Beginnings and Endings, right?

The end of my two-and-a-half-year relationship last Saturday was not out of the blue or in anger, and though I have had some pretty low emotional points about it in the last week, overall I'm feeling very positive that it was the right decision and I am moving in the right direction.

This week has been an explosion of options. I realized that boyfriend-man was a major, though not the only, thing pulling me back to the US. I think I am not moving back this year, and I am re-exploring options for the next few years. Here are some of the options on my mind:

For the rest of this year and the beginning of next:
1) Stay in Korea and keep earning my Native English Speaker dollars and paying off my student loans
2) find a job in the Midwest to be close to family and friends, and keep paying off student loans

For the year after next:
1) Move back to the US and pursue grad school/teaching certification. This has been the plan I've been building most of this year, though I've been having trouble deciding whether to pursue Montessori or a state teaching certificate, or both.
2) Move back to the US and pursue grad school in Environmental Science or Engineering. I could still make tutoring a regular part of my life, and perhaps have the more individual affect on their lives that I would not be able to have if I only saw students in classes of 30.
3) Move to China under a Chinese Government Scholarship and pursue Environmental Science or Engineering at a Chinese University. This would put me in China with some long-term stability, and I could make/continue solid friendships and start a life as an international science liaison.
4) Move to China and get Montessori certification at the teaching center in Hangzhou. Teach in China and return to the US when/if the job market increases with enough teaching experience to be competitive
5) Other things yet unthought of that will give me opportunities to teach, travel, and keep involved (even vicariously) in scientific studies.

I posed a couple of these on facebook the other day and got a lot of excellent feedback, much of which supported my feeling that I don't want to teach in the US right now. I really, really would like the right answer to bring me closer to home, but I also don't want to move home and feel stuck. So, right now I am leaning towards things that will keep me on this side of the globe for a while longer.

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!

Not sure why this blog post gets so many dang views

Previously titled: 罗亚死了，罗亚死了

April has been a good month in a lot of ways.

First, a friend of a friend visited Nanjing, and in helping to show her the city I finally saw a bit of the city myself. We went to Purple Mountain:

(this buddha statue was created as a tourist attraction in the late 90's, and we saw some other folks sitting on his lap, so we decided we wouldn't be disrespecting him or anyone else by following suit)

And visited a temple and a Ming Dynasty city wall that are both within 30 minutes walking distance from my Center. Who knew?

Pagoda in the temple:

View of the lake and Ming wall from the top of the pagoda:

I have ALSO been buying myself some books. These include: an anthology of Chinese fantasy writing from 2008, "Swordbird" (a book written by an 11 year old Chinese girl who lives in the US in both Chinese and English. Think Redwall series, except birds. Holding swords), a Chinese dictionary (not Chinese-English. Just Chinese), and a copy of China's National Geographic (or 黄夏地理). Xiaoxuan just helped me order a science fiction anthology and a selection of Lu Xun's writings (linked to Wikipedia). He was a very influential thinker in the decades after the Nationalist revolution in 1911. Many Chinese have to read bits of his writing in high school, and the woman that I have been helping to practice English highly recommended reading his complete stories (as in full texts, not necessarily everything he's written).

I am feeling good about my life plan. This is good. I have been feeling foolishly insecure all year about one thing or another. The plan a little farther out: I am moving to Korea next year, then I think back to China to work for a year and reapplying to grad schools for fall 2012. Then I'm hoping somewhere will let me teach and take students abroad, and maybe I'll work on a PhD.

I've realized I need to actually post about China more, and not keep this blog so self-centered. Now that I feel like I've got myself figured out a little more (haha, ask tomorrow) that is my plan. If you've got questions to guide my writing, I'd love to hear 'em!

Title is from one of the fantasy stories I'm reading, yo. "Luoya is dead, Luoya is dead"

She may cry but her tears will dry when I hand her the keys to a shiney new Australia

Welp, I have some major updates on the status on my brain and future plans.

Update Eins: I did not get into grad school. Despite the feelings of numerous friends and relatives, I do not seem to be the end-all, be-all of prospective researchers. Since I’d decided that I NEED some time away from school, this is really okay. My ego remains slightly bruised, but my ego generally needs to be taken down a notch or two.

Update Zwei: I am planning on moving to Korea in the fall to teach English for a year. This will give me some more experience teaching, and hopefully help me decide if I’m aiming to teach kids or older students. After I get the lesson planning figured out, it will also give me lots of time to work on other projects and figure myself out.

Update Drei: I’m afraid that right now I’m not planning on coming back to the US this summer. Plane tickets are expensive, and I’ve decided to use the money to travel around China since I’ll still have a visa to be here the rest of the summer. This I’m traveling with a Canadian friend and then visiting Xiaoxuan’s family in Hebei Province, near Beijing.

Update Vier: I love you!

Title is from "Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog"

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!

Eek!

I submitted my application to Berkeley! I am now terrified, in spite of having a couple people read it and looking over it again myself, that it is full of typos and unfinished sentences. I ain't gonna look, though, because no matter what I'll find something I wish I could change, and I can't fix it now!

Hopefully, now that I have an SOP I like, revisions for other schools will go much faster.

It is past midnight and I have classes tomorrow, however, so further updates will have to wait a while.