Expatriation, or something

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

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

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

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

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

Rooting

Traveling in the Midwest was wonderful. It made me feel 100x more connected to my whole life story, and less like I am in a dangling chapter at the end. I had the chance to hang out with two different friends I hadn't seen in years (one I hadn't seen at all for a couple of years, I think, and hadn't seen satisfactorily for 3 or 4 and the other I hadn't seen for 5 years). Just seeing my family and america-friends was lovely and empowering, but seeing those two in particular made me feel more complete.

Every person I saw showed me a different part of myself. I have friends and family who are pursuing all sorts of different lives, and I feel very privileged to be able to witness them. It also made me feel much better about where I am. Being on this side of the world, it is easy to think about what I 'would be doing' in America, to think about all of the other paths that I have not chosen (ummmm I guess I would be doing this anywhere. Heh). In any case, it was really nice to realize that while I have not figured everything out about who I want to be and what I want to do, I have learned and I have grown. Connecting with old friends helped me to see this, partially by letting me see their successful lives and realize that I have success in the things I want. Partially by reminding me of who I was and who they were the last time we connected, and letting me see how much we both have grown.

I am collecting perspectives and experiences. Learning about myself and about the world, and if that keeps me a little overwhelmed and not quite on my feet for a while, I think that's okay!

I am sitting right now in a coffee shop in 'city hall' in Jeju City. (The city center in most towns is called this. There is an actually City Hall building, but this whole area is called city hall, or sicheong.) It is a beautiful early-fall day outside. I took a long way getting here from the apartment I am sharing with a family. I walked down a road I hadn't before and discovered a lot of little restaurants to investigate, and stopped into a bookstore that just moved from city hall. I bought a korean photo-dictionary. And now I am going to study some Chinese, maybe study some Korean, and do some private writing!

Love!

"The brain is a very big place in a very small space"

Hello, all!

I'd just like to share some of the music that has been filling my mind since I didn't manage to write a new post last weekend. Very short, but I hope you enjoy it!

Take a Minute by K'naan-- this is a grounding and grateful song.

The Puzzle by Brother Ali, and Good Lord by Brother Ali as well-- I am continually impressed by the humility and wisdom in his lyrics (and by his life story).

Keep Your Head Up by Andy Grammar-- a sweet, hopeful song. (If you're not really into rap/hiphop, start here on this list)

Dig by Incubus and Earth to Bella by Incubus. I have shared these before, I think. They fit well with my introspection.

and last, Ode to the Brain by Symphony of Science ! This dude cuts together and autotunes pieces of scientific lectures (from the greats!) and the results are often really moving.

I bet that you can figure out which one my title came from.

how do we show each other who we are

I have always disliked labels. I owe this largely to having been raised and homeschooled by an anthropologist, as well as the Baha'i community. I learned early that they are often a deception; they whittle down complex identities to one or two words. Labels are generally static in the minds of those defining them, while the identity of anyone being defined is a dynamic thing, daily growing and being pruned. They are often assigned or inherited, and can be a constant hindrance to a person’s being seen by others or even understanding themselves.

One the other hand, they can be powerful and beautiful tools when they are self-chosen and self-defined. A dear friend has recently begun demanding that the people in her life let her define her Chinese-Americanness for herself and be willing to learn (as we so desperately need to) about how our behavior and attitudes might be racist without intending or often even realizing it.  You can find her words on this here in her blog. She has been a strong inspiring force for me to keep examining myself, and to see positive and negative aspects of my mind with confidence to best become who I want to be.

Knowing these things has made my feelings towards labels complicated. I am sometimes too wary of  the judgments I will receive from others for identifying myself with an idea or group, and sometimes wary of the problems that I might be allowing myself to sweep under a rug and ignore by placing a label over the areas of my identity involved.

I am lucky that in the Midwestern US the notable elements of my identity are chosen, invisible, or both. I do not wear my minority religion in my skin; I do not wear my parents’ divorce in my face. One cannot tell by looking or even talking to me that I was homeschooled, however much of the stigma against homeschooling they may buy into. I blend very easily into the white middle class majority. I cannot escape from being labeled female (my boobs have seen to that since seventh grade, and my love of dangly earrings rather reinforces it). I spent a lot of time in middle and high school experimenting with how 'female' I dressed and how people reacted to me. I hate how big of a difference there often is in how well people treat a feminine-ly dressed woman verses a more androgynous-ly dressed one, but I nevertheless am usually in the well-treated category.

