Monday, November 18, 2013

Euphoria is A Departure Spurned

                                                                           
My sister Beth, her cutie pie, and me.


I feel euphoric. 

Because I’ve just thumbed my nose at the calendar, poked time in the eye like I’ve wanted to ever since I started these five years of annual, wrenching goodbyes.

I changed my ticket.

This may seem like a small, insignificant blurb on the calendar, but to me it’s huge. Because finally, for the first time in years, when I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, I actually could do something about it.
Ever since I came back with the intention of staying on American soil for at least a year, I have found that my soul is gulping down home in great, deep breaths. Beauty around me. Coffee shops. English. Driving. Fall colors. Buying boots that actually fit me. Shopping in adorable little shops that carry antiques. Deer crossings. Flavored creamer in the stores. Salads. Beautiful Florida beaches.  Medicines on pharmacy shelves that I can read. Cambridge, Ohio decorated for the Christmas season. Bell-ringers at the mall. The lit fireplace in Cracker Barrel. Fish dinners without the fish eyeballing me. Reading on my Mom’s back porch.
But most of all, I’m breathing in these moments with my family, while turning over this glorious sentence in my mind in wonder: “I don’t have to say the big goodbye. I don’t have to get on a plane for the other side of the world. I don’t have to say the big goodbye.”

With my mom, grandma, and five siblings spread across three states, my visits home were always split up into tiny segments of time with family, fitting friends in where I could and resenting the huge chunk of time stolen from my family visits by my annual month of grad school in Chicago. But now I’m here, on this side of the world; I’ve spent many weeks visiting with my family around the country and the holidays are coming and I’m still here. And it hits me again in wonder: I don’t have to say that huge, long, wrenching goodbye.
After visiting with family in two states, I finally made it up to Ohio where my sister, baby nephew, and brother live. My heart has flipped over in gladness as I’ve been able to actually settle down and visit with them versus snatching moments from the mouth of that great carnivore, Time. Long, quiet afternoons spent in the woods hunting with my brother Paul. Long evening talks with my sister Beth. Long hide-and-seek sessions with my baby nephew, Brantley. My frantic habit of squeezing-everything-out-of-this-moment-because-I’m-leaving-for-China-soon has lessened and I’m starting to relax and luxuriate in this moment.

And today I decided that I wanted more time.

I had purchased a return flight to Florida for the nineteenth of November, because it was cheap. But when I started to mourn the upcoming goodbye, I delightful realization hit me: I am no longer a slave to time. For the first time in my memory, I could rebel against the approaching parting.

Extra charge for new ticket: $34.00.

Days gained: 6.


Thumbing my nose at a departure: Priceless.

Celebrating my brother Noah's birthday. My Mom made her awesome spaghetti!

For five years straight, my brother Scot and I have seen each other once a year, for one meal. Sometimes two meals...

Me and my baby sister, my Lilly.

This brother (Paul) and I share a deep love for the woods, even though he practically lives in the woods during hunting season and I finally got to go hunting for the first time this month!

Our family's little love, Beth's baby Brantley. 

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Recently Read Books: The Four Loves

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis


I finally finished this classic! I can judge how much I got out of it by the markings I left on the pages; but I must say that the first few chapters only have a few highlights while the last two chapters are majorly marked up! I would heartily recommend this book just for the last two chapters. In those chapters, Lewis discusses the subjects of “Eros love” and “Charity” with such insight, humanity, and wit that I found nearly every page refreshing and truly enlightening.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Recently Read Books: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley


After hearing good things about this story, I read all 370 pages in half a day because it was that delightful. The author employs  words so well, and creates a quite believable eleven year old girl who is a sharp observer, a remarkable chemist, an a complete pest as far as her older sisters are concerned. Flavia de Luce loves chemistry and is especially fascinated by poisons. All of her introverted hours spent in the huge chemistry lab (which a deceased uncle left to the family mansion) gives her an edge over others when she embarks on the adventure of trying to solve the mystery behind the body she discovers one morning in the kitchen garden. Bradley weaves this story in such an enjoyable way that I think he truly deserved the Dagger award he received for this first mystery involving Flavia de Luce of Buckshaw mansion.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Recently Read Books: A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley


This book won a Pulitzer, but I completely hated it! In my opinion, the only redeemable qualities of this book are Smiley’s skill with words, and how deftly she unwraps this terrible story. I love books that expertly delve into the roughness of what it means to be a family with warmth, perception, and realism, but this story was a train wreck. At the end of the story, every individual is rotten, crazy, shallow, dead, or irrelevant. While I understand that some families truly have no redeemable qualities, Smiley stepped over the line with this tale of the unraveling of a farming family. Seriously, if a relatively sane adult  wanted to kill her sister, would she really chose the route of canning jars of poisoned food and leaving the jars on the basement shelves for years? I kept reading this book until the bitter end, hoping that there would be something of genius to salvage—at least some way to reconcile the mess—but nothing came. If you think all farm families live the idyllic life, you should read this book, but if you are already undeceived, I would suggest spending your time reading something else. Eli Weisel’s  book “Night”, heartbreaking though it be, is a better use of time in my humble opinion. 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Recently Read Books: Celibate Sex: Musings on Being Loved, Single, Twisted, and Holy

Celibate Sex: Musings on Being Loved, Single, Twisted, and Holy by Abbie Smith


While I expected this book to pack a more profound punch than it actually did, it was a valuable read, full of honesty and encouragement. Abbie Smith wrote these musings while she was single, and she shares her own questions and difficulties as well as her meditations on what it means to be completely loved by Christ, even in our most vulnerable places. She writes, “Between twisted aspects of where we are and divine aspirations of where we want to be, we find space to become more human and sought by a Savior.” 

