Getting a feel for Korea

It took me a while to find Korea. I came as a China Scholar. I still think of myself as a China Scholar. But I came to Korea to be with Christian, to broaden my view of Asia, to calm down and figure myself out, and to earn money. I had a hard time separating my understanding of Korea from my understanding of China-- most of what I saw in Korea were things borrowed from China. I knew that a lot of what I understood as China I should really understand as Asia, but at the same time China has been an 'exporter of culture' for thousands of years in Asia. A lot of things that seem Chinese here are, or were.

... I started this post in a coffee shop in City Hall. I am now sitting at a kind of play/gathering ground (explanation in a moment) by the coast where, bless Korea, there is public wireless internet. There are coffee shops and bakeries popping up all over the place-- a Western fad. (There is also SPAM everywhere-- a product of American military influence in building South Korea's economy after/during the war...) This is a better place to think, and a good example for me to try to untangle my ideas of China and Korea. 

There is a long concrete wall behind me. It was I think recently painted a pale yellow, and has raised sculptures of fish and octopodes and Jeju Women Divers. On the other side of the wall is the ocean, which just switched from a deep turquoise to almost black with the setting of the sun, though there were clouds blocking the sunset for an hour or so.

I am sitting on the top of four large concrete steps that lead down to a large concrete court. The concrete is swirls and blocks of color-- blue and pink and yellow, I think, though I have almost always been here when the sun has been low and the yellow streetlamps distorting the color scale. This court ends maybe another hundred feet in front of me, and stretches probably half a mile from side to side. The area far to my right has basketball and other courts. Along the other edge are vendors. Some of them sell food, and most of them are renting some kind of equipment. Bicycles (for 1 to 4 riders), rollerblades and skates and pads,  child-sized electric cars, balls to throw around. There is only a small crowd out tonight, as it is Sunday, but there are still lots of families and more than a few sweethearts walking up and down the seawall or riding something around in circles. There is a constant murmur of parents telling their kids not to get so far away, or laughing or cheering their approval of some feat of balance, or children who have run out of feats and need a hug. It sounds like a community.

To get here I walked 20 minutes or so downhill from City Hall. The road I took was full of shops-- bags and shoes and pets and clothes-- and to cross the last main road I had to go underground and walk a hundred feet through the shopping strip that runs for a mile (I think?) under Jungangro. I am drinking a bottle of Tropicana Spirit: Juice100 &Sparkling, White Grape flavor. It was part of a 1+1 deal at the FamilyMart (a Japanese chain which competes with the Korean GS25) near my house. And, you will recall, I have my new black netbook on my knees, surfing the web and writing this to you fine people.

Okay. So, this court/public square feeling area could be in China, more or less. I have seen similar places at the center of cities where rollerblades are rented-- it is a good time in any country! But of course, in China the paved public pedestrian areas big enough for this are the People's Squares in the middle of cities (generally in the place where Something Else stood before 1949). But they are used in much the same way. I didn't ever live near the coast in China, and most of Korea is near the coast-- so we can chalk the salt tang in the air up to geographic differences.

Korea went through its lightning fast economic development in the 60s-80s, so the air here feels calmer as well. In China I often feel heavy with the emotional intensity that comes from Chinese people trying to keep up with the changes of the last century and keep track of their identity-- I say that or something like it often and am never sure if I'm getting quite what I mean across. This feeling is a lot of what makes China fascinating for me, though I struggle with it. I know I still do not have a good feeling for Korea's changes in the last century, because so many people here are so comfortable with them. I don't feel that struggle, but I know I also don't feel whatever was lost in it.

Korea is one of Asia's "four tigers" of economic development, and they* are conscious of being taken as an economic model by other 'developing' countries. My East Asian Economics/Economies** professor liked the description of Asian economies as a flock of geese-- Japan is the lead goose, and Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong flank it.

As an American (particularly as a white person, sadly) and walking symbol of the economic development that  both of these countries are aiming for, I am treated differently here. Differently from the way I am treated in American and differently from the way that most people are treated here. Overall, I am not given as much attention here in Korea, but I am definitely noticed. Understandably, not everyone is sure what to do with me. Do they like what my identity represents? Can they interact with me like a regular person? Can I understand even one word of their language?

The vast majority of people I have encountered in both countries have been incredibly welcoming-- embarassingly so, when I think of the way that foreigners, and especially foreigners who don't speak English, are talked about and treated in America. There are cases of discrimination, but they are not the rule. Definitely the main difference between China and Korea is that in China-- at least if you get away from big tourist areas like Beijing and Shanghai-- people are much more intrigued and excited to see a foreigner. Though I have had people in both countries tell me that I was the first foreigner they had ever talked to, or sometimes even seen in person.

Hmm... I think I'm going to stop here and try to come back with another entry just on Korea in the near future. It's I'm still struggling to put my finger on words to describe how these countries feel so very different. There are here, I'll just keep writing til they come out!

*I say 'they' and mean it in a way that is so general as to be pretty much inaccurate. There are plenty of people here who are contentedly clueless about politics and economic development in a lot of ways, just as there are most places.

