My tomb-sweeping Monday

(Making Rice Krispy treats in Jodi's apartment with my student and two of Jodi's students).

Hooray for little random holidays! Apparently tomb-sweeping holiday was a holiday a long time ago, but the communists got rid of it because it was "too feudalist." Now it's back! The holiday is sort of like Memorial Day in the States. People go to their relatives' or ancestors' tombs to clean them and pay respects. The government has reinstated this special little holiday, because they are afraid now that Chinese society is going to the other extreme of not being traditional enough. Thus, we have tomb-sweeping holiday this weekend.

The past couple of days I just hung out with a special student, went to fellowship, played many games of speed Scrabble to ward off my deteriorating vocabulary skills, and went on little errands.

Today it is actually sunny and warm outside without too much pollution. So it's a good day! This morning I just called a lot of people on Skype to chat. Later today I'll probably go skating. Oh, and I should finish those lesson plans... :)

In other news, I found out today that I can stay at Blue Sky next year, if everything works out! I was going to transfer into another program with our organization, but it just didn't feel like a good fit right now. Somehow everything is fitting together, though, so that Jodi and I can stay for another year at our university. That's amazing news, because we can continue many of our carefully-built relationships. We can also have maybe three more weeks at home this summer, too, which would be great!

So right now I'm just very excited about lots of things happening. He is in control, and it amazes me how He is in both the details and the big things in life. So I hope you are encouraged!!

I'm leaving you with a strange little video Jodi took of me when we were walking to dinner the other night. There's always crazy music blasting on the streets around here, and you can't help but dance to it. And note the Chinese girls in the background who steer clear of this scene.

Get ready to sweep those tombs!

Our three day holiday has begun! I can't remember at the moment what it is called in Chinese, but April 4th is Tomb-sweeping day!! Hooray! That just means everyone remembers their ancestors and sweeps their grave sites, I suppose. Basically, it's just another traditional holiday that gives students reason to hop on the train to go home. And we don't have to teach on Monday!

Today was a pretty grand day. I went to school, taught my last lesson about Easter, and had office hours. I studied some Chinese, and then came back to old campus in the drizzle. I tried to catch the bus to Wal-mart, since I haven't been there for a long time, but I gave up. The buses weren't even stopping, because they were so full. So I just headed back to campus and walked around the track in the gray mist.

The air seemed so heavy and damp, it was like it clung to my eyelashes. It was a little dream world, and students were sparse. So I had a nice, uneventful little walk.

Since I'm almost all better, but not quite, I came back to my apartment and crashed for a 2 hour nap, which is a rarity. When I woke up, everybody was deciding to do outside activities, even though it was still cloudy and misty and chilly.

Rachael went rollerblading and Jonathan and I kicked a soccer ball around on the field for a while. We both attract a lot of attention, because we are both tall and gangly and pasty-looking. And girls don't really play with soccer balls in China. In fact, girls in China don't really exercise at all.

So we ran around on the ill-quality astroturf, as the ball went SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT all over the wet field. There were also about 25 very tall soldiers drilling in formation on the same field. They marched around us and we played soccer around them. It was fun.

Then we spotted three little boys climbing over the school wall from the outside neighborhoods, onto the field. But the wall was too tall, and they just dangled from the wall, waiting for rescue or something. The soldiers noticed, too. We just stood and watched as ALL the soldiers in their formation jogged over to the wall and halted, facing the boys. Then two of the guys marched up to the wall and stretched their hands out very stiffly and awkwardly to help the boys from the wall. For some reason, it was a really strange sight. It was like watching a communist propaganda poster come to life. The people's army giving a helping hand to everybody, even little wayward boys stuck on a university wall.

For dinner, Joelle cooked a bunch of flour tortillas and chicken to make tacos. It was so good and so much fun. Three other team leaders from other parts of China are visiting Joelle, so they were with us, too. So we go to hear about our friends serving in other Chinese cities. One of my friends, Jenni, who teaches in one of China's most polluted cities, Taiyuan, even sent me a wonderful letter via her team leader. I was so glad to hear from her.

Then the rest of the night, Jodi and I just challenged each other to endless games of speed Scrabble. China's the life!

Is that rain?

(These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago. Joelle was sick, so we took pictures for her on her desk in the office. Aren't we professional?)

