I moved – here’s my new URL: http://www.worstkeptsecrets.net.

I\’m not disappearing, I\’m just trying something – it\’s probably going to take me a while to get it set up, but I will let you know as soon as I do.

Ok, so, I had a really nice Thanksgiving, and a great weekend, even though I did sustain my first Chinese injury….

We had Thursday and Friday off work, and miraculously, both of those days decided to be absolutely gorgeous, unsmoggy, and warm. Thursday afternoon we walked around Nanjing Normal University, and watched Leif play football (see, Thanksgiving traditions totally intact!). The campus was BEAUTIFUL. I mean, it really might be the prettiest college campus I\’ve ever been on. The buildings were really old, and of the architectural style that reminds me that I\’m in a really foreign country, there were trees everywhere, and students were lying around on the grass, studying and acting like college kids, which I think made us all feel a little old. Then we went to the top of Purple Mountain, and found big rocks to climb on. It was really, really nice to get out of the city and play in the dirt a little bit, and I really enjoyed monkeying around on the boulders.

We made it pretty high up those rocks – a lot higher than I thought I was going to able to go, incidentally – and got a crazy awesome view of Nanjing spread out all over the horizon. I was sitting up there, mostly just worrying about how in the world I was going to get back down, but also being a little thunderstruck to be looking at this huge, sprawling, beautiful city that\’s getting closer and closer to being my home. We drank a pot of (overpriced) chrysanthemum fruit tea in a little tea house at the top with big comfy couches and huge windows, and then went to Blue Sky for \”Thanksgiving dinner\” – I got pork chops, mostly because I didn\’t want to order anything that shared the same name as Mom\’s cooking, because I knew I\’d be in for a bitter and depressing disappointment. I\’m sorry, but no one makes mashed potatoes like my mom. I don\’t even LIKE mashed potatoes that aren\’t my mom\’s. They were good pork chops, though, and it was fun sitting around with my circle of China friends that sort of function as a temporary surrogate family, talking about home and stuff.

Friday was another beautiful day, and we wandered around for quite a while looking for a good restaurant. We found one, after a really nice wander, and I think I finally internalized a few more dishes. So now I can order fried rice and fried noodles, plus this tomato and egg dish I\’m getting addicted to (shi hong se), kung pow chicken (gong pao ji li), soup (tang), and this tasty potato thing (tou dou se) [I have no idea if I\'m spelling any of this pinyin right, just trust me that I can say it out loud]. Then I got my phone set up and did some shoppin\’ – if you want the number, shoot me an email – I\’ve also got an image file of my address, in case anyone wants to send me presents. Then we did our Friday thing, which mostly involves tequila and shaking it like you would not believe, which led to my first Chinese injury, as we shall soon see.

First, though, I talked to a guy in a really low key little bar near my house who is friends with the manager, who agreed to let me practice on their piano – SCORE. I tried to play, but the thing was so out of tune that it caused me actual physical pain. So I\’m going to pay to tune the thing, and in return, I\’ve got practice/performance opportunities. I also found myself a potential Chinese tutor. Busy night.

Anyway, after that place and the tequila, we eventually made our way to Big Scarlet, where we had an awesome time flaunting ourselves and our total lack of concern for the artistic principles of dance, and got up on a platform. Unfortunately, a lot of other people had that same idea, and, even more unfortunately, I was too close to the edge. End of story, an accidental shove sent both me and Chris tumbling down to the floor. Apparently, it looked like a nasty fall – Lily said it wasn\’t even funny, though I have a hard time believing that people dancing off the edge of a stage wasn\’t even fleetingly hilarious. But she said it looked awful and that it looked like the sort of thing that resulted in broken bones. Chris and I also just sort of laid where we fell for a few moments, which made it look even freakier. And I banged the living hell out of my head. I realize that a bump on the head doesn\’t even seem worth mentioning, but you guys really should have been there to palpate the monster. There was a lot of discussion as to whether or not my dizzy ass needed to get to a hospital, but eventually we decided to just go home, and I realized that I was probably fine, I\’d just found myself in a position to milk as much sympathy as humanly possible, and I rarely let such opportunities slide. Even so, I wasn\’t allowed to sleep until early the next morning, even after the internet said that was unnecessary in the event of a possible concussion. I felt fine when I woke up Saturday, but apparently while I was freaking out about coma/death/brain damage, I completely did not notice what I did to the rest of myself – I\’ve got a totally bruised to hell tail bone, and I don\’t even know what I did to my shoulder, but I do know that it HURTS. But once again, DANG I love my China friends – I don\’t know how many of you have had to try to deal with an injured, drunk Anne, but take my word that it\’s not easy or pleasant to do, and I was really glad to have them around for that whole melodramatic incident. So everything\’s fine, just don\’t get too wild and crazy near precipices.