**I really love that the lines around concepts are different in every language.

Expatriation, or something

Possibly the biggest challenge I have been facing in myself is how exciting living in a different country isn't. I mean, yes, I am building awesome friendships with people who have quite different perspectives in life (in some ways, anyway). I am seeing new places, learning new languages.

But I still wake up every day and think about going to work (or other things I would rather be doing). I still get unnecessarily anxious about social situations. I still have to get out of the house and DO things, and it is still just as easy to sit at home on the computer and waste time.

And more than that, it can be lonely. It is harder to start new relationships, though I find the payoff of connection is generally much bigger when friends are coming from different cultures, it is much easier to step on each other's toes by not paying attention to "the things that actually matter" in a relationship-- since we may have quite different ideas about what those are. I don't want to go shopping some days because I don't want to deal with the fear in employee's eyes when they realize they might have to deal with me.

I don't mean to be complaining, really. I know I am very lucky to be here and am grateful for the experiences I am having and the ways there are making me grow. There are just always people now and then who tell me that they are impressed that I can live here, and (aside from just not being very good at taking compliments) I always want to shout "Don't be!" I am dealing with most of the same problems that I dealt with in my life in Iowa.

I continually realize that no matter what exciting scenery I find for myself, I will always be me. I am lucky, but if any of my family and friends still in America (or wherever their home country) moved to a new country, they would very quickly discover that I have done some things well, but that they could do a lot of things better.

This time from Seoul!

Our trip has continued to be excellent, overall. We accidentally bought train tickets for Tuesday instead of Wednesday and  ended up having to stand a lot for a long time rather than having the relaxing afternoon watching the country roll by as we had planned. But on Wednesday morning we walked up to the top of Busan, including at least part of the 1,000 steps that are apparently famous. We went to a huge lovely bookstore yesterday, and I now have The BFG; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and A Wrinkle in Time to give to Xiaoxuan when I visit her family fort the lunar new year in February (going back to Chinaaaa!). We then ate some excellent Vietnamese food and saw Tron: Legacy in 4D (meaning 3D glasses and seats on hydraulics so when the characters swoop, we swoop).

Today we are staying in until evening, when we're going to Hongdae to do whatever is done when the year changes at midnight. Jei and Christian are going to make me watch the 1st and 3rd Indiana Jones because I don't think I've seen either of them in their entirety.

Christian and I put off buying any travel tickets until we'd actually left and were worried that it would make this an expensive trip, but we bought plane tickets back home from Seoul (since we came by boat from Jeju to Busan and train from Busan to Seoul) and they only cost us 30,000won (less than $30) each. It was a very new airline, so I'll be able to tell you better on Sunday WHY they were so cheap, but I am confident they will at least get us home.

As far as things-Christian-says updates, which should probably become a regular facet of this blog, he has periodically channeled the spirit of New Yorker (or something like it) Odysseus, or "Ody" for short ("'ey, c'mon, we're pals, right?"). He also informed me that he is naturally built like Brad Pitt, with a slightly larger nose. But is allergic to "stupid poop-heads" and since he spends so much time with ME, is always swollen.

A kind man.

Coming to you from Busan, South Korea

Hello fair reader! I am in the PC bang (computer room/cafe) in the shared floor of a Jimjilbang. The women's sauna is on one floor, the men's on another, and the shared sleeping floor, with cafe and computer room and massage chairs, on yet another. Christian is on his way up, he's just texted me, and we'll be spending the night here before spending another half-day in Busan (the highlights of which will be the beach, again, and the RussiaTown near the train station) before catching our train up to Seoul to stay with a friend there through new years. We took an over night boat from Jeju-si last night, and didn't sleep much. We got into Busan port a little before 6am and have been wandering ever since, so I'm not feeling too bad about having hit the sauna around 8pm and just chilling for the rest of the evening.

More updates when I'm back home!

Movement and Stillness; Silence and Sound

There is a magic in traveling, whatever the distance. It takes me out of myself and gives me permission to look at the world. Even taking the bus home from my school a few towns over, feeling the landscape rolling past me puts my place in the world into more perspective. I can see more clearly how far I have traveled and how much world there will always be left to explore.

In part I owe this to the motion sickness that I sometimes view as a tragic irony. I can't read in cars or especially on buses and only sometimes on trains or planes. I sometimes can't hold conversations well because I can't keep turning my head to look at the person I'm talking to.* I have always gotten motion sick, as far as I can remember, which has meant that car rides (and more recently plane and train rides) have left me with nothing to do but be in my mind. It makes me a less-than-ideal travel partner; as soon as I sit down in a car, my brain sets to meditative work.

I love thinking about the world without being altogether in any one part of it. I love tracing a line that has connected who knows how many other people. And I love that my responsibility is just to be wherever I am. "I'm on the bus, dude." or "I'm on a train, dude. In China." and "I'll deal with it when I get there." It is an opportunity to turn off my responsibility/stress mind and just think about whatever comes.

