Settling into life in CHINA!

I have been in China for just about a month and a half now. I arrived September 12^th, and began teaching the following week.

The days leading up to my departure from home had me feeling how I always do before leaving the States for a lengthy period of time – kind of hating myself for making the decision, feeling full of regret, and put simply: feeling like I really just don’t want to go. In these days, I find myself wishing I was the type of gal who could be satisfied living in the same neighborhood as my parents forever and maybe having 3 kids by the time I’m 25. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of life, by the way. It is comfortable and satisfying for many. Unfortunately for my wallet and my sanity, that is not the kind of gal I turned out to be. Instead I seem to be unable to avoid putting myself through incredible emotional turmoil that comes with making huge decisions that involve lengthy goodbyes, missing holidays, and being very far away from everyone and everything I love.  By now, I know the drill though – those feelings of unease and anxiety are temporary and fleeting. When I was 18, I seriously considered canceling the whole year and not going to Southeast Asia. Maybe I really had made the wrong decision and I would later regret it. 5 years later and I couldn’t be more grateful for following through. Now, that feeling is familiar and fleeting, and I know what to do with it. Sit through the anxiety and do whatever you have to do to get yourself on the plane!! Go through the motions and don’t think about anything too much. Shut off your emotions (in a healthy way) until you’re gone and can deal with them without having the option of not getting on the airplane. Next thing I know and the fear is gone by the time I board the plane, and replaced with an unexplainable feeling of excitement, adventure, and feeling overall powerful. That is a sensation that I am addicted to and crave and has led me to live the life I am living now! I am really proud of myself for pushing through and following through with these kinds of things, and to my family and people close to me for encouraging me to do so and reminding me that I am actually capable.

My transition upon arrival was actually so much easier than I anticipated. I immediately felt comfortable, safe, and at home. This could have to do with the fact that I have been to Fuzhou and to the university I’m teaching at before, we visited for 10 days during Pac Rim. I think it also has to do with the overwhelming sense of safety I feel in China. To be very honest, with the political climate in the U.S. and how the past couple years have been I definitely have a heightened sense of anxiety in the States. This comes up in big crowds, malls, really anytime I am out in public in a city. College parties, walking alone any time of day…this fear exists really anywhere, besides my hometown in Maine (which I am so very thankful for, that it still feels like such a safe place). This fear is linked to being a woman, a woman who is not white, and then also just being a citizen in a country where domestic terrorism is LITERALLY rampant. I’m not going to talk too much about this, but that is what gun violence is in our country, so that’s what I’m going to call it. I know I’m not the only person who feels this. In short, I can go to a mall in China any time of day and not have an underlying fear that I’m going to get shot. I can walk down the street alone any time of day without my chest tightening up every time I pass a man on the street. I will acknowledge that this sense of safety comes with a massive tradeoff that is freedom, and as a foreigner I am put in a unique box of privilege that allows me to feel this safety while also having the freedom that comes with a United States passport.

As far as the actual teaching part of this situation, it is going overall very well. I am teaching at a college of about 3,000 students in Fuzhou. My student are all from the Applied English department, and I teach Oral English. Their career goals are either to become English teachers or translators. I was initially very nervous about the job part of this experience. I have never officially taught before. Nothing about my college degree has anything to do with education. I had the 3 months of experience from teaching English in Laos after high school, but that situation was so different in that it was a volunteer tourism kind of situation (HMU if you want more info on this, in addition to taking part in voluntourism pre-college, it was also my thesis topic) where I was paying to do it therefore the expectations of me were pretty low (yes this is problematic lol). But the point is that it wasn’t a job, it was an experience I was paying to have. So yes – I had experience talking in front of a class and coming up with games and fun activities. As a native English speaker, I had the experience of being able to talk about simple topics that exposed people to pronunciation and intonation, something that really doesn’t require much skill other than having a loud and clear voice. I did learn a lot that year, but I was never trained for it. For this fellowship, the only requirement was taking a TEFL course which outlines the very basic formula for teaching English as a foreign language. I didn’t, and I don’t necessarily feel qualified for this job, and I also had and do still have a lot of feelings about the fact that this time around I am being paid, and students are paying a lot to go to this college. I want to make it worthwhile for them, and I want students to be able to gain something from my classes, but I am not sure I know how to do that in the same way that some people who either speak Chinese or have a background in education could. This is something I still grapple with. I’m doing my best, and I feel like by the end of this year I will have a much better idea of how to do this kind of thing. But I do wish I had a better idea before this year so that it wasn’t happening at anyone’s expense. I am really glad that my students are freshman though, because I can handle teaching vocabulary and basic sentence structure. Grammar, on the other hand, is so difficult for me to teach because I don’t even know all the rules myself! That’s something I have to learn first and then figure out how to explain it. It is hard to have to explain anything though, because my students don’t speak English so they don’t understand me.

So overall – this has been a learning experience. I do feel much more confident than I did in the beginning, and after every class I learn new ways I can improve no matter how small they may be. I’m constantly adapting and shifting things in the way I teach to try to make it more effective. I do really enjoy it – my students are so funny and no matter how frustrating it gets they have a great sense of humor and just crack me up. Every day is like a game of charades. If anyone reading this has taught ESL, please let me know if you have any game or activity recommendations for college students at a beginner level!!