Saturday was good, too – I stayed in my pjs, watched Predator, and sampled Chinese red wine (which I regret to report is a big ol\’ thumbs down – however, if your choice is between that and baijiu, go for the wine) and took it easy while whining about my shoulder/back/bottom incessantly. And it\’s looking like today\’s going to be a similarly laid back sort of deal. Fine by me. I do have pictures of most of what I\’ve been talking about up on flickr, so knock yourself out on that. Unfortunately, there\’s no video of the fall, which I imagine, in spite of Lily\’s account, was pretty damned funny to watch.

I\’m not being very good about updating at all – it\’s just a little bit of a pain to do, and I can\’t figure out how to make the slashes go away, other than avoiding contractions and various other punctuation marks. Let\’s face it, I can\’t live without parentheses.

Also, I can\’t link and I can\’t add pictures, and the whole thing is just a little frustrating. The good news, though, is that I do have sweaty dancin\’/drinkin\’ pictures on flickr, if you\’d like to see how we do (the same set I put on facebook). I also included the high five series – not my idea and not taken by me, but on my camera at the end of the (extremely long) night.

So, yeah, the weekend was fun – perhaps, dare I say it, too much fun, since it\’s now Tuesday and I still feel like I\’m in recovery. This week has been exam week, which means that I\’ve had a weird schedule, and I\’ve been invigilating other classes. Have you ever heard that word before? Chris broke that one out a couple of months ago, and I thought he was just flashing some ridiculous arcane vocab, but it\’s the word for watching students take a test, and everyone here uses it like it\’s not a completely weird word. Invigilating is not a whole lot of fun – you\’re basically expected to stand there and stare at a classroom full of stressed out students for 2-3 hours. The first test I invigilated was a three hour ordeal that included listening, reading, and writing sections. During these three hours, I memorized the poster at the back of the classroom that illustrated the causes of conflict, and they were: lack of empathy, lack of compromise, poor communication, needs not met, making assumptions, desire for power, self-interest, intolerance, prejudice, ignorance, challenge to values, and cultural threat. I didn\’t think that was a bad list. Then I tried to memorize the other poster, which had all the effects of conflict, but I didn\’t finish that one since there were more of them (I got as far as unhappiness, fear, poor self-esteem. negative thoughts, anger, physical violence, rudeness, hostility, stress, distrust, frustration), and the game was getting kind of boring. The class I was staring at didn\’t seem to be phased at all by me staring at them, so I started an intensive catalog of their shoes. About seven of the boys had Nikes on, and three of them had the exact same blue and white pair. The girls were more varied, with one pair of yellow and red converses that I spent a few moments actively coveting. The shoe game stopped being interesting pretty fast, too, so I started doing credit card related math in my head, which always induces a huge headache but is a great way to kill an awful lot of time.

While I was sitting there, though, I got to thinking a little bit about the students themselves, and the extent of the wall there is between me and them. I mean, I don\’t even know their real names – all of them use English names, some chosen and some assigned, and I don\’t think I like that practice very much. It\’s like they construct this entirely separate identity that only exists in English class, and it kind of weirds me out when I think about it. So there\’s the name thing, and the language thing, and the fact that I have absolutely no frame of reference for imagining what their lives are like outside of class.

Ok, to illustrate: if I\’m sitting on a bench in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and a man in a business suit rides a bicycle past me, I can make up a story for him. I can visualize the corporate meeting he just got out of, I can make up office banter all around him, I can imagine his white house and family pets and what his bathroom looks like. Obviously, I could be completely wrong about all of this, but there\’s a chance that some of it might be accurate. Here, though, I see the same thing, and I have absolutely no way to mentally supply missing puzzle pieces. I know that my students have families and hometowns that they love, and I know that they have friends and that they must go shopping for shoes. I know that they are very sleepy on Monday morning, and that they study wayyyyyy more than I ever did when I was their age. But I can\’t imagine what their parents\’ living room looks like, or the things they talk about with their friends, or even what they want out of life. I mean, yeah, we talk about monsters and chest hair (have I mentioned their absolutely bizarre fascination with chest hair here?) and they tease me about my love life and I dish it right back at them, but that\’s foreign language class talk – I remember similarly themed conversations in freaking French class, when we knew just enough of the language to try to make jokes but not enough to make them particularly nuanced. I don\’t know; while I was feeling incredibly awkward staring down my exam-takers, it really sunk in how big a distance there was between us and how much work it\’s going to take on my part to ever be able to bridge it.

Let\’s see: today I had a student ask if I was from America. I told her yes, and she said that she would love to go to America, it sounded like a lovely country, but she was afraid because she didn\’t have a gun and that it was very dangerous there. I told her that I never had a gun and she didn\’t need to have a gun if she wanted to go to America, but it was still sort of a WOA, different country! kind of moment.