Monday, September 30, 2013

Remembering Shandor the Great

Shandor and his bride (or, as my students say, "the handsome man and Audrey Hepburn")

Grandpa and Grandma's "original three"


Twotoundatuggerwidatingtiedtighttwotakesatoapandaboom!

If you can decipher that convoluted sentence, my Grandpa would be quite proud. He used to repeat this long tongue twister to my brothers and I when we were small, and then he would explain that it was actually a grocery list conveyed by a little boy who pronounced the beginning of every word with a “t.” His mother had sent him to the general store with instructions to purchase:

Two pounds of sugar with a string tied tight
Two cakes of soap
And a broom

I cannot recall whether or not the store owner figured out what the boy was trying to say, but I do remember that Grandpa was pretty tickled when I could repeat the sentence in all its obscurity.

My grandpa, christened William Edward Shandor, was a man who found joy in the little things. Whether it was a clever joke, an oft-repeated memory, a little boy’s mixed up grocery list, or an opportunity for a humorous photo, he chuckled his way through much of his life. He loved inside jokes, nicknames, vignettes, and never passed up a chance to make someone laugh. Sometimes he would kid around with a straight face: as a little girl, my mother was convinced that she really could run in between the raindrops if she kept trying.

Sometimes when Grandpa was truly serious, he would make others chuckle. Grandpa was a “dyed-in-the-wool” Democrat because he was convinced that the Dems were the party of “the little guy.” Some of his grandchildren were not exactly on his political side of the fence, and a great deal of kidding happened back and forth. Suspecting that my grandpa’s political loyalties lay less deep than his commitment to saving his pennies, I once prank called him pretending to be a member of the Sebastian Democratic Party, asking for handouts. He promptly hung up on me, and I never let him forget it! One of my favorite pictures of my grandpa is him posing bedside the life-size photo of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter walking down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day. Their smiles and waves are matched by Bill Shandor’s beaming face and raised hand. The “little guy” was walking beside the president. (Although, at six-foot-four, my grandpa was not exactly what you would call “little.”)

Although he was a dedicated, hard worker, my grandpa was also committed to enjoying life. He spent his retirement playing golf, participating in plays at the Theatre Guild, writing a column for the local paper, running the yearly “Shandorian” golf tournament, and even singing in a rap group dubbed “The Old Guys in the New Socks.” His rapping self-introduction began with:

“My name is Billy and I’d like to say
I might be old but that’s ok.”

We grandchildren, who only knew him in his “old days”, thought he was more than ok. He entertained us with stories (the old man with a long beard who lived in the tunnel, the time when young Bill wasted a hard-earned nickel on horrible coffee flavored ice-cream and tricked his buddies into buying another round of cones, the time when he was a military policeman in Japan trying to impress a woman with his one-word vocabulary and she responded in English); he hid quarters in his old Japanese box and swore that they multiplied in there (and then gave them to us!); he wrote letters to us when we moved away and always encouraged us to get an education, work hard, and do what we loved. He taught us to find laughter where we could---every time we walked into a local restaurant which boasted a life-size figure of Humphrey Bogart aiming his pistol, my grandpa asked us to pose with our hands held in surrender. If you find a Morrison posing with a statue or beside a road sign in a way that makes you chuckle, our grandpa taught us to do that.

Even when his health was failing and we were grown, he could make us chuckle. He once got on a kick over the old song “You Picked A Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille” and sang it all week, even serenading my grandma at their anniversary dinner! Once, when he and my brother Noah were sitting at the kitchen table, he started pretending to be a radio announcer describing the colorful life of “Mushroom Morrison”, or “Toledo Tom”---aka, my brother. Noah got right into the spirit of things, stuffed some napkins into his cheeks and gave his own rendition of his fictitious dastardly deeds in his best imitation of Marlin Brando.

Grandpa considered himself one of “the little guys”, but, once I moved to China and set up my grandparents’ wedding picture in my apartment, he took on the identity of a film star. I always laughed when my students caught their first glimpse of that enlarged black and white photo. Their eyes grew round, they gasped audibly, raised their cell phone cameras, and told me how handsome my grandpa was, and how my grandma looked just like Audrey Hepburn. I always knew that these kinds of stories could make my Grandpa smile, and so I relayed the most recent incident of Bill-Shandor-stardom in the postcard I sent him from China in the fall of 2012.

I was attending a student’s wedding in a small Chinese town, and the streets were alive with shoppers, firecrackers, and noise because October 1st was the beginning of Chinese National holiday. My phone alerted me that I had a new email, and I opened it to read that my grandpa had suddenly passed away. It was September 30 on the other side of the world, and I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. I was unable to talk to my grandma until I came back to my city of residence, and all I could think of was: “Did he get my postcard? That would have been my last communication with him!” Postcards from China usually take a month to arrive, so I thought it was a foolish hope.

I called my grandma and discovered that the postcard had arrived the day before he passed away. And it had made him smile.

On this day, September 30, 2013, I remember a man who filled many hearts with laughter. A man who loved his family. A man who was creative, encouraging, and hard-working. A man who loved Karen Carpenter songs, old movies, and good jokes.

A “little guy” who stood very tall in the hearts of all who loved him back.


I miss you, Grandpa.

