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.

Moments

I have been experiencing my time in leaps of realization and ever-clearer days. I know now that I want to live on this side of the world, at least for the plan-able future, and I am slowly clearing away the guilt that clouded my ability to see this and is still weighing me down about it. I don't hate the US, I actually like it much more than I did before I moved to Asia. I love love love my family and friends and would love love love to be closer to them and an in-person part of their lives. But I feel right here, and have an almost unimaginably sweet job: working with kids, working with language, having a LOT of time to study other things and to build relationships on both sides of the Pacific. And I think that a me armed with Skype and happiness makes me a better force than a confused me wherever I'd be able to find a job in the US next year.

I have been putting off finding/buying souvenirs for people. Partially because there is still a box in Iowa with some of the souvenirs I bought the first time I went to China (in 2006) because it is easy to lose momentum in connecting the right things with the right people to mean something. And I don't want to buy more clutter. And many souvenirs are clutter.

But a few days ago I was inspired to go to the beach and pick up shells and offer them to my brother for the business he is starting making t-shirts and jewelry and otherwise using his artistic skillz. I walked barefoot along the seawall and the first two beaches, and put my sandals back on to walk across the field on the way to the smallest beach by the Oreum*, because it's harder to see what you are stepping on in grass and I know for a fact that some weird foreigners like to strap small fireworks to model airplanes and fire/fly them in that field (*cough*). I almost escaped from the tinny sound of music blasting from the restaurant by the biggest middle beach after I climbed down the stairs to the sand, and wiggled my toes through the dry warm top sand to the coolness underneath. I picked up shells and thought about life, and wondered how much time has passed since the first person picked up shells and thought about life at that beach in Hamdeok.

Someone started announcing something over the beach speaker system, but it was far away and in Korean (and didn't seem to be inviting or inciting panic), so I ignored it and kept sidling into the surf and sifting through shells and rocks and sand and seaweed. After a while I noticed that some dark clouds were rolling their way towards me from the west, and decided that perhaps the faint korean buzz was correct, and I should head home. I stopped on the seawall and sat down when I saw a fish jump out of the water, and stayed to watch another 30 fish follow suit (or perhaps the same fish and a few of her pals do a really impressive dance). A dark grey crane stalked slowly from the westmost beach, and a white crane was far enough out in the falling tidewaters that she kept disappearing in the reflections on the waves.

I have had some really good conversations this week and in the last few weeks, and gotten a lot of really good support from all over. I just going to be here for a while. I am going to keep moving on my China plans and other studies, but I am going to try to focus on the moments that happen, and try not to think I must justify my days by what they might build towards in the future.

*Oreum are the "parasitic volcanoes" scattered across Jeju island. They are more or less hills, except that they are 120% cooler than average hills because they were formed by volcanic eruptions.

Reading novels in Chinese

I have had some realizations in the last month about who I let myself be, and some about who I actually am and what I want.

I have been telling myself that it is too hard, too lonely, too far away to keep living on this side of the world. And I have been feeling maybe not guilty but goaded by some peoples' voices in my mind who ask what's wrong with America?, or my own voices in my mind that whisper I may just be trying to run away from relationships before they get too complicated. That I may not be running towards anything.

But I am. And I have realized that I simply don't want to move back to the US. I want to let my whole being move to this side of the world, and not be standing a mental step back towards Iowa because I know I'm moving 'home' before too long. I want to stay here.

I do miss 'home.' I miss my friends and my family and have dreams about the skies in Iowa. To drive on a highway with radio blasting and see a thunderhead rolling towards me across the plains. Ah.

I have got to stop telling myself that I am afraid, though. I have got to stop being afraid of challenging myself. I have got to stop being afraid to belong. (I know that last sentence is angsty, but it's an honest and dominant fear of mine, I think. So there you have it: I'm angsty.)

One excellent thing I learned last year in China was just to go. Just to read, just to talk. I have been reading novels in Chinese, though I don't understand anything close to everything. I am just reading and getting from it what I can.

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.

A new year

I was in Seoul when my grandmother passed away, on my way to visit Xiaoxuan and her family for the Lunar New Year in China. I felt very far away and it still (two weeks later) doesn't feel very real, though I have been trying to call my grandfather regularly to stay connected to him and this new reality.

