With the birds I'll share this lonely view

Today was strange and beautiful. It started this morning around 11:00, when I got a knock on my door. It was Sandy, a very sweet student, come to pay homage to me. I asked her if she wanted to go to a park and have a walk. While we were walking in the park, I noticed the wind was strong and warm, and we happened to come across a man selling children’s toys from the back of his wagon. I spied a kite, and on a whim I asked Sandy if she wanted to fly a kite today. So we bought one and put it together, and ran around the park like children flying our kite. She was incredibly sweet. Every time she got it up in the air she’d hand it to me, and I would promptly crash it, and she would get it up in the air again. Then we walked on, hoping to get a ride on a boat out in the water, but there were no boats. We did meet a vendor selling a delicious treat. Six candied strawberries on a stick. Sandy treated me, and we wandered about eating it. We decided to have a rest under a weeping willow tree out in the middle of the lake, and Sandy helped me practice my Chinese. Mostly she helped me pronounce the tones, over and over, and some others heard and wandered near us to see what was going on, why some crazy person was loudly repeating the phrase “Can I have your telephone number?!?” I think in China it is very different from America. When Americans hear someone trying to learn English, or trying to speak it (unsuccessfully) they feel ambivalent and/or annoyed. But here, it’s like everyone takes a personal interest in it. People wander up and just start correcting you. Two women and their children sat down under the willow with us and they all started telling me words they thought I should know. Qing, please. Xiexie, thank you. Duibuqi, sorry/excuse me. And I taught their children how to say those things in English (that is my job, after all! I am even a teacher off-duty). I had quite a nice time at the park.











After our lovely time at the park I told Sandy I would treat her to lunch, and where did she take me? No, seriously, just guess. KFC. Well, she called it KFC, but it was actually a knock-off KFC. It amused me a lot that she knew the word “knock-off”. This place was called Dicos, and it was essentially the same as a KFC. We rode the bus to get there, and that was a lot of fun. For some reason I have always just adored public transportation, going for drives of any sort. So we took the bus, and the window opened enough for me to put my whole upper body out, and wave at people on the street, and I got to smoke on the bus, too, which was like a totally amazing bonus. At Dicos, I had a delicious spicy, crispy chicken sandwich and French fries, and a Pepsi with, get this, ICE! The first time I’ve had ice since I’ve been here. I have no idea why but Sandy kept feeding me. She treated me like a baby doll, like a plaything. She fed me french fries, which she tenderly dipped in ketchup first, and chicken tenders, and she even tried, unsuccessfully, to put a water bottle to my mouth and have me drink, like an infant. (When I got home, she also fed me my pills. She took them out of the package and put them in my mouth, and then held a cup of water to my lips.) I can't decide if she was treating me like an empress or an invalid!

After lunch we went to the supermarket across the street. For some reason Sandy was insistent on buying me nectarines. We walked up and down the aisles holding hands, and she pointed out different things and I told her how to say them in English and she told me how to say them in Chinese. It went something like this: “Garlic” -- “Dasuan”, “Green onions” -- “Qingcong”. It was a lot of fun, but also very odd, because even though I generally consider myself incredibly affectionate, I have never held hands with an almost complete stranger for five hours straight. I mean, technically, I don’t even know her name. And the entire day she didn’t call me anything but “Teacher”. It felt a bit strange. And I ran into quite a few of my students, and I wondered if this was normal, or if it was as incredibly odd as it felt. What do I know about appropriate behavior with your students? I mean, most of them are my age, and I don’t feel that I am an authority figure over them, and they obviously don’t either.

After the supermarket we went to an arcade. Sandy had never been to an arcade before, and was so shy to play the games. I was ecstatic. We played air hockey, and basketball, and Dance Dance Revolution, and the claw machine. But the best part of all, we played bumper cars. Bumper cars are essentially the same here, but also different. There are no seat belts and no restrictions, the cars go faster and the sessions last longer. I paid 10 RMB for me and Sandy to ride bumper cars for 10 straight minutes. That seemed like an incredibly long time to me. Sandy was horrible at bumper cars. She kept getting stuck in the corner, and I would have to bump her out. She couldn't steer and she was afraid to bump. But still, we were laughing hysterically the entire time, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. When we were done there, we went to wait for the bus to take us back to the school, but a man in a buggy offered us a ride for 3 RMB. I couldn’t resist, so we climbed into the back of his buggy and took a bumpy ride across town. I was grinning the whole way, as I had never ridden in anything like this before. Sandy was not as amused, because she thought it was too expensive, for one, and a little dangerous also. She insisted on wrapping her arms around my waist to keep me from falling out. I tried to explain that because I weigh roughly twice as much as her, if I were falling, her body weight would be insubstantial to keep me inside the buggy, and in fact we would both end up falling. She either didn’t understand, or didn’t care. We parted ways when we got home, but made plans to go to Yumen Shan (that’s Yumen Mountain, in English, ha!) next Saturday, bright and early.