Grandpa with a few of his grandkids, 1991



A few of the grandsons 1992


One of the obligatory "funny shots"--- Grandpa made this picture happen. And Noah helped. :-)



Sunday, September 29, 2013

Recently Read Books: In This House of Brede

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden


I bought an old edition of this book since reviewers raved about the story, but Amazon customers had majors issues with the reprinted edition. This book was a unique read because everything takes place in a world apart: a convent run by a contemplative order outside of a small British town in the 1950s or so. Reading the story is to brush against an entirely new vocabulary (every position, service, prayer hour, and building carries names steeped in Latin and tradition), as well as a schedule, a way of life which seems to belong to the Middle Ages. I loved the way the author balanced this sense of mystery by making the story all about what was going on inside of these ladies’ heads, hearts, or souls. By inviting the reader into the nuns’ personal struggles, memories, and desires, the author creates a story that is warm and human.  Due to the raving reviews I read, I expected this book to make it to my list of top favorites  once I’d read it. While it actually did not make the list, it was a special and enjoyable read.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Reversed Comfortability

In these days of reverse culture shock, when I was introduced to three Chinese students, I realized that was the first time that I felt completely comfortable with strangers since coming home.

My typical interactions with strangers have been measured, careful. Should I smile at that person who passes me on the sidewalk? What on earth do I do with the grocery store man who is trying to flirt with me? I know this lady at the gas pump thinks I’m stupid; she had to help me three different times within these five minutes. Watch what others are doing; make sure you’re not doing anything strange. Don’t appear weird. I run to my mom’s car after church, terrified of standing in the sanctuary surrounded by strangers who are all talking to each other.  I’ve spent enough time being a spectacle and I run from situations that might make me feel “spectacle-ish.” I heard about the singles’ Sunday school class but I can’t imagine going there since they have lunch first. Who would I sit with? Eating with strangers? It sounds terribly awkward…and right now the last thing I want to experience is awkwardness.

But when I was introduced to those three Chinese guys, I could “read” them. Here was one who tried to let others know that he is familiar with this culture (covering some insecurity), there was another one, mildly confident,  who looked like one of my dearest students back in China, and then a newly arrived one who seemed shy and nervous and was obviously more comfortable speaking Chinese. I always feel a little rusty when I haven’t spoken Chinese in over a month, but the boys were kind and we felt a sense of safety. The names of their hometowns were familiar to all of us, not mere “strange sounds.”  Here in this circle of strangers, we shared two things that no one else understood. We had all lived the life of a foreigner in a strange land, and we all loved China.


Best five minutes of my day.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Transient Permanence

If someone would come up to me right now and ask, “What do you want?” I would reply, “I want a home.”

/hōm/

The place where one lives permanently

Still living out of my suitcases, wondering what the future holds, my heart longs for permanence. I want to put up some curtains, unpack all of my books, and never move again. But that’s hard to do when I don’t know where.
America?  Which state?
China? Which province?
Greece? (I would definitely choose that little town with all of the white-roofed homes, clinging to the side of the island.)
I returned to a previous study I did on this topic, and found my wish echoed by a shepherd-king who spent his youth “on the run”:
“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.” Ps. 27:4
It seems like this place, the house of the Lord, is not just a physical spot (although it certainly was that as well, especially in King David’s day); it appears to be a space in which I can dwell no matter where I am.
This concept of moving permanence---I go from here to there, but stay within this home--- is hard for me to grasp. I still want curtains. I want to unpack the books boxed up for years, unwrap the porcelain dolls and puppets collected from around Asia, and cook dinner. But while I try to discover the physical answer to where, I’m attempting to learn how to settle down, rest, dwell in this intangible residence, this “house of the Lord”, this unchanging place where “even a sparrow finds a home” (Ps. 84:3a).

“Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to […]  your dwelling!”  Ps. 43:3

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Recently Read Books: Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation

 Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation
 by Amy Werbel

I knew I wanted to read this book from the moment I laid eyes on its description. As a visiting Fulbright scholar, Amy Werbel spent a year in China (from 2011-2012) teaching courses on American studies to Chinese university students. She wanted to train her students how to think critically, and her goal in teaching American history was not to “make the United States look better than it is—but rather to share what it feels like to be in a classroom in which everyone is free to scrutinize history without fear.” In her classroom, she and her students studied, critiqued, and scrutinized American history the whole semester. I enjoyed reading the excerpts from her students’ assignments; looking at one’s own history through someone else’s cultural lens is fascinating. I was even more fascinated at how the discipline of critiquing another culture’s history offers the honest thinker a non-threatening chance to critically examine his/her own culture’s history as well. I also loved reading her descriptions of her students and China; it felt so wonderfully familiar to me. Great book!


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Dear Jonathan...

From the afternoon that I met her in the hallway of the California hotel where we were to complete our pre-China training, I knew I wanted to be her friend.
And now, five years and fifty thousand memories later, I consider myself rich. She became my friend.
Confidant. Ally. Counselor. Sidekick. Sometimes my leader, sometimes my follower. Teammate—in every sense of the word. My number one sounding board. Travel buddy. Greatest encourager. True soul sister.
In this crazy life of living in a place where you don’t belong, a friend like this is rare, invaluable,  precious. Living no more than twenty feet away from each other the whole five years, we have bonded through shared purpose, deep joy, and confusing pain. The lattice of our friendship has been woven through a million moments…