The Baha’i Faith has often been central in my thoughts about chosen and denied identities. When my parents separated and my family identity shifted radically, and I began public school and lost the present tense in my alternative-schooler identity, I took a big step away from my identity in the Baha'i community as well. Partially this was confusion; I didn't understand the change in my other identities and thus didn't understand how this one could stay the same. I could also feel a strong desire in myself for stability, for something that I could rest my identity on and stop thinking about it, and it frightened me to think about how much I would stop thinking about if I gave in to that desire.

I did not identify with religion at all during middle and high school. I investigated quite a few philosophies and religions and learned a lot about myself, largely through counselors and support groups. The removal of my primary identities gave me an excellent and rare opportunity to look underneath my labels and clean out my definitions of myself, and the help that I received allowed me to take advantage of it. 

During my freshmen year of university I decided that I was far enough from my former identity as Baha'i to investigate it again. I started looking through the books I still had and eventually decided to try praying and see if it made a difference in my life if I didn't tell anyone else about it. I did and it did, and after a while I decided to call myself Baha'i. I think this was one of the best decisions of my life. I affirmed my ability to define myself and was able to grow all over my mind and spirit with the ideas and discipline of Baha'i teachings.

Lately, however, I have been realizing that my Baha'i identity has been becoming more negative than positive. This is partially because I have been far away from my home Baha'i communities and thus haven't had as much input available on how to keep myself moving in positive and intentional directions, religion-wise. And mostly because it has begun to get tied up with my insecurities and other mental and emotional shortcomings. I have been feeling this label pulling me away from other people, making it hard for me to understand them rather than respect them for who they are. I do not think that this is inevitable with religious identity, but I don't think I'm the only one who has these struggles. There is a Truth in the Baha'i writings that I experienced pulling me up to a place above labels, where I could see more clearly what people around me were offering and the burdens they were carrying and how beautiful they were. But more recently I have been feeling myself holding this label up as proof that I don't have to look (and simultaneously being frustrated for lack of beauty in my life), that obviously if I am Baha'i I am seeing what's important.

Because of this I have decided that I need to take off my Baha'i label for a while. I am looking at my other identities and trying to figure out what I should do with them. I don't know if I am taking off my religious label forever. I don't think so, but I think to be honest in the self-investigation I need right now I cannot make any promises. 

I am so grateful for all of the sincere people in my life who constantly inspire me to look at myself and what I am giving to the world carefully, and for all the love in my life.

Gratitude list

I've been focusing on problems (and fixing them, thankfully) in myself, my relationships, and in the rest of the world lately, and need to refocus on things that are good in my life. So, in no planned order, here are some things I am grateful for.

• my mother, my daily encourager and ever-ready cuss-outer of things that trouble me
• people who call me 'dude'
• chocolate in all of its (but especially milk-free) forms
• the ocean outside my window
• my students' sense of humor
• my electronic reader-- thank you dad!
• all the people who share music with me
• ondol heating. genius.
• for-the-rest-of-my-life friends/guardians of my identity
• languages, and the freedom to study them and understand my mind better
• books! everywhere, books!
• the peach juice in my fridge
• having made progress in my what-do-I-actually-want-to-do-with-my-life decision making this year
• being paid enough to live and pay my loans and save a little money for working 15 hours a week (I know, people, it's crazy)
• the fact that every korean student everywhere seems to know the word "crazy"
• boyfriend-man, and all that we have been learning recently
• indoor plumbing!!

My Education, part 1: Isaac and My Mind

My younger brother has always been a touchstone for me in thinking about education, though I'm sure it would surprise him to read that. And I think he would be surprised for the same reason I try to always keep him in mind: His brain does not work the same way mine does. His mind (from what I understand) functions mostly in pictures and sounds. He is very good at putting things together and at making them look the way he wants to. He is good at showing ideas visually. I am not. I function in words and numbers, primarily. I love to read and I am very good at math. This also means that I am very good at tests, especially those lovely bubble tests I took every year starting in elementary school.

Isaac, you might guess, is not so good at those kinds of tests. He learned to read quite late, and even after he did so, expecting him to derive some concept from flat black words on a flat gray page and then find the appropriate flat black words from the list provided wasn’t an appropriate way to measure what his mind was capable of.  He could and can get decent scores and decent grades, but most of the ways that students’ minds are traditionally measured miss the majority of his intelligence.