It is often when I am traveling and staring absent-mindedly into the distance that I am able to articulate myself the best.

This year has probably been my richest ever in terms of travel. I was on Jeju staying with Christian for six weeks just after the year began, then I went 'home' to Nanjing for Spring semester. Afterwards I traveled to Chongqing by 25 hour train, then to Yichang by three-boat on the Yangtze river, then by 13 hour train to Beijing. There I was picked up by Xiaoxuan and her father's entourage, and hosted in Langfang and Guyuan, near Inner Mongolia. I went home for three and a half short weeks, and zigzagged my way all over the Mighty Midwest seeing people I love. I've been in Korea for a few months now, spending most of my time on Jeju but some in Seoul, and Christian and I have another trip to Busan and Seoul in just over a week. **

What matters the most, of course, are people. It is wonderful to travel with or towards people I love, but I also like to travel alone. I have had some lovely conversations and even made friends on trains and waiting for them. It is very easy for me to feel isolated sitting home alone, or when I am at work with no one to talk to. But even if I am by myself on a bus, I feel connected to the people riding it and to the places I pass. And as I begin to learn the history of whatever place I live in, I begin to be able to trace lines back through the reasons for and implications of what people say and do, what kind of work they do and where. It is magic that there are so many lines to trace and to continue.


*I was recently lovingly reminded that much of this may be in my head. I am better in motion if I am not struggling with anxiety, if I have been taking care of myself mentally and physically. I am better if I have someone's hand to hold, and that has little to do with my inner ear.

**that was a really long brief overview...

Me-update

Sorry I didn't post earlier in the week! All is well. This is solely a Kara-update, my mind hasn't been coming together for a more thoughtful topic.

I think I have decided to get a masters of education and teach middle school science, and then get certified to teach in montessori schools. I don't just want to do the montessori thing by itself, I believe, because I want to be more flexible in where I can work and because I am pretty sure I want to work with middle-school aged students. This is such an important age to be encouraged and empowered, as youth are becoming aware that they are both intelligent and mature, but often not being given ways to use those qualities constructively, I think that I can feel good about spending my whole life with them.

I have just recieved (from my dear mother!) and begun reading a book about the Montessori philosophy. But it is essentially based around Maria Montessori's discovery in late 19th century Italy that all children have a spontaneous interest and self-discipline for learning, when they are given the help and encouragement to act on them.

I am looking for Masters of Ed programs and may be applying for next fall to a couple with late deadlines, but will probably wait to ensure that I have applied for sufficient funding.

Christian and I are going to visit Seoul and Busan (the capital/biggest city in SK and the second biggest, respectively) the week after next for our vacations. We're taking a boat from Jeju to Busan, a train from Busan to Seoul, and a plane from Seoul back to Jeju.

The first week of January my school is hosting a joint English Camp with a few other schools (including Christian's) and I'll be teaching about 15 4th-6th graders a day on the exciting topic of "money." We'll be designing our own currency and ending with a treasure hunt.

Korea!

So, I know that I told friends and family about Korea and Jeju island, and confused them and myself about how big each population is.

There are a lot of people. Everywhere.

Korea is about the same size as the state of Indiana (100,000 square kilometers), with a population of 50 million. 50 million is one sixth of the population of the united states. Jeju itself is about 1.5 times the size of story county (an average sized county in Iowa), with a population of 565,000 people. It's a lot.

... more on other things later. I am getting a bit more nervous and much more excited about teaching with each lecture that we have during orientation.

After Commencement: Yangtze part 1

So, Saturday June 19th (the day after my graduation ceremony at the HNC) I went to the Nanjing Train Station (南京站）and boarded a 28-hour train bound for Chongqing. I bought tickets for a sleeper bunk, so it was a very comfortable journey of napping and reading and chatting to the very friendly woman in the bunk opposite me (in the morning, she fed me roasted peanuts and lychee, and I helped her wind a skein of yarn into a ball).

Chongqing has been one of the cities to most benefit from the building of the Three Gorges Dam, which has made a long stretch of the Yangtze river navigable for large ships and made Chongqing a major port. A friend, Melody, met me in Chongqing on Monday, after my train ride and a stay in a hostel, and before boarding our Three Gorges cruise ship in the evening, we walked along the river.

I liked the traditional-style roof in the same shot as the middle-of-river construction

here are ships like the one that we rode, and big buildings and bridge of downtown Chongqing (...actually, I'm not sure there is one 'downtown' or that this is it, but saying so makes cities in Iowa seem less tiny)

Our cruise lasted from Monday evening through Thursday morning (when we de-boarded the ship straight onto a Three Gorges Dam tour bus, and, y'know, toured the Three Gorges Dam). The first morning we toured the "Ghost City of Fengdu," a 'city' of temples built for ghosts' use after departing this life. One temple was actually in use by monks, but I think most of the buildings were built more with tourists in mind than anything.

a map of the "Ghost City"- the central of three sections is being built in the shape of a King into the Mountain.

here's his head.

this is the gate to the top temple on the right-hand side of the City.