Riding on the back of her electric scooter, ignoring traffic lights just like the locals
Five consecutive Christmas mornings of making our own traditions…complete with the precious box of CheezIts shipped in from America
Countless hangout time with students in our apartments
Rescuing each other from the crowds at English corner (Is it 8:30 yet??)
Experiencing the loss of one of our dearest Chinese friends
Nanchang Train Station at 2 am---“the not-good, the bad, and the ugly”
Me blissfully texting her in those moments when my love for the students threatens to explode my heart
#hashtagtexts
Meals together around the world (Thailand, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, USA)
Boat rides in three countries
Hotel horror stories (the filthy common squatty/shoilet and the mold in the bottom of the glasses!)
Being greeted with exploding firecrackers upon our arrival at a student’s countryside home
Dealing with the horrors of Chinese bathroom facilities---especially the time when I was showed to the restaurant’s bathroom which also functioned as the storage room of the establishment’s noodle supply (buckets of noodles sitting on the edge of the squatty potty)
Sleeping in foreign airports (Thailand, Vietnam)
Long, adventurous train rides throughout China
Fourteen hours on a "hard seat" train trip (once in a lifetime is enough!)
Inside jokes (“I only hate really stupid people”)
Bonding with the workers in the cafeteria, the copy shops, the milk tea shops…
Comforting a weeping student
Being stared at, everywhere—even by a bus driver who rubbernecked as he drove past us
Communicating in a foreign language
Christmas parties---hundreds of students, hundreds of cookies, hundreds of pictures
Cultural stress
Visiting graduated students in other cities, and reuniting with them in Nanchang
Lesson planning/ Teaching
The days when we used to shop at the busiest Wal-Mart in the world, on the busiest day
Watching movies/shows online (much more accessible over here but sometimes the subtitles go wacko!)
Talking to our Father together
Our birthday parties with students
KTV awesomeness
Talking about anything and everything, all the time

For five years, together we have chosen to love this place, these students. The Chang has broken into our souls and we have returned again and again. And now, we are saying goodbye to this place, this life, and to each other.
This Nanchang life has had its grimy, exhausting moments as well as its exhilarating, hilarious, and heartwarming ones.

I wouldn’t have wanted to experience the heartache and the wonder of this place with anyone else.

Frodo said it best:
"What about Sam? I want to hear more about him.
Frodo wouldn't have gotten far without Sam."

Thanks, Christine.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

A Question of Stuff

Moving usually brings at least some sense of loss. Some re locations are viewed as exciting opportunities, while others break the hearts of the movers and those around them. And then there are the in-between moves, the mixed-bag transplants that have the movers torn between anticipation and nostalgia. I'm sure there are some moves which cause the re locators no end of relief, but even then, the move has changed something about their lives, and something (whether missed or not) has been lost.

Moving usually means saying goodbye. People, places, routines---there are things that must be left behind. But moving also involves a valiant attempt to transplant one's sense of home. In the West, we do this through stuff. We pack our mementos, our favorite towels, our important documents, and our stuffed animals into banana boxes and set forth to set up "home" in another place. Once this stuff is unpacked and set up in the new dwelling, we have taken our first steps to feeling less displaced.

So I am in a dilemma. I have a decorated, homey apartment full of five years of stuff. But I am not sure what to do with it, because after this move comes a year of limbo-transition. I plan to come back to the US for at least a year, dividing my time between my scattered family members who I miss so much. But I might come back to China after that and set up life in a new city. Then again, things might fall into place in another way and I might settle somewhere in the States for awhile. So, now it is a question of stuff.



Should I pack up everything and ship "life in China" stuff to a storage unit in Beijing, hedging my bets that I will come back? Should I only take three suitcases worth of my most precious mementos and my essential books and give everything else away? Should I ship a few things to Beijing, take the essentials, and leave the rest? Should I keep my matching coffee mugs, my cookie pans, and my glass pie dishes? Should I bring my favorite tea set back to the States so it can sit in a box in my Mom's garage, or should I consign it to a storage unit in Beijing, China? I didn't anticipate this part of the move being so complicated. I tried to go through my books this weekend, but realized that the size of the giveaway pile all depends on my final decision of what I will do with "the stuff."

Goodness, now I need some coffee.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Recently Read Books: Frances and Bernard


Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer


I love epistolary novels (books that tell the story through compiled letters), and I was hoping this book would be as amazing as two of my absolute favorites: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows and 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (which are witty, warm, delightful exchanges between lovers of books), but I was disappointed. The book received rave reviews from so many readers, and so I expected great things. The story traces the correspondence between Frances and Bernard, two aspiring book writers with sharp intellects who become friends and eventually fall in love through letters. Bernard is headstrong and impulsive, a deep feeler who is given to bouts of mental trouble, while Frances is steady, logical, and a committed Catholic who discovers that emotions and compassion make the next logical step difficult to find. I enjoyed reading the letters at the beginning, watching these writers connect over poetry, life stories, writing, religious searches, and their own different temperaments, but as the book went on my enjoyment waned. I guess I did not find enough beauty in the writing or story to coat the tempests and dilemmas that consumed the ensuing letters. While it was not what I expected, this book gives a glimpse into the complexity of relationships, especially when one partner is needier than the other.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Recently Read Books: Elizabeth Street


Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano


An account of an Italian family that settled in the US in the early 1900s, and based on true events, this story traces the life of Giovanna Costa from her marriage in Italy until the days when her children were growing up in New York. While Giovanna did not make it very far up the ladder of social or material success, she was an incredibly determined woman that survived some extremely tough times. Even in her serious encounters with the local branch of the mafia, she fought back with creativity and resourcefulness. Although the story is told in a rather rambling way and the writing is less than stellar, this book gave me insight into the difficulties encountered and overcome by Italian immigrants. I also gained an appreciation for the “sense of home” that they left behind---and how they truly felt like foreigners in their adopted country. I guess this book put faces, names, vignettes, and feelings to the sentence I sometimes say: “Well, my Great-grandparents emigrated from Italy…”

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Bittersweet: Musings from a Steamy Room

Giving oral English exams is already a bit of a death wish. Sitting for hours without a break, listening to the same few topics being discussed with various levels of low-ish competency, constantly taking notes and making calls on grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, content, fluency, and participation for two students at once drains the brain like a steady leak in an inflated inter tube. Before the end, the brain has gone flat and the mind is begging for mercy. I once gave oral exams for nine hours without a break. Ahem, something did break. My sanity.

