The Pick Up Sticks

To Happiness

2011-06-30T01:32:00.003+03:00

I left for China one year ago today and I returned home exactly one week ago. I spent just shy of a year there and left just over a year early. As my last, perhaps overly dramatic, post might have indicated, I ET'd. Despite having completed a full 2-year service in Romania, it's still considered an Early Termination when a transfer or extendee leaves early. Oh well. This will most likely be my last post here at thepickupsticks, but will certainly not be the end of my blogging life. I'll start a new blog in the near future to help me get through grad school and the post-PC life I lead and if you're at all interested in reading it, just send me an email (found in my profile) and I'll pass along the address. Don't be shy.

When people ask me about my site and why I left, I've found that it is very difficult to explain exactly what went on there. So many tiny details and a few big issues led to my decision. A volunteer currently serving in Romania is thinking about transferring to China and asked me for my thoughts about it, and here's what I wrote to him.

"...So let me explain a little bit about why I left. One of the hardest things for me to adjust to was the difference in the way the program was managed. I'm not sure how Sheila manages volunteers as a CD because I left about three months after she arrived, but the CD prior to her was Ken Goodson and he was an amazing CD and friend to me and just about all of the volunteers. Under him, the program focused mainly (at least in my opinion) on keeping the volunteers happy because they knew that happy volunteers meant productive, dedicated volunteers.

In China, it feels much more like the program's goal is to keep the schools and the government pleased and satisfied and will sacrifice the volunteers' experience and happiness in order to do so. In some ways, the program has its hands tied there because of the delicate nature of the relationship between the US and China. We basically have to do whatever China asks us to, where in most other PC countries, the US makes the decisions. Because of this, concerns and questions brought up (to the staff by volunteers) are generally shot down and there is little room for discussion. Only when I told them that I was planning to ET did I feel supported, which is not how it should work. Of course, this is all just from my experience. There are plenty of volunteers there who are quite happy, but the volunteers who are unhappy have no one on staff to talk to or receive support from other than the PCMO, who even then has to go through a rather generic protocol in an attempt to address issues.

Issues with the staff may not have come up for me if it weren't for my site - the real source of my unhappiness and ET. There's a major change happening in the college system in China. Most of the colleges and universities want to expand, but can't afford to do so at their current campus, so they're moving the entire university to brand new facilities. In many aspects, this is a good thing - more room for students, new equipment, better facilities, but it sucks for volunteers because the locations of these new campuses are often very remote and far from the original campus and city center, leading to a lack of community, an amplified sense of isolation and making all three goals of the PC unnecessarily difficult to fulfill.

Another surprise to me was getting placed at a three year, third tier vocational school where the majority of students are training to become automobile mechanics and have very low-level English and very little interest in improving it. (China's program is generally advertised as a future-English-teacher training program.) Turns out, luckily, that I love teaching and enjoyed that challenge, but having students who aren't academically driven or motivated to learn English, and therefore not interested in spending any time outside of the classroom with me, made that brooding sense of isolation and pointlessness even more intense. Combining that with the location of the school led to a depressed volunteer. I'm sure, though, that there are volunteers out there who could handle that situation admirably.

In short, my whole situation just didn't work for me. I'm pretty sure that if I had been placed at just about any of the other sites, I would have been ok. But who knows, it's pointless to ponder that. I loved teaching, but I needed more, as I think all volunteers do. We want a community to wander around in, where we can find people with whom to interact and make close friendships. We want students with whom we can bond and make connections, and none of that happened in the first year, so I left, especially after having such a great experience in Romania..."

So that's the heart of my ET, plus a multitude of other more minor issues. I am not attempting to dissuade anyone from joining the Peace Corps or going to China or transferring there, just wanted to be honest with my experiences. The Peace Corps can be an amazing experience; it was for me my first time around, I now realize. But 1/3rd of volunteers do ET and I now understand more completely why.

And, after a week of being home, there isn't a bone in my body that regrets leaving. I've seen more blue sky and sun in the past week than I did over the entire past year. I've spent time with friends and family and, though I feel a bit out of sorts a good deal of the time, the overbearing emotion is happiness, which feels wonderful after so many months of down. I don't regret transferring, it showed me that I do love teaching, but I don't regret leaving, either. Not a bit.

Here's to happiness. May we all be strong enough to find our own.

Things Change

2011-06-17T19:55:00.000+03:00

Remember this. Remember the disappointment. Remember the hard work and the tears and the longing for home, none of which was softened by friendship or even acceptance. Remember the dull-minded greed that took all of your effort to keep at bay, followed by the emotionless and dry-eyed goodbyes. Remember the anger and the foul words you never thought you’d say, screamed to yourself in an empty room or muttered under your breath after another idiotic hello. Remember the look in your students’ eyes every single time you tried to teach them something heavier than yet another silly game. Remember all of the one sided conversations and the struggle to think of more questions and the pure lack of curiosity, interest or concern. Remember all the stupid photographs that you never consented to, all of the pointing, all of the heads turning, all of the god-damned hellos. Don’t forget this. Don’t regret your decision. You’re miserable here. Every day. Nearly every hour. Never regret this. You’re going home. You’re going to hug your mom and pet your dog. You’re going to play with your little brothers and go back to school and live a better life. You’re going to feel happy again. I know the good memories and the kind people will eventually push the nasty ones out, and you will probably regret this decision some day, but don’t. Please don’t. Everybody deserves happiness, even you. Everybody has the right to leave a situation that makes them feel awful. You’re moving on to something bigger and better and healthier, don’t let the venom of regret poison a second of it. It’s time to let it go. Remember this.

Dear Diary

2011-04-04T18:12:00.000+03:00

I saw a foreigner for the first time today. My friend Lee said he saw one two weeks ago buying peanut butter, coffee and toilet paper at Wal Mart. Perhaps we saw the same foreigner. She was sitting on the bus headed towards the city center. The bus was packed, but she had a seat and was staring aimlessly out, ears plugged up with headphones and I imagine she was listening to Country Roads or My Heart Will Go On. Those are good songs. Or maybe she was listening to Chinese music. I wonder if she likes Chinese music. I could tell even from a distance that her eyes were not brown. I have only ever seen brown eyes. There are a few movies with actors who have blue or green eyes, but the color doesn’t show up very well in movies. I’ve always been curious what eyes of a different color would look like. Her eyes were definitely not brown. I think they were blue. It made me very nervous to see someone with blue eyes and blonde hair, someone who so clearly is foreign. I felt like I should say something to her, welcome her to our beautiful country, but I could not gather the courage. My neighbor nudged me with his elbow and said “look, a foreigner” and a few others in the crowd murmured their surprise. Foreigners do not come here to our Kong Gang, and they do not ride our buses. Her eyes looked sad, but that is not likely. Maybe it is normal for foreigners to look sad. And tired. I bet people are very friendly to her and always welcome her. We are a friendly people, so it is not likely that she is sad. Foreigners just look sad. And tired. But I bet she is happy. Just before her bus pulled away from the curb, her eyes flashed suddenly to mine. Oh, the thrill and fear of those bright blue foreign eyes piercing right into my own! I have never before felt such unease. When our eyes met, she cocked her eyebrow in a way I am unfamiliar with. I wonder what it meant, that eyebrow raise. But before I could analyze her expression more, the bus, with its sole foreign passenger, was gone. If I ever see her again, I will gather my courage and invite her to hot pot. I wonder if she likes hot pot. It will be difficult for her, though, having to use chopsticks and all. I hope I see her again and I hope I can be brave enough to speak to her.

