Understanding

This year is full of new things for me. Not only is it my first time overseas, but it is also my first time working a fulltime job, living alone, and being financially independent. The latter three have steep enough learning curves as it is, but that doubles in a foreign country. In a native country, a young adult struggles to learn systems they are familiar with, but with which they previously did not interact. The same is true of a foreign country, except that the systems are not familiar. Like, energy in the US and China are totally different (don't ask me how. I still don't understand.)

Now, I consider myself very fortunate because the program I work through covers most the expenses (housing, *some* dining, energy, water, etc). However, there's still a lot to learn, and there are so many things that I just don't understand about China.

I don't understand why the bathrooms are designed so that I can poop and shower at the same time (I mean, I don't, but I could).

I don't understand why everything is operated by cards (bike rentals, cafeteria meals, energy), yet I can't use my Chinese debit card in most stores.

I don't understand why the office for my group consists of three tables divided between four people.

I don't understand why people are always dancing. I don't dislike it, but I don't understand it.

I don't understand the subjects I teach (this isn't an issue with China).

I don't understand why my washing machine is in my kitchen (okay, even the Chinese think that's weird. I asked).

In the midst of all this understanding depravation, I'm somehow expected to have a handle on my life. So, to help, I made a budget for the first time. Now, I am not going to discuss my pay, but I will say that in one pay check I make more than I've ever had at one time. It's not a ton of money, I've just always been poor. Yet, somehow I still don't have enough money. This is more than I've ever had, and it's not enough.

I decided this week that I'm quitting money. That's a thing, right? All I really want to do at this point is trade my skills for food and shelter, maybe build a cabin in the woods, hunt, grow a beard. Essentially, I want to be Hugh Jackman at the start of The Wolverine, alone in the woods, free from society, mourning the death of someone else's girlfriend. Instead, I'm like Hugh Jackman in the middle of The Wolverine, confused and in Asia, mourning the death of someone else's girlfriend (seriously, what's with that?).

Things made so much more sense in the US. We use cards for everything, but we can use them EVERYWHERE.

Not enough space? We'll make space!

Dancing? Does that involve moving?

Don't understand math and science? Youtube will understand it FOR you.

Washing machine in your kitchen? That's called a dishwasher.

Money? Yeah. You still need that.

Yesterday while I was walking, I looked up at the night sky, lit by the large, lunar satellite. For a second I thought that maybe my experience is like the waxing and waning of the moon, slowly moving in and out of earth's shadow. When I got here, I was but a banana of a moon, and when I leave I will probably be a half moon. I don't expect to gain a full understanding of Chinese culture in only one year. I barely understand American culture; I'm just used to it. But isn't that what makes a home special? You can come to rely on things being a certain way; dare I say, you can take it for granted.

Back to my bad analogy, I don't think it's possible to ever come into a full moon of understanding (that sounds so dumb). The second you have a handle on a situation it changes. That's what makes life fun (and increasingly stressful). Frankly, I was never a big advocate of change, but constantly adjusting to new situations has made me quite flexible. I can bend more ways than Gumby in hot yoga (I'm killing it with the analogies today).

So what does this mean? Things are fine, I guess. I mean, learning to live with change isn't really a choice. It just sort of happens (and sometimes it doesn't). That in mind, how do we find comfort in an ever-changing world?

Entropy.

Eventually, the force of change will burn out.

Entropy will save us all.

My Week Off

Two weeks into teaching and I already had my first vacation. I really wish I could write a post about China, but almost nothing Chinese happened to me this week. Instead of traversing the great giblets of the Eastern Rooster, I stayed cooped up in my apartment, only leaving for supplies.

While I wasn't able to enjoy Chinese culture this week, I was able to get a lot of work done on projects I've had sitting around. I was able to focus all my energy this week to writing comics, book editing, and watching hours of Pinky And The Brain. Yes, things were looking up this week. Nothing could distract me from my work. Hour after hour I scribbled and scrabbled, making words take life, personifying images, and mopping. All the while, my social life became nothing but a screen, and I grew more hermitous by the day. All that mattered was my writing.

Three days in I had one of those writer moments where I looked back at something I'd written and realized it was total crap. Unfortunately, this "something" was actually everything I'd ever written. Sometimes I wonder how I graduated college with a writing degree.

This most affected the book I was editing. It is nearly three hundred pages, and I realized that everything was put together like a quilt sewn by a one-arm seamstress. I'd hit a bull's-eye like a child with poor depth perception pins a tail on a donkey - with three yards between me and the target.

The biggest issue I discovered was my own writing habits. I love strong characters. I know that to have a strong story, you need well-developed characters. I know characters must be well developed before the story, so that they can exist like real people instead of taking the form of expositional pez dispensers, popping out flashbacks every other scene. I knew this, and I totally ignored it. That killed me a little.

