Jessica Ralston's Blog

To Do List Before I Leave China (In No Particular Order)

• Pack.
• Travel to Dandong. Wave hello to North Korea, go to the Hushan Great Wall, have some good Korean barbecue.
• Clean the apartment. Top to bottom.
• Take and print pictures of each of my classes. Write my e-mail on the back, give to students on the last day of their classes with me.
• Get the bulk of the timeline business of my novel done and out of the way. That part takes up a lot of floor space. Neither an airplane nor my parent’s house have that kind of room.
• Did I mention pack? This also includes sorting through all the crap I’ve amassed over the year (souvenirs, cheap books, silly tourist T-shirts) and deciding what comes home with me, what gets thrown out, what gets passed on to the next teacher.
• Write up detailed class descriptions for each of my classes and one one ones for the next teacher’s reference.
• Buy more chopsticks, little tchotchke things, and some of the non-perishable foodstuffs that I want to bring home (date flakes, tomato and egg convenient noodles, baijiu, sachima… I’m pretty sure there’s something missing from this list).
• Do laundry. My mother would kill me if I came back with dirty laundry. ETA1: S1 informed me that this is included in packing. Okay, then.
• ETA2: Did I mention WORK? Yes, I still have classes in between all of this. Sigh.

There’s too much to do! I have about two weeks left here, and traveling to Dandong is looking less and less likely. That’s upsetting because I really want to see North Korea (from the Chinese side of the Yalu River, but still) and the easternmost section of the Great Wall.

…Instead of sitting here writing this blogpost, I really should be writing these items on a piece of paper and start doing them.

Yeah.

I never thought that when I started this job I would be wiping away someone else’s child’s tears with such frequency. Whether a child is genuinely upset or just upset they didn’t get their way, it still manages to twist something in my gut. Sometimes it makes me laugh or roll my eyes when I know the tears are just because the child wants the attention, but the genuine tears really upset me. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, October 20, is my eight month-iversary in China!

*throws confetti and blows a party horn*

It has definitely been a roller coaster of emotions over the past eight months. There have been times when I wanted to throw the towel in and say, “I’m going home, contract be damned.” Those feelings were sparked at multiple points by homesickness, frustration with the job, frustration with the roommates (who are also co-workers), and frustration with China and its culture. But, I told myself that I had committed to this (both publicly and personally) and I would stick with it to the end.

Then of course, there were other times when I was having a blast and sure, I missed home, but at that moment, everything was going pretty well. Although, I have never, in all my time here, said, “Oh, this is definitely a place I’d like to live.” I have never, ever said that about China.

The job is all sorts of rewarding, just like I had hoped it would be when I started. I have come to know my students (the ones I’ve had since February), on a personal level and I’ve become rather attached to them, particularly a group of 7-year-olds whose first English class ever was with me. When they started in March, the could barely say, “My name is ____,” properly, but now they’re asking me what my favorite food is, what my favorite color is and what my favorite animal is. It’s very gratifying to witness this transformation. I also have a class of about six 10-year-olds, and their English is good enough that they can actually argue (in a good-natured manner) with me. They happen to be my favorite class.

One of the biggest lessons I learned as an exchange student to Brasil in high school have come into play here: if you’re feeling homesick, stop talking to people from home, and instead, keep busy. Go out and see and do things, make plans with people, take a day trip. When I’m feeling particularly sad, I make plans with the assistants, who I’ve become quite close with. This type of job can get lonely sometimes, but you just have to make the best of it, and take the good with the bad.

It doesn’t feel like it’s been eight months (although I bet if you ask my mother, she’ll tell you different), but if the changing leaves are any indication, it has been. I am so excited for the next four months, and the months after that!

The sun rising over a flight of stairs at the Mutianyu Great Wall.

When I was making my west along the Great Wall a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but think of all the feet that had tread the wall hundreds of years ago, and how I was retracing their footsteps. The thought didn’t occur to me until I was in a guardhouse and had an odd experience with my camera and battery (I watch Ghost Hunters, so what?), but when I started the climb again, and I found these stairs, I realized that soldiers had climbed these stairs on the lookout for the Mongols hundreds of years before the first tourist set foot on it. It was awe inspiring, just as I think seeing the pyramids in Egypt would be, and seeing the Parthenon in Greece.

The day we climbed it we were lucky: we went early to avoid the wave of tourists (it was Chinese National Day), and the sun hadn’t burned off the fog that rested in the green valleys. When you come up over the rise of the first big hill and catch the view, it can be breathtaking. The Wall stretches literally for miles, following the ridges and dips of the mountains. It’s so…vast.

I found it interesting that a civilization would build this wall to keep people out, and for me, that rang true of present day China, in a way.

They do their best to keep news and world events out, while keeping their citizens uninformed. My mind jumps to the Chinese people being mute (no freedom of speech or freedom of the press here) and dumb (news coming in is either censored or tweaked to be more palatable to the CCP).

It makes me wonder about the quality and quantity of the Occupy Wall Street protests. I imagine they say something along the lines of, “See? This is what a democratic, capitalist society brings you. Do you really want this?” so as not to incite similar protests. This is why they block international social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Google+.