Today when I was walking back from the market to get some lettuce at 5:30, I realized it was raining. And then I remembered that it had been raining for several hours! But alas, I didn't really notice it! I think that was a great realization. My day had been so full and pretty good, that I hadn't complained about the rain even once.

I'm feeling a lot better today. My ear still hurts a little bit, but I'm getting most of my hearing back. And I only coughed a little. So thanks for your many, many thoughts!! China's not a very fun place to get sick.

After teaching about Easter again, I went to lunch with a couple of my dearest students. We just ate rice and fried tofu while we chatted. We talked about class, and they said how they love my class. They said they liked how I made my students be more active, and how the class was a lot more creative than their other classes.

They think the American way of learning is so fascinating and different than the traditional Chinese way. The two girls said that all their other classes did not encourage discussion or questions. They were supposed to sit in class and "receive information" from the teacher all day long, every day. So I guess that little insight encouraged me, especially when I often think that I'm not a very good teacher.

Some days it gets overwhelming when students and random people like to gush about how great America is. If people face anti-Americanism going to other countries, just come to China. They love America, for the most part, although all of their ideas of America are from the movies. I agree that America is pretty blessed and grand in a lot of ways, but I'm also not such an avid defender of the States anymore. It certainly has many positive aspects, but it also has a lot of negative aspects. Lately I sort of feel like I don't have any country. I don't get really fired up about any country, America or China. Maybe that means that I'm really a citizen of that place up above. :)

I don't know where those thoughts came from. It's probably time to get some lesson planning done, though. Have a wonderful day, no matter what country you're in!

A new day

Thanks so much for your thoughts lately!! I've been feeling quite a lot better lately, although my body is very exhausted. Thanks!!!

There hasn't been too much happening the past few days. It just takes all my energy to get ready for school and to teach my classes. After giving midterms for Monday and Tuesday, I'm teaching about Easter the rest of this week. It's been a great lesson so far. The students are so curious about this holiday and why it's celebrated. They've been asking a lot more questions than they ever did about Christmas.

And the weather these days is about the same. Blustery and cold and cloudy. Today in slight exasperation I asked my students, "Why did they name this school 'Blue Sky' anyway? I never see blue sky; only gray sky." They just laughed nearly uncontrollably. I laughed on the outside, too, but I think I was half-crying on the inside. I grew up with an extremely healthy dose of sunshine, and I can barely survive without it.

In other news, we saw another accident on the way to school yesterday. We had to slow down to go around a tiny police car, with its lights flashing. The car was parked next to two mangled bicycles on the ground. The police officer was casually standing with a clipboard, asking a couple people some questions. I was amazed at how nonchalant they were.

Then I looked next to the bicycles, and there was a man sprawled out on the road. He looked alive, but barely. His whole body was violently twitching, while everyone just stood around talking. That is the third body I've seen on the way to school these past few months. The other two bodies were dead. Thankfully this guy was still alive, but who knows if he still is. All of the accidents have involved people on bicycles or mopeds. It's an all too common occurrence, and unfortunately it's not very surprising anymore.

Well, hopefully I didn't spread gloom and despair over your day. I'm just telling you what happens here. It sure makes me thankfulto just be alive most days. Happy April 1st!

Trying to survive

Is that a terrible name for a blog post? Perhaps, but that's what I feel like lately. For 2 weeks I've been sick now. Just a long, lingering kind of sickness that saps all your energy and enthusiasm for life. All I do is cough and wheeze and blow my nose and feel tired and shiver from a little fever. Today I have finished my antibiotics I got at the hospital, and I still feel about the same. Fun.

Yesterday was a pretty great day, although I was exhausted by the end. I could only sleep about 5 hours on Saturday night, but I still wanted to go to fellowship on Sunday morning. Fellowship was good like usual. Then about 30 of us (pretty much all the foreigners in Nanchang) went to a Korean restaurant for lunch to celebrate a bunch of birthdays.

I sat by Sylvie, a girl my age from Germany! We talked probably for the entire hour and a half, mostly about Germany. It just made me miss Germany and learning German so much, I almost wanted to cry. She is also spending a year teaching in China. Unlike me, this is her first and last year. She'll be returning to Germany this summer. And she said I could visit her whenever I want to! I really want to visit Germany again, especially Bavaria, where she lives.

