auradis

Fake it til you make it

That night, I dreamed that a bird somehow got inside my room. Frightened, it kept trying to escape, but the windows were closed, and it would fly into the window, fall down in a daze, and repeat. I finally caught it in my hands and tried to calm it, but I could feel its terrified body shaking in my palms. Resigned, I released it through the opening in the corner of the window, and it flew away as swiftly as it could.

I was awakened at 6AM by voices coming from the classroom outside my room. Panicking, I checked my phone and saw that there was still an hour before I was supposed to wake up. Eventually, the students began singing praise songs [loudly]. I love that they love Jesus, but I wondered if they had anything better to do with their time…like sleep… Amazingly, they appear to wake up for morning prayer every day at that time.

The sunshine uplifted me a bit after the previous night’s indulgent wallowing, and I tried to put negative thoughts out of my mind as I prepared for the day’s lessons. In addition to the prayer/worship time at 6AM, the students also sing a few songs at the beginning of class, sung acapella [because that’s how they do] and led by one of the students.

I’ve decided to start every day with a writing exercise that they all read aloud to the class and turn in to me. I come up with a list of personal-ish questions that use some of the previous day’s vocabulary so that they can get thinking and speaking in English. It’s a bit reminiscent of the DOLs we did at the beginning of English class in elementary/middle school, which were exercises in which we had to identify the grammatical and spelling mistakes in the given sentences: editing, essentially, which I had no idea would end up being my choice of occupation..!!

The game of the day was a simplified version of Taboo, which I also miss playing with my Mizzou buddies. The male team won by one point. I’ve noticed that even in a classroom setting such as this, the girls women behave more shyly than the boys men, with the latter coming up to choose a word willingly while the former hesitate and look around at teammates. They’re not like this in every situation, but I would like to find a way to nurture greater confidence.

On the second day of every month, the factory workers get a day off, so there was no lunch to be had in the cafeteria [a relief?]. Instead, one of the students [Ruth] took me outside of the factory compound [finally], and we ate at one of the many little open-air restaurants lining a nearby block. So far I’ve been eating rather meagerly here, partly because I’m still not comfortable enough to eat openly [and for someone with a history of vaguely disordered eating, the act of it still carries the occasional tinge of shame] and partly because I’ve been so used to the rich and plentiful fare of Hong Kong.

Afternoon lessons ended on a happy note [no pun intended] after we did a musical dictation of Hillsong’s “Came To My Rescue.” I told myself that I would try to combat my loneliness by interacting more with the students outside of class time, which is…the obvious solution. Good job, self! I brought my laptop out and sat at the back of the room.

Most of the students were still hanging out there because really what else is there to do, and some started conversing with me. I mostly talked to the 19-year-old who looks eerily like one of my exes, since he was sitting the closest and took an interest in my Macbook.

This kid, who apparently took the phrase “Living Stone” as his English name [a direct translation of his Chinese name], is quite a character. During one of the class breaks [like passing period, except we all stay in the same room] when I sat at the front of the room writing in my notebook, he played the chorus of Westlife’s “My Love” loudly from his laptop and then yelled across the room for me to translate it. I’m very familiar with the song, having loved it for almost a decade, but how was I supposed to translate a love song?

“Please, teacher,” he called out. “I really don’t understand what it means.”
I could hear in his voice that he was baiting me, but I didn’t acknowledge it. Finally, I responded, “It means I miss you and want to see you, something like that.”
“Oh, well, I feel the same way,” he yelled back.
Insolent little…LOL.

When I was sitting behind him after class, LS asked me if I knew about the yoga epidemic in America. “Uh…it’s a very popular form of exercise,” I replied. “Even I’ve done it before.” Shock briefly registered across his face as well as the faces of nearby students. They tried to tell me some information on its pagan/evil origins, but I couldn’t understand all of it. Besides…really? I knew Chinese people were superstitious, but…it’s yoga! It’s that thing for upper-middle class people with time and space and money! Not some way to achieve nirvana, which was apparently its original purpose…

They also asked me about Halloween, which I thought most Chinese people translated as 鬼节 [“monster/ghost holiday”], but the students referred to as “All Saint’s Day” [I forgot the Chinese phrase]. Actually, LS specifically asked if people in Chicago celebrate it.
“It’s a rather foul day, isn’t it?” he inquired. “I’ve seen it in movies.”
I tried to explain that this holiday is basically a free-for-all for children to dress up like their favorite cartoon characters and gorge on candy.
“But I’ve seen reports on the news,” he persisted. “People dress up as fiendish monsters with blood on their faces.”
When I asked, he couldn’t spell out what exactly he thought these people did on Halloween, but they all seemed to have a rather odious view on the matter — a rather interesting cultural gap.

