Just another night in Wuhan
Tonight, I had that feeling people have been wondering about. That, "I'm in China! Am I really IN China? How did I get here? How can it be this easy?" feeling. It is a great feeling to have. A little background:
I'm exhausted. I'm at school from 7:45am until 5:30pm everyday. (I might as well warn those hard workers out there that my comments on exhaustion are relative, of course. Many of you, I know, work a lot harder than I do...So feel free to skip this entry as it may annoy you to no end...especially those of you who happen to be teachers and carry a heavier load than myself.) Okay, and back to my exhaustion: so, I'm at school for a long period of time. When I'm not at school, I should be marking papers, activity books and composition books, as well as preparing lessons or tests for the coming days. I also need to find the time to eat and to decompress. I'd love to find time for exercise (okay, you know me too well, I lie, but even if I did want to find the time...there simply isn't any). And as it is now, I arrive home at 6:00pm (on a good, traffic-less day) and don't even bother trying to cook for myself anymore - who knew you needed THAT much oil to cook eggplant the way they do in the restaurants? - and manage to stay up until 1am or 2am without really accomplishing anything and then I pass out until my alarm goes off at 6am. I snooze, of course, for at least thirty minutes and then dash around the apartment trying not to forget any of the many items I brought home from school without even opening them during their 12 hr vacation from the main campus.
And, Kindergarten might slowly be killing me. Can you die from too many cracked notes during singing? My throat has managed to stay resilient ever since the laryngitis scare, but I'm worried my voice is going to disappear any day now. Yesterday it was, "If you're happy and you know it...." and today it was, "Sometimes I am tall, sometimes I am small. Sometimes I'm very tall, sometimes I'm very small. Now tall, now small, now I'm a tiny ball..." over and over and over again. I wish you could hear the tune (and don't YOU wish the same?) but you'll have to imagine with me for a second. On the "very tall" line, the song reaches its highest note and every single time we came to that part of the song today, which was at least thirty, my voice cracked. The kids would giggle and I'd lose them for a good thirty seconds. I'm so impressed with the parents who think English torture is a good idea for 6 year olds. Why should they have to listen to some stranger mangle songs for 35 minutes every other day? And the parents are paying for this shock therapy.
But you know what? Secretly I love it. I always liked singing in the choir and thought that I had a pretty good voice in fifth grade. I wanted to take private singing lessons but never found the time. I figure this is similar. Singing songs you don't necessarily like for 35 minutes a day?
And then there's the ride home. Last week, we were told to take a taxi home after Kindergarten and the school promised to reimburse us after each month. Standing on the curb for fifteen minutes watching empty taxis roll on by because of taxi shift change (don't ask) we all became a little irrational. The next day, we complained to Mr. Ye that it was too hard to get a taxi home during shift change. Then, the Kindergarten asked two teachers to drop us at the branch school. Now we feel terribly awkward (two of us do) because we've destroyed that "end of day" ritual for the Chinese family that has to drive us home four days out of the week. Today, mother and son sat in the passenger seat while the father sternly guided his four-door sedan through Wuhan rush-hour traffic. Matt, Lisa and I were sandwiched in the back feeling like invaders in this family's life. Matt really drove the point home for me today when he reminded us that the Chinese teachers all take the bus home everyday and have to pay for it out of their own pockets. We certainly are showing how privileged Westerners like to demand comfort. The problem now is that if we told them we wanted to start taking the bus, the family would probably be terribly offended, as if their car wasn't good enough for us so we chose to endure mass-transit.
I promise I'm getting to the part where I talk about how great everything is and how easy the transition suddenly felt tonight when I had that Eureka! moment.
So I don't cook for myself and I am getting tired of the fatty foods from most of the local restaurants. Oil is in everything. Oil is a Chinese cuisine staple. Lots and lots of oil. And, your vegetables always come with a side of meat no matter what you order or how you order it. And then it happened. I finally decided to eat at this tiny hole-in-the-wall "restaurant" located down an alley right next to the main campus. The alley is wide. One side is the gate to the perimeter of the school and the other side is storefronts at the base of a tall, old apartment building. On the corner is a makeshift warehouse for beverages, most notably, Singo and Snow beer. Next to the warehouse is a small beverage and cigarette store. Next to the store is the restaurant I now call home. It consists of one room with two tables and a large stand with several baskets. Just outside the room, on the sidewalk is the wok and gas bottle. It's a husband and wife operation. The husband cooks while the wife is sous chef and waitress. When new patrons arrive, the husband pulls a folding table out from the back of the room and places it on the sidewalk. The seats are plastic stools that rest in a stack by the wok. A large vat of rice sits out on the sidewalk and patrons help themselves throughout a meal. The large stand with the baskets holds all kinds of fresh vegetables. Patrons come up, survey the vegetables and start making requests while the husband sets up a table. I went tonight and ordered "chou mian" - stir fried cellophane noodles with Chinese cabbage and "qie zi" - an eggplant dish.
I was sitting at my own little table, reading The Economist from over a month ago, and enjoying an ice-cold Snow beer. A side note on the magazine: I love reading the news from several months ago because it is all about things that are done and in the past, for better or worse, as opposed to things that are still in the works. For example, who could be more terrified of North Korea right now than say, me? I mean, I'm sitting here sharing a border with that wacko-job of a country. Sure, detonate a NUCLEAR BOMB underground. I'm sure every potential hazard or health risk has been averted since the bomb went off UNDERGROUND.
But let's not talk politics now. I was just getting to my FEELING. So yes, sitting there, enjoying the magazine, listening with half an ear to the Chinese talk all around me, enjoying my beer and waiting for delicious food, I felt how easy this sometimes is. I can sit down and comfortably order food and even know what is going to arrive. I can pay for things with the correct, even exact, amount of money required and I can sit alone in a foreign country among a foreign language and feel good, excited even. It is moments like these that give me that feeling, the one that makes me think life is easier than I usually make it out to be.
And to top this day off, my new co-teacher Christy is AMAZING! I feel more confident with my classes now, which probably helps, but also, she gets me and understands me and we enjoy the back and forth in class. So everything is up up up and away. I'm still tired, but at least I've got the energy to write about it, which, I think is a good sign.