Waiting for Mr. Right

2011-03-10T15:01:00.000+02:00

I’m waiting for Mr. Right to give me an answer. It’s difficult because he often takes more than 30 seconds to gather his thoughts, but it’s always worth the pause. The other students know what he is capable of and have therefore stopped talking, not wanting to miss a word. Every time I call on Mr. Right, which I try to keep balanced with the other students, the entire class effortlessly falls still and silent, all eyes on the performer as he clears his throat and thinks. Finally, after a few false starts, the words come out. Everyone in the class, myself included, laughs. He, satisfied with his work, leans back in his chair and coyly smiles, knowing he got the answer wrong. Mr. Right’s wrong answers are always better than the right ones. Sometimes it’s hard to stop laughing and continue with class. What else could you expect from a student who gave himself the English name Mr. Right.

Forgive Me

2011-03-10T14:57:00.000+02:00

Forgive me, but it gets old. I love Peace Corps, I do. I really love what it stands for – helping underserved communities, spreading cultural understanding, learning about the world, making friends, on and on, but sometimes, it just gets old. Sometimes it treats you like a five year-old kid who can’t make decisions, who has no experience, who can’t be trusted, whose opinions are silly little nothings. Sometimes, it feels like your freedom to do what you want to do, to be who you want to be, has been stolen away, tucked into a filing cabinet, where it will be kept under lock and key for the next 27+ months. It takes away living options. It takes away apartment hunting. It takes away decision-making and negotiating and discussion topics and pride and friends, and then it tells you to take this one situation, this one situation in this one city at this one school, of all the possibilities and places and people, take this one situation, no matter how poor of a match, and live with it. Deal with it. Take it like a man. Take one for the team. And if you don’t like it and don’t make it beautiful and shiny and meaningful, your problem. Your loss. Maybe you really are not cut out for this wildebeest of an adventure called Peace Corps. Maybe you don’t deserve to be here. Maybe you should just shut up or get out because there are thousands of hands typing away at their aspiration statements at this very moment, dreaming of mud huts and straw hats and all that nonsense I once dreamt about. We’ll gladly fly you home and replace you with one of them, regardless of their dreams, regardless of your thoughts. Just say the word, just show one little sign of weakness, and gears shall start turning. And, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, keep them to yourself. They don’t matter, anyways.
Forgive me, please, it’s just gotten old. I love Peace Corps, I do. I’m learning and gaining experience and living a life that I’d never have back home, but, you know, it just gets old sometimes. Forgive me. I’ve always believed in honesty and the occasional rant and perhaps I’m experiencing the 3rd year blues.

Happy Birthday to TJ

2011-02-27T17:23:00.000+02:00

Luckily, enough good things happen in this world that all the horrible stuff doesn’t have a chance of dominating everything. On February 27th 2004, little Tanner Joseph, more commonly known as TJ or Teej, was born. My little brother. He got out to a real shaky start, being born three months premature. There were days when we weren’t sure he’d make it. I remember going to the neonatal intensive care unit at Saint Mary’s hospital and visiting him with my step-mom, my dad and my sister. We’d have to scrub our arms up to our elbows with soap before we were allowed to enter to help eliminate the chance of germs affecting the fragile little bundles within.
Once inside, for the first few weeks, I could only look at TJ through the clear plastic walls of his incubator. My dad and step-mom were allowed to carefully hold his two-pound self once in a while, but the rest of us would have to wait until he was more stable. Honestly, I was afraid I would somehow hurt him if I were to touch him, so I was relieved by the rule.
Back then, he looked more like a little alien than a baby, especially when he wore his eye-protecting glasses and the flashing bracelets that monitored various bodily things. Tubes and wires were running in and out of everywhere. The one normal baby-like thing in there with him was a tiny blue hat, which fit loosely over his head and always seemed a bit crooked. I’m glad they put that hat on him, just to remind him that he was indeed a baby. A baby who would grow and get strong and would one day get to wear such hats while bouncing and giggling on his father’s knee, as all babies do. Not to be in a plastic box, wired to a machine for eternity.
TJ had to stay in that hospital room, in an incubator, for three months, up until the day he was supposed to be born. Even after that, he had hurtles to jump that other kids get to obliviously stride through. His digestive system took time to fully develop and for a while he was fed through a tube. He slowly graduated to eating real food, but not much of it. It took a long time for TJ to learn how to like food and he has always been underweight. Currently, however, he and his voracious appetite are doing their best to make up for lost eating time. His lungs were behind as well and he still suffers from asthma-like attacks today, but they’re getting less common.
The list of complications he faced, and may face for the rest of his life, goes on, but for the most part he is a very healthy, very happy kid. And he’s smart. And witty. And all the wonderful things a little kid can be. He might always be a hair shorter than the rest of the class, but he can tell fart jokes in a manner that makes his 30 year old sister, who hates fart jokes, laugh. Laugh hard.
Whenever I think about TJ’s first three months of life, and how uncertain things were and how strange he looked and how scared I was to touch him, I go numb. Of course, there’s no real way to describe it. He used to pester me non-stop to push him in his swing and I 99.9% of the time caved; he’ll talk to me for an hour on skype, though half of which is just him making faces at himself or making fart sounds; I once traced his hands with a pen and paper at least 50 times over because he liked it so much; he likes to race me around the house on his bicycle, even if it’s raining out; he helped me bake cookies this summer even though there was the opportunity for playing games on the Wii. Whenever I’m there, he’s around. Wanting to play or looking for help or needing to show me something. Making me feel like a big sister who’s loved and who loves. I can’t wait to be there in person for his birthday, some day down the line.

The second semester starts tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Cannon

2011-02-25T04:26:00.000+02:00

Of course, my internet went out the day following my previous post, dashing my hopes of charming the masses with a few bloggy tales before leaving Chongqing for a month. And by “the masses” I mean the kindhearted three who still take the time to stop by here no matter how bad I get at updating. Thanks for sticking around. And my internet is still out, but I won’t let that hold me back. I can do this old school style in Word and then upload whenever I’m reconnected.
Too much has happened over the past 30 days. It’ll be impossible to package it up into a tidy little post, so I’ll just ramble a bit. First off, I attended a ten-day language training at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu, the city where our pre-service training was held. Those ten days were long and tiring, but totally worth it. Unlike Romanian, there are plenty of materials, resources and classes available to help foreigners learn Chinese. And Peace Corps even reimburses a decent chunk of the bill. I’m just barely beginning to feel like I might be able to semi-learn this language, tones and all, which is a nice feeling. The characters still terrify me, though, but I’m hoping to start cracking that code this semester.
After the ten-day training, I dove straight into our ten-day PC in-service training, which now feels like a blur. It was great to see everyone, but we were so busy and preoccupied and tired the whole time that it was hard to really enjoy each other’s company. I’m planning to travel more this semester, so hopefully I’ll get to see my closest friends again soon, but it’s too bad they’re the ones placed the farthest away. After staying with a friend for a couple of days in Chongqing following IST, I am finally back home and, needless to say, still exhausted. I can’t count the hours of sleep I missed out on, but luckily I have this week to regroup and rest and get ready for classes to start on the 28th. I’ll be teaching the same students, but it’ll be American Culture instead of Oral English, so it’ll be nice to have a new topic and some content to work with.

