Chalkboard Tuesday

A Little Conversation

Every Thursday evening, all of us foreign teachers go to English Corner.  On our campus, English Corner is a school club run by some of the sophomore and junior English majors.  Ours is held outside, next to the lotus pond, for two hours every Thursday night.  It's designed to be an opportunity for students/faculty/random citizens in the community to swing by and practice their conversational English.  Sometimes this goes exceedingly well and we have great conversations or even develop new friendships.  Other times, it's difficult to focus on the conversations due to the distraction of whatever is most biting that night, typically a toss up between mosquitos or the cold.  It can also be an insight into what makes the minds of these young scholars tick.

Take, for instance, this conversation I had with a student during English Corner this past week:

Student: So, which one of you dyes their hair...you, or Miss Patty?
Me: Well, neither of us really dye our hair.  We've both added some highlights, which changes the color a little, I guess.  Why do you ask?
S: My roommate and I have been discussing this and we can't agree.
Me: Agree on what?
S: Well, your hair is not the same color!
Me: Um, yes. That's true.
S: So one of you must dye your hair because it's not the same color.
Me (a little confused): Mine is usually a little darker brown, maybe, but Miss Patty's is naturally blonde.
S: But, you know, all of us Chinese have the same color of hair.  And you're both American...so...?

Like I'd ever color over those golden locks!

I had quite the time convincing her that not everyone who shares a nationality shares the same hair color!

Chalkboard Tuesday

I'm not sure why he has antlers.  Or an earring.

Or how it fits into the bigger picture.

Not My Home

Today I received some news that dear friends of mine will have to leave the place where they have spent about 30 years building lives - the lives of their four amazing children, the lives of those around them that they've been able to share hope with and see transformed, the lives that come from a call to leave your home culture in order to give up everything and follow the irresistible pull to someplace overseas.  This sweet couple followed that call without any thoughts of looking back.  Yet, now, a new law is causing them to quickly and unceremoniously leave the place that's been "home" for such a long time.

Having been raised where I was, with parents such as mine, it would have been nearly impossible for me to grow up and be anything shy of a flag-waving, card-carrying, full-fledged patriot, fully aware of the benefits of my American citizenship and upbringing.  I would consider one such benefit to be the relative assurance of the survival, and success even, of my beloved nation and (due to my citizenship) my being welcome there so long as our mutual survival endures.  However, as one who studied and now teaches on the rise and fall of great empires and cultures, I'd be a fool to place all my hopes and assurances in even such a winsome-looking statistic.

Living here, it's easy to be reminded that this home in particular just isn't permanent.  Although some things have certainly become my new normal by now, far too many still feel entirely foreign.  Likely many of them always will.  Between that and the current uprooting my dear friends are experiencing, I'm so grateful for the reminder that none of this is permanent.  My hope and my trust must be in something greater, in Someone more lasting than the ever changeable laws, the nations, or even time itself.  Anything less is just dust in the wind.

Gotta Get Around

Some days I relish living in a culture that is not utterly dependent on individual automobiles, but has a healthy dose of walking and public transportation.  Of course, there are days where I can't help but think, "Holy crabapples! What I wouldn't give for the convenience of just being able to drive where I need to go already.  For crying out loud!"

One such time would be when the car or bus I'm taking from my town to the city stops about halfway there, on the side of a major highway, to exchange passengers with another car or bus.

"Chinese Fire Drills" - they're for real.

Or maybe when the cars/busses are also transporting random goods that you have to awkwardly straddle while holding your own bags and such.

Wha...eggs in a bucket of sand...? I don't even know.  At least it's not a live duck with its head sticking out of a garbage bag.  This time.

Those days are coming fewer and farther in between now that I feel a bit more confident about using the subway when I venture into the city (pretty much every Saturday now).

Normally, on public transport, people here just keep to themselves.  Many take advantage of the down time and grab a quick nap while others seem to be participants in some kind of bizarre anti-staring contest - desperately avoiding eye contact with anyone and everyone at all costs.  It's kinda fun to watch.

