I mentioned earlier that I am trying to read 100 books by the end of the year. I’ve been keeping track of them, and making some stray comments here and there and finally got around to formatting them for the internet. I should update this list at the end of each month with the books read for that month.
This says: Liǎng rén sān tuǐ pǎo. Literally ‘Two-person three-leg run’ or as you may know it better: the three-legged race. Or, the event I competed in this last weekend at our university-wide sports meeting.
You’ll be proud to know my partner and I came in dead last.
There aren’t words*.
*Except these: The box is actually tied to the man, that dog’s snug as, well, a dog in a box.
Meaning: me. I am just the worst. At providing a thoughtfully curated view of my life here in China. I don’t even care so much about showing the best of the best, but my inability to post something even once a month means that a photo or text dump would be unwieldy. No one needs to think I’m the very best, but they at least should think me capable of writing a coherent blog post.
In the month since I last updated, a lot has been done. I went to another primary school, flew to Chengdu for a weekend, had a birthday, hosted guests from Tianshui, participated in a sports meet, lost a sports meet, and got my (read as: belonging to the volunteer before me and left behind) bike fixed and took it for an inaugural 25 mile ‘spin’.
And this is on top of my weekly duties. I teach 20 hours a week, take 4-6 hours of Chinese lessons a week, eat lunch with the students, spend every afternoon at our English club, and then walking home from school (4 miles). That doesn’t count the time I spend on the weekends cleaning (so dusty here!) and socializing. Not to mention the lesson planning. My listening and culture classes are both content driven, so I have to spend the weekends learning the content and then figuring out language skills to match with appropriate items. Most recently I taught Shakespeare (which required I read Shakespeare for the first time ever). This week we’re breezing through the great scientific achievements of the 17th century and dabbling in Francis Bacon. I made a bizarre pledge to myself to read 100 books this year (just started number 34!) I also theoretically (though sometimes in practice) work on my thesis. Professors reading from home – maybe you’ll actually hear about this through e-mail one of these days.
Also, the weather has been awesome, so sitting inside is boring.
So, pretty much: busy all the time. One of my classes ends in a week (Selected English Short Stories – that requires minimal week-to-week upkeep but the front end was RIDICULOUS) so perhaps the drop from 20 to 16 hours a week will free up blogging times.
If nothing else fails, it turns out writing ‘update blog’ on my to-do list is a solid plan. It’s how this entry came to be.
I’ll get around to moving backwards, but this past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting a tourist area in the countryside with my friend Sherry.
Where we got off the bus. Also, how I know I walked 8km back home. Because I walked home from here.
10RMB gets you around the track once, I went around twice. The owner complemented my form. Guess those riding lessons in middle school weren’t for nothing.
Instant crowd.
Then we hopped on a swing. Sherry had never seen a horse before, and was surprised how large they are. She was too scared to try riding. She was almost too scared to get on the swing, but I managed to convince her.
Tiny mountain! We don’t really have hills here (see: town on top of plateau), so this was exciting.
I took a picture of Sherry taking a picture of a guy taking picture of a bird. Insert joke about Twitter at your own peril.
I’ve been back from my holiday in the countryside for over a month now, but have yet to say a word about it. I’ve been busy. But I feel like I can at least you give this much, verbatim from my paperwork to the Peace Corps bosses:
I could write a novel about my time or I could just say
simple things: I got to experience life in the countryside of China
and be reminded of my own hometown back in America. I was doted on by
my friend’s mother and ate way more than I could handle if only
because it was all so delicious. I was taunted by a 10 year old boy
but we still came out of it friends. My friendship with my host
deepened immensely, where even her mother was teasing us for looking
and acting so much like sisters. The whole vacation was basically my
heart writing a love letter to China and to the Chinese people I’ve
met.
I recently returned from a two week trip to Chengdu to participate in our In-Service Training. Returning to a city that felt so mysterious this summer only to find it completely familiar was a small comfort. Reading menus is still a challenge.
My literacy skills are flourishing, for certain, but going to a restaurant still feels like opening up a Highlights magazine and trying to find the rake hidden in a cityscape. I know what I want, but there’s a lot to distract me.
I will take my distractions up to eleven for the next two weeks, where I leave behind all that is familiar and comfortable and go off to the countryside to stay with two of my students/friends (that distinction alone has a posting brewing) and their families. One stop will include a pig farm. I’m beyond excited.
Until then: 春节平安快乐！Have a happy and peaceful (Chinese) new year!
Every time I start longing for Portland and wishing I could be back there with my friends, I look outside and remind myself: things here are good. This is our winter weather.