And I’m typing this feeling like I’m avoiding what needs to be typed about and feeling too falsely cheery…typing is how I deal with things, so deal with things I shall. On the first day of IST, February 8th, a little before 11am, our country director took the microphone to make an announcement. Her expression paralyzed the audience. She told us that the body of a US citizen had been found in a hotel in Thailand. She said that the body had been confirmed as a volunteer, as one of our own. She said that it was Cannon. There were no signs of violence and it appeared that his heart had stopped beating, she told us. The heart of a 6 foot 5, fit, 26 year old man had simply stopped beating.
Cannon had been at my training site, Chengdu University, and his host family lived not too far from mine, so we often ended up in the same group of 5 or 6 people who walked to class together. In all honesty, he intimidated me at first. He was tall, sported a multitude of tattoos, smoked tirelessly, spoke with a Bronx accent and wore less than appealing sweat-soaked white t-shirts and basketball shorts. But there was something in his demeanor that sparked intrigue. It only took five minutes of talking to him for the intimidation to melt away and a deluge of questions, curiosity and respect to take its place. I always liked Cannon’s presence and always wanted to talk to him more, but didn’t want to annoy him or appear to be too curious about his life.
He was the kind of person who spoke like he had failed English 101, yet had graduated summa cum laude from Boston University with a dual degree in finance and international management, something that even his closest friends here didn’t know about until reading it in his obituary. He was the kind of person who may or may not have been in a gang in his younger years, yet knew everything about Improv Everywhere and may or may not have participated on a few occasions. Although his tattoos peeped out from under his sleeves, he was an excellent teacher dedicated to and beloved by his students. He was the kind of person who appeared bored and uninterested, yet laughed at the cheesiest of jokes, even some of my own, to my surprise.
He broke down so many of the stereotypes people often have, yet he was completely oblivious to the good he was doing. Some people are capable of changing the way others view the world just be being themselves and to me, Cannon was one of those people. One of the diamonds in the rough, full of surprises. I thought so all along, just never felt the need nor had the courage to tell him. And it would have been a pretty weird thing to say to somebody I really didn’t know all that well.
Although Cannon and I, along with 15 or so other volunteers, were placed in the same city (Chongqing), I didn’t see much of him after pre-service training. He tended to avoid big groups and parties, for which I can’t blame him. I think the last time I saw him was just before Halloween. A group had gotten together for dinner and I remember chatting with him about classes and about how spicy the food was. We shared a moment over our mutual love of cauliflower. He laughed and smiled and I remember wishing I could think of more things to talk to him about that weren’t so lame.
Last Thursday evening, around 5:30pm, we held a candle lighting memorial for Cannon. The country director, his program manager, and three of his closest friends told a few stories about him, interspersed with tears and laughs, but of course mostly tears. We all shared a moment of candlelit silence to think of his family, reflect on the time we had with him, and focus on the little welt of loss stirring in all of our chests. Afterwards, a pretty little notebook was passed around for everyone to write their memories of Cannon in to send back to his family. His closest friends later added a few pictures and their own stories. His family, whoever they are, must be in an agony that I can’t even begin to imagine.
We all still have so many questions - how did it happen, why was he there, who was he with, was he happy, on and on – questions that will most likely never be answered, but all you can do is hope that he’s happy, drifting on a bright patch of cloud somewhere out there, keeping a caring eye out for all of us.

I feel like I should add, for anyone with a friend or family member in or considering the Peace Corps, the death of a volunteer is very rare and obviously devastating for the program and the volunteers and staff members who knew that person. For the three years I have been in the PC, eight out of approximately 7,500 current volunteers have lost their lives while serving. Peace Corps does all that it can, through safety training, medical care and volunteer support, to prevent harm to its volunteers, but it can’t eliminate all risk from service.

I wanna be normal

2011-01-19T06:28:00.002+02:00

Prepare for something lame, cheesy and a touch cliché: I already miss my students. I gave my last final last night, after which my students sang a song for me and my sitemate and I joined a few of them for dinner. It’s become a bit of a routine with this one class. Finish class, go to the dining hall, eat dinner, and then sit there entertaining each other with random English and Chinese phrases for two hours. Last night we even went over all the different (non-offensive) hand gestures the two cultures have. Intriguing, intellectual stuff.
I wrote the above a week ago and now I sit in my apartment, the lone room on the whole of campus warmed by a human presence, contemplating things, as tends to be my norm when presented with a plethora of free time. Campus closed on Monday, following the mass exodus of students returning home for the celebration of Spring Festival, which everyone likens to Christmas. It is THE holiday of China, bringing about a ten-day vacation, large and extravagant meals, kids hyped up on sugar and toys, and an enormous, terrifying, gigantic wrench tossed into the gears of anything transportation related. Or so I’ve heard.
As it is now vacation time for all colleges and universities, the majority of volunteers are off traveling, island hopping in the Philippines, catching rays in Thailand, hiking the jungles in Vietnam, or warming themselves up in southern China. All of which sounds grand and all, but the more I do this, the more I just want to be normal. The more I just want to stay in my pajamas and drink hot chockie, curled up with a good book, like I used to do during the college breaks when I was a student. Perhaps I’m not embracing the abounding travel opportunities as well as did in Romania, or perhaps the huge transportation wrench scares me too much, or perhaps this lingering cold is making me sleepy, but I have to admit – I am sick of traveling.
Moreover, I am sick of the stress of traveling. Researching hostels, figuring out bus/train/plane/taxi/subway/foot routes, staring at maps till my eyes hurt, spending money and getting the “foreigner tax” every step of the way, eating in unknown restaurants, attempting to sleep in unfamiliar beds, spending every waking second with the same group of people (no matter how wonderful they are)…all of which has gotten really old.
I love the form of traveling that Peace Corps offers – living, on your own, for two years in one community. You develop a new home, a new life, a new sense of comfort and security. You make friends who recognize you and smile every time they see you. It’s a form of traveling that I think I could do for the rest of my life. I love it. But this other, briefer, more stressful form of traveling…I don’t think I’m cut out for it anymore. Or maybe I’ll get more into it next year. I should remember that I didn’t travel at all my first year in Romania. Maybe it’ll be the same way here.
But for now, I shall embrace a deserted campus, my kindle stocked with nearly 1,000 books, the two bags of coffee perfuming my freezer, my recently acquired gym membership, and maybe catch up on a few things that I’ve been putting off, such as this here blog. Oh, and I guess I’ll also embrace quietly turning 30 tomorrow. Weird.

Some of our entourage - clockwise from left - Speaka, Teddy, Elizabeth, me, Tiger, Bear, Doris, Finn. Elizabeth and I gave Teddy and Finn their English names. This photo is from Elizabeth's online photo album. She takes way more pictures than I do and actually posts them. I can't add links on the side due to VPN issues, so I'm going to post it here: http://www.dropshots.com/iamechan4
Thanks for sharing all the great pictures, sitemate!