Sandy made me sad a few times. She told me that she had a dream to study nursing because she has two younger siblings, which is still very uncommon in China, because of the one family, one child law, and so her family found it difficult to support them. She dreams of becoming a nurse so she can make good money to pay for her siblings to go to school, because her father is an alcoholic and it’s too expensive for her parents to pay for it by themselves. She misses her hometown, and it is 12 hours away by train. But she is also happy that she is in Qinzhou because her town is very poor, and there aren’t any opportunities for her to work there. It just made me very, very sad. She asked me to come home with her at the Chinese new year, and I think I will. I think, in fact, that I would really love that.

Like black Cadillacs outside of the funeral

In the past two weeks, many things have happened to me. I have been to the doctor three times, my first trip to a Chinese hospital, had the flu, had an earache, made a new friend, took many, many walks on warm breezy nights, and found American food. I had a ten day break for the Chinese national holiday, during which I drank five bottles of wine and ate nothing for a week but raw pistachios. I was frustrated, bored, and lonely. I wanted to teach. I wanted to make my students come back forcibly, and teach them even if against their will. I missed my students, and I missed teaching, and I became melancholy and moody. I started fights with my boyfriend, I snapped at my mother, I got irritable and complained endlessly to my friends. But the time eventually passed, as it tends to do, and I found Monday morning of my first day back at work coming round. I was very excited. I had come to a few conclusions over the long, lonely lapse in company. I decided that it was my own fault if I didn't have anything to do over the holiday. I had a whole month to make friends, and literally hundreds of girls asking me to do things with them. I had put them off, not because I didn't want to be friends, but because they always asked me after class. After class I was so terribly tired, after four straight hours of jumping and laughing and enthusiasm, and I always feel when class is over that I will never, ever have the energy to do it again. But invariably, a few hours later, I have rested and recuperated, and am ready to do something fun.

Another problem is that they always ask for my phone number so they can call me to set up a date, but I don't have a phone. So I decided that every time someone suggests we should "do something sometime", then I will suggest doing something that very evening, or another evening, and make concrete plans right then and there. I will make friends! I also asked my boyfriend to send me a beginning Chinese textbook, and I resolved to learn as much Chinese as I could, to be able to talk to people and not feel so linguistically isolated. My sister also sent me a little book, Chinese Phrases for Dummies, that has already been quite helpful. In fact, it aided me greatly in making my new friend. I have already communicated such simple ideas as "Hello, how are you?", "Thanks", "I'm an American", and "I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese". So, with my resolutions and my promises, I was very much looking forward to starting my teaching after the holiday. So, obviously, what happens when I wake up Monday morning? I have the fricking flu. There are not words to express how incredibly angry I was about this. I taught my classes on Monday and Tuesday, with absolutely no enjoyment. I had a headache, and the children screamed like banshees. I tried to help them pronounce words, and my head was so congested they understood my speech even less than usual. I played my favorite color game, but I was so tired that the students pulling on my hair and clothes just about knocked me over. It was utterly, completely miserable. In fact, if someone were to ask me, years in the future, "When were you the most miserable in your entire life, and why?", then I would have to answer, "The first two weeks of October, in 2009, because it was hell on Earth (or rather, hell in China)". On Wednesday, I found Flora and told her to cancel my classes for the week, that I was just too sick to lecture. Wednesday morning I had awakened with the sorest throat I have ever had. I thought it was laryngitis at first, because I couldn't speak.



This is actually a funny tangent. I found out I couldn't speak because every morning when I wake up, I narrate my morning. I don't know why I do this, I guess so it feels like there is someone else in my apartment. It goes something like this, "Waking up, freezing cold, okay, get the coughing over with, you goddamn smoker, you're going to kill yourself, you fool. You're starving, do you want to eat? It's too cold. Just lay here a minute. Okay, okay, you have to brush your teeth, get this morning breath out of your mouth. You need to shower. But it's too cold to shower. Just smoke a cigarette, that will wake you up. Where did you put the lighter, where are you always putting the lighter? Why do you just have one lighter? You know you always lose it. You need to buy another lighter. That guy that sold you those eggs likes you." Etc. It will go much like that most mornings. Like I said, I don't know why I do this. So Wednesday I wake up, dreading my day again, and I start talking to myself... and nothing. No sound comes out. My throat hurts terribly, and I try to speak, and nothing. So I thought it was laryngitis for this reason.