I flew to from Seoul's Incheon Airport to Beijing Capital Airport a few hours later with no problems except a few minutes of tension as I realized I hadn't used my US debit card in months and wasn't sure how on earth I'd remember the PIN so I could withdraw money for a cab to go meet Shirin. My Jedi mind tricks, however, recovered it from the recesses of my mind on only the second try. The taxi driver proceeded to take me for a ride, as cab drivers in China universally don't feel bad about ripping off americans as we are so obviously rolling in money, but other than that the travel part of the day went well.

It was a very surreal week of travel, with my mind trying to adjust to being in a different country and often wishing that I was in the US. I kept Grandma and Grandpa in my thoughts and tried also to be present in the family gatherings that Xiaoxuan was kind enough to invite me to join.

At her father's parents' house I met aunts and uncles and a couple of cousins, and her cousin's two year old daughter, who really wasn't sure what to think of my at first but decided that I was alright after we spent some time drawing (read: scribbling randomly) together. We stayed up late watching the national dance/music/and sketch performances. We headed home around 11pm, I think, and after getting ready for bed it was just about midnight and we watch out of the bay window of Xiaoxuan's family's 8th floor apartment at the storm of fireworks in every direction. It was impressive. Everyone went to bed shortly after that, as we had to wake up extra early to return to her paternal grandparents' house to eat new year's dumplings and set off a few fireworks of our own.

Grandma's funeral was New Year's Day in China. I spent the day (except for breakfast) with Xiaoxuan's maternal extended family-- her mother's parents and brother. We ate well, of course, and her grandfather showed me a VERY complicated puzzle which I was not able to solve. I played Mazhang with Xx, her mother, and her grandmother. I lost, of course, but I held my own. Her father asked me if Americans just don't like humor because I hadn't been getting all of his jokes. I told him we did, but I am rather slow on the uptake in Chinese language conversations. He remains skeptic.

That night for me was the time of Grandma's funeral, as it was in the early afternoon in Iowa. I said prayers and thought about my family alone after everyone else was asleep-- I had talked to Xiaoxuan about Grandma a couple of times but mostly was still processing by myself. It was a gift to be welcomed into a family that week, strange though it was that it wasn't my own family in Iowa.

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...

Words, words, words.

I read a lot, and have since I learned how. I must say that part of my motivation to read when I was a child was the praise it got me and, as Christian can attest, I still want someone to witness my reading progress. Another reason is often escapism. I prefer novels-- the longer the better-- because they allow me to spend the most time in a world outside my own, and especially when I was young loved most to re-read favorites, because I knew I could be prepared for whatever happened. I still like stories that are long enough for me to spend time in a world, and I still love to relive stories-- but maybe not quite as often as I used to.

I also write, but less confidently (naturally, I suppose). I journaled more or less regularly through middle and high school, but have had trouble keeping a regular journal since then. Most of the time, though, when I sit down to write I have to write my head into order before I can even pretend I am writing about anything other than the state of my mind. Hence most of the contents of this blog. I am trying to write creatively, but with my current project am teetering on the line between knowing I have a story I want to write that will give me room to explore all the things I want it to, and feeling that all the pieces of it are spiraling out and should never have been connected. That's a little melodramatic but, y'know, I live in my mind so little things in here often seem pretty big to me.

I brought almost all new books with me to China last year, and decided halfway through the year that it had not been the best plan-- the living on the other side of the world business was enough 'new'ness and I wanted familiar stories. So, I brought more with me this time-- in large part through that previously mentioned e-reader, though I am filling up the shelves here with books anyway.

I have been reading a lot on Jeju, in between the teaching, spending time with Christian, and large amounts of sitting and thinking which fill my days. I have read:
1) the remainder of Red Mars, and about half of Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
2)The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (again)
3) The Man who was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
4) The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (again-again)
5) Briar Rose by Jan Yolen (again)
6) about half of Anne Frank's diary in German
7) about a third of 藏地密码 by 何马
8) a couple of stories in my 科幻小说集 (science fiction anthology)
9) One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (again)
10) most of China Mieville's The City and the City
11) The beginning of Tintenherz by Cornelia Funke

Goodness, I was thinking to talk about each of them a bit but that's a long list.  They are all recommended!

Thoughts on 'race' and living in Asia

Living in Asia has been a lesson in living as a minority-- on getting extra attention and being treated as not quite a real person. Don't get me wrong: My experience bears little or no relation to the experience of underprivileged minorities in their home countries. I am a very privileged minority here. And there's something more than that: this is not my home. I do not have to take responsibility for the demons here, and even if they did affect me negatively, it would be more like the misunderstanding of strangers than the disapproval of a parent.