So what did I do? How did I climb out of the funk and reestablish my resolve to write?

I didn't. I decided to give up on writing. I took all the old pages and used them as kindling for my stove. Now my dreams are dead.

Okay, I'm kidding. All I really had to do was ignore everything I'd written to this point and ask myself "What is the heart of this story? What did you set off to create?" It was then that I was able to find the lost purpose of the book. The funny thing is, I had tried to give it too much purpose when I wrote it. That was the issue. The events, the characters, the mood, everything in the story was designed to be a fun, carefree story. My character development had no place in this caricaturized world. I had tried so hard to make the characters real that they no longer fit inside the universe for which I had created them.

And then I learned something about myself. As hard as I tried to avoid a Full House moment, I found myself smack dab in the middle of one. See, I'm constantly upset at myself for not being C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Harper Lee, Dostoyevsky, Douglas Adams, and G.K. Chesterton. Where do they get off, being good at something I want to do? And how dare I even think of taking up the pen when all my writing is as messy and dull as a 5th grader's book report (I mean, it worked for Hemmingway, but I think that was a freak accident). It was hopeless.

But before I totally gave up, I recalled a section of The Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot. He wrote:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

This is so spot on it's almost obnoxious. It kills me because it is exactly what I needed to hear, written in brilliant poetry, which was the very cause of my jealousy and bewilderment. I'm not surprised. I've grown accustom to such ironies in my life. The writer causing me woe will ultimately offer me hope. My attempts at improving my writing will only hurt the style in which I want to write.

So what do I do? I forget my doubts and say that which I am no longer inclined to say, or for which I have no words. All I can do is make another attempt. The only thing I can do is try. Maybe I don't need to be a great author. All I really want is have fun, so I might as well write a book and see if people like it. Then I suppose I'll write another and another until I write myself out of this self pity and into the hands of readers.

I hope this little "Life Lessons with Taylor" Didn't bore you too much. Believe me, I didn't intend to learn anything this week, it just sort of happened. I guess T.S. Elliot will always be the Bob Saget to my troubled Stephanie, and I guess C.S. Lewis is uncle Jesse; Adams is Joey. Chesterton is Urkel.

All this to say that I was upset, but I got over it (but really, that doesn't make for a good story).

So my week off comes to a close. Lessons were learned, stories were written, meltdowns were had.  Classes are starting again, so I'll have less time to weep over my own short comings as a writer. Hopefully that's a good thing.

I Started Teaching

Studying English was a dream of mine for years. Since I was twelve I've wanted to be a writer. Maybe it was the fact that I was used to being poor that I didn't really mind the idea of continuing to be poor. Really, it was a miracle I was even able to attend college (a Miracle named Carol), but then to throw it away on an education that would never bring money, well I'll be the first to admit that was probably a foolish decision. If majoring in something I hate was all it took to bring in money, I would have studied Pre Med. What deterred me from this (besides having no scientific abilities) was that it wouldn't just be college. Whatever I studied in college would become my life - so with the blinding passion of Lord Byron, I ignored the "smart" thing and began studying English. I have officially declared that my best decision in life, apart from the Oreos I had last night. Sure, it was difficult, and it might not pay off, but it was the most fun I've ever had. I didn't even know I liked education before I started studying English.

The jokes were nonstop, and heck, I cracked half of them.  "What are you going to do when you graduate?" I hated that question. Obviously, I would do the same thing every English major does when they graduate - move in with their parents and "write." I say write with quotation marks because it rarely means sitting down at a typewriter and punching out a book draft. Oh no, first there's research to be done, followed by pacing, playing with a stress ball, and who knows how much self loathing. And then there's the "studying" which ought to be called pleasure reading. "But I'm examining the writing style and-" yeah shut up. That's a lie and you know it.

By some freak accident I ended up with an actual job after graduation. I was almost disappointed that I wouldn't get my three years of jobless mooching while I "found my style." However, I was excited to jump at the opportunity to teach the very thing I had studied, and as a bonus I would finally get to travel.  Needless to say, anyone who had given me grief about my major was surprised (this was mostly me).

So here I am, an English degree in one hand and a piece of chalk in the other. It's strange to be called teacher. It's strange to have people come to you for answers. When I look around the room I get a little nervous and excited and sleepy (because instant coffee sucks). But I smile brightly and say, "Hello class, I am Taylor Swanby, your math and science teacher."