(To preserve our mental stability, my colleagues and I now divide the oral exams into two weeks. Less brain damage that way.)

From the students' perspectives, oral exams can be terrifying. They are given a daunting list of class topics beforehand and are expected to use vocabulary learned in class during the exam. When fear prompts serious preparation, the results are quite beautiful. I have had students amaze me with their preparation. Everyone is nervous, but not all are ready. I don't mark them down for nervousness, but after five years of doing this, I can spot a well-prepared student in an instant, even a midst the jangle of nervous mistakes and pauses. Unprepared students are more obvious than a round hay bale in a newly--mowed field---and unfortunately, much more numerous.

Combine the pain of oral exams with searing heat, long wait times, and no AC, and you have just added a new level to the word "miserable." Both teacher and students would rather be swimming. And sometimes things go from bad to worse.

No! Unprepared student who did not show up with your exam partner for this morning's exam, now is not the time to ask your teacher to let you pass the class anyway. Not now, in this hot room in the afternoon where you have just flunked the exam she let you take. Now is not the time to endeavor to enlist her sympathy, when twelve groups of students wait outside her door, sweating in the hallway as they nervously anticipate her calling their names.
 “Please give me a chance.”
“I gave you a chance, a chance to take the exam. Your pronunciation and grammar are amazing; but you were totally unprepared. You used one vocabulary word from class for the topic.”
“I used another word, too.”
“Two words from class is not enough to give you a good mark.”
I may sound cool and collected on paper but neither of us was in fine form that hot afternoon. He finally left, taking the fifteen minutes with him that he had stolen from all of the students waiting in the hall.

The classroom that was assigned to me actually has AC, but when I opened the door it was filled with students who thought it was un booked and were hoping to escape the heat. I elected to use the small side room with a broken door and a table littered with used tissues. I had used this room for mid-term exams, and the students and I had gotten locked in the room. That day, one of the boys jumped out of the window (only 3 feet above ground) and went around the building to let us out. 

Remembering that, I decide, this time, we won’t completely shut the door.

The students are hot, and most of them couldn’t fall asleep in their airless dorm rooms the night before. They sit down to begin their exam and I advise them to buy an inflatable swimming pool and set it up between their bunks. Nervously, they reach into the exam baggies to blindly choose their topics.
Some shine. Some flop. Many just get by. Some of them are so nervous I have to tell them to take deep breaths. Others seem composed.

Some make the most hilarious mistakes:

“I have many personalities.”  (He meant to say, I can say many things to describe my personality.)
“Long ago, there was a superman who had two sons.” (He meant to say, There was a rich man who had two sons.)
“I sink, if there was more terrorists, more happiness.” (He meant to say, More tolerance, more happiness.)

Some pairs make me smile:

Two boys come in with their biggest, winning smiles even though they serve up a poor exam. Usually good students, they know they have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. “Miss Sarah, can we pass?” They are laughing, embarrassed, and I laugh with them. “Um, not this exam!”

Certain classes have a higher level of English and their exam topics are much deeper. One pair of students pulls out the topic of discussing ethnocentrism.They demonstrate an ethnocentric conversation and I am laughing. Plus, they make the concept personal. “When we first came to Nanchang to study, we hated this place and hated Jiangxi. We love our hometown best.  But you know, this place is someone’s home, too.” They refer to clips from The King and I which we watched in class and my teacher-heart is warmed. Something stuck.

My brain is struggling as the exams drag on.  Out of habit, I say “See you later!” as the students stand up to leave. But now I realize with a pang in my heart, that's no longer true. Many of the students taking exams this term have only been mine for a semester (some for a year), but I will miss them.  Many of the students this Spring were such a joy to teach. And even after the ordeal of an oral English exam, some of them have told me that they will miss me, too. One sophomore girl began to cry hard, tears raining down her cheeks as she gave me a hug. I tightly hugged her back.

Students need classes; classes need a teacher, and both teacher and students need exams. We're all wrapped up in this together and saying goodbye to the worst part of the job means saying goodbye to the best part as well. 

Moments when I realize this make even the ending of oral exams bittersweet. 




Sunday, June 16, 2013

A Name Runs Through It: ECIT

My first school will always have a special place in my heart. My two years of teaching at the East China Institute of Technology caused me to fall in love with Chinese college students and, surprisingly, with the gritty city of Nanchang. I love Nanchang because my students are here. And because this city holds a cornucopia  of memories which has enriched my life ten times over.

I stayed in Nanchang because of the students at ECIT. I only agreed to transfer to my present school (Nanhang) because it was not far from my old one. Eventually, I fell in love with Nanhang and the precious students here. But there is still a warm spot in my heart for ECIT.