I learned during my first two months in China, over the summer of 2006, how much I used 'race' to define people in my mind, despite education and good intentions to the contrary. You see, whatever the majority of people in a person's life look like is what they will spend the most time defining. Growing up in predominantly White Iowa, I noticed a lot more about the variations in skin, hair, and eye color in white people I met than I did about others. For the most part, I probably would not know more than a couple people in a given minority in any particular social group, so their being Black or Asian or Latino/a or Native was enough to give them a unique identity in my mind.

I'm not sure that this tendency itself qualifies as racism*, but it is definitely a convenient jumping-off place for discrimination. When I have put everyone who is not The Same As Me into handy categories, it is very easy to attach any label or stigma to all of them at once, instead of having checks built into my mind to remind myself that no one characteristic, even one as defining as heritage, can tell you what is most important about a person.

So, when I came to China, at first everyone just looked Chinese to me. Everyone had black hair and skin a different color than mine, and my mind was overloaded. There were simply too many people to fit into a convenient Minority category, and I had to start paying attention to what they actually looked like.

What I realized was that Chinese people look a lot like the White people I was used to describing more carefully in my mind's eye (and, I have since had time to confirm, a lot like people from many other races and backgrounds). There are Chinese people with long faces and thin noses, with melancholy eyes and mouths that droop in the corners. Tall and wide with booming voices, thin and pale so that it seems an unkind word could knock them over. Over and over again I looked at someone and realized that if their skin was a just a little lighter, or the lines in their face had slightly different angles, I would think of them as White rather than Chinese.

I am always afraid when I attempt to voice realizations like this that it will sound like I have been amazed to find that other humans are human, which feels horrible. What amazes me is to find that despite always having known and professed that all humans are human, I still use racist shortcuts in classifying people in my mind. I am sure that I do this is all kinds of ways. Living in China and Korea, and especially trying to function in Chinese, has made it easier for me to remember that a persons ability to express themselves in a language I understand is not a good indicator of their intelligence, but it is still much easier for me, in a frustrating situation, to think of people who I can't communicate with as stupid. I know I make assumptions about people's gender or intelligence or even just interests based on things that are simply convenient and not all that meaningful. Perhaps all of the evidence I use does mean something about a person's identity, as race certainly can, but they are not all-meaningful.  I am grateful for my constant opportunities to re-learn how to pay attention to who a person really is.

*so I'd love to hear what you think!

Be careful what you do-- because the lie becomes the truth

One of the most important things I learned last year in China was about myself and about how I am motivated. I was used to being a good student. I was used to getting good grades because I did the reading and the work, because I was intelligent and ready for class every day, and perhaps most importantly: because I am mentally quick enough to keep up with professor lectures (many of which cater more to the professor's mind than the students').

I was not a good student in China. I struggled to make it through half of the reading for most of my classes. I did finish, but rarely. My Chinese ability was average for my classes-- meaning that I ended up with passing grades but was not ever the smart one in a class. I couldn't keep up with lectures, felt a fool many times a week when a professor asked a question in class and I couldn't answer.

I am embarrassed by how thoroughly feeling like a poor student threw me completely off track, even when I was getting through just fine, really. I was embarrassed to talk about how well I was understanding course material, and had trouble staying motivated to do reading because it took so long to look up the characters I didn't know, and even when I did my comprehension was low.

When I did actually talk to classmates about schoolwork, we were always in more or less the same place: struggling and embarassed about it. A friend who was in a different program in nanjing said she thought herself lucky she had already had so many experiences as a good student-- she remarked that if feeling this way had been her first experience in school at five years old, she would probably never have recovered and would have spent her whole life thinking of herself as a bad student. This put into clearer focus some thoughts about the way that my brother and I were treated and spoken of when we were both in elementary school, and about the education system in general that I will hopefully explore more fully in a later post.

It was definitely not my best year socially, either, and I'm still working on trying to figure out why. In some ways it was a product of my surroundings-- living in close quarters with large groups from different cultures left a lot of differences of understanding in the open, and it also underlined how much more comfortable people were overall with classmates with the same native language. There were many friendships across the Chinese-Foreigner line (and I'm happy to say some were mine!) but much of the time groups from one background or the other dominated people's social lives.