After dinner, I watched half of Daybreakers with LS and another student on his laptop. There are some rather morbid scenes of dead and/or bloody people, during which I made appropriately disgusted noises. This caused LS to hold up his hand in front of my eyes to shield my vision — funny the first time, not so much the third or fourth. And it reminds me even more of that ex. It was a surprising gesture from someone who insists on calling me “teacher” instead of my real name because he says our age gap [of 2 years] would cause it to be disrespectful T____T a joke, probably, but he persists.

I’d like to elaborate on this tangent and note that I really despise it when guys [of any friends/boyfriends/whatever] feel like they have to protect me. I mean, unless there’s an imminent ninja attack and he’s some kind of martial arts master, I can probably handle myself. More importantly, he doesn’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve seen — it might be nowhere and nothing, but he DOESN’T KNOW. For him to assume weakness is inexcusable. And if he DOES know me well enough, there should be no question of my capabilities.

Anyway, this post has gone on too long … time to end it!

Running home now kthxbai

Now onto the deep stuff.

Compared to the complete freedom I enjoyed in Hong Kong, this is like being in high school again: Everybody is focused on studying and I have no autonomy. I saw very few taxis around the city and there’s no way to know how the bus system works. Even if I wanted to go somewhere, the teacher’s bedroom is located INSIDE the classroom, in which there are students 12 hours a day. Getting out isn’t as much of a problem as the fact that there is literally nowhere to go. This is more in the middle of nowhere than Columbia, Missouri.

I’m also suffering withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal from my exchange student friends I spent my precious last weeks with, withdrawal from the city I’ve grown to love, withdrawal from a high-speed internet connection that is the tool for my addiction, withdrawal from the freedom of having no responsibilities and being able to stay up as late as I possibly can, and most importantly, withdrawal from being able to be myself.

I urged my students to refer to me as Laura and nothing else, but some of them still call me 老师 [teacher]. This is discomfiting for me as only three of them are younger than me, and even so, only by two years. That’s only the surface of a gap I haven’t quite figured out how to bridge yet. Because I’m not comfortable [or awake] enough to go mingle outside of my bedroom yet, I receive a knock on my door by my escort to meals, or for a delivery of fruit or tissues or breakfast or what have you. Their attention is touching, for sure, but I could literally be in a prison. An air-conditioned prison with smiling guards and a big bed…but a prison nevertheless.

My meals are all paid for. Even my after-dinner bottle of juice at the tiny convenient store was paid for by Mark. The 2600RMB from my aunts is burning a hole in its secret compartment, and I’ll be lucky if I get to spend even a quarter of it this whole month.

The niceties can be stifling. I asked Mark how to operate the speakers so I can get my private late-night fix of loud music bwahaha and he showed me willingly, but added, “You don’t wave to worry about it, teacher, we can set it up for you.” THANK YOU BUT I REFUSE TO BE A DEPENDENT SIMPERING WEAKLING OKAY DON’T ASSUME THINGS ABOUT ME.

After class, one of my students came up and asked me something about people in Chicago. I couldn’t understand the phrase he used, but after some difficulty, I deduced that basically he was asking if people in Chicago dress like the do “in the movies” … that is, skankily? I almost died. I suppose it would be advantageous for me to hide my penchant for deep-cut tank tops despite the 100-degree weather, but that means half of my clothes are out of service. And if that’s considered a curiosity, I suppose I had better not reveal all the other kinds of sins I’ve gotten into.

