Long Time No See

How to begin? Hello! Long time no see! 好久不见！(hao3 jiu3 bu2 jian4)


I have picked up my pen, figuratively speaking, after a long hiatus to announce to my little blogosphere that in about 2 months time I will be returning to China to teach music at an International school. To many of you who are reading this, this is not news since I probably told you in person, but if I don't ever see you, then, surprise!


The main reason I decided to start blogging again is that I have way too many thoughts and emotions to really understand what I'm thinking and feeling most of the time. If you've ever had to make a major life transition then you may understand what this is like.


Every single day I experience more emotions than I know what to do with, and frequently all at the same time. I am stressed about all of the end-of-the-year school things I have to do, wanting the stress to be over, and not wanting the stress to be over, because that means I will not teach these students ever again. I am simultaneously puppy-dog excited about whoever my new students will be. I am soul-achingly sad to leave the people I love here: my family, my friends, my church family, my students, my coworkers, our new dog (I know, not technically a person, but already I love him). I am thrilled to meet the people I will live and serve with over the next two years. I am afraid to leave the comforts of home: the familiar, the routine, the Starbucks, the easy access to cheese and tortillas. My heart leaps at the thought of being in China once more. I can't wait to study Chinese more, eat Chinese food, speak with Chinese people, drink nai cha, take overcrowded busses....


If you felt that was a lot to read, then you're right. It's also a lot to experience at one time, all the time. And that is not even everything.


I am overwhelmed with the prospect of finishing my time here in New Jersey well, and preparing myself well to return to China at the same time. Time is dwindling. I'm done with school in less than a month. I have four more Sundays as music minister at my church. I start training for China in a month's time. This is unfathomable to me.


So, all that said, I'm going to try to regularly post between now and my departure (as yet undetermined) one specific thing that I will miss, and one specific thing I am excited about. Since it's Monday, and Mondays are currently one of my days at the Catholic school, I'll start there.


I will miss morning times at the Catholic school where I currently teach. I will miss the whole school (quietly) gathering together to hear a scripture lesson, listen to announcements, celebrate birthdays and achievements, sing a hymn, and salute the flag, and sing a patriotic song.


I am excited to experience and fall in love with my new school's morning traditions, whatever those may be.






That's all for now. Because I am a teacher and it's late and there's school tomorrow. :) 下次见！


~Erin

Faithfulness, Trust, and 童话

I like music. A lot. If you know me, you're saying “Duh!”. But in all seriousness, music is the most powerful tool at my disposal for learning new things, connecting to others, and expressing myself. It is also often through songs that Father teaches me things or reinforces things I should already know but have as of yet failed to grasp. One of those lessons that I have been currently learning is that of trusting in God; being able to trust that He is faithful, and that I can fully trust Him with every aspect of my life - especially my uncertain future.

~~~~~~~~

Story Time:

Around Thanksgiving of 2011, my dear friend and I sat down for a few hours and memorized all of the words to a song. Said song is called 童话 (Tong Hua) which translated into English means “Fairy Tale”. It is an incredibly beautiful, sappy, sad, tear jerking Chinese love song. And I'm still proud that we learned and memorized all of the words in the space of a few hours, because my Chinese was pretty much nonexistent at that point in time. 童话 became 'my' Chinese song after that as I prepared myself to go to China. I listened to other Chinese songs, but this was the only one I really truly knew. Every time I heard 童话 I became filled with excitement over my future journey to China.


(side note: 童话 was written in 2005 by Malaysian Chinese artist Michael Wong and is one of those songs that pretty much everyone knows and loves).




Well, come August 2012, after a month studying in Beijing, I found myself journeying by train to Harbin with my teammates where I would live for the next 10 months. It was a long train ride that got us to the Harbin train station at some ridiculously late hour. We were exhausted, and had to haul our luggage up stairs to get out into the night to get taxis to our school. I felt nervous, and was apprehensive of pretty much everything at that point. As we emerged into the night and marveled at the raucous crowds of people and the bright neon Chinese signs I heard a song wafting out of some bar or club. That song was 童话. I exclaimed “I love this song” and hummed along, which elicited a smile from Vincent, our Foreign Affairs Liason. And at that moment, all of my fears and trepidations for the coming year ceased. It felt like God was telling me, “You are home. Don't be afraid. This is home. I am with you.”




Through the year in Harbin, I experienced many, many ups and downs. Life was hard a lot of the time. But it was also really rewarding. 童话 would pop up occasionally. It was an initial source of bonding with a teammate. I would pull it out to perform for and connect with some students in a restaurant, or on a field, or at karaoke. I would hear it sometimes when walking on the street. (It is still pretty popular even though it's not as current. It's a classic.) It was like part of the background music or playlist of my life.




Fast forward to June 20^th, 2013. My last day in Harbin. I had been emotional for weeks. But this day was the hardest by far. I had to say my final goodbyes to my students, my campus, and my friends and leave the city that I had come to love through the hardships of the year. As we all waited around in front of our apartment building for the bus to come to take us to the train station I stood in a circle with some of my students. After aimless chatting and awkward silences someone said, “sing a song”. So we sang “you are my sunshine” together, since I had taught it to all my classes, and it was like our theme song. After it ended, someone else said “sing a Chinese song”. So of course I pulled the only Chinese song I knew out of my 'pocket' and started into 童话。 Just a few bars in, I looked around at my students and saw tears escaping from some eyes, and then watched two students completely lose it. I barely lasted past the end of the song before I was a complete blubbering mess. Then I hugged each student goodbye and sobbed my way onto the bus that would bring me to the end of my time in Harbin.