That's right. I am currently acting as a math and science teacher. Mind you, I have not used math since my senior year of high school, thanks to Running Start. Now, all of a sudden I'm supposed to teach these kids subjects that I can barely recall. Oh, but it gets better. I also teach Career Studies on a Canadian curriculum. Clearly, I am not the best man for the job, and normally I would have said "no way," to this position. However, it was so hilarious that I just couldn't turn it down. I mean, I was so adamant about studying English that I discarded math as soon as possible, and here I am teaching it to high schoolers.

Before you worry too much for the youth, I am not actually their math teacher. I am their English math teacher. I am simply teaching them concept they already know in foreign terms (where as I am teaching foreign concepts in terms I already know). Even so, I only took this position knowing it was a temporary thing while they wait for another teacher to arrive.

Somehow I've made it through a week and a half of teaching these subjects, and it's been busy. At times, I find myself enjoying it. Yet, the fun moments cannot cover the fact that I am just not good at math. I would much rather be teaching language, and once the new teacher comes I will begin teaching conversational English.

This is just a taste of the craziness that has happened thus far on my trip. I'm definitely learning a lot about myself as a teacher, and I'm hoping that by the end I will have "found my style." Of course, who knows what I'll be teaching by then.

1 up

I moved to China. Since that point, I've questioned this choice every morning as I lie awake on my stiff bed. I reach for my phone, turn on sudoku, and consider my decision.

Up until I left, I was fairly certain I knew why I was leaving. There's an indefinable desire for adventure that builds inside some people,* and I was under the impression that I had that. I felt a passion for the unknown. To go into the world without a clear sense of what to expect was a thrilling idea. But instead of grasping the adventure like Walter Mitty, I was instantly struck with a sense of homesickness like Bilbo Baggins. My biggest criticism of The Hobbit was Bilbo's never ending thoughts of home. Like, get over yourself, am I right? And here I am, sitting on a couch in China thinking about home. Except that I'm even worse than Bilbo, because I live in a world where I am connected to home over the internet, and I know I will be back in the States in ten months.  So what even am I complaining about? Is it the "waste bucket" where you throw your poop rags instead of flushing them? Is it the undrinkable tap water? Is it the lack of an oven and dryer? These are all trivial matters, but they're foreign. It's like using a bathroom at a strangers house, uncomfortable and wrong (doubly so if they have different hand soap).

Once I finish my game of sudoku, I walk out into the living room of my apartment and turn on my computer. Then I smother a piece of bread with peanut butter and call it breakfast. A flick of the switch and the kettle starts boiling water for my instant coffee. Eventually I will start my job at the Changle No. 2 Middle School, but until that time I have all morning to do whatever it is I do while waiting for my job to start. This mostly consists of perusing webcomics.

Probably the best thing that has come out of moving to China is its use as the ultimate 1up in a conversation.  Yeah, you went on a camping trip this summer? Cool. I'm moving to China. Every conversation dead. I win (assuming I don't talk to someone moving to Kenya).  This is great because nobody really knows how to respond, so they stumble around with, "That's crazy! Why are you moving? I knew someone who moved to China. I am Chinese. I don't speak English." All excuses to hide their jealousy. It even works when you return from China. Just throw out that you lived in China for (in my case) a year. The unfortunate side to this is that awkward period when you actually have to live in China. Before, you can say, "I'm moving to China," and after, "I lived in China." But it's the actual living there that makes this 1up work.

Probably the worst thing about this is knowing that everyone you 1uped can return the favor now that you live in a different country. You say, "I live in China," and they say, "Cool. I have all the American accommodations that you miss." Anytime I see a post on facebook about someone chilling in a coffee shop, I take offense. Stop gloating.

I feel I should mention that there IS coffee in China. Coffee shops are placed around Changle like a health-conscious mother counting the sprinkles on her child's whole-wheat, birthday cupcake. But I'm getting off topic.

The point is, that I am currently at that awkward point of living in a situation that I bragged about and want to brag about later. I'm totally driven by my pride here. So what is one to do when faced with this sort of situation? Write a blog. Drink tea. Exist in China. (*cough* work on your pride issues).

Really, China is a great place. The people are kind and generous, the food is delicious, and the school is beautiful. I've just traded cloudy skies with smog, and traffic laws for... less traffic laws. The real issue isn't China, but my love for America, specifically Seattle. I mean, even Frodo missed the Shire while he was in Rivendell. Seattle is my Shire, my Anatevka, my home.

When I crawl into bed at night, I laugh at my worries. I know I've made the right decision in coming to China. I play a game of sudoku and imagine the coming adventures before drifting off to sleep. It's stressful, but it's exciting. I'm looking forward to my year in China, and I'm looking forward to coming home in June. In the meantime, I'll take each day as it comes.

 

* Actually, this is defined as "A desire for adventure."