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.

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.

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"

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.

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!

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!

The wisdom's in the trees// Not the glass windows

I have been stressing a bit recently. I have not been having a bad time. I have already, in fact, celebrated my birthday twice. Shirin's birthday was on Monday, so on Saturday she and Rong Fan and Xiaoxuan and I ate hotpot. Hotpot is, I think, from Mongolia, and involves a pot of boiling water (kept boiling by a burner in the table) in the center of the table and ordering whatever ingredients you want to eat. I really like mutton and tofu "skin" (羊肉 and 豆腐皮). Shirin and I then got hour-long oil massages for about $10. On Monday Shirin invited me and two other friends to her place and we made curry and drank tea.

Today I am bringing chocolates to my first class, since today may be the only time in my life that I have class on my birthday and I have never had the opportunity to be the kid who brought birthday treats before. I have been waiting long, but I won in the end.

Then I'm going back to the bookstore where Xiaoxuan and Xiaochun took me and gonna buy myself an idiom (成语) dictionary, and perhaps something else. Got sweet mugs there. We'll see.

The weather here is quite nice. It is a sunny 50 degrees for my birthday today. I miss snow, but I'm hopeful we'll get a bit sometime in the next few months. We are very lucky to have central heat in our buildings, which was not permitted when most of the buildings in Nanjing were built, so many people are very cold in the winter.

Anyway, to stop the stressing, today is going to be a day for praying and meditating and eating chocolate and not worrying about school. Hopefully this will help me to be clear and focused enough tomorrow to make real progress on papers again. It will definitely make me happier about whatever I do.

I love you!

Today's title brought to you by Breakdown by Jack Johnson

i'm just a little bug who tries real hard

I am not in Wuxi! But I have a ticket for tomorrow morning, so I will have to stop sitting around and being a lame-o by 9:06am or I will have wasted 54 yuan.

I have been having trouble getting myself going, and kind of letting little things pile up. I am currently trying to figure out how to get a package from Fedex, but so far have been unable to find anyone who know their number, or where I might look for it. I have sent an email to a member of our super helpful administrative staff, and hopefully that works out. I just finally added money to the sim card on my cell phone, so I can keep making phone calls without worrying about it. I am going to do one final revision of my SOP and then finish Berkeley's application- it's due Tuesday! Ahh!

A friend knocked on my door an hour or so ago and said that through a professor's student she was being interviewed in Chinese about Thanksgiving and wondered if I would join her. I did, I told them that I generally eat food and hang out with family on Thanksgiving, and that what I am most thankful for are all the wonderful people in my life. Then they took some footage of Anna and I reading and writing Chinese, to make their segment more impressive.

And here I am, back again! I am gonna do some homework. For serious.

(oh, and my title refers to Morris)

"Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower?"

I have been delighted to discover over this Thanksgiving break that there is a cornucopia of English-language literature on the internet. I read The Little Prince again today, and am seven chapters into On Human Bondage by W. S. Maugham. I also read (mostly) a Chinese article on globalization for International Politics. I intended to get some writing done on my Anthropology essay; I listened to a lot of music and have greatly improved by sudoku-solving-time.

I took a walk the other day, and am going to finally upload a few photos of our corner of Nanjing:














Whose dog is this, you might want to ask?
I have no idea, so it would probably be better not to.

This is Beijing West Road- 北京西路－ the street our dorm window looks out on (though we're up at tree-top level on the third floor).


Looking the other way! There is a bike/motorcycle/scooter lane on each side of most roads here, separating smaller, more vulnerable vehicles from the car traffic in the middle.








This one is cool! There are these strips in the sidewalks all over China, ostensibly for blind people to follow with their canes. The dots in the distance signal a change of direction or material. Sadly, every Chinese I have asked about them assures me they have never actually see a blind person use them. Good try, though, guys.
... I spend a lot of my time thinking about these as I walk around town.

So, uploading photos is ridiculously slow, and I am afraid that I am giving up. Those three just took the better part of an hour of clicking "upload" and fiddling on the internet and waiting...

Love!