These past couple of weeks have been a little strange for me, though.  Waiting outside the station last week, some *ahem* not-exactly-registered taxi drivers were trying to earn my business and asked where I was going.  Our conversation went a little like this:

Group of Drivers: Hey! Where ya headed?
Me: I'm just waiting for a friend, thanks.
Group: OH! She speaks Chinese! Did you hear that?! Chinese! You speak Chinese?
Me: Uh, just a little.
Group: That's great! How old are you? (I always have a strange, internal monologue to remind myself that it's culturally appropriate when I get asked this question.)
Me: Oh, um, well, I'm 28.
Group: 28! So, do you have a boyfriend then? (Same internal monologue for this question, too.)
Me: Uh, no.
Group: No boyfriend! Why not?
Me: Oh, uh...too much trouble. Yeah, that's it.  They're too much trouble.

As if that entire conversation wasn't awkward enough, at that point, they started calling random men over and filling them in on my condition, listing off the stats - 28, no boyfriend, speaks Chinese, etc, etc while turning to me and exclaiming, "Isn't he handsome?! Aren't Chinese men just so handsome?"  Thank goodness my student and her mom arrived just then and I was able to make a hasty goodbye.

I had nearly forgotten this little incident until I made it to the same spot this morning and was greeted by a couple familiar faces and the ever enthusiastic "Hello!"s.  Thankfully, any would be diatribes were cut short by a truck pulling up and unloading quite a few of these guys:

Men in uniform - always a showstopper.

I like to think their mission today was just for that very purpose, to spare me further awkward conversations with random people on the street.  Mission accomplished, fellas.  Mission accomplished.

CQ's Best Kept Secret

Since returning to campus last month, the couple next door has been talking about going down to the river for their evening walks.  Their description made it sound like an urban paradise, but even that still didn't convince me to take the next opportunity to run down and check it out.  Bob and Carolyn are everything I hope to one day become - contagiously adventurous, indiscriminately kind, unwaveringly optimistic, and exceedingly generous.

Their generosity often applies to descriptions as well.  Take, for example, the "spaghetti" dinner I tried to make for all the foreign teachers shortly after arriving in our town for the first time last year.  The thing that I remember most about that meal was how embarrassed I was to serve it.  Likely, a worse pot of noodles has never been cooked - before or since!  Yet, in true form, our neighbors were encouraging with claims of how delicious everything was.  Keeping that in mind, I was somewhat skeptical that this river path could be everything I hoped for, but the allure of finding a good place to run finally drew me there a couple of weeks ago.

I was shocked by what I found.  First, there's a new housing development on the walk down to the river that was an ever-so-subtle reminder of home.  Though much larger than the usual Texas apartment community, and still under construction, the warmer colors and mix of stone, brick and wood were a welcome break from the typical concrete and tile.

Pergolas and arches and shutters!

Once I got to the river, I was shocked by what I found.

Where are all the people?!

Perhaps the emptiest road I've seen here.

There are three paths: one right down by the river (where old men usually have their fishing poles set up), one midway up the hillside (the least populated and thereby my path of choice), and one up by the road.

Path directly next to the water.

Decorative roadside walkway.

Not sure what happened here...this one swallowed an axe?

View from the middle path.

Boats along the river.

A sweet father-daughter moment.

And then, just like that, after following the path back and forth a couple of miles, the magic had gone and I had returned to the hustle and bustle of the city.

Chalkboard Tuesday

The wheels on the bus...are a math problem?

My Favorite Things (Teaching Edition)

Ok.  Moving to a country/culture that is easily a 180 degree turn from your original can be quite enlightening, in any number of ways.  One thing that living here has helped bring to mind would be all the favorite things I maybe didn't even know I loved so much.  You know, you never know what you have 'til it's gone, and all that rot.

Well, it has also helped me develop new favorites.  Two such new additions have to do with teaching.  The first would be the quirky ways students express their affection, namely the bizarre pick of gifts. Whether it's a faceless wooden figurine, a golden and personally engraved bookmark of Chairman Mao, or Christmas apples, they seem to know no end of generosity.  Perhaps the strangest yet:

Thanks be to Bob for checking to see if this little fella had been properly gutted and then...um...handling it.

The second would be the journal assignments from my students.  Actually, in all fairness, this is a double-edged sword.  Ever tried to grade 5 entries apiece for 500+ students in a week?  "Oy!" is about all that can sum that up.  However, some of them are so precious, revealing, emotional, or downright sweet that it is altogether worth it.

Of course, I see my fair share of brown-nosers  - "I will always do my best to improve my spoken English!" or "Ms. Lin is a beautiful and responsible teacher."  (That's when I know they're really concerned about their grades!)  But some of them take the ambitious opportunity to teach this waiguoren about their own culture or practices.  And, even more precious, are those who truly open up and allow me a small glimpse into their lives, lives in a culture that typically shies away from expressing emotion.  To be so implicitly trusted pulls at my heart.  Every. Single. Time.