~~~~~~~

It wasn't until months later as I was reflecting on China and agonizing over my current life situation and my plans and hopes for the future that it hit me. 童话 had come full circle. As I entered Harbin, it was a promise that Harbin would be my home, and that God would be with me through the whole journey. As I exited Harbin, it was as if God was saying “Do you see? Do you remember? This place has become your home, just as I promised. These students that you didn't even know 10 months ago became people whom you loved and were loathe to leave. I was with you when things were horrible, and I was with you when they were great. I am faithful. I am always faithful.”


Tonight I Skyped with one of my teammates from China, and got to share with her some of my current life story and the things I've been learning since coming back from China. I know that I want to go back to China in the future. And I also know that I need to stay in New Jersey for at least another year for many reasons, and I am committed to that decision. But it's scary. With that decision comes the possibility and the fear that I have forever allowed the door to return to China to close.


After I hung up, I proceeded to return to my Chinese language studies that I had been doing before the call (I study Chinese at most spare moments in my life in some way). And somehow they led me to a video of 童话. I watched the video and read the Chinese lyrics. I was at first just amazed by how much of the Chinese I actually understood. And then it hit me again. This is my promise/covenant song in everything regarding China. God is faithful. If He wants me to go back, I will go back. I have nothing to fear. He is with me in the sea of uncertainty that is my life just as He was with me in Harbin. He is always faithful.






If you're interested, here's a link to the music video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOeFSgQEsMQ


And here's an English translation (it's not the best, but you can get the general idea):


http://www.lyricsmansion.com/result_east/tong-hua-%28english-translation%29-lyrics-guang-liang.html

We're not in China anymore...

America is a little different from China.

Today I...

Eavesdropped on airport conversations (on accident) because they were in English and I could understand them.

Hugged my parents.

Rode in a car that wasn't a taxi.

Stood outside and listened to cicadas and the two cars that drove by.

Slept on a bed that felt like fluffy clouds.

Ate a bagel. With cheese.  Said cheese was neither incredibly fake nor cheddar.

Did laundry in a washer (with liquid laundry soap) AND a dryer.

Walked barefoot outside on the grass.

Talked to people in America on a cellphone.

Talked to people in America in person.

Had to remind myself that toilet paper goes in the toilet.

Didn't have to mop my bathroom after I took a shower.

Cooked on a stove.

This is so surreal.

China Nights

Cathy, Lora, and I went to a night market tonight.  I've been wanting to go for a while, and since we only have two weeks left in Harbin, time is running out! I wish I could explain everything in a way to help you understand what an Asian night market is like.  It's unlike anything I have ever experienced in America.  All of the people, the noises, the smells are too great in number to count.  It's so busy, but not a hurried busy.  You can't hurry through a Chinese market.  There's too many people moseying along. 

So, I'll try to help you understand through pictures and videos of the whole experience. 

The first thing we did was buy a bunch of different street foods for our dinner.  I had a slice of watermelon on a stick, delicious spicy doufu (tofu), and a deep fried huge potato curl on a stick.

The doufu lady frying the yummy doufu!

Enjoying the doufu

Fried potato on a stick.  So delicious it has a heavenly glow.

After sating our hunger, we perused the hundreds of stalls selling things like ginormous stuffed animals, housewares, clothing (including undergarments), awesome lighters, and bejeweled headbands. 

I bought a Chinglish T-shirt.  I've been wanting one for a long time, and it was pretty inexpensive.  It also makes absolutely no sense.

Along the top, it says: "Moussy glmaucw with an nupaarlelled negry that enmacred the world"

I also got an adorable dress for super cheap.  It was funny looking through the piles of clothes at the shop I purchased the dress from because the owner of the stall would toss things he thought we would like our way all while shouting at the people walking by to come to his stall.  Basically he was telling them "Look, the foreigners are shopping here.  You should buy my things too." 

Foreigners = Free Advertisement

After almost three hours of walking around, we were exhausted.  So we trudged our way back through the crowds of people and then ran to catch the 104 bus so we could get back to school.

My attempt at a picture of the crowd of people behind us

I had more bus video, but the internet is not happy, so it will not upload.  I'll try again later!