So I told Flora I couldn't lecture because of my voice, and she took me to the doctor. He gave me pills and I went home and pretty much slept the rest of the week into oblivion. So on Friday I felt quite a bit better, I went to sleep feeling certain that I would wake up almost totally well. I woke up with an earache. Again, there are not words to describe my anger and frustration. I had been so sure I would be healthy again, and now I had one of the most painful afflictions I know. So I told Flora I had an earache, and she took me to the doctor again, and he gave me more pills. That night, I laid down to sleep, and my eardrum ruptured. I don't know how many people have experienced this, but it is excruciating. Blood and pus come pouring out of my ear onto my pillow (disgusting, I have to wash that now, and my washer is broken). So Flora took me to the hospital across the street. I was afraid. I did not like this hospital. The nurses here wear those old 1950s insane asylum dresses. The stark white dresses, and even that hat with the flappy things on either side of the head. It can be unnerving. My nurse wore a mask over her mouth, so she looked even more terrifying, and she poked cold things inside my ear, and I just knew she was going to poke another hole in my eardrum. I was certain that's what was happening to me. I was so frustrated that all of this was happening, and I couldn't control it. I just spent hours wanting to do something childish, like break something, throw something, hit something, just to feel like I was in control again.



But the time passed, as it tends to do, and Monday morning came around again. I felt a lot better, even though my ear is still draining quite a bit while I sleep (I really need to wash that pillowcase), and so I went to the primary school, and had a wonderful day of teaching second grade. Flora said for a few days I could just teach at the primary school and not at the health school. That is how my new friendship came about. The gatekeeper at the primary school is an old man who tells me every day that I need to learn Chinese. He lives in the little room beside the big gate, and he invites me inside in the mornings after class, because it is so cold. We are both chain smokers, so we sit and smoke cigarettes until the driver is ready. He tries to talk to me, and I have developed a trick. If I simply nod my head, and repeat the last few sounds he made in Chinese, then he feels that I am listening to him and understand. It is amazing. Today we ate these donut things, essentially like deep-fried breadsticks. Five for one RMB, and we shared them and smoked cigarettes, and faux-communicated. He is quickly becoming my best friend here.



Today I felt so much better; I went for a long walk into the busy part of the city. I had only been to this part of the city late at night, drunk. The last time I went there, I drank a bottle of wine and decided to go for a walk, got lost (obviously), and wandered down an ally to find an empty spot to piss. I found myself in familiar territory (luckily). I was on the back ally where the primary school is located, only a few minutes from the health school by car, and I easily found my way home. In the daylight, I came across something wonderful. It was a big red sign over a very tiny shop, and on the sign was none other than a hamburger! A hamburger, a fried chicken leg, and french fries. I felt like I hit the jackpot. American food, right before my eyes. I didn't know how to order, but luckily the woman didn't need me to. She just looked at me and started making me a sandwich. It wasn't a hamburger, it was a chicken sandwich, but it was delicious and tasted just like home (kind of). Every bite I took, I expected to bite into something terrible, but I never did. Pure white meat chicken sandwich bit of mayo, lettuce. I'm starving just thinking about it. Sometimes all it takes to turn your temper around is a good meal.

I'll make it to the moon if I have to crawl

Sixth grade is pretty similar to fifth grade, quite different from fourth grade, and third grade is completely and totally a different world altogether. I would never have known that the grades are so different, I remember it all as a haze, every year of school essentially the same as the last. And yet, teaching each grade, I see what is similar and different about them. This is what is different about third grade. It is a hell on this earth. It is a plague unto man. When I taught third grade a few days ago, it was a madhouse. The students wouldn't stay in their seats, they were up running around, they didn't listen to a word I said the entire class, they screamed and yelled in Chinese utterly incoherent to me. One of them even kept running behind my back to make faces at the other students. I was certain that day, what I will refer to as The Day of The Third Grade Terrorism, that I had lost all of my skills as a teacher. I came home defeated and down-trodden. But not hopeless. I decided that I just needed to think this through, figure out what went wrong. I obviously couldn't handle the younger classes the way I had handled the older ones. This would call for a complete reworking of my entire lesson plan. No lengthy individual introductions, no lecture at all. I came home, lit a cigarette, and considered my dilemma. The third graders didn't listen to me. That must mean I didn't get their attention. They didn't behave, that must mean they weren't interested. So how do you get 50 third graders to listen? I considered when I was in third grade. What if my regular teacher, the disciplinarian, the one I had come to respect, had said, "Students, here is a Chinese lady to teach you Chinese. Give her your full attention." And then walked out of the room, leaving me with this stranger who spoke no English. I was a thoughtful student, so I would have tried to pay attention, assuming I would get brownie points for this. But after she spoke for several minutes, saying things I couldn't comprehend well, if at all, I would surely lose interest. I came to understand why my students did not pay attention to me, because I was doing nothing to grab their attention. So I thought about what a Chinese lady in my third grade class would have to do to get my attention, and then keep it. First of all, just seeing a Chinese lady would hold my attention for a few minutes. The element of surprise was on my side. Then she would have to do something physical, something entertaining. I decided to play a new game, where my body is home base. Once all of the students were touching some part of my body (and yes, if you are wondering, my butt got groped a bit) I would yell out a color, and all of the students would have to rush about the room to find something that color and bring it back to show me, and then back to their desks. Then I would yell, "Touch base!" and they would all run up and grab hold of me again, and it would start over. This game really got their attention. It had everything a third grader wants: running, yelling, touching people, a race, a bit of competition, a show of knowledge. The students all raced to the front of the class to be the ones who got to me first, because the first to get to me got to hug me full around the waist, or hold my hands, while the others had to settle for a bit of clothing or an arm or leg. This game went over so incredibly well, I couldn't believe it was this simple. I had worked out the dilemma completely. Just make them run about a bit, and they settle down immediately! So then I showed them the parts of the face. I used a student for this, and this amused them very much as well. I chose a student and pointed out their ears by pulling on them, pointed out their nose by squeezing it, pointed out their cheeks by pinching them. Using their face like a doll, it couldn't have amused the students more to see their fellow student poked and prodded. And the demo student was also very happy to be the center of attention. It was great fun for us all, and to review I would ask them to come up to the board and draw a part of the face I named, to see if they recognized the word. A lot of funny faces came up, because each student drew a different part of the face, so it ended up looking like a clown. So my first day of teaching third grade I thought they had beat me, but my second day of teaching third grade, I came out victorious. I imagine this is what it felt like to win WWII.