Another \”oh shit I AM in China\” moment: we were talking about nationalities and I had them draw a map of China on the board, and then the neighboring countries, which sprawled out into a map of the entire world and led to a north/south/east/west exercise involving a penguin stranded in Ireland trying to get home to her parents in Antarctica. However, at first I was just pointing to the different countries, asking students what you would call a person who lived there (Russian, Indian, etc). Without thinking, I pointed at Taiwan and got a unanimous \”CHINESE!\” Woops. Definitely in China.

Anyway, my class took their test today, and they did very well, which made me feel better about things. They got snickers bars and a movie day as a reward. And as MY reward, I\’m getting a four day weekend. I\’m trying not to think about the fact that it\’s almost Thanksgiving too much – I\’m expecting to have a complete homesickness freakout over Christmas, and I\’m trying to consolidate as much of that into one holiday as I can. I am feeling that, though – it\’s starting to feel like it\’s about time to drive to Harrison to have dinner with Mom and Dad, since it\’s been about three weeks and I\’m used to being able to go visit and stock up on familial bonding and delicious cooking (or delicious pizza hut, really, either one is good!). I\’m also kind of jonesing to go pester Daniel and shotgun all the episodes of Heroes I\’ve been missing, and I definitely wouldn\’t say no to Thai Diner with Shaun or a comfy evening at the Dinosaur House with tasty vegetarian treats. However, it\’s too early in the game for me to start getting mopey over such things, and that\’s why I\’m going to be a trooper about Thanksgiving. I\’ve just never not been home for this, you know? I guess missing holidays is a little more grown up than I ever meant to be.

BUT, there\’s a consolation prize, assuming our paychecks come through in time – I think we\’re going to head over to Suzhou for a couple of days and check that out. It\’s an ancient sort of tourist town a couple of hours away on a train that gets called the Venice of China due to a large amount of canals and streams and stuff. So I think that\’ll be a lot of fun, and there will be a full report on that, with pictures.

Erm. What else can I tell you about? I was about to go off on a rant about how I\’m concerned I\’m not doing enough cultural crap, but if I do that, I can\’t exactly tell you that it\’s Tiger Week on Animal Planet and that I\’m really excited about that. I need for this satellite business to get struck by lightning or something. I used to brag about how little tv I watched. Most of my shows came on DVD, and were not the product of idleness but of genuine interest, and I felt so good about that. However, if you just don\’t HAVE cable because you can\’t afford it, I guess you can\’t really brag about how strong and good and active a person you are until you\’ve faced the temptation head on. I just love me some Animal Planet, and for the first time maybe ever, I\’ve got a non-sibling who\’ll watch it just as happily and for just as long as me, and who will also make me pasta and popcorn and feed me olives with chopsticks while he\’s at it.

Holy crap, internet, I am HAPPY! I mean, it\’s kind of weird, and every once in a while (usually while I\’m sitting on the toilet, for some reason – unfortunately, adjustment here does involve some lengthy toilet trips, and I guess I find that to be a prime life contemplation time), that\’ll kind of sink in, and it\’s a little bit like getting a new pair of glasses after wearing the wrong prescription for years and having to get used to being able to see properly again (not going for a cheesy vision metaphor there, just the feeling of betterness being something a little strange). I wasn\’t unhappy before this, but I was pretty bored and I definitely felt like I was stuck in a rut of twenty-something angst and self-absorption. Now, I spend most of my day actively involved in my life, rather than just letting it pass me by, I feel like I have things to talk about again, and I feel like a pretty together, reasonable, not-batshit-insane person, and it\’s fucking great!

End of story, move to China! Seriously, if I can do this, you can. Or don\’t move to China, just do something you want to do. It helps, a LOT. (you\’re totally allowed to punch me the next time you see me for having a life coach moment there, I know that\’s obnoxious).

Anyway, Tiger Week is calling my name, so I\’m done for tonight. I hope everyone\’s well, and I\’ll talk to you all soon.

I did wind up staying home on Friday night, furiously cursing my stomach for keeping me indoors while everyone else went out to play. Saturday, though, I felt much better and me and my entourage (I like using the word \”entourage\” or \”posse\” better than \”preexisting social dynamic I have bulldozed my way into\”) went to Xuanwu, the lake in town. It was a gorgeous day, and a surprisingly gorgeous lake. It was really nice to be outside and able to stretch out my arms and spin around without knocking anyone over. There were plenty of people out there walking their dogs, flying their kites, juggling, and making out, but there wasn\’t a throbbing mass of people surrounding you at all times. There were some hiking trails, tea houses, and what looked like the beginnings of several carnival rides, and a driving range where you pay 45 yuan to hit golf balls into the lake. Which we did, enthusiastically. We were also a lot better at it than you might have thought, although we noticed problems in our follow through form upon studying the photographs. [Which I meant to post here, except it looks like I can\'t add images to my blog via this particular channel. Go check my flickr page.]