That evening we toured Zhangfei temple, which was full of calligraphy and very fun, though by that point I was nursing a sunburn from falling asleep on the sun deck (I was in the shade when I sat down! The ship turned after I fell asleep!) and a little cranky. Um, though I don't seem to have and pictures of the calligraphy. I think my camera had died... I will see what I can find later.

Many of my favorite pictures were just of the river.

boats next to us as we left the ship the first time

view of the rising sun over the Yangtze

River!

The first and most dramatic of the Three Gorges- it looks like the river slices through the middle of a mountain.

I'll post this now and put the rest of the cruise in a separate entry. Stay tuned!

1am, and I am in transit again

Not a complaint, though the thought of finding a place to live in for more than a year at a time makes me ache a bit. I'm getting pretty good at packing, getting pretty good at not being attached to belongings and being ready to let things go, and I love always having new things to discover and new people to meet. But I would love to make some friends and know they will be around, that I will be around. That we might celebrate each others' birthdays more than once together.

That's a pretty angsty thought, given that before this year I lived in Iowa City for five years, and that before that I had lived my whole life in Iowa. But living around college students is a constant transition of relationships. Everyone is still deciding who they are and where they are going, and holding on to any one person too tight risks losing yourself.

We had our HNC commencement ceremony this afternoon. It was really nice. I have been so caught up in disappointment in myself, frustrated that I have been struggling so much with my own things (I am full of FEELINGS and sometimes it's a problem) and not taking full advantage of where I am that I have often lost sight of what a unique program I am in this year. I received (in an unashamedly fusia cover) a joint certificate in Chinese Studies from Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. Stephen Roach, the Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and Zhang Yibin, Nanjing U's liberal arts vice president, were our commencement speakers. My classmates are truly warmhearted and have a lot of vision and commitment. I know that I personally really need a break to figure out how I want to use this experience, as well as my undergrad degrees, but this has been an incredible place to be. I am qualified to call myself a China expert, of sorts anyway.

I am looking forward to traveling and being around people I love in the next month and a half, and very much looking forward to the reflection and clarity of mind that both of those things bring me. Next year is going to be a more personally focused one. I am hoping to write a lot (knock on wood; if I set myself up with expectations now I'll drown in them by august) and clear my mind out a bit. Hopefully one of my next entries will begin to outline possible writing for the next year. I'm looking forward to it.

Love!

This post gets lots of hits too. Why, I ask you?

Previous title:  More of a pledge than a post

Hello, all! I have been sitting in our student lounge at the HNC for about nine hours. Not consistently, obviously, as I have been doing homework and thus taking every possible excuse to go somewhere else and do something else, but I have been here a long time. I have mostly solidified plans for a cruise on the Yangtze river in a couple of weeks. I will be finalizing them in a couple of days. I am hoping that it takes less time to upload photos here when I'm in the States. I am hoping to do posts on the World Expo, the Nanjing Massacre Museum (which I can promise will be aptly summed up with the word INTENSE), the Yangtze cruise, my time in Hebei with Xiaoxuan's family, and maybe the four days I'll be spending in Seoul before I head back to the States. Hopefully, hopefully.

I am really excited about the cruise (er, obviously) and about going to Langfang in Hebei province. Xiaoxuan told me on Friday when we ate out (at a Muslim restaurant on the Nanda campus-- no pork) that I will be the first foreigner any of her grandparents has met, except possibly her one grandfather who was a soldier in the Korean war. But, in her words, "that was maybe not so favorable." To give you some more of her words on a completely unrelated matter, one evening after a very long day of classes and lectures I kind of hyperventilated at her in mock-freak out that I couldn't decide what book to read in the few minutes I had before falling asleep.
"The Center is so cruel to you," she said calmly.
"Yes, you phrased that well," I replied, "it's not that I am crazy, it's that the Center is cruel."
"Actually, my meaning is that the Center is cruel and so you became crazy," she explained.
"Oh," said I.
"So it's still the Center's fault, but your situation is not so good."

I seem to attract this kind of lovingly mocking friendship. It works for me.

She's generally more encouraging than mocking. Today I was muttering at our Center T-shirt, trying to find where my Chinese name was written.
"Sorry," I said, "I'll go back and talk to myself in the lounge soon."
"And I will go to the library and talk to myself there," replied Xiaoxuan, "and we will leave a quiet dorm room"

I have been well, overall. I spent another weekend in Shanghai, commemorating the ascension of Baha'u'llah by saying prayers at 3am with five friends on the 29th of May. That was lovely, and together with other awesome friend-time made it a very recharging weekend for me. Since then I have been a lot better about waking up early enough in the morning that I have time to pray and meditate a little, and start my days with clarity rather than rushing and feelings of guilt.

I think that my Yangtze-Hebei adventures are going to involve two more day-long train rides. I am very excited. I love sitting on trains and looking out the window, knowing that I won't be arriving soon enough to worry about and all I need to think about is the meaning in the scenery, more than pretty much anything else I have done in China. I love trains.

