I don’t know how I came to be a
person with a blog, but here we are. I often (always) keep the ramblings of my
head to myself, but had the urge to share some of my thoughts and experiences
with the world. My mother will be ecstatic. If you find yourself reading this
you probably already know that I am in China volunteering with ILP until July
this year. It is April, 9th here in Weihai, so I have been here for
seven weeks. The opportunity to come to China honestly just fell into my lap
one day. I had just gotten home from work to a text from a good friend from
high school letting me know there were open spots for the next semester. I was
like, “okay” and moved to China three weeks later. I’ve actually received a lot
of compliments about how I am brave to drop everything and move to another
country or how people wished they would have done something like this. In all
honesty, I’m not brave at all. I was able to drop everything so easily because
I have no idea what I am doing with my life.
I am your average 23 year old without a
boyfriend, a Bachelor’s Degree, or any idea of what it is that I truly want. I
didn’t come to China because I was brave. I came to China because it was a
convenient escape from “real life.” Ironically, even after I moved 6,142 miles
away, life still seemed to catch up to me. Duh, Nat. I wouldn’t say I’ve had
the hardest life by any means, but I have had my struggles and I am known to be
an A+ “bottler.” If you don’t know what I mean when I say “bottler” it pretty
much means I stuff anything that has to do with feelings into a bottle and
screw that lid on real tight. However, you can only bottle for so long. My “feelings”
bottle has gotten pretty full and it’s starting to resemble a 2 liter of soda
that you’ve just violently shaken. THE FEELINGS ARE ESCAPING. We have a lot of
free time between classes and adventuring for me to think and I’ve finally
realized there is no avoiding it. Poor Maddy has had to go through some of my
meltdowns while being here. She’s a champ.
I guess my point is that no matter
how hard you try to run away from big life decisions or your struggles there is
no getting away. It always catches up. Maybe if I had chosen a different
country where I’m not taller and blonder than everyone I wouldn’t have been so
easy to find. So that’s my goal for the once in a lifetime opportunity I have
here. To tactfully remove the lid from my “feelings” bottle and let it out
without revealing too much of my crazy at once. To decide what my major will be
and where I want to end up. The clichés I have used in this post make me want
to throw up a little bit, but we will just have to look past that for now.
So much
has already happened for the seven weeks I have been here, but I think I will
just start with today. Today I was able to go on my first “home visit” with one
of my students and his family. His family had invited me and his other teacher
out for a little adventure. We were informed of this last night, but our
coordinator hadn’t let us know which student it was that had invited us. We
walked down to the front gate of the school at 8:30 this morning and saw our
second grader, Cha, waving excitedly at us. My heart has grown so much because
of these kids. I already can’t imagine what it will be like saying goodbye to
them. Anyway, Cha and his family speak very limited English. I speak even more
limited Chinese. Cha does know enough English though to convey the idea that I
am a monster who ate a baby that is now in my tummy and that baby is now dead.
He did this with hand motions and the words “baby,” “monster,” “you,” and “game
over.” If these kids know any English at all it would be the words, “game over”
whenever anything unfortunate happens to anything or anyone. Pencil fell off
your desk? Game over, pencil. Toy car just ran into your friend’s hand? Game
over, car. Getting shot with finger guns? GAME OVER, TEACHER.
Anyway,
we drove to a part of Weihai I haven’t been before and parked in front of a
beautiful field of yellow flowers. I died. If you need to know anything about
me it’s that I am in love with massive amounts of flowers and Harry Potter. So
here I am typing about flowers and listening to the Harry Potter soundtrack.
Irrelevant to anything and everything right now. Another thing to know about me
is I am distracted easily. We taught Cha’s family the word “picture” as they
took a lot and we made our way to a green house area. As anyone in the world
knows, Asians are always throwing up the peace sign in pictures. I’ve learned
the real reason why. Here, it means they are happy. So it makes me feel good
every time one of my kids throws up a peace sign when taking a picture with me.
It’s also just become a natural thing for me to throw up my two fingers in every
picture taken out here.
We wandered into a green house that was filled with flowers where I lingered for as long as I could and then went into a strawberry patch where it was an all-you-can-eat. They have the best strawberries here. My mom tells me not to eat them. I ate them. Behind the green house area there was a river that was surrounded by cherry blossom trees. We ended up playing games that we taught each other how to play with gestures and broken Chinglish (Chinese English). It has been the most awkward, enjoyable experience getting to know people without actually being able to speak to them. It’s the oddest thing, but I kind of like it. However, translator apps are heaven sent. They let us know that they wanted to get lunch and we all hopped in the car again. We reached our destination where we walked into a room filled with fish tanks and an assortment of bowls. I became horrified when I saw what was on display for lunch. Cha grabbed a net and thrust it into a bowl where he was trying to wrangle in the biggest shrimp I have ever seen. It was flopping around among octopus and I just stood there wide eyed while watching. We went into the room where we were eating as I tried to prepare myself for what I would have to force myself to eat.
The food came out and was actually pretty good for the most part. Since we are in a coastal town they serve a lot of seafood. They served fish you eat off the bone, eggs that tasted like they had been dropped in the ocean, but a lot of other good things too. More vegetables than I’ve seen the entire time I’ve been here. Give me all the broccoli in Weihai, please. One of their favorite dishes is oysters. So they bring out these huge plates of giant seashells. I, personally, don’t really like eating things where I can see organs, but ya know. We ate and they started driving us back to the school. Cha knows English letters and started to spell something out on the backseat for me on the drive back. He spelled out “Chab.” I sat confused for a minute and switched his “b” to a “d.” THE BOYS NAME IS CHAD. So what makes me a worse teacher? Not knowing his actual name the whole time or actually contemplating continuing to call him Cha instead of Chad since that’s what I know him as. In my defense, it took him seven weeks to tell me and said his name “Chawwww” when I asked him weeks ago when we met. Cha seemed mild compared to the kids I know that are named Ice Cream, Blue, and Appel. (Not Apple, Appel. Pronounced “uhh-pell”). So I’ll keep you posted on the Cha, Chad, Chab situation.
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