I wanna be normal

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