Quick Update

Among my methods of schoolwork procrastination has been changing my mind repeatedly about my summer plans, and obsessively looking up plane tickets on vayama.com. These culminated tonight in the purchase of a round-trip ticket from Seoul to Des Moines and back- putting me in Iowa or thereabouts from Tuesday, July 6th until Sunday, August 1st.

Hope I'll be seeing you soon!

Final thoughts on Bazhong

I’m not really sure where to start updating you about the rest of the week. Definitely the best and most important part was working with the kidsI think pretty much all of them were excited about my class simply because it took them away from normal assignments and classwork (as any self-respecting seventh grader should be) and many were also excited to meet us.

Playing Jeopardy in our second lesson with each class was hilarious. It wasn’t exactly Jeopardy, we had lots of questions about US culture and such divided into two groups: Easy and Hard. When I explained the game, I first told them that I’d be asking them questions and some of them would be hard, then that they were in groups, then that each group would choose either an easy question or a hard one. Whenever Genbao finished translating that, everyone would yell “Easy!” and I would put my hands up and say “but! And easy question is worth ten points, and a hard question is worth thirty” and a hush would be followed by whispers of “三十”[thirty]and sometimes a round of yelled “Hard!” They were attentive and excited about the questions. I didn’t tell anyone out loud if they were right or not- half the time looking back at the kids anxiously before doing so. The scores were always greeting with cheers and groans.

I think I mentioned before that Genbao was a fantastic co-teacher. He helped a lot (one could also say “did most of the work”) lesson planning, and then the night before we first taught he said “I think that because you are native speaker, you should teach. And I- I will translate!” He was great.

We got a good reputation because we spent a lot of time of phonics the first day- all the teachers who sat in on our class did all the phonics work along with me and the kids.

The more ridiculous things are usually a better story, but I’m afraid that focusing on them too easily gives a skewed vision of my life in China.

Ridiculous Thing 1, I already mentioned, was in my mind the fact that we met with the mayor and local Communist Party Secretariat. They wanted to meet with us to support our visit, and possibly the fellowship that’s supposed to be happening in Bazhong next year. It was a kind gesture, overall, but still a strange one.

Ridiculous Thing 2 involved our return trip. On the way there I and three other classmates rode a train to Guangyuan, the nearest train station. We rode the public bus, which is scheduled to take three and a half hours, driving on mountain rodes and stopping now and then to let passangers off. Our trip back to Guangyuan took only a little more than two hours. Why, you ask? And I will tell you. We took a different road, a highway. Why does the public bus not use this highway? Well, I’ll tell you that too. It isn’t finished. No one uses it. We loaded onto a bus, our luggage crammed in around us, with two students in a small silver sedan along with the school’s headmaster leading the way. The sedan and our bus flashed their hazard lights the whole way- “foreigners on board-foreigners on board-attention.” We breezed past a family car stopped at the blockade and onto the unopened section of the highway. We had to turn around on one overpass, the middle of which was blocked off with piles of construction materials, sending us down an entrance ramp and back up the other side. We passed many groups of construction workers who got out of the way for us to pass.

Overall, the trip was awesome. I got closer to some classmates, got to interact with a bunch of really bright students both in my classes in the middle school and at the high school English Corner. I returned worn out but very happy.

Eigentlich konnten wir uns freuen

A good first day of teaching! Although I really don’t know what to do with the teachers and their expectations- as far as they are concerned this trip has been one of misunderstandings and silly expectations- the kids are fantastic. Teachers (at least two, up to five) sat in on every one of our classes today. Genbao kept saying how nervous it made him during our breaks, and I kept telling him not to worry about them; just focus on the kids. The teachers stared at us pretty stonily most of the time, but I managed to ignore them pretty effectively. Apparently one of the high school teachers pulled aside one of the HNC students teaching there and asked if we were teaching majors. No. No, we are not. We are English speakers, and that’s all we got. I think they’re expecting us to revolutionize their teaching methods. Whatever. I’m sure someone saw that we are from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies and decided they wanted us to be teaching majors and passed that wish along.

Anyway. The kids are fantastic. They are attentive and curious and really excited to speak English with us. I am teaching seventh grade or 初一， the first year of junior middle school. The kids are twelve or thirteen and look about nine. They just about swoon when I manage to catch a single student’s eye and smile at them. They told me that that I am very beautiful (a stretch, at best) and my handwriting is very good (an outright falsehood) and after two of the five classes I taught today I was surrounded by a swarm demanding I autograph their textbooks or notebooks or the flags that Genbao and I gave out as prizes for our most challenging activity. Our third class asked for my phone number. I said, Chinese or American? and they said Chinese of course! but none of them have called or texted me yet.