With the confidence boost of prevailing over the Third Grade Terrorists, I decided to be a little more adventurous with my older classes as well. In two of them I played the game I had been wanting to play all month, where I make up a bag full of my clothes, and they come up and pull out an article, and talk about what that piece of clothing's name is, the colors, and what kind of weather in which it would be worn. There was a lot of giggling and joking around during this game, which was quite a bit of fun. And as I suspected, when one student pulled out my bra, the entire class was total chaos for a few moments, while everyone took in the very idea, which went something like: "That huge bra, it's true the teacher's breasts are quite large, but look at that, it's ridiculous!" I think this is a game that can be modified for every single class I have, for the younger and older students, and for the smaller to the extremely large classes. Then everyone wanted to take pictures, and since it was the last day of classes before vacation, I decided to let class out early so everyone could get pictures of me and their friends wearing my clothes. Speaking of which, that was earlier in the week, and now I have been on autumn break for three days. I don't have classes, so I have little entertainment. I have been considering what to do with my time here. Last night I couldn't sleep, it was one in the morning here, and I was bored, restless. I decided to go for a walk to tire me out. I walked out of my apartment building, and was struck by a big, bright moon and a sprinkling of stars. People who live in cities must be used to not seeing the stars for weeks at a time, but I am not, and I had not seen the stars for a month. Every night the moon hangs like a glowing orange pumpkin in the sky, amidst clouds of grey pollution that block out the stars. I had not seen an evening for a month that wasn't gray and orange. Probably it was because there was a strong wind blowing from the east, sweeping away the clouds and pollution for a few hours, carrying with it the scent of the ocean. It was such a beautiful night last night, and the whole campus was deserted for break. I felt completely alone. I love feeling very, very alone in very large places, because it makes me feel like the last human being left alive. I remember when I was young I saw this zombie movie with my sister, "28 Days Later". The beginning of this movie shows a man waking up in a hospital bed, presumably from a coma, to find everyone in London is gone. He wanders the big, empty city in his hospital gown, looking around. I will never forget my feeling, watching that, as though I were there. It was like swallowing a deep breath in my chest. That, too, made me feel crowded and restless. I sometimes get this feeling at home when I am driving very early in the mornings. I think 4:00 a.m. is the time when the most people are asleep at any given moment. I pretend there are zombies, no humans left, and I feel safe because I have a car, a protective shield. Once I was with a friend during this time, and tried to describe the feeling, but it didn't translate, because you can't be the last person left alive if there's someone riding shotgun.

In any case, I have taken a strange tangent in my thoughts. I am thinking about very complicated feelings, and I suppose this is because I am feeling very complicated feelings. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that this is the way things would go? Not me, never. I suspected I would come here to mourn lost things. China, I mean. I would mourn lost things that would never return, or distract myself with seeing something new. I do know one thing: China is not the place I have been looking for. That place that is so totally different from the places I know that it is utterly unrecognizable. China is too civilized, it is not strange enough. You have to squat over a hole to piss, but then you use toilet paper just like anywhere else, and wash your hands with a bar of soap. I had thought it would be different, probably I had thought it would be a struggle. Everything I have ever thought has been wrong. In my first blog I talked about how you never know what you will feel on your journeys. You never know what something will mean until it happens. I know this is true, but what are you supposed to do, really, with that kind of information?