Sometimes it's like Charades or Pictionary

But most often attending classes in Chinese is like a long game of Telephone. We read, looking at characters and sometimes understanding a whole sentence or a (glorious, wondrous!) paragraph. Then our professor presents, asking us questions of which we understand words and sometimes a whole (glorious, wondrous!) concept. We answer, based on our mishearing, and he attempts to bring our answer back into the realm of What He Was Trying To Discuss.

I guess it would be more exactly like telephone if he left us to discuss on our own and then tried to recognize where our confused conversation had left us by the end of the hour, but I stand by my analogy.

It's tiring.

"But everything looks perfect from far away..."

You all may notice that my posts here get more frequent in proportion to the number of other things I should be doing. I am trying to just let myself be productive in whatever way I can, however, so I've decided that's ok. My courses are honestly far less demanding (at least so far, you can ask me again when term papers are due) than most years at U of Iowa, so it will probably work out.

I am still stressing about my presentation on Monday, but I have more or less convinced myself that the stress + my worn-out state from the rest of today make it not worth working too hard tonight. I am instead trying to regain my emotional and intellectual strength for tomorrow. I am doing so by drinking tea, reading fiction, and journaling.

I helped out teaching 5-6 year old boys again this morning, probably for the last time. Getting up very early on a Saturday morning, on top of the discrepancy between my energy wavelength and that of kindergarteners, leaves me ill-equipped to be much use to them. I have found other venues for out-of-school productivity though, so don't be too unhappy for me.

I climbed a mountain today! I was an awfully small mountain- when we first got off the bus Xiaoxuan turned to me and said "山在哪里？" (where's the mountain?)- but I still give myself a lot of credit for climbing it.

Xiaoxuan told me the other day that she had been worried about living with an American, she wasn't sure what cultural problems might arise, but that her fears were misplaced because I am more like her than most people. She, and independently a number of other Chinese classmates both male and female, has told me that I am more like a Chinese student than an American. I am too 文静 (gentle), too 安静 (quiet, peaceful). This is perhaps in large part due to stereotyping, but also to the fact that Americans can be of ridiculous when they travel abroad. Perhaps especially in China, where the first impression people have of foreigners is: FOREIGN, and one quickly realizes that it will be impossible not to stand out.

One thought this repeated observation about myself has led to is that I must be a very odd (perhaps eerie?) presence a lot of the time. I try to let people know I approve of them. I don't sit in silence out of spite or frustration, though perhaps occasionally out of self-doubt. Mostly, I just find a lot to think about in the spaces between the lines on a highway, or the different ways houses seem to greet the world with the lines of their eaves and the sizes of their windows, or the sentences people choose to say when they don't want everyone to know what they are thinking. I am not sure I would not call this wisdom; I seldom reach meaningful conclusions. I just see a lot of interesting paths for my thoughts to travel and generally feel it's better to take them.

Can I tell you a secret? I don't really like to travel that much. I am not very good at transitions. They leave me feeling tilted and worn-out, and it can take a long time for me to recover. I think it took more than a month for me to be okay with Nanjing, and I think I probably won't really have anything solid to say about how I feel about this city until I leave in January and come back in February. But I think that the patchwork quilt of places spread across our planet is one of the greatest gifts we have as residents here. If one dimension of the universe can be described with math and physics, in describing the shapes of the lines that connect all its points, another can be described with biology and ecology, in all of the incredible diversity that those elegant essential truths can combine to create. Another more complex dimension is human, sometimes messier to sort out but all the more poignant for its layers. And all of these are woven in and around and through one another all over our beautiful planet so that whole worlds exist in any one place, and even beginning to draw a line between two of them is magic.

If I chose each day what I would most like to do, I would almost always end up sitting someplace sunny, drinking tea, reading, writing, twirling my hair absent-mindedly, rambling in mutter-y and introverted kind of way, and looking out of windows.

I cannot promise that after next summer I will have seen all the sights in Nanjing, or sought out all of the worthwhile people I could have. I am so grateful for my chance to just be here for a year and let the reality of the place sink in to my consciousness.

Academia!

I just took my only exam of the semester. It was in English, for Environmental Economics. I think I did alright, though essay exams can be deceptive. I had long answers for everything that seemed quite complete to me! We'll see how my professor feels.