He suffered emotionally for the immeasurability of his mind beginning when he was quite young. I was held up as an ideal little brain, loving to read books and work with numbers. Most of the things that Isaac was motivated about were dismissed as games or hobbies, and not the stuff of ‘real’ education. I wasn’t usually convinced that the books I read were building my mind more effectively than the drawing of creatures and construction of scenes with legos or other toys on which Isaac spent his time. I was honestly often embarrassed when I tried to do what he did—he understood things about how shapes could fit together to make something unexpected that I could not keep up with—his creations were consistently more interesting than mine on multiple levels.

I was eternally conflicted about the different ways our intelligences were treated. I was made accustomed at a very early age to being thought of as the ‘smarter’ and often simply ‘better’ sibling. Most of the time I knew that that wasn’t true, but that knowledge by itself wasn’t always enough to make me unhappy hearing it, as least as far as I myself was concerned. I lived on praise. I did hate the way I could see it made Isaac feel, and because of this I sometimes resolved not to tell my family of something ‘admirable’ that I had done. I would conceal the fact that I had already finished a novel or how quickly I was getting through my math workbook. Sadly for both of us (and especially Isaac) my resolve did not often outlast my need for positive attention.

Even a step further outside of measurable education are our emotional compositions. Another thing that made it easy for adults to praise me was my retreating and people-pleasing nature. I tried to get out of the way or change the topic of conversation and make conflict unnecessary. Isaac did not. I often thought he was unreasonable, and he could definitely be disobedient, but he maintained a principle within himself of not abandoning things that mattered to him I have always admired and envied.

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...

"All this living's so much harder than it seems// you know, this livin's not so hard as it seems"

So I've had kind of a strange couple of weeks. I was rather low for awhile and this was compunded by my feeling foolish for feeling low and it took me a while to, first, give myself permission to not be happy and, second, to investigate why I wasn't happy.

This is a phase that I go through regularly; I want to say once or twice a year. I have to re-realize that being unhappy does not make me a failure, but it is probably telling me something important about myself. It trips me up and makes me realize I've been crawling. I have been thinking about this article (Depression's Evolutionary Roots, in Scientific American), which discusses depression as an evolutionary necessity, as the mental analogy to a physical fever-- an automatic response that helps to eradicate another problem.

Other than dealing with my emotions, as always, I've started seriously looking into education as a career. I'm looking into Iowa state certification, Chinese language teacher training, and Waldorf and Montessori certification. My ego will be a bit upset with me if I don't decide to pursue higher education in Science and become part of my generation's Badass Female Scientist League, but I think I might be happier as an educator. I see many of our problems today rooted in the fact that students don't learn to investigate truth on their own in school; they learn to mimic those 'smarter' (probably really only more educated) than themselves, so that after school all important issues easily become a competition between sides who have already decided what they think. (There will be more on education later, I hope, as I have yet to understand to my satisfaction the difference between the Waldorf and Montessori philosophies.)

Basically, after a couple of weeks of mental bewilderment, I have come to the conclusion that what I need to decide what direction to move in my life is a systematic exploration of topics I am interested in... like, maybe, a weekly blog series! I am too clever for myself, sometimes.


Title is from Jack Johnson's "Dreams be Dreams."

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!

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"

To People Living With- living with- living with- NOT Dying from Disease

I'm sure not what's caused this recent eruption in thoughts I want to share here but I think it portends good things about my mental health, so let's go with it.

The title is from the song "La Vie Boheme" in RENT. I can't say that I am a proponent of the 'bohemian' lifestyle, but I am very much a proponent of the fearlessness and freedom in this soundtrack. So, I guess, if the choice is between la vie boheme and condemning those who choose it, color me bohemian.

The oft-quoted "be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle" (or something like that?) comes to mind. We are all living with disease, and it has only been in reminding myself of this that I have recently started climbing further out of it. All of us have things that drag us down if we don't name and face them. We're much like the witches of fairy tales that way; "tell me your true name, and you are in my power." To addiction, fear, and self-loathing and I say: we are stronger than you.

The thought has often occurred to me that those of us with something to recover from- disease, addiction, war, divorce- are the lucky ones (that is, of course IF we get help. otherwise we are just spectacularly in the dark). I think that lives are measured more in direction than in places, and it is easier for us to see the low we are coming from and point ourselves up. If we started at Content, how would we see which way fulfillment lies? Really, though, I think the challenge is for people who think they are supposed to be content, and can't see why they aren't. There are so many shades of pain and struggle that go unnamed and untreated. Let me say this (to myself as much as anyone else): if you are unhappy there is a valid reason. You deserve help, and help is possible. Keep looking for it.