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

the proudest moment

2010-12-31T18:45:00.001+02:00

The theme for this week’s lessons was, fittingly, New Years. In one of the classes, we did a little mini summary of the highlights from 2010, like what is your best memory of 2010, what was the most difficult thing you did, what was your proudest moment, etc. All of the answers involved going to college, studying for the exams and taking the tests to get here. There’s only one girl in my mechanics class of 23. She rarely speaks, but her English is surprisingly good. I asked her what her proudest moment of 2010 was and she replied, in perfect English, “My proudest moment was leaving the countryside and coming here to study.”
I have to remind myself of that sometimes. There are three tiers of universities here. The first is the top, where the students with the highest test scores coming out of high school go, then there’s the middle tier where students with average test scores go, then there’s the third tier, where students who did not do so well on their exams go. My school is a third tier school, more like a vocational school than a university. My students are studying automobile design, mechanics, hotel management and logistics. They tell me readily every day that their English is very poor. And, for the most part, it is.
It’s a challenge every class to be understood. It’s a game of figuring out how many different ways I can say “describe a trip you would like to take” and knowing whether they really understand what to do or if they’re just saying ok to get me off their backs. It’s a puzzle of deciphering what English words they could possibly be struggling so intently to say. It’s a miniature show of gesticulations and crude drawings as I try to describe Santa and his eight tiny reindeer. Every class takes all of my effort to understand and to be understood. Every class comes with many silences of 30 or more seconds while Nick or Nancy or Bruce or Jim wrench the sentence “I want to travel to Beijing by plane first, then to Sydney by boat” from the recesses of their brain. And many of them have been studying English for 6 years.
At first I wondered why a school like this needed native English speakers to teach, especially because most of the students are going into professions that don’t need English to get by. Most volunteers are working with students who are majoring in English and who will one day be English teachers and who really really want to practice their English. That makes sense to me - giving future English teachers new teaching methods and improving their English skills at the same time. Benefits all around.
But here? Where the students often consider English a thorn in their side, where the students would rather hear me speak Chinese than practice their English, where even the English teachers seem uninterested in the language. Why here? In one short, sweet answer – Because the government says so. My school is directly tied to the government and because they want Peace Corps volunteers here and it’s a delicate relationship that needs to be maintained, they get them. That’s in a nutshell formed from my shoddy understanding of things.
This became a grudge in my mind and for a while it was difficult to not feel angry about being placed here, and slightly shafted. I hear about other volunteers holding debates with their students and teaching them about art and discussing politics (delicately) with them, getting invited to lunch every day by different students, not getting to practice Chinese because everyone wants to speak English, and I question what good I’m doing way out here, on the edge of town, with my hundred or so students who tell me every day that their English is very poor. And, for the most part, it is.
Then I find out that some of my students are coming from the country side, where education might not be top priority. Where a student feels proud to leave. A place that produces students with lower test scores, but students who are nonetheless intelligent. Students who can write sweet notes on Christmas. Take, for example, the following, which accompanied an apple:
“Dear Arien, Apple stands for peace, safe and well in China. Though you can’t celebrate with your family, you can celebrate this holiday with us. May your holidays be bright. Happy New Year, Merry Christmas  Yours, A.”
It’s not much, but I’ll take it. And I’ll take the 40 or so other equally kind-hearted notes I got, and the endless badminton matches and the numerous performances that are suddenly popping up and the little band of student friends I’ve acquired over the past month. We might not be able to say a whole lot to each other yet, but we can definitely play a mean round of badminton.
As 2010 ends and 2011 begins, I will keep it in mind every time I want to question why I’m at this school that coming here was, for some of my students, their proudest moment. And I think the best way to look at it is to be proud of being a part of somebody else’s proudest moment.

Happy New Year.

A Little Dash of Pride

2010-12-09T16:59:00.001+02:00

It’s official. My students have won me over. At least one class of them. A couple of students approached me last week about attending a show they were putting on and I, possibly a bit too enthusiastically, said I would be there in a heart beat. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Thank you for inviting me. I’ve been dying to be invited to something, and here you are finally inviting me! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
So the event happened tonight, but I got a sneak peak yesterday, when, before class, I asked them what they were going to do during the show. Before I knew it, the entire class was singing a Chinese song. They got really into it…clapping the beat and swaying and all. A couple even stood up. And they’re all men, except for one. I have a tough time imagining a whole class of American eighteen and nineteen year old mechanic students serenading their teacher before class, so I’ll count myself fortunate.
They were the last group to perform tonight, of about 10 other freshmen performances. I must say, though all the acts were interesting and funny (as little as I could understand), the best was certainly saved for last. Who knew that my little class of mechanics is filled with natural talent? I’m all jazzed up now to start a drama club again and work with the students on more creative stuff. After the show they all clamored around my sitemate and I to get our feedback and all I could do was beam.

On a side note, after the show, we went to the little supermarket here on campus. I saw one of my best students, and being all jazzed up as I was, I went over and lightly punched him on the shoulder and said hi. Of course, when he turned around, I realized it wasn’t my student at all. It was someone I had never seen before. He just stared, wide-eyed. That’s what we giant, pale Americans do. Go around punching random people on the shoulder. Yup.

An Ode to Luggage

2010-12-04T17:22:00.000+02:00

In every volunteer’s home, there is a constant reminder of the day that will eventually arrive. Sometimes it’s incorporated into the living room as furniture, covered with a pretty piece of fabric and passed off as an oddly balanced end table, or shoved into the bottom of the closet and used as a shoe rack, or tucked carefully into a corner, uncovered, but as hidden as possible, such as my own. It carried our lives here, balanced on our backs or tugged along behind us, and it will eventually carry our lives away. It’s the only thing we’re guaranteed to take back with us, in one form or another.
And in my opinion, it’s rather underappreciated. In many cases, even abused. On my first trip abroad, my big red roller bag blindly followed me, its brand new little wheels getting all scraped up and bruised, throughout the streets of London. I was careful at first. I avoided puddles and gently lowered it down any steps, and never tugged at its handle too gruffly. From my window seat before take-off, I looked on in horror as the airport baggage handlers yanked bag after bag from the truck and threw them menacingly through the air and onto the plane’s conveyor belt, where they slammed and crashed into one another, looking broken and sad. As I saw my big red roller bag appear, I turned away and fidgeted with the seat-back tray in front of me, telling myself it was just a suitcase. It couldn’t feel the pain the baggage handlers ruthlessly doled out.
At London Heathrow, my heart caught in my throat in anticipation each time a piece of luggage popped out of the airport bowels and slid onto the baggage claim belt, where onlookers either admired or questioned its owner’s sense of travel style. Where was my bag? A black, oddly shaped trash bag, tied at the top with red rope, slid by, causing several murmurs and raising a few eyebrows, until a man with a tiny boy by his side grabbed the bag, untied it, and unleashed, to the child’s delight, a stroller. The crowd returned its attention to the carousel. Bag after bag plopped onto the conveyer belt, which ran endless laps around and around, showing off its goods.
Soon the crowd had plucked out most of the items, leaving just a few tattered and crumpled unclaimed duffels, and it was clear that baggage claiming for my flight was coming to a close. By this time, my palms were itching and my throat had gone dry at the prospect of spending two weeks in a foreign land with nothing other than my puny, pointless little carryon backpack. Just as the last of the passengers picked up their things to leave, a thud came from within the carousel, causing heads to turn, and seconds later my big red roller bag raised itself up and out of the airport bowels, then it turned casually onto its side and slid gracefully down to the belt. For an almost imperceptible second, the remaining crowd hesitated, drawn by the appearance of such a fine looking bag so late in the claiming game. They looked on in what I believe was envy as I proudly, yet carefully, claimed my big red roller bag.
Such was the beginning of my love for the big red roller bag. A love which has bloomed over the years to produce adventures and wanderings, stories and photographs, experiences and friendships. And today, ten years after that first trip, I find myself worried about the big red roller bag. It has been stuffed well beyond capacity, then thrown ruthlessly to the ground (not by my own hands, of course), or hurriedly dragged down dozens of steps, or yanked up stairs, or sat upon, or left to topple over onto itself (all of which I feel horribly about), and all of that abuse is starting to show. There’s a hole in the seam on the side, the color is no longer bright, the wheels wobble feebly under even the most modest of weight, an audible groan can be heard each time I try to zip it up.
Yet there it sits, patiently in the corner, with neither complaint nor hostility, a friendly presence, waiting till I’m once again ready. Ready to stuff it to the gills, roll it from this room and into a plane and on to whatever is to come next. I know it’s silly to love an object, but I love you, big red roller bag, and I hope you can see me through till the end of what has turned out to be a rather long adventure. After this, you will take an extremely well earned vacation. I promise.

