Monday, March 29, 2010

Dragonfly out in the sun, you know what I mean

My dinner in the cafeteria this evening consisted of a dish of spicy eggplant, a dish of squid/celery/carrot, a bowl of rice, and a square of apple pie. My dishsoap has a pretty standard lotus scent, and I have been eating a lot of seaweed-flavored saltines.

I have in the last few days completely made up my mind, at various time, that I am definitely going to Korea to teach English, that I am going to put all possible effort into the Sichuan teaching fellowship, and that I am definitely going to find some way to stay in Nanjing next year. I have come much closer to figuring out my rubric, at least. I need to be somewhere I feel I am building meaningful relationships. I don't really need (almost don't want) to be advancing my career next year, as I need to have space to figure out where I'm going next. I have been pushing through this education thing for quite a while, and I think I need to stop and look where I'm headed before I keep pushing any longer. I feel good about my educational decisions (well. I'm less than ecstatic about the loans I'm accruing here through Hopkins, but I'll survive). I feel good about my International Studies/Environmental Science degree, good about my trips abroad, good about the time I spent working with rain gauges, good about this year in China (and what it will tell people about my stubborn ability to sit through lectures I don't comprehend, if nothing else).

I'm struggling to make a decision about next year that I am sure is about what I want and not about expectations I am imposing on myself. I keep thinking that I will accomplish this one more thing (have a job, graduate from college, speak Chinese) and then I will be happy with myself. I am finding that contentment comes with motion, with getting up every day and feeling good about what I am doing, with having meaningful relationships and knowing that I help to deepen them. I am trying to figure out what that means about where I should be next year. Maybe I should go to Korea where I will be best able to focus on my relationship with Christian, as well as teach children. Maybe I should stay in China and take advantage of this time to build relationships in this country and in this language. Maybe I should go back home and take advantage of this time to be with family before my life solidifies somewhere else (I did actually just check some job listings in Ames... doesn't look hopeful).

In the more tangible here and now, my cold is still lingering on but I feel much much better. The air quality here makes it harder to get over respiratory illnesses, I think. I read in the China Law Blog (which is probably, but not definitely, reliable) that breathing the air in Beijing is NOT as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day; that rumor is an exaggeration. It is as bad as LIVING with someone who smokes a pack a day. I've heard Nanjing is just about the same as Beijing overall. Some days better and some days worse. (Christian happened to arrive a couple days after the worst pollution day on record.)

My weekend was lovely. I spend time with Shirin and some Chinese parents and nine year old kids on Saturday, ending with going out for hotpot in the evening. Sunday morning I started tutoring the young couple I met last weekend who will be moving to the East coast for school in the fall. They are just lovely, so it was a great start to the day. Over lunch, Shirin joined me for a talk by a representative of a Chinese NGO, set up by some fellow Center classmates.

My head's still spinning with thoughts about what I should do... still trying to quiet down long enough to see my options clearly... Wish me luck.

Also! Last night, instead of continuing to do my homework, I stumbled upon and watched in full a documentary called Darius Goes West. It's about a boy with Muscular Dystrophy who drove from Georgia to California with 11 of his friends to try to get his wheelchair on Pimp My Ride. It was very moving, and I heartily recommend it. Also, if anyone is ever looking for a gift for me, I'd be all about the "golslabi" T-shirt for sale on their MD research fundraising site.

Today's title is from Nina Simone's "I'm Feeling Good," which I was first introduced to through Muse's cover.

[Austin said I haven't been posting enough. Here you go, friend]

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Spring Illness

Howdy, all. I've been having a pretty slow-moving month. I finally got that "travelers' diarrhea" the doctors all warn you about, and spent a lot of time sleeping for about a week (I'll spare the details to those of you I've not already burdened... I love you, Mom!). Then I had a long enough reprieve to have an excellent trip to Shanghai for the HNC Career Day, where I listened to panels of people working in Legal Services, Consulting, and Green Business in China. I learned some things- to begin with, what "consulting" is- and made a cool connection. I spent the rest of the weekend at a Baha'i friend's house, doing homework, taking advantage of her FANTASTIC speakers (my iPod earbuds are seriously making me sad now), and at the Naw Ruz party with the Shanghai foreign Baha'is association. All good times.

I got up early Sunday to get to the train station and buy a ticket back to Nanjing. Got home around 12:30 and at 2pm met a lovely young couple I'm going to start tutoring in English.

Kind of read (have I mentioned that I have more reading than is humanly possible? Have I mentioned I spend a lot of time doing other things? heh) for a while, hung out with friends, went to bed, went to a couple days of classes, thought about papers and jobs and worried about what I'm doing next year. Caught a cold, and have spent much of the last two days lazing around my room. It got cold and rainy again this week, which is I'm pretty sure why I got sick (I tell the most exciting stories about China!). On Sunday and Monday the weather forecast was "widespread dust," Christian actually made me realize this when he said there was a huge dust cloud/storm/something over Korea. I looked out the window, thought, well, the pollution and low clouds are awfully brown today and checked the weather. Widespread dust! I thought these things only happened in Beijing (where the weather forecast is sometimes "Sand," which blows over from the Gobi Desert).

I have been meaning to make phone calls to the US, but need to get up early (ish) in the morning to do so, and with all morning classes and being sick and just lazy, I haven't in quite a while (besides, y'know, Skype contact more or less daily with Christian and every few days with my mother. One can generally assume that I have long-windedly pondered my path and purpose for my mother's benefit in the past couple of weeks.)

I'm still thinkin' real hard about what I should do next year. I will let you know when I have a decision, but honestly I will probably be going back and forth about it for at least another week or two, so don't get too anxious.

Um, so no title song today, but Christian linked me to this cool video of Massive Attack's Splitting the Atom earlier today, which you might enjoy.

Oh man! And to help you appreciate better how awesome AND nerdy (if those terms can be separately, really) my awesome nerdy boyfriend is, read this post about the card game he invented to teach English to his students: Sorcery: a Collecting

Friday, March 5, 2010

Plan B! Plan B!

Well, Christian and I are waiting on responses from two or three schools, but we've each been rejected from enough programs that we will definitely not be able to attend school in the same place next year. And, aside from that, I pretty definitely need to spend a year away from school and use my brain in a different way for a while, so on the slim chance that one of the schools I have yet to hear from accepts me, I'm going to defer.

Which means, dear ones, that I am figuring out where I WILL be next year, and it almost certainly will not be in the US. I have found a couple of things I would like to apply for here in China, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center has a resume book which is circulated around many firms in China. If nothing comes of these, I am also applying to both of the programs which place native English speakers teaching English in Korean public schools- which will hopefully land me on Jeju Island with Christian. I feel like I should stay in China to keep using my Chinese and build experience here, so I am going to give jobs here (especially two of them that I know of) my full application effort. But I also feel that I need to do something, sometime soon, where I don't feel like I'm running at full speed all the time, and that it would make my life about 100% better to be in the same country, even, as Christian.

So, we'll see what happens! I am hoping I will be back in Iowa for a few weeks this summer. If I know I will be gainfully employed next year, I definitely have funds for it.

The plan is still almost definitely grad school in Geography whenever I actually get in to a program. I have questions I want to ask in a research setting, and I am pretty sure I want to teach eventually. I have dreams of leading study abroad trips.

Wish me luck!