En Route Reflections

As frustrated as I was during PST about not having the ability to post my blogs, this exercise of posting them months later has been quite delightful. I have enjoyed being able to look back and review/reflect on what I was going through. Even if the post was nothing more than a snapshot of the instant when my fingers were on the keys, it has been interesting to compare my thoughts and feelings from then to now. The following is one of those snapshots—digitally scribbled as I transitioned to the toughest job I'll ever love. 

And, as a blogistic note (you see what I did there??), the backlog of blogs is nearly finished. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not write a lot during my first semester of teaching. In the coming weeks, expect those blogs, then the most recent blogs about my travel and vacations. Hopefully, I'll be posting in real-time before the semester is over. 

Powerless in China

Below is a blog I wrote on 24 August. At the time, it was meant to be a smattering of updates about what I had been doing. Now, I guess you can read it as a smattering of highlights from my last couple weeks of training. 

Blink

Editor's note: I wrote this blog on 22 August.

Nearing the end of PST feels like I’m reliving the last month of college. Everyone is coming to the realisation that these times we cherish will not last forever. PST is only the beginning of our Peace Corps journey, and like the colon blinking on my alarm clock, every moment is gone in an instant, another taking its place. Every laugh, joke, memory: blinked away—the blinking of my clock no different than the blinking of my eyes...

Watching our language teachers blink away tears after laughing at my inspiring interpretive dance... My laughter later joining theirs when they ask me if I’ve ever had dance training—they noticed I pointed my toe really well...

Amidst various levels of singing, we blink through squints, trying to read the words on the KTV screen while belting like a karaoke champion...

Blinking astonishment from friends as I rap the entirety of Eminem’s “Without Me”, only looking back at the words once...

Cutting a moment’s blink in half, I flash a wink at a friend staring at me...

My computer is on the blink every time I attempt to send an email...

Blink.

Our group hangs on every second. I lose myself in thought, watching the blinking of my friend’s digital-faced watch. He never wears it in class—only leaves it sit on the table if he’s not spinning it around his pen.

With each blink, we get closer to saying goodbye to the friends we’ve made. Friends forged through like-minded aspirations, lengthy safety sessions and waiting... lots and lots of waiting...

Can you count how many blinks exist in a single day? Can one count the number of cultural interactions—somewhere on the spectrum of failure to success—we have faced? Each one helped us grow as individuals, but more so as friends.

Like eyelids, we were brought together. We have connected and bonded, but like each blink, we will now be separated. One cannot see with their eyes closed. 

Inspiration...

This is me, being serene.
Notice my favourite
Chengdu food?

Looking back through my written blogs, after Model School, there is a break. After a bit of thought, I remembered this was the most anxious time of PST—we were interviewing to determine our site placement. Then, that fateful Wednesday, we all met for a long morning (that no one remembers) before being given our placements after lunch. 

Everyone was so nervous. I tried to approach the day with serenity. There was nothing I could do to affect where I was going, so why worry about it. The Peace Corps goal was to choose a school where I could flourish. I trusted them to do just that... I mean, my other option was to go home? Not happening. I remember how electric with anticipation the room was—not a loud stadium electric, though. It seemed like most everyone was quiet and reflective with their emotional amalgamation of excitement and dread. 

I had my Kindle ready. I promised friends and family back home I would live-update facebook and twitter as soon as I knew where I was going. In hindsight, this ended up being an unknowingly introverted decision. While everyone else was flying around the room to see where their friends were headed for the next two years, I was hunched over my Kindle, reflecting and typing; by the time I had successfully updated both, much of the buzz had died down (it is labour-intensive task to type on the Kindle's keyboard).

You Wanna Be On Top?

No one said training was going to be easy—in fact, quite the opposite. All of the PC literature I read always used the word “intensive” in reference to pre-service training (PST). And on top of that, China’s PST is an entire month shorter than typical training programmes in other countries. All of this adds up to what can be a very overwhelming and very exhausting experience.


One of the more important aspects of PST for volunteers working in education—besides learning the language you are going to need to survive for the next two years—is a process called model school.

Going with the flow.

Editor’s note: Here's a blog I wrote on 17 July that I didn't have a better way to introduce.

My first impressions of Chengdu were mostly an awed terror. Admittedly, part of it was the exhaustion of travelling for thirty hours, but part of it was the overwhelming sensory overload of experiencing the city.

Milton would say this post is "All Daemons!"

If I ever wanted to get adorabled to death, my chance came and went.

Anagnorisis

I have seen the sun on two occasions since arriving in Chengdu; both occasions have been brutally hot, so despite my elation, there has been some level of unavoidable discomfort. However, on one of those days, I made a most joyous discovery, which lead to a realisation that has since helped me truly appreciate the little, fleeting joys life presents to us.

But before I get to all that, allow me to set the scene and explain some things...

Moving In

Editor's note: Here's my first attempt to backlog blogs I wrote before I had access to a VPN. This blog was written 9 July, 2011, four days after moving in with my host family. 

After four days, they joked the honeymoon was over. They weren’t kidding… All right, that is a tad melodramatic, but Tuesday was a dramatic day: we met and moved in with our host families.

Part of the Peace Corps training here in China is living with a family to help facilitate learning and understanding of culture, as well as language learning. After four long days living out of a hotel, we were split into groups and sent to four different universities, where we will be continuing training for the next ten weeks.

Information dump aside, meeting our host families has been something we have been building up to for days. They gave little information about our families and lots of suggestions on how to cope, communicate and make the most of our stay. Anticipation was high as we herded ourselves into a room with signs bearing the names of our hosts, meeting smiling Chinese faces holding signs bearing our names.

Meet Li Yanxi. 

With coupling anxiety comparable to the nerdy kid at the middle school dance (I remember it like it was yesterday), I found a young boy holding a sign with my name. We exchanged nervous “ni hao”s and I say hello. He giggles shyly and replies “hello”. Within a minute or two, communicating between his limited English and my negligible Chinese, I learn his name is Li Yanxi and he is twelve years old.

In an instant, I am following him back outside, only to meet his father, locate my bags and jam into a car. Riding shotgun, the driver bombards me with what I assume are questions, but it just sounded like Chinese. Li Yanxi tries to translate, telling me the man wants to know where I am from. When I say “United States”, he continues with the Chinese; the only word I recognise—because he says it four times—is “Obama”. He rolls up the windows, cranks the air conditioning, laughs at me for attempting to fasten my safety belt and offers me a cigarette, all while speeding away. Most importantly,  “…Baby One More Time” was belting through the radio to soundtrack all of this happened.

The afternoon was a blur of nervous sighs and embarrassed laughter as we tried to communicate—searching through our respective Chinese/English dictionaries and pointing to words and symbols on Peace Corps-provided phrase lists. My host father was trying to be as accommodating as possible, and for that, I am grateful. My host mother had not been home at that point. (I learned later that she was working overtime at the Sichuan Normal University Library, preparing for a national inspection.)

After a tremendously delicious dinner, the evening was spent walking around where they live. It rained in the afternoon, so it was a most agreeable temperature outside. They showed me how to get to the university where I would need to be in the morning. I like the idea of recording my walk to school one morning, like one of my dear friends did on his vlog. Or, I did until I tried it. I learned I am incapable of walking or holding a camera level. Every recording I made was too bumpy, with more visual jostling than Cloverfield.