The Year Book

2010-11-25T16:06:00.004+02:00

Thank you, kind goat herder, for answering my grammatically bizarre questions about your little herd of baby goats in a way that I could understand. Thank you for letting me stare at them with you for a while yesterday and for treating me like anyone else you had met that day. I think you’re my favorite stranger ever.

Thank you, little noodle shop boy and tea shop girl. You’re both very young, but you seem more mature than the majority of my students. Thank you for always giving me a smile, listening so patiently to my choppy order, and providing food and drink advice for free. You might not know it, but I buy stuff from you as an excuse to hang out with you, no matter how briefly.

Thank you, dear student T, for walking and talking with me, inviting me to different events, coming to my office hours, going out of your way to help me, and for not once making me feel like an exotic beast on display at the zoo.

You, too, little students O and L. You’re very different from the others, but in a good way. Thank you for showing me that this place can have variety and a longing for the outside world. Your quirkiness and your ideas are gorgeous treasures that I hope you never lose.

Finally, thank you teacher N, for understanding so much. I appreciate your open mind and your honest words. You’ve made life here much more bearable and I really can’t imagine being here without you.

I hope this list only grows.

Lost

2010-11-07T12:53:00.001+02:00

There are countless ways to get lost in China, or at least in Chongqing. You can get lost outside, navigating through the winding mazes of narrow streets, beeping bikes, tall buildings, shouting vendors and steep stairs, or you can get lost on a full-beyond-capacity bus by missing your stop and ending up in a part of town you’ve never been to before, even though it looks exactly like where you wanted to go. Everywhere looks like where you wanted to go. Or you can get lost inside, wandering around a many-storied, multi-escalatored mega-mall that connects to four other many-storied, multi-escalatored mega-malls.
The malls here confound me. And the fact that I can spend an entire day exploring the many layered bowels of just one frightens me. And I didn’t even see the whole thing, nor did I go into most of the stores. I just walked. Around and around, up and up. I’m convinced this mall itself never ended, but I eventually had to give up on the endeavor. Especially when I reached the top floor and there, magically, was an exit. To the street level. I was on the sixth floor of the mall, thinking I had long ago left the option to easily exit behind, on the first floor, where I had entered. But there I was, on the top floor, blinking at the light streaming through giant glass doors and the cars zooming by outside.
At first I thought it was a trick of some sort. Beyond the doors lie another section of the mall and a gigantic movie screen showing images meant to make the shoppers feel like they’re on the first floor, giving them the impression that they can leave at any time. But surprise! You’ve found the coat check and you now have to spend another 4 hours finding the exit on the first floor. Haha, gotcha! Well, I wouldn’t let them fool me. I kept my hopes low and gingerly approached the trick exit. Expecting resistance, looking for any sign of a giant movie screen, which is entirely plausible in Chongqing, I pushed on the doors. They swung heavily open and a stream of smoggy air brushed past me and dissipated into the mall. It was real. Real smoggy air. I took a few steps. I was really outside. The cars weren’t actors in a movie, they were real. Real smoggy cars. Huh.
I turned around to look back at the now shut glass doors, reflecting my confused image. I looked lost. And tired. And really, really, unnaturally tall. I’m not sure how long I stared at my giant, mutated reflection, while cars darted to and fro behind me. Something had melted down in my brain and was taking its time to recover rational thought. Finally, my image was swiped away by two young women emerging from the mall, shopping bags dangling at their wrists. They giggled and chattered and glanced at me a million times until I forced myself into motion and launched back into the mall, as much as I disliked it. That sixth-floor outside world, though real, could not be comprehended, nor navigated, by me. Perhaps next time.
Retracing my steps as quickly and accurately as possible, I fled. I flew down escalators, brushed by meandering shoppers, ignored hullo!s left and right, resisted the draw of numerous cafes, stopped only once to eye a comfy looking sweater, and just forty minutes later, I was staring at the exact same scene I had seen on the 6th floor. But I was now on the first floor. Wasn’t I? Giant glass doors. Cars zooming by outside. The doors swung open and a gust of smoggy air entered the mall. Real smoggy air.
I walked out and this time I resisted the urge to glance back at the glass doors with their confused foreigner staring out. I didn’t let myself think about how strange this place is. I just walked until I found my bus stop. That’s the craziest thing. No matter how lost I feel here, I never am. I’ll be approaching absolute certainty that I’m miles away from where I want to be, and then the bus I’m looking for blares its horn at me as it drives by and, without thinking, I run to catch it. All anxiety dissipates. Easy as pie.

From Home

2010-10-27T17:42:00.002+03:00

I sort of forgot about how much I love receiving stuff from home until yesterday. My mom sent me a letter over a month ago and a small package about 2 weeks ago and I picked them both up yesterday. The package smelled like cinnamon and chocolate and home. I've grown deeply attached to the USPS flat rate box. Its presence means presents. And tasty treats. And sweet little notes written on everything. Thank you, Mom and Ozzie. You guys are so thoughtful.
If you ever feel like stopping by to say hi, or want to send a little letter or package my way, please feel free to do so using the address below. You need to use both the Chinese and the English, so it's probably easiest to just copy and paste the below into a word document and print it out. Bonus cookies if you copy it by hand :)

重庆市渝北空港桃源大道1000号
Erin Aldrich / An Xue
1000 Tao Yuan Avenue
Konggang Yubei Dist.
Chongqing China 401120