I have had one (5 minute) presentation so far in a Chinese class and have another (15-20 minute) presentation in International Politics in Chinese on Monday. After that, the rest of my semester will be composed entirely of reading, attending classes, and writing papers.

I got through my short anthro presentation alright. I wasn't terribly happy with the level of thoughts I presented, but I was (and remain) quite certain that the professor wasn't actually grading the presentations on more than completion, so that is okay.

On Monday I will be presenting about the changing nature of military alliances. This should not suggest to you that I am in any way qualified to act as an authority on military relationships, but everyone had to sign up for a topic and that's what I picked from the list. A student or two present at the beginning of each class, and the the professor takes over and leads discussion for the rest of the time. In talking about alliances and collective security I am planning on discussing the Nile Basin Capacity Building Network that I learned about at the conference in Egypt last winter. It is pretty cool. Though it is not an institution with authority, it is a network of scientists and managers in the ten countries whose land includes part of the Nile watershed who work together to research discuss issues of river geomorphology and management. It is not a military institution, but I think that the existence of groups like this greatly reduce the role of military alliances. Hopefully there will at least be some good discussion.

Xiaoxuan and I are going on an HNC-arranged trip to Qixia Mountain on Saturday. Hopefully I will remember my camera :)

It is November already! I am making progress on my graduate school applications. Here are the places I am applying: University of California-Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis, Clark University, University of Texas-Austin, and University of Colorado-Boulder (in the order in which their applications are due, if you were wondering). What's-His-Face is also applying to schools in Ohio and North Carolina, and since I'm planning on deferring for a year to work before I would actually start any of these PhD programs (er, Austin is just a Masters, I guess) (if, you know, I get in) I may end up living in one of those places for a while. It's a big country, folks! But it is smaller than the Pacific Ocean.

Good news is that as I have been working on my grad school apps I have been getting more and more excited about Geography and the questions it would allow me to professionally investigate about the world.
... I just had an excited conversation about it in my head but it all happened too fast for me to write down...MAN and then I tried to find a good summary on one of the department websites and they're all too exciting and I couldn't pick one...
Okay: Geographer study a wide range of questions, from physical environmental sciences to more or less anthropology. Geography is "the study of spatial relationships," which can be put to a lot of uses.
...Yeah, I'm gonna need to think about this and make it another post. Or possibly try to write about it when I am less caffeinated.

Happy Thursday!

// but ain't none of the glory mine

I spent time with my Five Project family for the second time today. I wasn't really sure how it was going to work out after meeting with them last week. As I said- although the goals and participants of the Five Project are clearly explained, they assumed I could tell them how autism is understood and worked with in the US. I can tell them about the people I've met, of course, but my goal in this project is just to build a friendship and support them. I don't have any expertise. The father, son, and a young cousin came to the HNC today and we hung out in the courtyard for a little over an hour. It was a little uncomfortable at first as we got used to the place and the father kept trying to make his son be polite, or whatever, for me. Which isn't really a concept that applies to people with autism, in my understanding. They communicate what they are experiencing to the best of their ability, which is simultaneously much less and much more than many of us are capable of.

Anyway, after a while the father decided he was ok with me just hanging out with his son (he stayed in the courtyard- one of his parents is going to be there at all times to make sure his needs are taken care of). I talked to him a bit, but sadly cannot really understand much when he talks. Most of his communication is nonverbal anyway, though, so it's less of a problem than with most people. He feels strongly about the value of picking up leaves and flowers and putting his hands in water. On these things we agree.

I am continually trying to get my head around what is happening when I (or a classmate) try to communicate outside of our native language. Much of the time I am still thinking in English, so Chinese feels like an extra layer that blocks me from the meaning behind someone's words. I try to trace the meaning of Chinese words by lining up the points of English I know they touch, but this keeps me at least one step removed from the deeper form and significance of what is being said. I am trying to shift to thinking in Chinese and just filling in the necessary gaps with English, but it's coming in more fits than starts, I feel.

NOTE: the title of this and the previous entry are lyrics from Gnarls Barkley's song "A Little Better" They ain't mine.

well, I can sing you a storyline// and if you like my story, fine

Well, dear ones, here I am again. I was not very busy at all over the National Day break, but I spent most of my extra time letting myself just be in Nanjing without having to do anything. I did a bit of reading and a good deal of thinking for all of my classes, and also a bit of random wandering around the city.

