end of semester feels

I’m in class right now as my students watch a movie – “Big Hero 6”. It is the last week of classes, but oral exams are already done so there is little to no motivation on either side to do any real work. I can only hope that they choose to pay attention and maybe grasp at some straws to learn a few random English words, thanks to the subtitles. 

Wren has been here for about 2 weeks now. In short, it has completely changed what my experience here is like. For starters, we are staying in an apartment about a 10 minute bus ride so I feel a real separation between “work” and “home” that I didn’t necessarily have before living on campus – yet the commute is still SOOO easy. This is nice. Second, it is actually a lot more fun to see and do things with someone else rather than alone. I definitely enjoyed my solitude to a certain extent, it was a unique time to answer to no one but myself. But it is true when they say life is better shared. There are lot more things I’m interested in doing with someone else, new places to go and things to try that would seem a little dull alone but are enhanced by companionship!! 

Something that came as a surprise to me was that some of the feelings of being so far away from home that were intense before, still linger. I kind of figured they would disappear as soon as Wren got here, being that he is one of the closest people to me. The isolation and loneliness part disintegrated but I’m still experiencing a sense of homesickness that I don’t think I’ve really identified before. Homesickness used to be a word we all tried to stay away from, whether it be on my semester abroad, my gap year, or on Pac Rim. If you were feeling homesick then you weren’t fully immersed in your experience, which means you were not doing it “right”! I would hardly have admitted if I felt homesick, and I certainly didn’t explore what that really meant. This time around I feel less shame for admitting that and acknowledging what it means. No, I don’t want to go home. I don’t miss the United States and I don’t miss living there. I’m also not trying to make a statement about not liking America or what it stands for right now (lol not that that’s not applicable but not really what I want to delve into here) but as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, there is 10000% a totally different feel being abroad specifically in China. I do relish in the ability and privilege to distance myself from the political scene a bit, as news updates about the impeachment pop up on my iPhone daily (guess I kind of am delving into it), and I find myself frequently checking the news about the next disaster (Iran, Australia fires…).  Being far from home and far from other people who are also consumed by this news allows me the privilege of tuning in and tuning back out. Let’s be clear this distancing doesn’t come from a place of apathy but a place of wanting to maintain my mental sanity and manage my anxiety. Because lets be real, we are all having some heightened anxiety with everything going on from the climate crisis to the upcoming election to the impeachment process to the next thing Trump is going to do or say. It affects us, as much as we try to dismiss it as politics. Politics are personal, politics are in real and they do impact our every day life. But anyways, for those reasons I do appreciate being in a place where it is easier for me to take a little break than it would be if I were home. So it is not the United States I miss. What I do miss is living in the country I was raised in, a place that is familiar. Existing abroad in a city that is not made for foreign people in any way, shape, or form, when you do not speak the language, is a full time job. Surviving in a place not built for you is a full time job (and this is obviously applicable to many people in many different situations worldwide, on much larger scales of difficulty). We adapt to the things like learning the bus routes and where to go for specific items but it is all still a chore. I say that in the best way possible, the flip side of the coin is that some days it feels like a chore while other days it is an adventure. There is really never a dull moment.  

Last Saturday Wren and I had an incredibly full day. My boss Fay has a son in middle school; he and his classmates must pass a soccer exam and various other physical fitness tests in order to be accepted into a high school. In China, only about 50% of middle school students go on to high school. Even though the schools are public, they are very competitive and students have to really compete with one another to get in. Fay wanted Wren to do a little soccer workshop with her son and some of his classmates. We went to that at about 8:00AM, which was basically a span of 2 hours during which Wren ran some basic soccer drills and all the parents stood around continuously snapping photos and posting them on WeChat. In Fuzhou, hanging out with white native English speaks = CLOUT. After the soccer workshop, we went to this teashop owned by a friend of Fay’s. We all sat around drinking tiny cups of tea, as the Chinese do, and eating roasted watermelon seeds and oranges. We also watched some Liziqi vlogs on youtube, if you haven’t heard of her, check her out! I made a hyperlink for one of her videos if you just click on her name. All I know is that she is this Chinese girl who moved back to her rural hometown to take care of her grandmother after working in the city. She then learned how to do all things traditional – such as growing rice, making meals from complete scratch (seriously, down to every last little bit), and preparing traditional preserved snacks. She films them in a very slow and relaxing way that is supposed to take viewers “back to nature”. It is very relaxing. If you are ever feeling high strung or anxious, I highly suggest giving them a watch. She definitely does romanticize rural living, which is slightly problematic since rural living in China has been incredibly difficult and brutal. It also makes it seem like this kind of living really is accessible and how people in the countryside live, which is of course not true! Nonetheless, the videos show an intricate process and are worth watching! We then went to lunch, went on a short hike, and were exhausted and ready to go home. But somehow we ended up in this yoga breathing class with my boss Fay and her friends. It was basically an hour and a half of really intense breathing meditations that were supposed to clear our heads and expel all bad energy. It’s said to make some people even hallucinate as they reach another level consciousness. No joke, I honestly almost thought this was happening to me. Not to disregard this whole process as bullsh*t, but I’m pretty sure its just a feeling a lightheadedness from potential lack of oxygen that makes people feel like they slightly hallucinate. All in all it was a very interesting and full day, and quite amazing we got to experience all these things that we certainly would not have without having some local connections! For that I am very grateful for the people in Fuzhou who have reached out to me to make my feel more comfortable in this city over the course of time I’ve been here, and have also been eager to show Wren around too. We are so lucky to have people who are willing to spend some of their own time to teach us about Chinese culture and make sure we enjoy Fuzhou!