Comfort for all

2010-10-22T17:55:00.001+03:00

Perhaps the point of all of this is redefining comfort. Not just for myself, but for my students, my colleagues, the vendors I buy fruit from, the ladies who sweep the stairs, the guards who patrol the halls, even the people I casually pass on the street. Of course I’m going to feel uncomfortable, being the foreigner. I’m going to flounder through language mistakes and get off at the wrong bus stop and drop chopsticks and sweat buckets and go through innumerable awkward moments - hours, even. That’s a given. But pushing the comfort levels of other people, the people who live here, simply by being present? I never expected that.
The window of my apartment overlooks the main hub of campus, right by the cafeteria and the track, where just about every single student passes every day. I can watch the campus thrive from here. I see students walking to class, chatting with one another, teasing each other, bouncing a basket ball back and forth, jogging to class late. I see them from here and they look perfectly content, going about their business. Then I leave my apartment and walk down the stairs and join them, adding myself to the mix, and the whole scene goes to pot. The basketballs stop bouncing, the teasing ceases, the jogger’s step falters.
A little wake of discomfort follows me everywhere I go. Last week, at my favorite noodle shop, I heard the waiters arguing over who was going to help me. They weren’t arguing because they both wanted to take my order, they were arguing because neither of them wanted to. This was the first time it hit me. I make people uncomfortable for no other reason than being foreign. I’ve since been back several times and, though they’re very friendly, there’s always a hint of tension in the air, not just from the staff, but from the other customers, too. Like I might burst into flames at any moment, right in front of their eyes, so they better keep glancing over as not to miss anything.
I wonder if Chinese people who go to America feel disappointed when they arrive and no one stares at them, nor shouts “ni hao!” at them every few minutes. Diversity is one of America’s greatest strengths and something I’ve been taking for granted my entire life. At what point does a person, or a group of people, become comfortable with being around someone who does not have the same traits as them, to the degree that skin tone becomes invisible, hair color melts away, and blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes all have the same exact function? I’m looking forward to the day when the scene outside my window will not be spoiled by my presence, and the waiters won’t think twice about jotting down my jaozi order, and everyone can just be themselves.

I'm lovin' it

2010-10-14T18:08:00.000+03:00

It started about a year ago, with one innocent visit. I was with a friend in Bucharest and she decided to get a coffee at Starbucks. I was just going to go in and look around and chuckle at how the chain really does not vary in appearance no matter where in the world you are, but then I decided oh what the heck, and bought a coffee for myself. 19 lei worth. It brought back a lot of memories. Good memories. Coffee shop memories. Non-Starbucks coffee shop memories.
We sat at a table with comfy chairs and chatted, warming our hands around our mugs, just like I used to do at my old favorite coffee shops. Up until then, I hadn’t had a Starbucks coffee in a very long time. Years. Up until then, I had done a very decent job of cutting a company I had somewhere along the line deemed unworthy out of my life. That’s where it started. Or, you could say, that’s where it ended. At a Starbucks in Bucharest, my long-term avoidance of corporate America and fast food nation ended.
What followed was a sad downward spiral into some of the horrible places I had taken measures to avoid for years. Dinner at Pizza Hut, followed by a McFlurry at Mickey D’s. Wake up to a scone and a latte at Starbucks. Repeat. I soothed my feelings of treachery by telling myself it was only while I was in Bucharest, which was once every other month or so. But a nagging guilt tainted each sip and every bite. I remember the first few times I went abroad and snorted at the other American tourists eating in places like TGI Friday’s or Ruby Tuesdays or McDonald’s. Why on earth travel if those are the places you are going to eat? Silly American tourists.
Back then it never would have occurred to me that maybe those Americans weren’t tourists. Maybe they lived there and maybe that was their occasional treat to themselves. A treat that made them feel guilty and weak and ashamed, but gave them a few glimpses of a comfortable place far, far away. It might not be the restaurant or the coffee shop they would have picked if they were in America, but because it’s the only option for something some-what familiar, they went with it. To those American diners who I snorted at years ago, I am sorry.
And now that not one, but two Starbucks shops are only an hour-long bus ride away, tempting me every day I have off, I have to put myself in check and rationalize the glee I’ve started feeling every time I know that a Starbucks is near. There is a part of me that still, deeply and possibly irrationally, dislikes the chain and I will never go to a Starbucks in America. I will spend the extra 30 minutes and dollar to hunt down a local coffee shop. That’s because those local coffee shops exist in America, where here, Starbucks is the coffee monopoly and I have not found another option that provides both decent coffee and a comfortable place to drink it. The day I find Chongqing’s version of Bibo, I will be there in a heart beat, thankful for no longer having to feel the guilt I now associate with drinking coffee, a habit I have found impossible to shake.
All of this has been coming about in my head because there’s a WalMart in Chongqing. It’s only 15 minutes away from my campus. I’m going there tomorrow and, this is the worst thing I’ve ever said in my life, I’m excited about it. I’m excited to go to WalMart. Good gracious, what has happened to me? It’s such a strange feeling, being excited about going to a place that I loathe. Starbucks is one thing, but WalMart? I am a horrible let-down of a human being. A traitor no longer eligible for the title semi-cool. Good night.

Messy

2010-10-10T17:02:00.001+03:00

What does it take before a person’s life is considered a mess? Is it generally addiction related, relationship related, incompetence related, or what? If a person knew only the following things about me and nothing else, what would the conclusions be? I’m just shy of 30 and rarely live in one place for more than a year. I haven’t held down a full time job for more than a year and a half and have had a smattering of random part time jobs. I have two bachelor’s degrees, neither of which I’m actually putting to use, both of which took me seven years to earn. Most of my closest friends I see less than once a year and I often forget to wish them a happy birthday or a merry Christmas. My mom has been taking care of my dog for the past 10 years and I kind of question my ability to properly care for a pet anymore. My little brothers are more used to talking to me on a computer than in person. I have zero savings, no house, no car, no career, no marriage, no kids, no nothing. All I’ve accumulated are experiences and gigabytes upon gigabytes of pictures. To some, I’m sure, my life is a mess. I’ve never thought about it until today, for some reason. I’ve never thought about what it takes to consider a person’s life a mess. I don’t know quite yet if I should label this life of mine a mess, or just a convoluted maze. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been told I’m young and have all the time in the world to figure things out, but some day not too far away, people are going to stop saying that, and all the time in the world will start to run short.
I start teaching full time tomorrow and I damn well better like it.

New Campus

2010-09-24T18:22:00.001+03:00

My university changes every day. When I came for the site visit about two months ago, it was unlivable. Only the skeletons of buildings existed and not an ounce of green could be found on campus, which is strange for here. Now the teaching buildings are complete enough to hold classes all week long, the student dorms are abuzz with life (6 lives per tiny dorm room, to be exact), the soccer field is thickly coated in Astroturf and little oases exist in the most unexpected places. Despite the construction noise that has become the soundtrack to my life, the plethora of bottomless pits waiting to be stumbled into and the red dust hanging in the air and coating EVERYTHING, watching a campus spring up around me is pretty cool. CQIPC used to be in the heart of Chongqing, right across the street from the Olympic stadium and minutes by foot from a monorail stop. Downtown, in all of its skyscraping glory, was only a 15 minute monorail ride away. Now, at the new campus, it takes two hours by two different buses to wind up in downtown. We are literally at the end of the city. Beyond this campus, there is nothing but gently rolling green hills. And I think I’m growing to love it. Across the street from the university is what I would call a village, even though it’s still considered Chongqing. There, chickens run through the streets, which are too narrow with too many stairs to allow for cars, and people sit in front of their houses playing mahjong and chatting. Little kids run around pant-less and gardens are interspersed between the run down houses. I walk through there and I feel much more foreign, but some how much more right, than I ever do when I walk through downtown. I thought I would hate being in a huge city and far away from all the attractions, but who needs another towering skyscraper with a starbucks? My attractions come in the form of clucking chickens and counting stairs. I’m a little worried about my village, though. Future plans for this university include taking over the area across the street and turning it into a shopping district for the campus. I hope those plans include leaving the chickens, pant-less kids and mahjong players alone. We shall see.