I think that sometimes addiction and disease are almost attractive because of that earlier thought, though. If you have a problem that obvious, it can (from the outside, at least) make it easier to see what would make your life better. And I have seen the depth of love and wisdom that many survivors have been able to reach through their circumstances. I am grateful for all of my struggles, as they've pushed me into the direction I'm going. At the same time, I don't really think it is pain that makes us beautiful. Perhaps pain is just one of the things that shows us our beauty most clearly.

I don't think there is any limit to joy that we humans can experience. I don't think there is anyone who cannot be happier, healthier, stronger. I think that is a blessing.

These thoughts started while I was sitting in Ecoffee (壹咖啡）reading for my East Asian Economies (东亚经济) class. I was reading the World Bank's report on the "East Asian Miracle" (yes, in Chinese. No, not understanding everything). In the last century, we have done a lot of naming. We have named inequalities and injustices, and I think many people get discouraged, frustrated, or even angry at the growing list. But I urge us all to see it as progress. The more problems we name, the more problems we can overcome.

This sentence resonated on this chord for me: “东亚经济增长最快的国家和地区，即日本和”四小虎“也是收入分配最公平的经济实体” It says that the countries and regions with the fastest economic development, Japan and the "Four Little Tigers" [Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong] are also the countries with the most equal distributions of income.

Equality is not a goal for the sake of those currently at the bottom. It is for all of us. I do not demand sanity and happiness purely for my own sake; with them I will be best able to better the world. If women's status in the world becomes equal to men's, it will not just be women who are better off. All of humanity will benefit from their knowledge, wisdom, and perspective. At the same time, all of humanity would lose greatly if men's status was dragged below women's (this same holds true for the gaps between people of different races, classes, backgrounds, nationalities, etc).

You are not doing anyone any favors by accepting unhappiness. Seek help, seek enlightenment, demand help, offer love and friendship freely. Love life, accept nothing less than wonderful.

(Not much of a travel blog, is this?)

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]

"There's so much more to get than wronged"

I have been trying to take a step back from the expectations I have of myself and see who I am and where I am and should be going.

I have been praying more. I have been trying to make my days expand into tapestries of things learned and seen and loved and not just the passage of the sun over my head. I have been trying to look around more.

I was almost overwhelmed in Nanjing. Not quite, I struggled through my classes well enough (I think. My civil law professor has still not told me if I passed or not) but had a hard time reaching out to the people around me. I'm hoping I can change this when I go back; that I can let people matter to me. Of course, half our time will be over, so everyone else's focus may not be on forming friendships, but I do the best I can.

I have been realizing that it might be okay for me to get used to things being alright. Not that I'm never going to have to face anything difficult again. I'm sure I will. I will be miles away from you when bad things happen. I won't be there to hug you or for you to hug me. I will be confused and in over my head and helpless. I will be human. But it will be okay. I will rely on the knowledge that I am not the most important thing in existence. I will call this knowledge "God" and scratch the surface. I will rely on the beautiful people I have in my life, all over the world.

The title is from "Earth to Bella, Part 2" by Incubus

If I turn into another// Dig me up from under what is covering// The better part of me

I am still working on being open and present, in my day to day relationships and in the deeper relationships with friends and family that may only surface in too-infrequent emails and phone calls and holidays, but offer a mirror of my progress and a reminder of who I am.

I am still working to put all the pieces of myself together. To see who I have been and who I am and who I want to be. I struggle sometimes with the self I see reflected in others. For instance, after my parents' divorce it was hard for me to interact with quite a few people who'd known me for a long time. They (you) saw the same person they had seen before, but all the pieces of me had come apart and I didn't know for a long time which ones to keep. I had defined myself by my family's life together, by our house and neighborhood, by the fact that I homeschooled, by the time I had for my friends, and I lost those things. It took a while for me to get my feet under me again, and even after I did old relationships were often a sharp reminder of how much had changed. This has been true of other transitions since then, though to a lesser extent. I change and want to move on, and don't always know how to interact with people I knew before.

I don't want that to stay true. I don't want to see my own struggles in your faces. I am learning to define myself as the intersection of all of your lives, as this beautiful point of opportunity to learn from you and share something of what I see. I am learning to look forward to the worlds of people and experiences I have ahead of me.