Xiaoxuan and I (with a few other classmates) had decided to get out and see some of the sights in Nanjing during our week off, but our trip to 夫子庙 （Fuzi Miao- the Confucious temple) convinced us that this was not a good plan. The crowd exemplified the Chinese phrase 人山人海 (ren shan ren hai- mountains and seas of people). Xiaoxuan and Rong Fan both asked me at different times if I had ever seen crowds like that in the US. I told them ‘kind of.’ I’ve seen groups of people that tightly packed in big cities or big malls in the US, but the knowledge in China that this population density stretches across such vast areas, the knowledge that in Nanjing I am surrounded by 8 million people in one (granted, quite large) municipality, is overwhelming on a new level. That evening we decided against paying 30 yuan to go into the park itself and instead walked back to “Aqua City,” a large shopping complex with a lot of expensive foreign stores. I bought myself a coke and just walked around looking at people and stores, explaining that in the US most of my clothes come from second-hand stores. Clothes in most stores were about as much as new American clothes are in the US, some slightly more expensive since it is so foreign and fashionable.

Another evening an American friend and I ventured to Nanjing’s Downtown. We, again, mostly just walked around. She needed a set of drawers for her closet, and we both decided it was wise to buy economy-packs of toilet paper. We quickly realized, however, that the evening before National Day was not the best choice of times. We found ourselves heading home around the same time (about 10:30pm) that the vast majority of taxi drivers had decided was quittin’ time. After half an hour or so of unsuccessfully trying to hail a cab at one of the busiest intersections in downtown Nanjing, Stephanie left me standing by the side of the road with her drawers and our collective 40-or-so rolls of toilet paper and ventured upstream to try her luck in less populated waters. About another 20 minutes later she pulled up in a taxi, with the driver crying “hurry! I’m not supposed to stop here!” I threw the TP in the backseat and pulled the drawers in behind me. We had a lovely chat with the driver on the way home. Also: we made it home. I called it a win.

I actually started drawing over break, which I’ve hardly ever done before. I don’t let myself draw, I say “I can’t draw,” because I’m not very good at making realistic pictures. It is, however, a fantastic exercise for my brain to just let myself start filling a page with shapes. It’s interesting, because when I worked at Prairie Flower (Waldorf) Preschool, that’s what we told kids to do. Not to worry about what they were representing, but just to enjoy the process of colors happening on paper. But I still feel like it’s illigetimate a lot of the time, I stop myself from picking up my pencil because I don’t know what will be on the page when I finish. I’ve (once again) proven to myself that this doesn’t matter. I’ve got a few pages that are really fun, if not amazing technically. And drawing them helped me wake up my brain in ways that no amount of article-reading or paper-writing can.

Let’s see. I’ve let too much time pass and am going to dump a lot of stories on you at once, I’m afraid.

I met with a family last Sunday through The Five Project, with hooks volunteers up with families of children and young adults with autism or other mental challenges. They assumed that since I was American I could tell them all about how autism is treated in the US and what they should do with their son. I, and the Five Project coordinator who came with me, corrected them that I just want to provide a “friendship” flavor of support, and they seemed like they might be ok with that. They’re coming by the Center this Sunday afternoon, and we’ll see if we can make our relationship productive. Their son was very sweet. He learned my name and made eye contact (on his parents’ promptings) and thanked me for coming to their home. I think his memory of me, however, will be most involved with the strange way my hand smelled (like my soap, I hope), which formed the main topic of our personal interaction.

I am helping out at a weekend school where another friend works tomorrow morning. More on that after it’s happened, perhaps :)

…You can, perhaps, tell that I decided a while ago that I was spending too much time on the Center and with other Center students, and have been trying to add more variety to my schedule. I may have overdone it, but not of my weekend commitments come with obligation at this point, so it should work out happily in the end.

My conversations with classmates are benefitting as we all get more comfortable in our “target” languages and are feeling like we can talk about real things, and not just what we are doing today or which state or province we were born in. That is really cool. Hmm. I’m having trouble saying something both meaningful and Chinese-internet-appropriate about them, though. I’ll report back when I can articulate myself.