Other than the possible demise of the village, I can’t wait to see how my campus develops over the next two years. It’s nice to be a part of it from the beginning, when a lot of things are just as new to everyone else as they are to me. We briefly visited the old campus during the site visit and it is puny in comparison to this place. Many universities are doing exactly what CQIPC is doing – selling their old downtown campus and building a new suburb one – because they need to modernize and to accommodate for an increasing student population. It’s hard right now because all of the teachers live near the old campus, so they’re doing that two hour commute every day, twice. But the monorail will eventually come all the way here and our campus will have its very own stop. I have the feeling the stop will open on the day I leave, but it’s still exciting to think that some day getting to downtown from here will be an hour long coast on the swanky monorail. Until then, I’ll savor walks through my chicken-lined village and venture into the overwhelming depths of downtown sparingly.

Training

2010-09-18T18:00:00.000+03:00

Before anyone can begin their higher education as a college student, they must complete military training. The universities provide the training to all incoming freshmen and it's during the first 2 or 3 weeks of the semester. Currently, my school is on day 3, even though it's Saturday. My apartment overlooks the field where all of the training occurs and I've spent many minutes over the past few days observing the drills. Mostly what I've seen has been a lot of organized standing and sitting and walking around with lots of shouting. At all hours of the day, and many hours of the night, there's shouting. It sounds to me like they're yelling "Wheel! Of! Fortune!!" but I'm pretty sure they're just counting to four (yi! er! san! si!) as they do some sort of exercise. I don't know how they do it. It's been over 40/100 degrees the past 3 days and they're dressed in full camouflage suits standing or sitting still in the open sun. Granted, I am a pansy when it comes to heat, but it's got to be awfully sweaty out on that field. For a couple of days last week, my site mate and I contemplated asking our supervisor if we could join in the training, especially since there's very little for us to do right now because nearly all of our students are freshmen. Luckily we didn't pursue the idea. I've been hunkering down in my gloriously air conditioned apartment and getting some lesson planning and studying done. On Wednesday, the high is supposed to dip to 27/80 and I am counting down the days. Oh, to walk outside and be comfortable.

When I do toughen up and get outside, I experience a roller coaster of thoughts, especially when I'm alone. I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle being stared at and/or called to. Even though I'm in a huge city with lots of foreigners, we are still few and far between and I'm on the outskirts of the city. As I walk, I feel my hackles go up as a hand full of faces turn. I see a girl glance at me and whisper something to her friend, who immediately turns to look at me. She turns back to her friend and they both start giggling and whispering to each other. Maybe they were talking about the building behind me, who knows. I shrug and walk on, feeling confused and slyly checking my fly. A group of boys walks by. They stare, but smile, so I smile back. Okay. That was okay. A few minutes later, I walk by a building that's under construction. From within, I hear someone shout "Hello! Hello!!", but I see no one. I continue walking as another Hello rings out, followed by some string of Chinese that I can't understand. Whatever. I can't even see the dude and he's yelling at me. I give no response and ignore the subsequent hellos. My walk continues. I pass several people who seem to be purposefully not looking at me, though the side-ways glances are still noticeable. Thanks, I guess. Next a girl walks briskly past me. As she does, she smiles brightly and says “hello!” I smile back, a little surprised, and say hi. Well, she was nice. I hope I seemed nice. Huh. What next. I approach an old man who's carrying two heavy baskets that are slung over his shoulders with a thick bamboo rod. As we pass each other, I look to see if he's staring at me. He is. I match his stare. Despite his obviously heavy load, we nearly turn around backwards to stare at each other as we walk. Finally, he turns back and I breathe a sigh of relief. I know. I look weird. I dress weird. I sweat a lot. I know us foreigners are very very foreign here. I know. I get it. You're curious. You're surprised. You're happy I'm here or you’re not. You want me to feel welcome here or you want to make fun of me. Okay. So why can't I just deal and not let it get to me? Do I try to respond to all the hellos? Do I stare back? Do I smile at the giggles? Do I walk with head down and eyes glued to the side walk? I can’t figure it out. Each time I go for a walk, I feel humiliated, annoyed, rude, awkward, surprised and happy at some point. Every single time. It’s not just a walk anymore. It’s a parade. I’ll be here on this campus for two years and I’m going to make it a goal that I will one day go for a walk and feel nothing but happy. All we need is to get used to each other.

An Xue

2010-09-10T16:37:00.002+03:00

I was almost a Stephanie. The top two picks on a pretty long list of possible baby names came down to Erin and Stephanie. We still have the list somewhere. It was written before my parents knew I was a girl and on the backside a few boy's names are scrawled. If I had been born with a Y chromosome, I'd be Anthony right now. I wonder what he'd be like. I'm not sure how Erin beat out Stephanie, or Anthony for that matter, maybe it was a coin toss, or my quarter of Irish blood taking charge, but I'm glad she won. I don't know how much really depends on name, but I'm pretty sure the Stephanie me would be an entirely different me.
I now have another name. When I arrived in China, my Chinese name was ready and waiting for me. An Xue, pronounced more like On Shoe-ay, was given to me by our training site language teachers, who all sat down with our pictures and our English names and decided what would suit each of the 23 of us best. Like in Romania, names are said family name first, then given name. An is my family name, meaning peaceful, and Xue is my given name and means snow, so my Chinese name is Peaceful Snow. All pale jokes aside, I like my name. During training, I was called by this name by all of the teachers, my host family and many of my fellow trainees. It has become part of who I am and I can feel An Xue taking on a life of her own. I hope I can cultivate her life into something unique and meaningful. I've spent 29 years turning into Erin, good and bad, and I hope I'm able to do something halfway respectable for An Xue over the next two years. It's a little intimidating, a clean slate. A name waiting for its history to start.
So far, An Xue has eaten hundreds of kilos of rice and has developed strong cravings for the grain when it's not eaten at least once a day. She has also acquired a taste for spicy food, which was previously seen as an impossible feat. She can use chopsticks to eat peanuts, noodles, eggs, pork, oatmeal, cow tongue, cow tail, banana, apple, pig lips AND spinach. She can also spit fish bones directly on the table without thinking too much about it. She can haggle for prices, even though her language skills are laughable (literally), and she will eventually figure out how to get from A to B, be it by bus, by foot, by train, by monorail or by taxi. She's got squatting down to an art and rarely misses. She can strike up elementary conversations with strangers, though those conversations don't go very far. Yet. Basically, she can survive. Now it's time to get the real story started. Teaching starts next week, just one class for now, but hopefully it will get the life of An Xue rolling a bit faster.