My feet have been dry. My clothes have been dry. My apartment is saturated with natural light from 8am to 6pm. I miss home a lot, but dang – I am glad to get a break from PDX winter.
The hardest thing you’ll have to deal with in the Peace Corps will be the other foreigners.
My last quarter in school, we were required to purchase and take a range of personality measures and then synthesize these results into a paper that looked at how these affect our views of ourselves as people, scholars, and future teachers. I spent a long time thinking about the results I got and working with them for the rest of the quarter to make myself a more reflective individual.
Then I came to China and promptly forgot about them all.
Over the past week, some conflicts I have been having at my site have come to a head. Of course, conflicts is a generous and inaccurate way to phrase what’s been happening. Testing out my flight response and working my global social network is more on point. To keep things short: I have been feeling bad about having bad feelings.
One of the measures we took was the Meyers-Briggs type indicator. I scored heavily towards Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, and Judging (ISFJ) otherwise known as the Protector personality.
At work Protectors are seldom happy in situations where the rules are constantly changing, or where long-established ways of doing things are not respected. For their part, Protectors value tradition, both in the culture and in their family. Protectors believe deeply in the stability of social ranking conferred by birth, titles, offices, and credentials.
What this means in a general sense is that rules are stable and meant to be followed, and I have an inherent and inflexible respect for authority and status. What this means practical sense is that I have a low tolerance for constant change and find embarrassment in those who disrespect and disregard authority. The former I had to battle constantly at work in America. Working in restaurants is almost a guarantee that you will come to work each week and find that management has come up with a ‘new’ way of doing small things. You build these up enough, and for me, it means I reach a breaking point.
As far as the latter goes, this has been the source of my recent angst and best echoes the sentiment of the leading quote. For the longest time, I took that advice at face value. Finding myself in a foreign culture, I would expect those from similar cultures to my own to behave in ways similar to my own beliefs.
This worked to console me for a couple months.
A hard internal audit of my feelings this week revealed the meaning to go much further. Because of my personality, I really expect everyone to share my respect for authority and rules, and when they don’t this leaves a mixture of upset and confusion in its wake. This is not going to change. How I handle it can.
I know that the respect I have lost for some people may never be restored, but I take comfort in knowing that their presence in my life is controlled by contracts without administration interest in renewal. I have to understand that it is okay to feel upset about things, and that my responsibility is not to change the behaviors of anyone except myself.
My battles, for the time being, remain closed up inside myself. While I find myself having trouble with some people, I generally don’t act it out. I choose to voice my frustrations to those I am close to, but as far as dealing with the people concerned, my response will likely always be to flee. But I still think it is important to recognize the validity of my own struggles and to not spend too much time beating myself up.
But it’s not all bad news.
The good of my personality type is that once I find some people to care for, I feel at home. Having almost 200 students to choose from as well as my colleagues, this has helped me quickly adapt to life here. Nothing makes me happier than trying to solve the problems my students bring to me, whether academic, personal, or irreverent. I will give up days and weeks of my life for the people I care about, and I am so fortunate to have people like this in my life every where I go.
When you think of Peace Corps, you think of living in hardship and with underserved/or underdeveloped communities. You think your biggest battles are going to be on the outside. For me, my greatest challenges to date have come from inside – within my own my culture and within my own self. These are the things I won’t get to leave behind when I come back home.
Sometimes it’s good to remember that you’re just another foreigner yourself, and it is okay to have problems as long as you recognize and reconcile.
As I mentioned earlier, I had the privilege to go to the more rural parts of Qingyang to ostensibly ‘observe’ some of the students during their teaching internships. Of course, after the first time I wised up and realized that foreigners don’t get to observe – they teach or visit ALL the classes. I made four visits to three schools total, and because I am a lousy cameraperson (or, I just feel guilty about taking pictures of people) I only have some photos provided by my tutor during our first visit to her school in Zaosheng. 
Playing the Chinese version of “Duck Duck Goose”.
Learning a dance from the students. 
The boys all mobbed Brendon. 
And, of course, the girls all mobbed me. 
In the classroom. The schools get so excited to have us there, they make us visit almost every classroom. One school was so large we had to split up to cover them all. 
Our posse of observers. 
Where the teachers sleep/live. Or, where my tutor wanted me to sleep by trying to make me miss the bus back to Xifeng twice. Luckily, I caught the last bus out of town both times.
For the last three visits, I actually prepared a lesson on describing people. Thank goodness I took all those art classes in high school. I knew they would be good for something one day.
Getting Schooled in China 