So, Friday afternoon marked the passing of an era in my life. Not only was it my last day of teaching at my current school, I finished my last academic involvement with ECIT. You see, every fall semester, when I introduce myself to my new classes, I tell the students that I started out teaching at ECIT. And last fall, after I said this, a hand shot up out of the crowd of grad students and a voice exclaimed: "You were my teacher!"

I was floored. I did not recognize this student, but here he was, an ECIT graduate, on my roster for my Oral English class for grad students, here at Nanhang! He had been a student in my semester-long Speaking and Listening class when he was an ECIT freshman or sophomore, and now he would be my student for a year.

Throughout the year, I grew to love the students of that grad class, and ten of them once squeezed into my tiny living room for a fun time of games and laughter. The ECIT grad, Trey, was there and I told him: "You know, when I heard you were from my old school, I felt like I had met someone from home!" He flashed a smile: "Me too!"

On Friday, I gave that student his final oral English exam and he was well-prepared and not afraid to speak. Before he and his classmates said goodbye, I told him that I had to take a picture with "the last ECIT student". He posed for the picture and then handed me a small gift with a card which read:
 
  "Miss Sarah:
Thanks for the cultivation of Miss Sarah for two years. Maybe you can't remember, you give me a low score so that I failed the exam in the first year of my college life. So that I had lost the scholarship. At that time, there were a hatred sentiments in my mind. But when you say you come from ECIT in the first class of postgraduate class, I was excited. Just like found the friends and give me more comfort. So, the words before [about hatred sentiments] is just a joke. The failure [in my freshmen year] is my respons[ibility], I didn't study hard and scared of speaking in class. But during this year, I become more confidence. I found your are a good teacher, was oppassinate [compassionate? or passionate?] careful and beautiful.
    I really thanks to you, I think everyone of our class must be sad when we knew you will come back to America. I wish you will happy no matter where are you.
    Your (ECIT) student,
    Trey

Book-ending my teaching in Nanchang with ECIT students: I wouldn't have it any other way.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Savoring, Cherishing, Remembering



"Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're worthy of you and real."
---Rainer Maria Rilke




"Because simply to be here is so much
and because what is here seems to need us,
this vanishing world that concerns us strangely---
us, the most vanishing of all. Once
for each, only once. Once and no more.
And we too: just once. Never again. But 
to have lived even once,
to have been of Earth---that cannot be taken from us."
---Rainer Maria Rilke






Friday, May 31, 2013

Things I Will Miss: Serendipity

I will miss the randomness of China; the certainty of encountering the unexpected. China has never stopped surprising me; my fingers still itch for my camera and there are many things I see that I wish I could capture in pictures. Serendipity occurs amid the irritations, and I have always loved surprises.

This little dog sometimes surprises us with his presence on the second floor of the campus cafeteria!



The back of the school cafeteria: beauty a midst the trash.


This adorable baby was just chilling on top of the menu on the counter of the little drink shop that I often frequent.  


I am no longer surprised by the constant presence of  regular students in uniforms, doing the nation-wide mandatory "military training", but I always smile when I realize just how surprising these scenes would be to friends back home...



You turn the corner...and--wham! There's a fish-drying operation  on the side of the street!


On a sunny day, you never know what you'll see airing out on the bushes and trees.... I guess Teddy Bears need to sun-bathe, too.


You can never predict when you'll see a suspiciously familiar  ad/franchise name  being used to  boost the local businesses...

Meat drys in the most unexpected places.
I am still surprised by how naps can occur absolutely anywhere.



I love waking up in the morning with the assurance that I will not be bored. Thank you, China. 










Friday, May 17, 2013

Beginning to Say Goodbye

Tears started raining down her face as soon as the words left my mouth. She continued to cry as she tried to assure me that she understood why I had decided to go home. I squeezed her hand and promised her on my life that I would not lose touch. “You girls are so precious to me; you fill my heart in the hugest way. I promise you will stay there, in my heart; loved and cherished. I will save money; I will come back to visit.” She unwrapped the gift I pressed into her hand; a pair of porcelain angels which have adorned my apartment every Christmas for the past three years.

“The angel class!” She smiled through her tears.

 Ever since these remarkable girls came into my life, my heart has exploded in ten thousand ways. From the first semester, when they were eager freshmen, I called them my “angel class.” Countless memories have woven themselves through the fabric of these years. The girls crowding around my coffee table, eating jaozi. Girls in tears sharing about their past hurts or future fears. The girls cramming into my apartment for a movie. Girls sharing the microphone with me in both shabby and glitzy KTV rooms. The girls sitting with me in the crowded cafeteria week by week, sharing vegetable dishes and rice, pushing tidbits of food onto my plate with their chopsticks; “Sarah, have some.” The girls taking my heavy bag onto their own shoulders as I walk out of the classroom. The girls worrying about me:
 “Sarah, I was so glad to see you only carried one bag today. “
“Sarah, you should rest.”
 “Please take care of yourself.”
“Take my sweater; it’s cold outside.”
“When will your Mr. Right come?”
The girls sitting on my floor, trying on make-up for the first time. Girls making scented soap from the kit I carried to China all the way from America. The girls coming into the dorm hall exclaiming, “I heard your voice!” Girls talking, laughing on the sixth floor during my weekly visits to their dorm building. The girls speaking with other students at English Corner and discovering that their English really is as remarkable as I claimed. “Sarah, the others barely spoke! They just asked really simple questions! I realized, what you said about my English is true!”

Poland with the angel: birds of a feather....