We were told to assume that the seventh graders would know next to nothing, and were pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t true. They definitely can’t have very elevated conversations, but they can follow my instructions that have to do with the textbook and the activities in it. We asked what they wanted to be when they grow up and everyone who answered in English (we told them they could speak Chinese in the hopes that they would give us real answers and not just convenient ones, but few of them complied- I think all the teachers in the back were making them nervous too). We got quite a few “I want to be a policeman/woman. Although it is a little dangerous, the work is quite interesting.”s and another set of “I want to be a reporter. I will meet interesting people every day.”s and quite a few “I want to be an English teacher, because English is very interesting”s. I’m not sure how much of a difference we can honestly make in two class periods with each class of eighty (for a total of an hour and a half of very divided attention for each student). I am trying, and Genbao has been awesome at reminding me, to walk up and down through the classroom while I am talking and having them answer questions or practice pronunciation so that I can hear more of them and they all feel like they have been close to and approved by a Native English Speaker (more than that: An American).

Every time the class split into pairs there was always a student or two who ended up by themselves, by coincidence, their choice, or their classmates’ judgment I was never sure. It gave me the chance to pair up with them. I got a few pretty awesome facial expressions when I said “Can I be your partner?” Eyes went wide with a mixture of joy and pure terror. Most of the kids did really well for their level of English.

One boy sat in the back and didn’t understand enough to pay attention unless Genbao was translating. I did the “Is Mary doing her homework?” exercise with him one-on-one when he ended up alone. He had a lot of trouble- didn’t know any of the recent vocab, pronunciation was way off and very very hesitant. He looked at me like he was waiting for me to give up on him and move on to a smarter student- his smile seemed to shrug and his eyes apologized even while they were begging for approval. We went through a couple and he successfully said and (I really think) understood “No, she is eating dinner.” I told him good job and smiled at him so that I hope he believed me, but I don’t really think he did. Another girl I talked to one on one wasn’t too good at English, but I got the feeling it was because she didn’t care. This kid didn’t seem to think he had the right to care (I infer from kids like him I have known). He was paying attention and willing to work, and I’m sure if he had just a little extra help he’d be able to do just fine- I’m pretty confident that he will end up with no option but to go back to his home village. Kids don’t end up with expressions that hopeless if English is the only subject they’ve been convinced they’re hopeless at. I’d be angry, but there isn’t anywhere constructive to direct it, so I’m letting the anger go. There are over a thousand students in each grade, about eighty in every class. These teachers are not the best (though they are decent), or many might have chosen to live somewhere other than Bazhong. So I’m just resolved to keep trying to keep eye contact with him and the others who look like they don’t think they belong in school.

So, we were told we were coming to 中国一个非常贫困的地方－one of the poorest places in China. This is not true. Bazhong is definitely out of the way, and not one of the places that tourists generally frequent, but it is only poor and under-developed enough not to be too embarassing to the Chinese government. One of my classmates who’s also on this trip spent some time as a volunteer English teacher with an organization focused on sending teachers to poor villages. Most of her colleagues, she said, ended up in cities where they were not needed because they were not allowed into the really poor areas. The Chinese government is very sensitive to being seen as 落后 (backwards) and is growing tired of lectures on 人权 (human rights) , and wants the world to marvel when we realize that all of their problems are solved rather than continuously telling them what they do wrong (I think). This is a complicated country.

We are being banqueted (again- the school administrators already fed us very well last night, and our HNC administrator took us all out for hotpot tonight) by some higher-ups in the regional government tomorrow. I think at the expense of our time at the high school English Corner, which... would not be my choice of priorities. But one surrenders some amount of judgment about time management when entering into arrangements like a week of teaching English in China. We are actually quite sheltered from bureaucracy at our little Center, though of course we complain about what we do encounter.

The man who picked Genbao, Sean, Fan Yi and I up from the high school where we ate lunch and took us back to the middle school to teach wore an electric blue jacket with neon green and black polka dots (which, I later discovered, were carefully coordinated with electric blue plush sneakers). His hair, without any product that I could detect, put of the rest of us to shame with its rebellious and care-free volume. His ride was bright red, something like a shortened PT Cruiser. He was blasting what Sean informed me was like Tibetan techno,; it switched back and forth between an instrument I would describe as “beautiful” and “traditional” and a rousing chorus of “If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck” all over a thumping bass line. Sean asked if I had ever been to the Tibetan Plateau (which includes part of Western Sichuan and much of Qinghai province as well as Tibet itself). When I told him I had not, he helped put the song in a more 地道 (authentic) context. He said that Tibetan men –truly manly men- ride around on motorcycles, long black hair flowing out from under their cowboy hats, with techno blasting from speakers on the back of the bike. A cloud of dust, the gleam of sunlight on high cheekbones, the increasingly insistent thump of techno: this is my impression of Tibetans. I would like to get to the plateau and round it out a bit, but I’m not sure it’s in the cards this trip.

Yang Genbao and I spent about an hour and a half (close to two hours, actually) finishing our lesson plans for tomorrow. Wu Dai, who’s teaching the other 初一 class, joined us for a while. The kids’ English is seriously multiple times better than we were told to expect, so we’re trying to make our lesson plans more complex. We have three more new classes tomorrow morning (we had five today) and then have two second-time classes in the afternoon.

Teaching is hard work, eh?