I often wonder if they know they’re being oppressed, but most of them seem pretty content to just live their lives, especially older people. I imagine younger people in the bigger cities like Beijing or Shanghai are slightly more informed than the average Chinese citizen, but they have the tech savvy to get around the blocks.

I didn’t mean for this post to turn into something slightly political, but the topic has been on my mind quite a bit recently, because my NaNo novel is about a government not unlike China, that censors websites for much the same reason as the CCP. It was originally meant to be a pretty picture to look at, but I’m not apologizing for what the post has turned into.

Pretty picture though! If you ever have the chance, go to The Great Wall, it’s beautiful. And, it’ll make you think.

When I come home on Saturday and Sunday nights (usually with takeaway from the vegetable place around the corner) I really don’t have the mental capacity for anything more strenuous than changing into pajamas and collapsing at my desk in a miserable, moaning heap. (I work about 8-10 hours on those days.) During my boneless, mental mush time, I tend to put on a few episodes of Friends just to unwind.

My sisters and I love Friends. There was one summer were S1 and I watched every episode in the ten seasons. The pair of us would sit on the couch in the living room after everyone went to bed and watch a few episodes. This would baffle our mother because she said (and still says), “I don’t know how you can watch so many episodes in a row. Doesn’t it get annoying after a while?” I don’t know either, but we can, and no, it doesn’t get annoying. There are some episodes we skip, just to get to our favorites within a season because we know it that well. We’ve seen every episode at least once, and a lot of episodes more than a handful of times. Nearly everything can be brought back to a specific moment in the Friends timeline. It’s become a point of discussion for us.

S2 resisted for a while, but eventually we brought her over to the “dark side,” which I think happened she she hit the age where suddenly adult humor makes sense, rather than just being funny because everyone else is laughing, or the delivery is a bit humorous. However, S1 is still the bigger fan. If she catches an episode on TV and I’m around, I’ll throw on the same episode and we’ll watch and chat on Skype.

It’s nice to have something like Friends to remind you of the special bond you share with your sisters, even though I’m in China and my sisters are in New York.

Sidenote In the spirit of helping fellow Wrimos, please head over to my friend Theo’s NaNo blog and join me in supporting his efforts! November is right around the corner!

I’m seriously considering going on a Yangtze River cruise for National Week in October instead of going back to Beijing.

I’ve been researching my options, and if I can do it for the same or less than I did Thailand last month, I’m doing the river cruise.

Or, I could just DO the river cruise, cost be damned, because when am I ever going to have an opportunity like this again?

Although, considering the fact that the Chinese government doesn’t even know when its own holidays are (they don’t know until about a month beforehand, why, I don’t know), this might prove problematic in the pricing of flights from Shenyang to Chongqing, and Yichang to Shenyang.

The Winter Special cruise with Victoria Cruises is super cheap during the New Year. That would be fun.

Decisions, decisions.

1. Tomorrow I’ll have been in China for six months, officially. I’m not doing anything to celebrate because I’m working all day tomorrow and Sunday. Maybe I’ll buy some cake.
2. Also, starting on Wednesday, I’ll be living with a dude. (A sloppy, lazy boy. Ugh. A million times ugh.) Other Teacher is returning to the States. Her contract is up. I get her room though, which is bigger and has a comfier bed.
3. That is all. Thank you.

*trudges off to write and edit some more*

I have to, have to, have to, have to post in this every day. I should set an alarm on my computer or on my phone or something.

Some things have happened since I last posted (in November 2010). Here is a list:

• I moved to Northeast China in February to teach English to adorable little Chinese kids. It’s a fun job, I like it a lot. But I miss Western conveniences, Western politeness, and my family and friends. ‘Nuff said. I’ll be back in New York in February 2012.
• It snowed for 97 hours straight in December in the city where I live in New York. Ridiculous, I know.
• The super-duper folks who run National Novel Writing Month decided it would be fun to do summer sessions and call it Camp NaNoWriMo. I attempted the July session and failed utterly (I was on holiday and my work schedule got busy), but we’re in the middle of the August session and I am kicking ass and taking names.
• Events I’ve missed since I moved to China in no order: two funerals, the birth of my second cousin, the marriage of my other second cousin, my baby sister’s junior prom, seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II at midnight with my best friend, two family reunions, and a few concerts. Suck.
• Totally awesome things I’ve done since moving to China, which sort of make up for the things I’ve missed at home: traveled to Beijing, walked through the Forbidden City, saluted a Mao statue mockingly (which I took great pleasure in), went to a music festival featuring Chinese punk and indie and electro bands, flew to Thailand, went snorkeling over Thai reefs and saw a number of things I don’t know the name of, jumped off a 15-feet tall dive boat into the ocean, danced on a stripper pole with a Thai hooker, saw Harry Potter at midnight in a theater full of Chinese HP fans.

So anyway, I’ve been pretty busy lately. I’m about 5,000 words ahead of where I should be on my Camp NaNo novel, and that’s where I like to be. It makes me feel like I have a comfortable buffer zone if anything should happen, and I can’t write for a day or two. I fee like I can squeeze out another couple hundred words before sleep.

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Now playing: Glee Cast – Never Going Back Again (Glee Cast Version)
via FoxyTunes