d be awesome to teach them Nordic mittens or something.

Go for walks. So this is a gimme. Obviously, I can go for walks in China. That being said, one of the nice things about walking around the States (or at least the Twin Cities) is the general anonymity available. I will always be noticed in China. China is not diverse. If you are White or Back or Latino or anything that doesn’t look distinctly Asian, people will stare at you. Staring here is not at all the same taboo it is in the States. So yes, I can walk, and yes, I will walk, but people will be watching me.

Bike. So I’ve heard that bikes are easy and relatively cheap to acquire in Heqing, and I look forward to checking into that. Whether or not I’ll feel comfortable biking there is another question. Roads are freakin’ terrifying in China. When I say that they remind me of roads in driving-based video games, I do not exaggerate. Although drivers generally wait at red lights, beyond that there are two rules: don’t hit others, and don’t get hit. Stay tuned on this one.

Hang out in coffee shops. Alas, we find ourselves faced with the unfortunate reality that coffee shops aren’t big here. There should be some in Lijiang and Dali I expect, and maybe I’ll be able to find a tea house nearby, but that good ol’ mocha is probably going to be a rarity for me over the next few years, as will that awesome aroma.

So there you have it. I’ll update you on this topic throughout the year as I see development. For now, it’s Friday morning, which means 1.5 hours of training, 1.5 hours of teaching/observing, 2 hours of lunch/break/Chinese prep, 1 hour of Chinese, and FREEDOM!