Afterward, the rest of my team traveled to the other side of the city to visit the other team with our organization. We have never visited their university, which is a technical college. It was much smaller, but a lot more beautiful than our campus, since it was on the edge of the city. The taxi got us there by going up in the hills, which is covered with the largest cemetery you could ever imagine. It was one of the most amazing and creepy sites ever. Apparently this cemetery is one of the largest in China. Gravestones are literally stacked next to each other for miles. It looks like each person has about one square foot of land, and that's it.

Anyway, we got to their school safely, and I became rather envious of their school. It isn't congested like our old campus, and there are tons of trees and even little paths to walk and hike. The air was also so much cleaner and clearer all the way out there. AGH! I want to live there!! You could actually walk around and see some nature, and there weren't 20,000 students staring and yelling at you.

Then today I had two classes, meaning I was at school all day, until 5 p.m. It was time to give midterms, which I had painstakingly created. I think they were pretty good tests, I'll admit. But all my students, even the best and brightest, had the most difficult time with cheating! Cheating was so rampant today that I had to lift up my thoughts nearly constantly. I was just really frustrated.

My frustration increased at lunchtime, when I was grading the first batch of midterms. When I was finished, I noticed that one girl didn't turn in her exam, even though she had been in class. But I couldn't do anything about it, because I had to run to another class and give the exam.

After that class, one of the monitors managed to track this wayward test girl down. I told her to come to my office right away. She finally meandered in with the class monitor, and I just felt really angry. I asked her why she didn't turn in her test. She insisted that she was sick and couldn't come to class. Then I told her that she had indeed been there, and had an exam paper to account for. Okay, she admitted. She was there, but felt too sick to take the exam. I asked her, why on earth didn't you tell me or at least give the exam back? She said that she took the exam home with her and would bring it back tomorrow to take it. I looked at her in astonishment. One of my tests were now out there running around for all the other 150 students to see, and she wanted to bring it back the next day to take. Is it just me or is that a problem? She could not see why this was an issue, no matter how many ways I tried to explain.

So now I'm not sure what to do about the tests tomorrow. Who knows how many students saw it. But it takes a lot of energy and resources to create and print these exams. I do know that I have created a new exam for her on a piece of paper, which is much more difficult, if not nearly impossible to complete.

Oh, I don't know. Sometimes these cultural barriers really get to me. It's like we are communicating on an entirely different level with entirely different values.

Can you please lift me up? I feel very tired and sick and fatalistic, especially with dreary weather for as long as I can remember. You can probably tell that I have an awful attitude that is simmering just below the surface. I reallllllllllly need your thoughts. Thanks!

Resting

The past few days have been like a lost week. I'm living in a fuzzy world, where I can't quite see or hear or speak very well. I've mostly been trying to survive.

I have been able to go to class for the past 2 days. I have been using a microphone, but I can't project my voice. One of my classes (my crazy kids) were empathetic for about 3 minutes, but then they almost went wild. I didn't have the energy to bring order back to the classroom. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, but it was getting a little out of hand.

My other classes have been more understanding, even though I stand up front talking in my gravely voice like someone who is very lethargic and half-asleep. Then I have to pause to cough every 12 seconds.

Today during my class I received this special note from one of my students. I receive lots of advice on getting better, but this was pretty classic:

"Dear Laura, I'm very worried about you. You had better keep healthy. Here is some advice, I hope could make you better.
1.) Drink more water, that's always a good idea. It's good for your throat.
2.) Have a good rest, sleep early.
3.) Wear more clothes. I heard the weather will turn cold in two days.
I hope you will better soon and we will see a enthusiastic Laura again. :) Best wishes."

That about sums up the concern my students give me. They offer the same advice: wear more clothes (they tell me this as I'm sweating in 2 layers of long-sleeve shirts); drink more hot water (they tell me this as I'm busting full of water); rest more (they tell me this after I've just slept for 9 hours). Oh, and some tell me to get more exercise. How can I exercise when I'm resting? And then some suggest that I go to the hospital again. No thanks! I've already been there once and that's enough to scare me away forever.

They're pretty precious students. They are so little and innocent and often immature, but they like to act like little mothers.

So I haven't been going to my office hours much this week. I'm just trying to make it to my classes. Being sick in China is always a lot more draining and difficult than in America.

Despite being sick most of the time, I've made my decision for next year, which you probably already know! A couple days ago I committed to return with this organization in August. I don't know where they'll place me, but I'm looking forward to it. Thanks as always for your thoughts and encouragement!