Have you married?

Culturally, it's such an innocent question, typically accompanied by fits of giggles and small, shy glances.  Yet, somehow, it's both harder to hear and to answer here.  It always manages to create some sort of overstimulated emotional reaction inside me.  Whether it's barely noticeable in an absolute-smallest-of-twinges-felt-in-the-innermost-part-of-my-gut sort of way or whether I'm caught completely unprepared to the point an instant rush of adrenaline quickens in my veins while I feel awkwardly put on the spot...either way, it's really rather unpleasant.

Culturally, there are only two legitimate answers to this question: a seemingly rather simple "yes" or a just as simple "no" as in "not yet."  In Mandarin, the question is nearly always asked as a quite open-ended but literal "Have you or have you not married?" as opposed to the American English version of "Are you married?" with its (glorious!) implication of current conditions.  According to (my rather limited grasp of) the nature of the language, the proper response in Mandarin should then be either "I have" or "I have not."  Pretty simple, right?  However, I haven't been able to comfortably or legitimately answer with either of those responses in years.  To say "I have" would be met with further questions as to where/who my husband is and to say "I haven't" would simply be a lie - so not my style.  The asker(s) can't possibly be aware of the many complications that riddle the truth as well as my past.

Culturally, it would be wildly inappropriate to burden those only wishing to make a little small talk with the highly personalized details of my story.  They don't need to know about the years of heartache I struggled through, scrambling after a husband who first rejected his faith, his wife and ultimately all other significant commitments.  They don't need to know how much greater the pain was even further increased by perfectly well-meaning individuals who assumed that my own faith must have been lacking, that I simply didn't value the marriage enough myself, or that surely I failed to make a sufficient effort and let it slip idly from my grasp.  They don't need to know.  And that's not what they're asking anyway.

Culturally, it's not about the culture at all.  It's about my own personal journey, my personal struggle through issues I never anticipated would be mine - lost baggage I never meant to claim, yet somehow repeatedly finds it way to me in unanticipated, little reminders like this question.  Most days I feel as though I've come far enough that it just slides right off, but somedays the constant reminder is too much and I want to blame a culture for valuing a life as so much greater if it's legally and matrimonially attached to another, blame whoever might be responsible for leaving me to deal with this kind of silly conundrum, blame myself for not just getting past it altogether already.  Somedays it's really all too much, but sometimes, somehow it becomes a sweet reminder of the infinite measure of grace and peace I've already received, a chance to remember I'm neither who, nor where, I once was and that my hope has indeed been redirected.

National Day Trip

The alternative title for this post could be "I may have finally learned my lesson."

First lesson being, if I have the urge to get some much-needed-as-an-undercover-introvert alone time...well, I should definitely stick to a plan of traveling alone.  Second, the only people who should travel on national holidays in this country are those who need proof that the billion+ population is not a mere exaggeration.

(It's not.)

All week, as those around us celebrated the birth of New China, I contented myself with much smaller celebrations, such as:
the arrival to our first destination (after an adventuresome night followed by nearly 15 hours on a bus),

Pre-adventure - trekking down a CQ highway in the rain due to standstill traffic.

Laura made a new friend on the long bus ride.  Heh.

 experiencing "almost" Tibet,

Tibetan prayer flags strung across a local river.

my first glimpse of yaks,

Hairy cows!

a delightful bowl of noodles,

The much-celebrated Lanzhou Lamian.

 and perhaps the most beautiful creation I've ever seen.

Long Lake, JiuZhaiGou

Clear enough to see to the bottom - at least 10 feet down.

The natural minerals/elements (including copper) turn the water the most stunning aqua blue. 

I'm a sucker for waterfalls.

 Lesson learned.  But still, I couldn't have asked for a better classroom.

The First Ever Chalkboard Tuesday!

As a teacher in the university setting here, I have the privilege of regularly rotating classrooms.  Occasionally, the previous teacher has neglected to erase the blackboard.  Even more occasionally, whatever they have neglected to erase is somewhat amusing or even insightful.

Tuesday seems like the closest-thing-to-perfect day to share these little moments.  I mean, there's just not a day of the week whose name really makes the word "chalkboard" sing when you combine the two.  So, Tuesday it is.

Alright, here we go, starting off with the proverbial bang. *Ahem.*

Um, what class is this again?