I know there is more I could have done, was capable of doing, to improve to social feeling in the Center. Trying to pick up the pieces and get more out of last year will, I think, be very important for how I feel about myself this year.

Title is from Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", which has been stuck in my head for the last few days because a friend of mine introduced me to this excellent cover by Aloe Blacc and The Grand Scheme.

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.

The end of the semester approaches!

I am outlining and researching for a paper comparing Renewable Energy Law in Germany and China. This points my research at the intersection of economic development and environmental protection in the two legal systems. It needs to be 5,000 characters by the end of the semester, which in double-spaced English would be upwards of 15 pages and in Chinese will be 10 or so.

The Chinese constitution mentions environmental protection in it's "General Principles" section, but does not include a clean environment in its fundamental rights (or Bill of Rights). The Environmental Protection Law is extensive, and the largest problem is that it is not enforced locally. It includes a clause stating that the appropriate government department will "in accordance with the national standards for environment quality and the country's economic and technological conditions, establish the national standards for the discharge of pollutants."

I am hoping to get a feel for the different strengths and weaknesses of approach between 'developed' country with relatively strict environmental policies (ie, Germany) and a quickly 'developing' country where economic development still for the most part takes places with little or no regard to environmental protection.

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"

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.

I can't get to sleep// I think about the implications// of diving in too deep// and "possibly"- the complications

I went to bed around 11:30 last night, after having emailed about a couple of english teaching jobs in China and worked on my application for TaLK in Korea. I think I fell asleep around 3am. I wasn't unhappy; I've done the anxiety insomnia thing and this wasn't it. Still processing what I should do next year. I've decided to teach English wherever I am, since I don't know what else I'd want to do and it would be good for me to investigate teaching more formally. I'm feeling good about that decision. The task now is to find secure places to work that will pay me enough to save a bit of money and work on paying back my loans. I know that's possible with either of the government programs in Korea. I know that secure programs exist in China, and I know that some pay alright. Okay. Moving on.

On my 4 hours of sleep I managed to stay awake and almost as attentive as usual through my classes this morning. Both were a little lacking in attendance; our spring break is next week and a lot of people have left already to travel. I and three (at least... I really thought there were more) of the other kids going to Sichuan to teach English are getting on a train on Sunday afternoon. The train will take about 25 hours, and once we reach the Guangyuan train station we'll have a two hour bus ride to Bazhong.

My teaching partner, Yang Genbao, and I planned our lesson last night. We're following their textbook for the most part (involving learning to talk about doing homework and watching television, among other daily and riveting activities) but are playing Jeopardy the second day (we're only going to see each class twice) and leave the last 10 minutes of each class for them to ask us questions in Chinese. They will probably be pretty excited to meet Genbao since he's from so far away in China. I think I already said that I'll probably be the first foreigner these kids have met. It's blowing my mind a little.

I did my class shopping today, photocopying the textbook so we can give the original back to the other group teaching 7th grade, buying candy for prizes. This involved a lot of walking around outside and listening to music- one of my favorite things to do. I was lamenting the trouble I have been having meeting and connecting with people and thinking about how a foreigner in China really has to find a way to enjoy attention (reminding myself to be excited about all the opportunities to smile at people I have when everyone is staring at my white white skin), and then made a friend in the supermarket. He was working handing out samples of crackers and standing right by the bulk candy. I tried the sesame and the peanut varieties (芝麻 and 花生）and told him about my quest to buy candy for my students next week. He asked me where I was studying and how long I'd been in China and gave me advice about what treats to buy. He asked me for my QQ (chinese IM service) and I told him I don't have one, which is marginally true as I have one but have not figured out how to use it yet.... So I gave him my cell number.

This was not my being hit on. Being foreign in China, outside of the biggest/most "developed" cities makes you a celebrity of sorts. Lots of people are excited about having a foreign friend, and my speaking Chinese more and more comfortably has made it easier and easier for folks to talk to me. It's cool beans.

I was also excited to find soybean powder at the supermarket. There are fridges on each floor but I haven't found a convenient way to buy, story, and keep soymilk for my tea/coffee. Little packets of soy powder, however, are working just great. I also replenished my oatmeal supply and bought some dried seaweed.

I probably won't post until after Sichuan, so have a great week!

Title is from Colin Hay's "Overkill". I have also been listening to the Rent soundtrack a lot this week.

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]

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