Sick Tuesday

It is early afternoon and I've been banished to my room. I have been battling a cold/sinus infection/cough for over a week now, and it just gets worse everyday. This morning I woke up with all that stuff again, plus the most painful earache ever. It is still ringing constantly, and every little noise or word echoes back into my head, with a sound like tin or little circus clowns in my head. I just want to rip my head off. And my voice sounds like an old woman under water, according to Joelle.

Anyway, I tried to get ready for school, but I wasn't going to survive. Thankfully, a couple of my wonderful teammates were able to substitute for me today. But the FAO people insisted on taking me to the hospital. If you aren't sick when you go to a Chinese hospital, rest assured that you'll be by the time you leave. I'm glad Joelle also went with us, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about the trek.

Apparently we went to the nicest hospital in Nanchang, which makes me wonder about those other hospitals. First, we were stuck in a gigantic, never-ending traffic jam. There were four lanes of cars trying to fit in one lane for hospital parking. Mr. Li was amazing at getting the little van to the entrance. A sign said the parking lot was full, but that didn't matter; people still streamed in regardless. Mr. Li found a nice little parking spot in a pile of mud.

Meanwhile, there were literally hundreds and thousands of people everywhere. People layered in blankets were being led over speed bumps and across sidewalks on gurneys. There were just people everywhere--most of them coughing, smoking, or looking half-dead. One baby had open sores covering its face. People also wheeled by with little IV drips attached to their arms.

Inside the building was open, with just different desks and little rooms. There were another million people inside, all of them forming mini-mobs around the desks, since there aren't lines in China. Little nurses in faded uniforms were in the midst of all the commotion. Little children ran by, and elderly people, who all seemed very tiny and poor, just hobbled around. Streams of people hiked up and down the stairs in the middle of the building. It reminded me more of the train station waiting room than a hospital.

I just tried not to think. I have been in the university clinic a few times, but this was like the clinic on a massive scale. Disorder and sickness everywhere. Actually it all would probably be rather amusing if I hadn't been sick and if so many other people didn't look so sick and confused, too.

We went to a waiting area, where people sat in metal chairs. There was a bathroom with a big sign to wash your hands, but it was meaningless because there wasn't any soap in the bathrooms. Soap is a rarity anywhere in China.

Since we were laowai, the nurses had us bypass the waiting room and led us (Joelle, Amy, and Mr. Li) to a little room. This little room was one of many. Inside the bare room behind a small desk sat a doctor in a long greyish white lab coat and black plastic glasses. He wore a face mask, so everything he said was muffled; not that I could understand anyway. He told me to stick a glass thermometer under my arm for 5 minutes, while Amy translated for us. Meanwhile, other random patients and passerby meandered into the room to see what was going on and to hear the diagnosis. There aren't any privacy laws in China, I suppose.

I'm pretty sure I just have a sinus infection, but he sent us to the fifth floor for a blood test, which we didn't even stay around to see the results from. This was more fun. It was much more crowded up here. There were glass windows, with flustered and/or angry nurses behind. The windows had a hole where you stuck your hand in to get blood drawn. After Mr. Li carved a path for me, I thrust my arm in to window. The guy just poked my finger and kept squeezing to get some blood out of it. At the same time, people were still jostling everybody else to get a spot, so they were bumping into me from every side.

After that, we went back down to the same doctor who was currently looking at some elderly men who appeared to be farmers. One had a broken arm and the other maybe had a lung infection. We were also gathered near them, and other people kept pouring in to hover around the doctor, all of them pointing at their x-rays or random body parts. Mr. Li once again was assertive, so the doctor gave me a prescription for an antibiotic.

Wow, all of a sudden I just felt very exhausted and drained. I didn't really mind so much the craziness. It was a bit trying, but it could have been a lot worse. It just saddened me, I think, to watch all these people who were really sick or tired. Everyone had to fend/fight for themselves to get anywhere in this place. And I was wondering if anybody actually ever got healed. It was like taking a step back 100 years ago. Walking into that hospital, you would have thought it was 1909 if you hadn't glimpsed a computer every once and a while.

Sorry for that super long post. I just had to share. Hopefully I wasn't too negative. I just am very tired, and once you think you've experienced all the cultural stresses/shocks possible, there's always more. Hopefully I'll get better and not ever have to return. Thanks for your thoughts! Now I know why there's that advice, "Never go to a hospital in China unless you are absolutely dying." :) Enjoy your day!