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This is the second of my quadrilogy of more serious and sentimental blogs. Once again it's time for me to reflect on my time in China and look back on the past three months, see what's changed and write about the future. So, once again, I ask you go read my first ever blog followed by the blog 'The first milestone: Three months' so that like I you can get a true feeling for how my journey has been shaping me.
First I would like to just say it is ridiculous i'm even writting this right now. Completley insane. I remember so clearley,picture perfect in my mind, sitting at this exact desk and writting my last milestone blog. Time has simply flown past me. So much has happend between the last blog of this nature and the current one; I survied christmas, New year and not only that but the absolutley, mind blowingly amazing spring festival (there are six blogs to come documenting my travels so get excited) and all that has happend in the blink of an eye. People always reffer to a saying. When you die your 'Life flashes before your eyes'. People fail to understand that the phrase is not literal; it reffers to how quickly your life passes before you. I have experinced that feeling. The past three months have flown by. They flashed before my eyes. It has had quite a profound effect on my perceptions and experinces in China. I won't say i'm any wiser than I was since the last blog. But i'm certainly more experinced and that will certainley reflect on me as a person.
In my last milestone blog (near the end) I said i still feel like i'm adjusting to ceertain things in China such as thanking waiters, trying to clean up for people after meals and showing general courtsies that are otherwise unneccesary in Chinese culture. What the past few months have made me realsie is that I simply will never adjust and won't change. Not because I can't but because these mannerisms are part of how I am. Adjusting to a culture does not mean elemintaing your own to make way for the new but being accepting of the other culture and allowing it to work in it's own right. It will not change me and equally I won't change it. And that is fine. That's the way it's meant to be in my eyes. Sure, i'll probabley never get used to the spitting, the loudness, the vomiting but I've come to see they are going to happen and you just need to accept it and understand we are diffrent. I need to accept these things not neccesarily 'adjust' or 'adhere' to them.
Next was my nervousness at using Chinese. People always say Chinese is the hardest language in the world to learn. There are tones, the grammar is very far from english and the script (characters) are unrelatble to the pinyin (latinsed script). All of this summounted to my nervousness and apprehension in using the language. However my six weeks on the road through spring festival amde me come to realsie the best way to practise and language is to use it. Common sense but spring festival forced me into situations where without using the language I could not have got by; ordering train tickets, talking to people on trains, making friends in bars, asking directions, talking to taxi drivers.... All ot these situations I surpassed with fairly high sucess rate. It made me see maybe the language isn't so daunting. It isn't that hard. It's all about breaking that initial language barrier and embracing the new way of working. I've come to think maybe I might even be ok at talking. Not only ok but, with practise, I could one day be good at the language. Not just becuase i'm learning Chinese but becuase i've come to love Chinese. Anyone who has ever known me will know my whole life language has been a barrier I could not surpass, something to incomprehesible for me. But now I have a passion, a spark, ot learn more, and continue to learn. I want to learn Chinese so desperatley. Stephen Erhorn, my longterm partner in crime, summed it up perfectley 'Language is not something to study but is a means of communicating with others'. Once you realise that the spark ignites a fire . I can't wait to continue learning the languge, using the language and communicating with others using Chinese.
My last blog also talked about teaching. There's not a lot I can say reffering to teaching as most of my time since my last blog has been spent celebrating holidays or on spring festival. However, as I am returing to teaching very soon, I can say I feel more like a teacher now then I did 3 months ago. I do feel more comfortable standing in front of my classes and talking to my students about academic matters now or, atleast, more so than I did before. It may also be that fact that on my travels we talked a lot with fellow travellers about our experinces as teachers. Most people we're especially intrested in two things; that I work in Xinjiang and that I am very young. I have started to think what we are doing is rather special, something that never really occoured to me before stupidly, and that I have become far more used to being a teacher than I gace myself credit for. Although I'm not exactly excitred about returning to working (who is?) i'm certainley more prepared for it than I was three months ago.
Finally in my last blog I talked about feeling a lack of maturity in myself. That I don't feel like a 'grown up'. Again it's become very apparent to me on my travelling and interations with others whilst travelling that although I don't feel it I certainley have matured in a sense. I often found fellow travellers believing me to be twenty one ore twenty two, maybe thrid year uni or just out of uni. Not just because of apperances but because of what I have done; I left everything i'm comfortable with of my own thought and decided to work as a volunteer in an area of a foreign land I know very little anout. It turns out that's an incrediabley mature decision to make. I am no more mature than I was before personaility wise. I can be a bumbling, argumentive, metal obssesed, comic loving fool sometimes. But othertimes i'm composed enough to be a teacher, travel five thousand miles on plans i've made myself, cook, clean, make friends and approach new challenges with a vigour. Turns out maturity doesn't come from the way you are but the way you act. Batman is still the best thing in the world and I will die with a Rammstein CD in my arms. But I will ahve done so knowing my finances are in order, my job is done proffesionally and that i've done something extraordianry in the eyes of others. So, like I said, it seems I have matured in the last three months.Just not in the way you excpect. You don't chnage. The way you act does.
That really is the end of my reflections. Even now reading back over this blog it has a very diffrent feel to my first milestone blog and I feel that's the way it should be. Each of these blogs should show progression; I should have learnt more, grown more and have more to say each time. So here's to looking to the future; I have another three months of teaching before the next blog and what will happen between then? I don't know. My dad will be visitng the end of March, Beijing Mike will be coming for a visit in April. We have a weeks holiday the end of May. All this and yet I still have no idea how the next three months will shape and change me. And that's exactly how I want it. By my next blog I hope to have my Chinese to an even higher standard and continue my work on learbing characters as well as language (neither is as important as the other). I hope to keep enjoying teaching and continue to work towards actually making a diffrence to these kids education. I want my skills as a cook and a guitarist to prosper greatley both are doing well). And I want to have another new perspective on China life.
Once again what more can I say than this is well and truley the time of my life. Spring festival was an experince I will remember forever (six more blogs to come very soon, keep an eye on this space) and hopefully the next three months will offer my diffrent opportunies. So, here is a toast, I'm over half way through my year now; let my remaing time in China be as enjoyable, as propsorus and as enlighting as the first six. Cheers.
- comments
Gran What a great blog Alex. with your super descriptive powers and my pretty good imagination, I almost feel I've been on your holiday with you! keep up the good work. Lots of love Gran xx