May Flowers

Spring basically happened overnight.  One day everything was dry and barren, still recovering from the April snows, and the next grass was popping out of the ground and buds were starting to appear on trees and bushes.

Cathy and I decided to walk around campus to capture some of the beauty.

First, the lovely Cathy on one of the tree-lined paths that leads away from our apartment building.

Opening blossoms

A shot of Teaching Building 1 (where our office is located and where I teach 3 classes)

Stopping to smell the flowers.

Our willow-lined road

Okay, not necessarily pretty, but it's nice to see our apartment building not covered in snow!

Culture

First off, I apologize for not blogging for the entire month of April.  It was absolutely insane, and I have no idea where that month went.  Maybe it was the teaching on 2 separate weekends thing and planning and administering midterm exams.  At any rate, I'm back and reflecting on culture.  I return to America in less than 2 months, and that has gotten me thinking about all of the things that are different between these two countries.

As you probably know, life in China is a little different than life in America. I'm pretty accustomed to Chinese cultural rules at this point. I have embraced many of these rules as my own. This means I'm probably a little fuzzy on the American ones. So here's a heads up to my friends back in the U.S.A. Feel free to (gently) reprimand me if you notice me doing these things in a couple months.

1. Standing too close
   Personal bubbles don't exist in China. There's a whole heck of a lot of people here. Sometimes you're on a bus literally crammed full of people and you have to have your body shoved up against a complete stranger with your arm reaching around some man's waist to be able to hold onto a bar to keep from being flung into other people by the jerking of the bus. This is totally okay.
2. Pushing
   This is linked into the “standing too close” thing. Again, China has a lot of people. If you want to get on or off a bus, order food, or enter or exit a building, you have to be pushy. Literally. If you don't push people or jostle for your position, you're not going to get what you need. Sorry in advance.
3. Being unable to stand in line
   And this goes with the “pushing” thing. People don't really stand in lines here. You kind of form small mobs and then push to the front. People will cut in front of you if you're not assertive enough so you've just got to keep pushing forward. This also connects with “standing too close”. In the cases where there is something resembling a line, it is perfectly acceptable to be immediately behind the person in front of you. I understand that this is probably not the case in America unless things have completely changed in the last 10 months.
4. Linking arms or holding hands
   I often link arms or hold hands with my friends (girls, not boys) here. To be fair, I did this before, but after living in a culture where it is the norm, I'll probably be even more likely to forget that it's mostly not okay in America. So if you're not comfortable with me standing really close and holding your hand while I talk to you, just let me know.
5. Table Manners
   This mostly applies to eating out. I'm much more inclined to slurp. I've also become pretty adept at shoveling large amounts of food into my body in short periods of time as our lunch period is limited. So sometimes I might be more focused on the food than the conversation.
   Also, if you eat something with bones here, it is completely expected that you remove said bones from your mouth and pile them up on the table, not on a plate. The same is done with any tissues you use during the meal.
   Finally, at Chinese restaurants, you order a bunch of dishes and everyone shares. I like this a lot. I'm probably going to complain that we don't do this often in America. Please forgive me.
6. Being bad at speaking English
   Okay, this one's not a cultural thing. It's just something that will probably annoy you. I teach English and I try my hardest to maintain my grasp on correct grammar and a wide, intelligent vocabulary. However, I fail at that a lot of the time. A lot of my days are spent communicating with students whose first language does not have any verb tenses and therefore struggle with English and its gazillion verb tenses. I've gotten really good at communicating my ideas in English almost entirely in the present tense, simple future, and simple past since using other tenses often causes my students with a low English level to look at me with glazed-over eyes. Though I do still try out present continuous, present perfect, past perfect, and past continuous first, sometimes I just get myself grammatically confused. Please help me.
   I also apologize if I say things like “have a try”, “have a rest”, “just so-so”, and countless other Chinglish phrases that I probably don't even realize I use.

I hope you find this helpful and informative for the future. I will make cultural mistakes. Let's just laugh at them together and move on.

Mondays

I type this as I savor the last bites of my tiny little “french bread cake”, a gift from a student.

It's 8pm and I've just finished my night class.

I must admit, when I got my schedule for the semester I panicked at the words “night class”. Who honestly wants to teach a group of 41 Sophomore Finance students oral English at 6pm every week? Not me.

I've now taught this class for 3 weeks, and it has its challenges, but it's also been one of my best classes.

Monday nights have become special to me.

They've allowed me to be there when a friend needed English help.

They've given me sweet moments to chat with the awesome boys who always stay after class to work.

They've given me time to walk and talk with the boyfriend and girlfriend who sit in the front row and work really hard to improve their English.

They've given me the opportunity to run into 6 girls from my TCFL class from last semester (as well as their two Korean students).

Mondays are a gift.

I am blessed beyond measure.