Though actually each of the English teachers here is only in charge of one or two classes that meet every day, and not eight different classes five in a day with no future idea of what to expect from them. I’m sure they’re still plenty worn out when they get home.

Okay, heading to bed. It’s 11:40 and they come to pick us up at 7:50.

[Things one does not miss after leaving China: grey-black pollution boogers. I may have said this before. I seriously will not miss them at all. They seriously happen a lot. No hyperbole. Blackness. In my nose. From the air.]

Xavier Naidoo's "Eigentlich Gut"

In which I continue to overwork the gentle comma and the sisters parenthetical

Long distance train rides will make a documentarian out of anyone. The scenes that flash by demand explanation. How were these mountains formed? When were they terraced? How many generations have used oxen to plough that field?

I got to the Nanjing Train Station with my three classmates/traveling companions about forty minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. We found the aisle waiting to board the K290 bound for Chengdu already full, and so threw down our backpacks and bags of food and sat in the aisle next to it. A boy probably a bit younger than us was going around with a cup begging for change. He stopped in front of Yang Genbao and then me; Genbao suggested I make a trip to the restroom after it became obvious the kid wasn’t going to give up. I don’t like ignoring people who obviously need help, but at the same time giving a mute boy one Yuan isn’t long term help. And also, once you have definitively revealed yourself as an easy mark in public spaces in China, you will get no rest.

Train station waiting rooms are frequented by beggars, as well as vendors walking around with maps and newspapers. It has worked out all right for me in that by telling beggars that I am not going to give me money I often let other train-waiters around me know that I speak Chinese, and a conversation can start.

This time, however, I already had people to talk to, so when our train was 20 minutes late, I wasn’t bored.

We rode in a hard sleeper car, which I think I described for my trip from Guangzhou to Nanjing. I slept in the middle bunk this time, which was a hundred times more comfortable than the top bunk. I could see out of the window from my bed this time, and had a bit more room to move around. I tried going without the Dramamine, since I ended up still uncomfortable for the whole train ride with it last time (as well as unconscious for the majority of it...). I drank lots of water, and slept a fair amount, and didn’t feel sick at all.

I learned a three-person Chinese card game (with Mitch and Genbao) called 抖地主or “Overthrow the Landlord” (which Mitch and I speculated is probably at least forty years old).

Our 25 hours on the trian passed more or less without event. The scenery was beautiful in the morning when we had reached Sichuan province (Genbao said we had passed Xi’an- where the tomb of the first Chinese emporer and his ceramic warriors hang out) in the night without knowing it. Spring is well on its way here.

The view from the train was incredible in the morning. The terraced mountains were highlighted with the occasional line of yellow safflower fields, and the light green of new deciduous tree growth seemed to be gentle waking up the dark evergreens. I love trains. I could listen to music and look out a train window happily for days, I think.

The bus from Guangyuan to Bazhong was supposed to take three and a half hours. We spent an extra hour sitting on the side of the road with cars and trucks honking at us after our driver realized he had lost the key to the luggage compartment. He left the bus’s Karaoke (卡拉OK) television on though, and I had snacks, so it wasn’t too bad.

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

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!

Pictures of Jeju!

We went to a glass museum which had, among other things, fish made out of old bottles:

There are walking trails all over Jeju, like this one:

They often have views like this:

There are also beaches everywhere:

There are also many waterfalls. I LOVE how the rock wall is reflected in the water here:
This is farther downstream from the pool pictured above:
Look, it's me!

Back in Nanjing!

It feels like home here, which is stranger than I've been able to put into words.

Coming back was another adventure, of course. Christian taxi'd with me to the airport around 7:30 in the morning on Saturday and we had breakfast in the airport before I went through security for my 9:05 flight. I flew up to Seoul, took a 10 minute shuttle bus loop from the domestic airport to the international one, re-checked my duffel bag and flew to Shanghai (the first flight was only an hour long, the second was two hours. Both uneventful).

China makes itself known pretty quick. I stood in line for about half an hour after getting off the plane to go through customs and then picked up my bag and walked out the airport doors to find myself, along with two or three hundred other people, standing in line for a taxi. the line swept along the curve of the airport building, narrowing by means of a canvas rope from being sidewalk-wide, to a three people across, to two, and down to single file before winding back and forth in a metal queue six or seven times. The wait was only about half an hour, despite what the taxi driver who accosted me as soon as I came out of the building looking foreign assured me would happen. "You want taxi? Come with me. Here you wait two hours." "NO." I didn't even ask him how much he would have charged to take me to the train station, but probable 200 or so yuan. The drive on a meter cost me 53 yuan (just under 8 dollars), and my driver refused even to keep the change from the 55 I gave him.

The taxis were lined up eight in a row. One wave would drive up and the worker standing at the front of the queue directed whoever was next to the first one to stop, and so on until they were all taken. As soon as a taxi drove away another would zoom up to take its place, the driver hopping out to expediate luggage moving if necessary. My driver took me on an expressway through downtown Shanghai and it was wonderful to be moving so fast so close to the ground and see the buildings. The sky was clear and it was sunny and warm. My hair was messed up from leaning on my seat on two planes and blowing in the wind from the taxi's open window by the time I got to the train station, but sometimes I like to give people something to stare at me for other than my skin color.