Augh! I can’t seem to word my thoughts precisely, but the final kicker is this: The family that was supposed to come and co-teach with me, whose mother had fallen sick a few days ago, just sent word to Hannah that she passed away from her illness. Not only is this a dreadful shock to their family, it also means that I, an UNTRAINED English speaker-turned-teacher, may very well have to teach alone for the next three weeks.

It’s the kind of task that I can do if I grit my teeth and fake it, but I will not enjoy it.

Ever since she got it into her head that I wouldn’t be able to find employment after graduation, mother has been pressuring me to pick another occupation. Like teacher. Or teacher. Or maybe teacher. But I shrugged off the suggestions because I knew I wouldn’t like it. I also know that I have the potential to be a good teacher — I’m patient, caring, loud, etc — but if something doesn’t come naturally and pays insufficiently, there’s no incentive. Also, when I think about most pop culture young female teachers I’ve seen [the one in Matilda comes to mind], I would hate to be put into that smiley, pristine little box. I may feel pedestal-ized here in China, but in America the position of teacher does not nearly receive enough social esteem as it deserves.

I almost cried a couple of times last night while thinking about my situation, but each time the tears could not quite escape. I’ve never quite been able to cry out of sheer self-pity; my destiny is in my own hands. A strong statement, but my last thought before drifting off to sleep was, Park Yong Ha, was it so bad that you really lost all your will to live?

These posts might be a bit delayed because the bad internet connection doesn’t let me format them properly, but they’re written according to the dates in the titles…so use those as reference. AND I WANT TO INCLUDE PHOTOS IN THESE POSTS BUT FOR SOME REASON THE FREAKING UPLOADER WON’T WORK CORRECTLY FML. So you’ll have to do without for now.

//

I woke up at 6AM to start repacking my belongings. We left [with all my luggage] an hour later in the church van and headed toward the factory, half an hour away. Despite having only gotten a little more than four hours of sleep, I sat wide awake in the passenger seat to observe the city of Yiwu as we drove down the spacious and well-paved roads.

This place isn’t exactly poor, as I could tell from the better-than-crappy apartment buildings, but like mother told me, it looks like the 农村 [I suppose “countryside” would be the closest translation, but in actuality it’s less romantic and closer to “undeveloped area”]. People walk across five lanes of nonexistent traffic as comfortably as you might stroll down your driveway.

Once we got nearer to the factory, though, the buildings became shabbier. Rusty tractors occasionally came down the road, the traffic lights didn’t even bother turning on and people moved around as if they just…didn’t care.

We are inexplicably* stationed inside this factory compound, where most of the residents are workers, and we use a classroom and some dorm rooms. I’ve gathered that the students usually come live here for five days while taking classes, then go back to the church building on the weekends. This means that I will have to pack and haul ALL of my crap across town twice a week.

I stood before my class of 16 and introduced myself, mostly in English at the behest of Hannah, and took them through the lesson book. We played a couple rounds of Telephone [to practice their listening and speaking but mostly because I miss playing that game], answered some personal questions, and thus three hours passed more or less smoothly. Praise God…but boy was my voice tired from talking so much.

For lunch, the students bring their own tableware and swipe for servings of the same mass-made food as the factory workers, which they then eat in a large dining area that is basically four slabs of concrete. Teachers and managers, however, get the privilege of eating out of actual dishes in a partitioned room off to the side, so my little vision of happily bonding with my students over lunch in a modern cafeteria is totally moot.

I’d like to add here that after a semester of dining out every day and eating mainly meat, having mostly vegetables at every meal is rather refreshing. On the other hand, I never get to choose. Nor do I get dessert. This situation might turn dire.

Lunch break is from 11:30-2PM, during which I took a much-needed nap. The subsequent two hours were spent having more lessons and musical dictations, during which I played Hillsong’s “All For Love” from my laptop and had them fill in some of the lyrics, which they all seemed to enjoy, this being a Christian program and all. Mark, the class captain [president? leader?], then helped me set up the Ethernet connection, which is adequate but just as undependable as the wifi at the church. Like yesterday, I spent most of the day in my room, glued to my laptop.

*I’m told we spend our weekdays here because it’s safer; over by the church, police tend to poke around, and we don’t want them getting in our business.