One of the clearest things I feel about my own identity is the necessity of travel. I didn't apply to ISU because I grew up in Ames, I grudgingly stayed in state for the tuition, and did not even consider staying in the US after I graduated. I don't have anything against the US, but it just felt wrong to be there last year and seriously added to the stress of my last year at UIowa. As much as I am struggling with my classes and my self this semester, I am definitely on the right continent.

In school news again, yesterday I wrote almost 1,000 characters of my civil law paper on the way that the Stubborn Nail House owners (钉子户） (who refuse to move when the government licenses their land for development) and their treatment in the media signal the recent developments in civil society in China. Woohooooo. I have done very little today.

Today's title brought to you by Dig by Incubus
Today's almost title #1 brought to you by 23 by Jimmy Eat World (I felt for sure last night// That when we said goodbye// No one else will know these lonely dreams)
Today's almost title #2 brought to you by Wasting Time by Jack Johnson (Nobody knows anything about themselves// 'Cause they're all worried about everybody else)

Countdown to Christian: 24 days (24, Christian Yetter! Fools round down!)

"Say 'hello' to all the apples on the ground"

I am reading Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About America," which has actually been very timely for my international politics class- I read his summary of Huntington's theory of the clash of civilization's the same day a classmate presented on it (though D'Souza and I feel differently about its ability to describe reality). I am working on articulating my thought on it. It has, at the least, pushed me to put my thoughts on my own American-ness as someone who has spent time in Germany, Egypt, and especially China into words.

I am reading another excellent article by a scholar (John Lewis Gaddis) which is tugging at similar strings of my identity. And a historian from the State University of New York at Buffalo was here last week and gave an excellent presentation on his current quest to understand world history and China's place in it. I am hoping to write a coherent post on my American identity when all of these things have percolated in my mind a bit longer, but I am thinking I will probably wait until I get to Korea after my semester ends and post then. I have started writing it three times now and am still struggling.

The essence of what I want to say is this: America has been the center of world civilization for at least half a century, and it's Western predecessors for centuries before that. D'Souza spends a lot of time on why this is justified, and makes a number of important points. However, a central civilization, a model nation, are not what the world community is looking for. As far as the principles of science, democracy, and capitalism (the three principles that D'Souza argues are Western civilization's greatest contributions, and justifications for their leadership) are concerned, they have found a model. What we are trying to find is not the country that everyone wants to live in, but a way for all of the countries in the world to work together.

I know that my voice is a very recent addition to the academic conversation on these topics, but I simply do not believe we are living in the same world as we were two centuries ago, and I don't think that my perspective can be dismissed entirely as naive. We are not living in a world where any one civilization or nation will be The Source of learning and progress- D'Souza is right in saying that in many ways that is the role the West has been playing. Humanity is developing to the point where we are learning how to function as a whole.

... I'm definitely gonna post on this again when I am not painfully aware that I have a lot of other homework to do.

In other updates: I am loving my International Politics class. I am learning so much. I am loving the many perspectives and the deep thinking in our readings and after every lecture I feel like my brain is on fire with thinking. Shi Bin is a fantastic professor. My other classes are all decent.

My Chinese is improving, but slowly. My vocabulary is still frustratingly limited but in my conversations, especially with Xiaoxuan and Rong Fan, I am finding myself more and more able to at least describe a word or concept, even if I don't know the translation.

I am going to Shanghai with Shirin tomorrow (so yes, I should really be doing homework). I love train rides. I'm very excited.

I have had a lot of lovely conversations, in English, in Chinese, through Skype, through email, and in person, this week. It has been really good.

Today's title brought to you by The Nurse Who Loved Me by Failure

Countdown to landing in Korea and seeing Christian Yetter: 29 days.

Allow me to add some "-spection" to that "-version"

I have taken the Myers-Briggs personality test a few times and my result is always the same: INFJ, for Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging, though not on the end of the spectrum for any of the traits they try to measure (this time I was "moderate" in three of the traits, and "distinctively intuitive").

The website I just took this test on (yes, there are other better things I could be doing with my time... pthbthh) links to a description of INFJ's as "Idealist Counselors" which describes me, among other things, as "difficult to get to know" because so much of what matters to me goes on beneath the surface.

I do not think that personality typing like this provides any ultimate answers in self-understanding, but it is both interesting and reassuring that my answers to different sets of questions all lead objective outsiders to a number of true conclusions about me, basically because it shows that the 'me' I'm getting to know is real.