I got a train bound for Nanjing with less than an hour to wait at the station. There were three or four stops on the way and Nanjing was the end of the line, and miraculously no one got joined our car after we left Shanghai, so the car emptied bit by bit until I was left with a table and five foot window to myself watching the sun set over Chinese cities and hills and fields and factories. It was beautiful.

I took the subway from the train station to the Gulou stop, just a ten minute walk from campus. My duffel bag was feeling pretty heavy by the end (I wouldn't have this probably if I didn't travel with more books than clothes) but I made it back cheerfully and found the German bakery down the street was open and gratefully ate a sandwich.

I am currently trying to decide which classes to take. I think it's going to be Religion Systems in China, Environmental Law, and East Asian Economies, but Chinese Interpersonal Relationships and International Political Economics were both pretty interesting today.

Love from China!

Wrapping up Jeju thoughts

I had grand plans of writing while I was on break in Korea. Of emptying all the cluttered thoughts out of my head onto paper (or my hard drive), organize them, and be able to start this semester focused and fresh.

The writing part didn’t happen, as you’ll notice by the slim blog post pickins, but I am feeling so much better for my time in Korea and so much more confident about my semester.

I spent a lot of time in Korea doing little to nothing, which seemed to confuse and perhaps frustrate Christian who felt it was his duty to show me the island and keep me entertained. I had a marvelous time lying around watching old Poirot episodes and reading.

We also did have PLENTY of adventures. During my last week I went to class with Christian and made some buddies, particularly in the third grade (It was one of the days when he’s on his own, with no Korean co-teacher to translate and help him, so I’m pretty impressed that he has had any kind of a first grade class. The kids have plenty of energy but don’t understand any instructions that can’t be mimed). At one point Christian was asking his class to sit down and they were too busy talking about their last activity and/or not really understanding, so I sat down at one of the student tables and two girls shrieked and ran across the classroom to sit next to me. It was very sweet, and pretty hilarious.

You don’t wear shoes in school in Korea (or homes). When we walked in Christian led me to a set of shelves with extra plastic slipper-sandals and gave me a pair before going to his cupboard and taking out his own personal pair. The sandals were the kind with lots of almost sharp plastic bumps on the bottom, which I suspect are good for reflexological or circulatory reasons, but made my feet feel awful weird and tingly by the end of the morning.

We ate (twice) at a restaurant that served pie-sized Herb Burgers, cut into eight pieces and requiring the help of at least two friends to consume.

We played a lot of games with friends, most notably Settlers of Catan and Warcraft III (I’m expecting my Huge Nerd badge to be upgraded to a Super Huge Nerd badge any day). We ate pancakes and broccoli (not at the same time) and I think I made up for all the cereal I had not eaten all semester in Nanjing.

Being on Jeju felt WAY more like home than my time in Nanjing has, and while I think Christian “Chuckles” Yetter (only super special people get obnoxious nicknames, dude, trust me) was definitely the main reason, it’s made me think about changing the way I structure my life in Nanjing. I’m going to try to read and maybe write every night, and spend more time just talking to people. Basically, I’m going to do less homework. Probably this is a good plan.

a rainy day for thinking

Christian has been sick today, so it's been about the quietest day we've had here so far. We walked to a grocery store down the street to pick up apples and broccoli and kimchi and rice, and have been lazing about since then. Well, I have been lazing about and watching movies. Christian has been reading and sleeping and recovering from illness. I rewatched The Dark Knight and then watched 3:10 to Yuma for the first time. I recommend them both.

Since landing in Korea almost three weeks ago, I have spent a lot of time sitting around, some time reading, many evenings eating out with Christian and other friends, a lot of hours on buses around Jeju Island, and generally had a good time.

Christian and I walked down to the ocean another day, to Jungmun Beach. We walked backroads and got a bit lost on the way, ending up on one of Jeju's Olle trails, long wooden-planked walking trails that snake their way around the Island. We took a lot of pictures. Once we got to the beach we took off our shoes and socks and walked in the surf, chilly though it was. That was one of the warmest days we've had, it got up around 60. I made Christian laugh by standing ankle deep in the water and shouting "Hit me!" at the bigger waves as they came in, and then shrieking when they obliged and soaked by jeans up to the pockets. My lower half was pretty thoroughly drenched, and all the local high school boys working out on the beach had their belief in the weirdness of foreigners reinforced, by the time we left.

We went with three other friends to see a "Mongolian Horse Show" depicting the life of Genghis Khan. There were a few acts, with Temujin as a boy on the Mongolian plains, a youth in battles, and as King. There was soundtrack and narration provided over loudspeakers, but it was in Korean so I got very little out of the words.

Hmmm. Christian's feeling well enough to watch Eddie Izzard, so I'm gonna join 'im.