I know it's silly, but I've missed having a blog to muse within. Unfortunately, I seem to not have much to say tonight, aside from general sleepiness and a wholehearted contentedness.
I'm a Peace Corps volunteer in China. It seems odd to identify myself as such, because I hardly feel like a Peace Corps volunteer. I spend a lot of time with my students, just not in the traditional after-school clubs and such that ever yone told us that we would to. I try to make myself completely available to them; they're all completely aware that not only do I make my phone number and e-mail address available to them and offer them office hours, but I EXPECT them to call me if they have problems. I spend weekends with whole classes, end up with English hot pot or visits around the city with them. Heck, I think I know my city better than most of my students, since they're not from Sichuan and they live outside of town. It's made for some interesting site-seeing days speaking entirely English and helping out with problems that they have that they can't work on when they're in a class of thirty. My students are bemused by these excursions, if only because everyone assumes they're foreigners and they get the same staring-oh-my-god-superstar treatment that I get every day. But I feel good doing it, and I'd probably do it whether I was a Peace Corps volunteer or not.
I've come to love China. When we first came here, we were warned that we'd go through phases of acculturation and acclimatization to the culture here; that we'd start off by being naive, innocent and bright-eyed, excited by all the difference here. That we'd next kind of fall in an acceptance, then get jaded and start to hate China, where every little thing would grate on our nerves. Finally, we'd grow to love China and just sort of sink in. When I got here, I felt so boxed in by my host family and problems with my apartment that I just... skipped the acceptance phase. I sort of skip steps a lot in my life, isn't it funny? I spent a good month absolutely miserable, intent on leaving and trying to plan how to make it happen. I liked my students, but that was about it.
I got so lucky, though. Back in September, my second weekend after I moved into my apartment, I had a visitor from Gansu, another Peace Corps volunteer. With her, I met up with a half a dozen other Peace Corps volunteers and some of their friends. We had a pretty good time -- we went to the Women's World Cup, the soccer tournament in Chengdu, which was pretty sweet. We wandered out to the pizza place by my apartment. We went to Pete's, the western food restaurant, and met up with a couple of their friends. And I met a couple of people who live in Chengdu, much to my benefit. We wandered around afterwards, buying DVDs and just hanging out, before splitting for the afternoon. I got some phone numbers and some possible new friends.
Fast forward to the end of October -- I was wandering around Sichuan University on my way to Peace Corps HQ and saw one of those friends who I hadn't spoken to in ages, and we were both rather startled and pledged to phone and hang out. And we hung out. And clicked. Hard. And that probably turned the tables on Chengdu and China for me. I hate to credit it all to an external source, but frankly, having someone to share it with has helped immensely. I've always been known as a loner, but I'm not, really.. I crave company, I just don't really know how to connect. It's sort of sad, really.
Anyway, luck is that it ended up working out so well. I can't believe my life: China rocks, my relationship rocks, my life rocks.
I still hate pink. Why is this relevant? It's not. I used to have a boyfriend who'd ask me these crazy questions like,"Why don't you like pink?" and get really upset when he got answers like, "Just because!!!" I think I had an argument about why I don't like pink for an hour. Pink sucks. Why? Because it sucks. Simple as that.
So why? BECAUSE. So there. :)