Peace Corps, Part Two

2010-06-03T01:29:00.003+03:00

In December, a friend of mine told me about her plans to transfer from Romania to the Peace Corps Nicaragua program, an idea which had never occurred to me. I had considered extending my service in Romania or transferring to the TEFL program there, but my enthusiasm for staying in Romania, as much as I love it, eventually waned and was replaced with the desire to experience something new. I talked with our country director about transfer options and China's TEFL program quickly rooted itself into my brain and I applied to transfer. And was accepted. So here I sit after being home for one month and getting reacquainted with all the glorious things that I love about Nevada, those dusty hills and that dry sage breeze and all my family and friends, knowing that in one more month, I'll be back on a plane heading even farther away. To Chengdu for another round of PST and then to who knows where for two years of teaching English to university students. Why am I doing this all over again? I certainly went through some rough and low times, but now that Romania is in the past, those bad times pale in comparison to the good times. The mean people have been nearly forgotten and the kind ones bring my memories to life and make me smile. The government's corruption can no longer compete with the people's compassion. And I don't want this challenge to be over yet. I'm not ready to be an RPCV and to find that elusive next thing to do and to decide what my long term future entails. I still don't know what I want to do, so I'll continue with this temporary thing that is changing who I am and making me love life and breaking my heart all at the same time, over and over again. Put me back on the roller coaster, I'm not done yet.

Renomania

2010-05-07T20:04:00.003+03:00

I've been home for a week now and feel surprisingly ok. Based on the stories I've heard about returning home after two years, I was expecting all kinds of anxiety attacks and sleeping issues and instability, but I feel fine. A little out of step and weird, but fine. Perhaps I'm not yet in the clear, though. Both Reno and Romania feel like imaginary places, like they belong in a book of myths and legends. From Dracula's Backyard to the Biggest Little City: A Tale of Two Towns. Or something like that. I like how Romania feels right now. I love the country in a different, more powerful way now that it's a memory. It's a warm, light place in my brain that, when focused on too intently, can bring tears to the eyes. I hope that feeling never fades.

There was an older Romanian woman on the flight from London to Dallas. She was alone and could speak no English. At Heathrow, I heard her ask a man if he spoke Romanian. After repeating herself three times and getting the response "what?" three times, she gave up and started shuffling through her purse. Her hands shook a little. Surrounded by a sea of English speakers for the first time in two years, I was immediately drawn to her, and found myself clinging to this last little piece of Romania for as long as possible. We found a great deal of comfort in the other's presence and I couldn't help but get choked up as she boarded her plane to Tulsa, Oklahoma an hour before my flight to Reno. Goodbye, Romania. You kept me company all the way to America and I'm very grateful for that.

My mom, sister and sister's boyfriend met me at the airport with a welcome home bouquet and balloons. The length of space between where I could see them and where I could actually hug them seemed to last a decade and I think I may have pushed a few meandering fellow-passengers out of the way. Sorry about that. Tears of joy are strange creatures and I'm still trying to figure them out. Obviously, I have done alot of crying over the past three weeks. Tears for leaving, tears for missing and tears for arriving. But for now, I'm just happy to be home. I've really missed this place.

Szia

2010-04-28T23:44:00.002+03:00

The final night in Sfantu Gheorghe. My two very heavy bags are packed, this amazing apartment is as clean as I could get it, I have said enough goodbyes to run my eyes dry and I have six more hours until I need to leave for my final checkout in Bucharest. It goes without saying, I can't believe my time here is already up. I've been telling everyone (including myself) that I'll be back in two years for a visit. It's the only way I can get myself to leave. This place and these people have given me something too wonderful to permanently leave behind. As Arnie is known to say from time to time, I'll be back. There's no doubt in my mind. Thank you, Saint George. I love you and I will miss you more than you'll ever know. Va pup.

Mistakes

2010-04-24T11:13:00.002+03:00

You'd think living in a different culture for two years is long enough to learn the ropes and to know how to avoid making mistakes, right? Well, not for me. I haven't made any hideous horrible mistakes, but, with all of these semi goodbye parties and gatherings I've been hosting and attending, I've made quite a few little baby mistakes.

Mistake 1: Coffee. I forgot that Romanians typically like their coffee very strong and very small. So when I brought out a tray of large mugs brimming with weak American style coffee for my tutor and some other friends, they immediately and kindly asked to pour half back into the pot, half of which ended up on the counter due to my own shakiness. They drank the rest of the coffee without complaint, though I'm sure it was too weak for their liking. Oops.
Mistake 2: Diplomas. I also forgot how much people here love diplomas. You can hand out diplomas for ANYTHING and often times they are expected after a special class, meeting or session. During the party at the EPA, somebody not in the English class asked when the English class was going to get their diplomas. It had never even crossed my mind to make them diplomas, but of course they deserve them and how could I not have thought of that? Four hours later, I was busily designing generic diplomas for both the English class and the drama club, which were received with beaming smiles. Phew.
Mistake 3: Cake. A friend made a cake for one of the going away parties. It was a beautiful huge chocolate thing that looked heavenly. After they brought it and some presents out, I hugged and pup'd them and opened the presents and then we all sat back down and started chatting. Time went on and I kept staring at the cake...wondering when we were going to eat it. Finally, after twenty tortuous minutes, I asked if we should slice into it. The lady who made it said, a little exasperated, "We're all waiting for you to cut it! You have to serve it because it's your cake!" I jumped into action and five minutes later, we were devouring the cake. It was delicious.

They're all little harmless mistakes, but still mistakes that a local wouldn't make. I wonder what mistakes I'd be making after living here for ten years. Or would I then finally be a pro.

To Infinity

2010-04-21T22:42:00.004+03:00

The Drama Club put on its last play of the year tonight. It was a spin on fairy tales and involved Prince Charming and Snow White a year after their wedding. Special appearances were made by Chuck Norris, Bob Marley, the Wicked Witch of the West, Hansel (of Hansel and Gretel), Little Red Riding Hood, and even Death himself showed up. The students wrote the entire script and designed the set (we actually had a set this time) and came up with their costumes and did everything on their own. Yet, for some reason, they don't think they can continue on next year without me. Although I'm touched, it's nonsense. I wish they could see how talented they are. We'll meet up one more time next week for a little goodbye party, then my time with the Saint George Drama Club will come to a close, most likely tearfully. All I can do is hope that the club will still be running when I come back for a visit, 5 years down the line. That would be so cool.

Today also marked my goodbye party at the EPA. Despite not going in much at all over the past few months, nearly the entire agency stopped by to bid me farewell and munch on a cookie or two. It made me realize how much I did, at certain times, enjoy working there and how nice some of the people are. For a while, I had it in mind to leave without really saying goodbye, but I'm so glad I didn't do that. Several of them have been a part of my life for the past two years.

I feel surprisingly numb. I had my first going away party on Monday with the 5 people I've worked the most with at the EPA. When they brought out the surprise cake and gifts, I started to cry. It didn't last long and wasn't too over-dramatic, but the cake and gifts and kindness were unexpected and really hit home. I'm leaving. I'm going to miss these people and it seems that they're going to miss me, too. Since then, I think something inside has shut down a little bit and isn't registering all of these goodbyes and isn't letting me cry. It'll wake up at some point. Maybe in Bucharest. Maybe on the plane. Maybe at home. It'll wake up and want to speak in Romanian and wonder why I've left and crave the comforting te pups, but none will be found. Hopefully I'll be around my family and friends by then and their presence will undoubtedly lessen the shock.

If Iceland's volcano or any other sort of natural disaster doesn't get in the way, I have one week left in Sfantu Gheorghe and 9 days left in Romania. I'm so sad to leave, I can't wait to get home, I'm so sad to leave, I can't wait to get home, repeat to infinity.