I'm Just A Little Bit Caught In The Middle

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't come to China with a can-do attitude. I was pretty sure I'd be fine. I knew I would have hard days but I was pretty sure I'd be able to get through them. I was pretty sure that because I loved China so much, sliding into life in here would be like a walk in the park. Obviously, I was not only wrong for having that kind of attitude but I was also very wrong about everything that that attitude led me to believe. Two weeks in, and China had knocked the wind right out of my sails. Two weeks in and I thought I'd go home. I didn't know as much as I thought I did and it was much more like a trek through the jungle than a walk in the park ( and now that I actually have trekked through the jungle I am acutely aware of just how accurate that description is - especially the part with the scary bugs and the ever present knowledge that there are greater, scarier animals lurking in the shadows). After the initial slump, I did start to settle in. I had a routine, made some friends and started my little China life. Then, around the end of last semester, I started getting tired. Tired of everything taken ten more minutes than it would in America. Tired of struggling to communicate. Tired of working, because everything here is work -school, english corner, even just getting around, grocery shopping, demolding my apartment, it's all work.

Thailand proved to be a nice break from the cold, the routine and even the constant presence of tiny bones in all of our meat dishes but it was still work. We were in a new country. We were packing up and moving somewhere new every morning. We saw a lot and did a lot of awesome stuff but when we got back to Lin'an, we were still just as tired, if not more so. Then, my dad came to visit and as much as I had just wanted to curl up in my bed and sleep off all of the traveling, he came to see China, so that's what we did!

There isn't much to do in the area of China that I live in, so most of the time we just walked. I had just walked hundreds of thousands of miles through Thailand (which may or may not be a slight exaggeration) and my poor running shoes look like they're about to fall apart at the seams but we walked. And while we walked, we talked. And it was so nice.

I'd also be lying if I said that I didn't love texting, email and Facebook. In fact, given a choice, I'll pick one of those over a phone call every time. While I do call my parents occasionally, for the first time in months, I got to talk to my dad face to face! There are things that you just can't really talk about or explain over the phone (especially with a 13 hour time difference). For example, what my life is actually like here. I can tell them all about my apartment, my students, my school - but none of that means anything until they see it. Last time, they saw it through pictures but last week he not only saw it but got to actually walk through it with me ( because we literally walked everywhere). And, while I'm more physically exhausted than I was before I even left for vacation, visiting with my dad was more refreshing than months in the Thailand sun ever could have been. I got to not only tell him about the things that I love here but I got to show them to him, which helped me to remember how much I love it. He pointed out things that I, having walked by them everyday, no longer noticed or appreciated. Having him point them out, and talk about them reminded me that they were there and that I did, and still do, appreciate them. Thailand was wonderful (and I promise that I will post more about it later) but, it turns out, that the way that I actually got over the little China slump that I was feeling at the end of last semester was with a hug from my dad and a walk....a long walk...all around China.

When I got to China, I thought I could do it. I'm 22. I got this. Turns out, I don't got this. Turns out, I'm 22, I live in China and I still need my dad.