During my second semester at this school, life was hazed with pain and stress as well as a relational emptiness resulting from my recent transition from my first campus in Nanchang. I had already taught and hung out with hundreds of students on this new campus, but had only discovered a handful of friendships that were real. I desperately needed a “heart gang.”
In the spring of 2011, I plopped my teaching bag on the desk in Room 304, and looked over a class full of girls with only three boys. I had no idea that I had walked into a relational treasure chest. Thus it began:  four semesters of teaching these students who embraced learning, cultivated creativity, and possessed precious hearts. Every week, as I walk through the dark, quiet campus after visiting the girls’ dorm, I find my heart bursting with the joy of knowing these wonderful “angels.”  And now, as this fifth semester of loving them begins to close, I must learn to say goodbye.

It will be very hard.

The angels as freshmen---after their first Easter egg hunt



 Poland and I at the cutest shop in China on the evening that we began to say goodbye.




Friday, April 5, 2013

Chinglish+Love=Laughter

Chinese students often bring smiles to my face. My students make me smile through the notebooks they choose for their homework records (because the covers are a scream!) as well as what they write on their personal surveys and homework records. The funniest thing is that all of these items often reference the topic of love.

Allow me to share the smiles.

    This notebook cover begs to be read aloud in varying degrees of volume, with great emotion, and interspersed with laughter.



     These survey answers refused to flip right, but hopefully they still bring a smile to your face.



This notebook cover's bizarre "Love Chapter" references made me chuckle. 



My students' tendency to misuse the phrase "puppy love" makes me smile.



I suppose some would not find the juxtaposition of these two words as odd as I did. But I certainly smiled.



Their honesty makes me smile. Who doesn't wish for such a perfect boyfriend/girlfriend?



This notebook cover's noble description of "The Handsome Men" caused me to spend the rest of my day looking for "Him"/ "Them".



This homework reflection made me smile, and wince...hahah. 



Checking homework is not the most enjoyable task, but my students' choices of  words and notebooks keeps me chuckling...and looking for love. Hahah!






Sunday, March 24, 2013

Recently Read Books: Hannah Coulter

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

I bought this book because a reader with great taste (check out her blog at  www.thoroughlyalive.com) absolutely loved it. She said someone had given it to her to read with these words: "Read it slowly. It's too precious." I had tried Wendell Berry before and was skeptical of this high praise, but I started to read. I must say, I did not read it slowly: I started in the late morning and finished by suppertime. And then I laid my head down on my couch pillow and cried. I have not been so deeply "moved" (the word my students would choose :-) by a book in a long time. This book was beautiful, and indeed "precious." The beauty of the story is difficult to explain, since it is merely Hannah Coulter telling her unremarkable life story of growing up and living and farming outside of a small Kentucky town near the Ohio River. And yet, to read this story is to enter into the mystery of the human experience in its beauty, sorrow, questions, sweat, joy, and sense of belonging. The two main themes that achingly stirred my soul were:

     1) Hannah's sense of belonging, her sense of "home" in this community as well her sense of belonging in the beauty of the fields and the woods
     2) The intangible oneness, stitched-together-in-soul-ness that formed the bedrock of this couple's life which was full of hard work and constant wrestling with the land

A brilliant author is one who can write unremarkable stories of normal humanity in a way that somehow connects the reader with the preciousness of life under all it's daily struggle. Reading this book is like drinking a long, cold drink from a good, deep well on a hot summer's day. A drink that goes straight to your soul.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Scenes: A Day

 Snapshots from Morning Class:

Heads were spinning after I drew, explained, and quizzed my students on all the relationships in my family tree. I was truly thankful that I was behind the podium and not at a desk in a Chinese class on family language, because I would have been in tears. The myriad of Chinese words which describe each specific family relationship (with different words for those on your mother/father's side) is a mammoth task which I have not yet attempted to master.  But here I was, announcing that my students were going to draw out their own family trees and explain them in English. As I walked around the room, I saw papers slowly, sometimes painfully, filling up with Chinese names and English labels. One in particular caught my attention. Here was a visible illustration of how family size has drastically decreased in the last generation. I felt like I had stumbled upon a sociological microcosm, snapshot, or log, and so I asked if I could take a picture. Admittedly, the family tree was not finished because there were still cousins to be recorded. But I was fascinated.


And here are two more family trees on a single sheet of paper:


                                                         Seen At lunchtime:

Any time the sun comes out, the laundry will too. And in the most unlikely places. As I was leaving the cafeteria, I spotted a worker's scaffold doing double-duty as a clothesline, probably for one of the families who works in the cafeteria.



Last week I noticed that the flowering trees outside of the classroom building were also serving as a clothesline, or, the most beautiful coat-rack I'd ever seen.



Beholdings from Afternoon class: 

My friends Larry and Jim, who have served me faithfully since my first year in China, and  have participated in every lesson on "Small Talk" conversations. Today, they did not fail to charm this term's new students despite their limp necks and rattly eyes. (The uncomplimentary descriptions referring of course, to the puppets.)



Spied On the Street:



While walking back to my apartment, I saw this ominous message in plain sight, right on a main campus thoroughfare! No one else seemed disturbed, but I would have felt better if Christian Bale was in Nanchang. (Since Heath Ledger obviously was.)

                                                         
 Views from the Evening

My living room:
My student's face, wet with the tears that come with expressing the worries of approaching graduation and facing the horrors of society's high-pressured rat-race.

English Corner:
Familiar faces. New faces. Freshmen and sophomores surrounding me in a tight circle, talking. 

The dorms:
Beloved students. Laughing. A girl biting into a fresh cherry tomato and spewing the juice in my direction. 