There is a lot I love about China. I always knew I was going to live abroad for some period of time again, whether it be through teaching English or another job. But I didn’t know China would be the place this would happen. It was a last minute decision I made when the perfect opportunity arose, and I would not have imagined that this is exactly what my first year after college would look like. I just kind of went for it, as there wasn’t a lot of time to think about it once the opportunity presented itself. That being said, I am so grateful and so glad that this is what I decided to do. If there is anything I have learned about myself and my relationship with traveling it is that I do best on long term trips where I am in one location for at least a month, and I am alone or with one or two other people. Group traveling is absolutely not for me. I like to be able to establish a routine, get to a little deeper than surface level, and not feel a pressure to be out in the world exploring every day (that pressure happens when a trip time is short). I need to have my own space and be able to be alone. I need time and I need stability, but I also love traveling and adventure, so this is the way it works best for me. This is also likely why I did not necessarily thrive on Pac Rim.  Having my time be all my own is really important to me, this does not just apply to traveling but to life in general. Obviously I work when I work, but other than that everything is up to me. There is no one expecting me to be anywhere, no one to meet up with all the time, and that is so liberating. There is a clear separation between work life and my personal life, and that is something I need. I know I am an independent person, so I am really enjoying being pretty much alone at the moment.

This kind of freedom is a beautiful and rare thing, when no one is really counting on you (besides work but that doesn’t count). Where your entire schedule is up to you. On the other hand, do I feel isolated sometimes? Absolutely. I couldn’t do this forever. A year is just fine, but I couldn’t live a whole life being so autonomous and alone. I am living in a place where no one really speaks English. Fuzhou is not a tourist destination, and not many foreign people come here to live. In fact, it is actually shocking when I run into the occasional white person at Starbucks. I’m not lonely though, because there are people everywhere. But it is isolating because I can only communicate with one other person, and that’s the other fellow from Puget Sound. I cannot just ask for something when I’m out in the world because even words that English speakers often expect everyone to know (bathroom, toilet, how much, etc.) are simply not understood (nor should they be, and I kick myself a little every time I find myself frustrated at the fact that the barista doesn’t understand when I ask for the bathroom). So my life is now a game of charades. If I want my coffee iced, I have to make the motion like I am cold and shivering by chattering my teeth and rubbing my arms. Luckily most people have a good sense of humor and are willing to help me out and be patient, which I appreciate more than anyone really knows.

My best friend Nellie actually put my experience thus far into words very accurately in her blog (she is wrapping up 1 year and 2 months of living in Shanghai as a fulbright fellow, and we got to spend some time together since our time in China is overlapping. PS We are literally soul sisters/I've known her since birth/how weird is that we're in China at the same time). This is what she wrote:

"The week after my birthday happened to be Golden Week, the week of vacation celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and so Wildes and my previous roommate from Beijing, Jacob, came to Shanghai to spend it with me! After only three weeks in Fuzhou, Wildes had reverse culture shock coming to Shanghai. Fuzhou has an absolutely tiny foreign population, and so every time she saw a person who was not visibly Chinese she would poke me and ask “what do you think they are doing here?” I would respond “I have no idea? Working? Why do you care.” I think it really goes to show how different the experiences of someone living in Shanghai are to someone living in a 2nd or 3rd tier city, where there is no foreign community. I really do think that it is a really special thing to be able to live in one of those smaller cities, where you are more immersed in Chinese culture than is possible in Shanghai. On the other hand, I am thankful for a lot of little things that make me sane in Shanghai, like oat milk! It is also a much different story for Wildes, who doesn’t speak Chinese and so life can be quite hard in Fuzhou!"

And for those of you wondering, am I learning Mandarin? Kind of. Am I trying as hard as I could be? No…..but I am going to kick it up a gear soon. Inevitably I am learning words and phrases here and there. And I am really learning how far a tiny bit can really go. And it can go FAR. If I put some more effort into it I know I could learn an amount that would make my life so much easier. But as it is now, when I’m not lesson planning, grading, teaching, or doing other life activities like going to the gym or eating, the last thing I want to do is work on Chinese. I am lazy about it, but my effort has all been placed elsewhere over the last month. I feel like I am just now reaching a place where I have energy to give to Chinese so I will start soon. I know there is only so much you can really learn about a place if you do not speak the language. And this is a big issue for me, because I really do love it here, and I am here for a while. I want to make the most of it and give it my all. It is easier said than done, and there is a constant battle of me feeling like I am not doing enough but also trying to not feel so much pressure or be hard on myself about it. It is such a balance of making the most of this experience as possible, while also taking care of myself and giving myself a break.

We are almost halfway through the first semester and I can hardly believe it. The time has definitely flown and continues to fly by. Wren will be here in just a little over a month and I simply CANNOT wait. I have 6 weeks off for Chinese New Year so we will be traveling during that time and I am counting down the days!!! So that’s the update, thanks for reading, especially if you made it all the way to the end! And follow my travel Instagram @wyhoxoxo if you want photo updates!