China honsety

So I just talked to the center manager. I'm taking my medical leave as of November 15, and with flights that will put me stateside on the 16th. It's going to be a disaster coming back, because I have about 5 legs. I fly from HohHot to Beijing. Beijing to Shanghai. Shanghai to LA. LA to Chicago. Chicago to Dulles airport in DC. But it was the cheapest way that I could get in that matched with my parents times in availabilities to come home.

It's going to be the first time I'm home in nearly two years, which is a landmark in itself. While I'm excited to be able to be home for a holiday and spend time with family, at the same time I'm incredibly nervous. I've been away for two years. I'm a nervous wreck now, but certainly not the nervous wreck who first boarded the plane in February 2010.

There are things in China that I've seen that I certainly can't blog about, nor would my family actually understand what I've seen or what I've been through. Nobody needs to know what the hospitals are like here. It's driving my parents mad that I refuse to see their suggested doctor in Beijing. However, after spending 2 days in a Chinese Hospital, I've vowed never again. Especially the night I had to have Scott, and our security guard, Star stay with me. After that horrid 48 hour excursion, I vowed never again. Things that people would never actually understand unless they were here to witness it themselves. The level of grime in the bathrooms, how they made Scott sleep in the same bed as me as I was throwing up blood after kicking him out of another bed, not changing the sheets before they put another patient in the same room. There's no way in hell I'm going to get better here with those conditions, especially since they denied they fact I had a previous medical condition that was found and stated on my health forms even before I entered the country. This is crap you get as you live a third world country.

China's still very much third world. Africa isn't third world, I wouldn't even rank that on any scales, as much of the populations don't even live by the sub-standards as the people in China, Russia I'd also put into the same category as China. Things you have to see to actually understand. If you read Lost on Planet China, I'd say that book gives pretty much the most accurate portrayal of what China's actually like.

People wonder why I don't blog as frequently. It's not that I don't like China. Before I came to China, my parent's neighbor, Bill Rowe, a Chinese History professor at Hopkins, best described how one would feel about China: it's very much a love hate relationship; and he spent ten years living in various parts of China. It is very much a love hate relationship. While I have no real intentions of spending ten years here, mostly because I envision the country crashing and burning in about 7 and I want to be out well before then.

I certainly love my network here. Scott has become very much my brother away from home, I could never put into words what this man has done for me in the last 6 months. Crystal, the Chinese language teacher I had in Shenyang, has been much more of a language teacher. My painting teacher Master Ma, has had me flourish and hone my painting skills far beyond I would have expected in 5 months. Annette, who keeps me grounded and civilized. Peggy, who reminds me daily of things I need to continue to work on to become a respectable and decent adult. Tommy and Shauna, a young married couple, who regularly include me in a lot of their family events. They however, also remind me daily, why I'm thankful my parents have blessed me with American citizenship, something many of us take for granted on a daily basis. A network that's taken me over 18 months to build, but certainly is something I've done on my own, and certainly was something I wasn't accomplishing on my own living in my childhood bedroom, working minimal hours at my dream job, while cooking and cleaning for my parents, since I certainly didn't have enough money to break out on my own.

I take pride in the connections that I've made since I've been in China. China hasn't been an easy ride and there have been many nights I've cried myself to sleep, only wishing to go to the airport the next morning to board the next plane home. I've made many mistakes since I've been here, and at the end of the day, I'm forced to address these problems head on by myself. But I've spent nearly 28 years running from my problems. I still dart from a lot of the issues I've come across here, but in time, they sit there and mock me until I deal with them.

This time, I have to go home to deal with it though. I've denied since January that I should really have the Western world fix what the Eastern world can't. Don't get me wrong. I'm terrified. I've grown accustomed to many of the shocking items that compromise China, and to be honest, a lot of them aren't even shocking anymore. That tells me I need to come back for some perspective. I've built the nice network I mentioned above. I've grown comfortable in a world that is far from comforting. Re-entering civilization scares me enough that I don't know if that after I go home, if I'll revert to what I was before and have trouble getting back to where I should be. I'll be talking to Scott regularly while I'm home, which will hopefully keep things in perspective, and he claims that if things fall through where I am now for coming back to work, he'll hire me at his new school in a heartbeat.

What I'm mostly afraid of is that in the time that I spend on my medical leave is that I'll forget the desires I have to continue to do what I think is important work. I love my students in HohHot. As much as I may be bitter about the process and the frustrations of dealing with Chinese management and parents, and in the end, how little power I have to do things, it is that little bit of power that I do have and the glimmer of hope that you give kids and the dreams you help instill in the kids to want to have them make something of themselves at a much larger scale than their country will offer them in the next seven to ten years.

If my bluntness of this post alarms you, I don't feel the need to apologize. There's the China that everybody sees, but China's very good at projecting a face that like a glass doll, quite elegant too look at, but full of cracks, and fragile to the human touch; after all, they bailed us out and prevented us from having another 1920's stock market crash, but that wealth is something that 99% of this country doesn't see. If you are interested in what the real China is, the Economist wrote a few articles recently that pretty much summarizes it to a T. The whole idea of Gendercide in China, an article that was published in the Economist in March 2010. Then there was one that was published back in August 2011 as well that discussed more of the economic status and development of the country.

There's a lot that people don't seem to understand of China. I'm not saying that I've become an expert of the country in the last 20 months that I've lived in China. If anything, these last 20 months have really altered my world view and understanding, something you can only get by actually experiencing a country first hand and long term. While much of the last months of my time in Shenyang became a distasteful view of China, the last 6 months have changed in the idea of while the situation in many cases may be crappy, but it's how willing one is to put up with gilded crap. It's all about appearances here, in hopes to give many other more countries an illusion of grandeur that may not actually be obtained for another 50-100 years. I wouldn't say that I'm bitter. I've had many up periods in China, but it certainly lives by that craptacular cliche of "not all that glitters is gold."

I'll certainly try to post more of my highlights while in China, but Readers, you also need to understand the frustrations of living in a third world country who can't seem how to properly manage itself beyond the image it wants to project.

ramndom

okay so it's been about a month since I've posted anything.

The news seems pretty boring. I'll just write.

The manager team of the school I moved to has chosen to leave. The Irish man, James, who was the man who originally hired me, was the director of studies at my point of hire. He hired me back in early March. I took the job in April, moved here in the beginning of May. At that point he switched his position to just being the senior teacher. He hired me mostly because he wanted help landing the Bank of Inner Mongolia. updated all of my banking lesson plans and pitched it and landed it. James decided he no longer wanted to be director of studies.

In the time between me being hired and coming to HohHot, Scott, a Canadian became the director of studies. He was the senior teacher, at the time I was hired, so it wasn't that he was a random addition, but it was the pair of these two that I moved to HohHot for. It's going to be awkward with out them since that was the primary reason I came here.

Classes are going relatively well. Still needing regular feedback from my teaching assistants as well as other staff. I am now teaching a lot of kindergarten aged kids, mostly because I have no shame in making an overall ass of myself.

I'm taking a painting class. Things with that are going well, as I had an art show about a month ago and James just paid me to do some paintings for holiday gifts.

My stomach has been giving me a lot of trouble since I've been in China. I've had a lot of issues mostly since January of last year. I'll be coming home to have this looked at. Don't really know how to feel about this. Will be home for Thanksgiving.

That's me in a nutshell.