The campus:
Students practicing rollerblading on the huge, smooth, sunken concrete circle in front of the Students' Center Building. Couples on their evening walks. Outdoor exercise equipment clinking together as some students complete their work-outs in the dusk. The neon blue of the lakeside lights reflected on the water through the willows. The long, empty stretch of campus road curving around the lake and up to the foreign teacher's apartment building, which I call home.












Saturday, March 16, 2013

Some of My Top Favorite Books


---A few of my favorite books of all time, from the top of my head (that means I am not looking at my bookshelves (since most of them are in America), so I will probably forget many other favorites L). I guess these books would be ones that shaped my thinking in seismic ways, or touched me to the core of my soul. J

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (fiction)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather  (historical fiction)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (historical fiction)

In the Arena by Isobel Kuhn (biography)

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (fiction)

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (fiction)

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Barry (fiction)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (fiction)

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (fiction)

Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss (spiritual/fiction)

Evidence Not Seen by Darlene Diebler Rose (biography)

Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard  (allegory)

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azur Nafizi  (nonfiction)

Cross-Cultural Conflict by Duane Elmer (nonfiction)

Cross-Cultural Servant hood by Duane Elmer (nonfiction)

The Valley of Vision (devotional/Puritan prayers)

                               What are the books that have shaped you?

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Falling in Love in a Classroom


In the autumn of 2008, a brand-new English teacher arrived on the campus of ECIT, in the city of Nanchang, China. Everything around her was drenched in sweat; the cafeteria was so steamy she couldn't eat, and the apartment was bare and dusty. She wondered if she would ever feel at home.

On the first day of class, the school assigned her to the wrong classroom; she plopped her teaching bag on the podium only to be approached by a nervous student, “Um, sorry, teacher, this is Japanese class.” The next half hour was spent walking back and forth across the campus that seemed so large (to a small-college grad) as she tried to find her students. At last, the monitor met her at the doorway of the correct building. “I’m so sorry,” he said. She followed him to the classroom, nervous and off kilter. What would it be like?

A posse of four boys sat in the front row, one boy’s hairdo sprouting like a haystack from off his head, identifying the fun that was bottled up inside of him. The other students filled the room, unsure of this teacher who looked much different than the blonde Americans they had seen in the movies. The teacher handed out papers with English names on them, and, mistaking a student with short hair and baggy clothes for a boy, she made her first faux pas as she offered the girl a boy’s name. The new teacher spoke too fast, and the students’ English level was low, so low that it would prove be the worst level she would ever teach during her years in China. This class would prove to be the most unruly, irresponsible, unmotivated group of students that she would ever teach in Nanchang. In days to come, she would walk on top of the desks to get them to be quiet, offer them academic points for merely bringing a pencil to class, use a cookie sheet as a barrier between a chronic cheater and his classmate’s exam, and discover that a student had climbed in and out of the third floor window during a break. But at this moment, as the new teacher and the new freshmen experienced each other for the first time, none of this even mattered.

Because she was falling in love.

In years to come, when she would remember times with her “crazy class” (as she began to call them), she herself was mystified. What had caused her heart to fall for those students in such a deep way? Why did she sob, heartbroken, when she thought she would not get to teach them the second semester? How did she put up with all the ridiculous, schoolchild behavior that happened in that classroom? Why did she worry about them so much? How did this class irrevocably knot the emotional rope that bound her heart to this place?

She didn't know why.

But somehow, that first class had found a key to a part of her heart that she did not know she had. They were the first ones to unlock the hidden door, surprising the teacher and themselves with what they discovered inside. There was a fountain of love and fierce loyalty that had previously been untouched.  And it belonged to them.

These motley freshmen would not be the only ones to win her heart.

But they were the first.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Books I Can't Seem to Finish

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner  (fiction)
One of the top five books I have ever read is Stegner’s “Crossing to Safety,” but so far none of his other books have had the same effect on me. While "Crossing to Safety" is acknowledged as a trulygreat book, "Angle of Repose" won the Pulitzer. So far I cannot really get into it. I would love for someone who has read it to inspire me to finish it, or tell me it’s ok to give up. J

The Life of Pi by Yan Martel  (fiction)
This book won so many great reviews that I thought I would love it. But I kept waiting for the story to grab me and it never did, so I gave up. I think I probably did not read far enough. The movie was quite popular here in China, so I feel like I should either read the book first or just give up and watch the movie. I would be glad for anyone’s advice. If you convince me to read the book, that would be fine, too!

The Gate of Heavenly Peace by Jonathan Spence (nonfiction/history)
I know Spence is “the man” when it comes to writing about China but this book intimidates me! I do want to finish it someday, but I am wondering if any of you Spence readers would have any other recommendations for books that I should read before this tome? J

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (fiction)
I heard that this book was amazing, and it seemed well thought of at Wheaton, so I bought it. Even the ticket collector on the Chicago suburb Metra had heard of it! Although Berry is a good writer, the book has not given me a reason to continue plowing through its slowness. I am fine with slow books (“Death Comes for the Archbishop” is one example of a very slow, but profound book) if they grab me with profound-ness and great writing. This book has the good writing part, but the profound-ness seems lacking, and the author has not made me connect with the characters in a way that would keep me going (as McDermott does in her slow tales of families). I just read Berry’s "Hannah Coulter", and LOVED it, so magic has come from this writer’s pen! But so far "Jayber Crow" is a very long drawn out self-account of a man wandering back to the town he grew up in. I know more is to come, but I am not compelled to find out. If any of you "Jayber Crow" fans have some thoughts to share, I would be glad to hear them!