To complete your snapshot of my life: other than the above, I spend time just about every day talkin’ to a cool dude in South Korea, some more time wishin’ I was in South Korea with him, a fair amount of time reading, a lot of time twirling my hair and staring out of windows, and am happy almost all of the time.

All’s well in Nanjing, friends.

My Introduction to the HNC

Nanjing Train Station （南京火车站）has exits to the subway, the street, and a dedicated underground driveway for taxis. I was actually very grateful not to have received my luggage when I found myself walking down a few flights of concrete steps into a large crowd waiting to grab a taxi (打车). The crowd was eventually funneled into four lines, which were then combined back into a single line where a traffic-controlling policeman was standing. A wave of taxis would drive in two by two, and he would ask each person how many people were riding with them, and then direct them to a car.

I hopped in and said hello (你好－ nihao) which seemed to take the driver slightly by surprise. I told him I was going to Nanjing University, and he asked me which campus. I said I wasn’t sure which part of town (I didn’t know Nanjing) but I had been told to use the entrance off of Shanghai Road. That was enough for him, and off we went. When I studied in Tianjin I had a few very interesting conversations with taxi drivers, but I let this fifteen minute drive pass more or less in silence- I was worn out.

I was worried that he wouldn’t take me to the right place- the HNC is not in the main NJU campus. It’s right next door, but I wasn’t sure how quickly I’d be able to find it. But as the driver slowed the taxi down and asked me if this was the right place, I saw he was pointing to a sign that said, in English, “The Johns Hopkins and Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.” “Yes yes yes!” I cried, then realized that I should speak Chinese. I cleared my throat. “It is,” I said, “thank you.” I paid him and crossed the street.

There’s decent security here at the center, though that first day the gate guard just let me walk in because I looked foreign and like I thought I belonged there. I was directed to take a mask off of a table (to keep from spreading the H1N1 I may have been exposed to during my travels) and go inside. In the lobby I was told to wash my hands with sanitizer and then asked a lot of questions in Chinese which I had to have repeated to me a few times. Finally, the staff was satisfied with my personal and travel information, I had my key and my packet of information, and I went up to my room.

This is probably the nicest dorm room I’ve ever lived in. There are large closets with hanging space, cupboard space, and drawer space. My roommate and I each have a big desk with five drawers and a bunch of shelves on top, and there is plenty of room under each of our beds to store empty suitcases and shoes. This is China, so one cannot be expected to function without hot water to drink and there is a faucet at the end of each hallway (we’re using five floors of the dormitory this year) which dispenses hotter-than-boiling water. One of my classmates used some of my Neosporin today after spilling some on his toe and burning himself a nice big blister. Most importantly: we have a private bathroom, with a large show, huge sink, and Western toilet.

I hadn't understood clearly from the people in the lobby whether I was supposed to do anything that first day, but I decided that I probably didn't and took a long shower. It was beautiful. I even had one more clean shirt in my backpack to change into. I hung out in my room for a while afterwards, wishing that I had a password to access the Center’s wireless network or my luggage to start unpacking, but overall completely relieved to have actually made it here.

I started meeting people at dinner. Most of my fellow internationals are from the US, but there are also Korean, Japanese, Canadian, Spanish, and French students. More than half of the students here are Chinese who will be studying in English with Johns Hopkins professors, the rest of us will be studying with Chinese professors mostly from Nanjing University.

This first week has been Orientation. We’ve met the Chinese and American co-directors, heard from the staff, joined the local internet network, and had presentations on using the library, on public safety, and fire safety. Most of these were in Chinese, some of these I hardly understood at all. Happily, I’m not the only one, but sadly this does not make me any more prepared for my classes next week. For which I’ll register tomorrow, after I’ve started attending them. The classes I’m hoping to register for are: 中国现代化中的社会问题 （Social Issues of China’s Modernization), 中国民法 (Chinese Civil Law), 人类学与中国研究 (Anthropology and Chinese Studies) in Chinese, and Environmental Economics （环境经济学）in English. More later on how that works out!