Then we came home and tried to cook out. The night before Chris had marinated chicken breasts, and we had veggies and garlic for kebabs, corn on the cob, and brats – sort of a \”wait, aren\’t I supposed to be in China?\” meal, you know? Unfortunately, the charcoal we had was not self-lighting. This led to the boys going on a lengthy scavenger hunt across the city in search of lighter fluid while the ladies stayed home eating peanut butter sandwiches. The males returned without lighter fluid, but with a wicker plant stand they intended to set on fire and dump the charcoal on in an attempt to light it. So they went up to the roof to do that, while we stayed in and decided against betting on their success since we both were pretty sure of the outcome already.

Anyway, Chris wound up running back to the supermarket to get a different brand of charcoal and a disposable grill kit, just in case, and we eventually got the food cooked (I\’m using \”we\” in the sense that I sat and politely observed while everyone else worked, although in my defense it wasn\’t my innate laziness this time, just my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to grilling). And we ate and were very happy. We also did NOT burn down the building.
[You know, I had a picture of this, too. DAMN it, China.]

Um, other interesting things that happened to other people this weekend: a girl we\’re going to call Badass until I get her permission to talk about her openly on the internet got a hamster. Its name is Patrick and I get to be his aunt. I never much cared for hamsters, honestly. But then I found out that the Chinese word for hamster translates as \”pearl bear,\” and when I started thinking about Patrick as a pearl bear, I decided that I love hamsters. He\’s a damned cute little ball of fluff, too. He took a little nap in my hands and ate some bread and made a little poo, and if someone is comfortable sleeping, eating, and shitting around me, I him as my friend. [For pictures of said pearl bear, well, you know what to do.] The way that I reacted to having something small and fluffy in my hands made me think that I should get a pet. I know, I know, everyone of you who knows me is thinking, \”here we go again…\” since the last time I said that, I got into this snowball effect that ended in a tarantula, two snakes, two rats, and two cats, each of which (minus the Brain, rest her soul) had to be relocated. I mean, that was a hard lesson in responsibility right there – people my age and as rootless as I am SHOULD NOT GET PETS, and I still feel soul-suckingly guilty for acquiring so many animals that in the end I was unable to care for.

But come on, a fish? I could have a fish! I adored my fish in college, and its passing was hard on me, but didn\’t require a three week mourning period. I\’m afraid of getting something mammalian that I wind up projecting all of my personality hang ups and overemotional tendencies onto, only to have it die and feel like a piece of my soul went along with it. Hamsters, well, haven\’t we all had a bad hamster experience? Mine involved an escape, a cat, and a long, drawn out death in my hands (his name was Squeaky and I loved him). And I can\’t have a dog or a cat, period. Yes, I pass scores of adorable, needy, big-eyed, totally lovable puppies and kittens on a quasi daily basis who desperately need the good home that I alone can provide for them, but NO DOGS OR CATS. I was incredibly lucky to find temporary housing for Ipso and Parker in the US. The chances of me finding a satisfactory Chinese home for someone are infinitely tiny.

I am sort of thinking finches, though. I\’ve never had much of an interest in pet birds, other than the occasional passing fantasy of owning an African grey who would talk to me when I was lonely and frighten away unwanted guests and generally be my best friend. I guess the only thing that really interests me about birds is the fact that they can fly, and it seems like having birds in cages means depressed pets and a bored owner. But during the ludicrously long shower I just took, I got to thinking that it might be very pleasant to have a little singing friend. This is a very loud place – there\’s construction happening everywhere practically twenty-four hours a day, and the traffic is nonstop and honky, so a bird friend wouldn\’t make any difference in the overall noise level – it would just be a nice, welcome home noise. And I could get it a pretty little cage and a lovely hand painted ceramic food pot and bring it to the park with me on nice days. It would also be a very Chinese pet – I see people wandering around with their bird cages all the time.
[Yes, I do have pictures of this as well.]

Furthermore, I think it might be extremely good for my psychology right now. First of all, I really like having something to take care of, and I\’m no good with plants. That might make me feel a little more grounded here, especially since I feel so dependent and like I need taking care of at this point in my life. I don\’t know, I\’ll think about it. Fish or finch, though, I promise. No cats or pandas or pigs.

Back to hamsters: this is the best internet find I\’ve been pointed to in a long time. It\’s hamster fan fiction. Guys, I thought snake owners were weird. Apparently, they have absolutely nothing on these hamster freaks. [Hey, guess what. It\'s not letting me put in links either. Here\'s the URL: www.hamsterific.com - yes, it is misspelled. Go to the forums, and then to Happily Ever Hamster for the good stuff] Let me transcribe a poem for you:

Hammy Heaven.~
For those of you who have lost a loved hammy.
You lost a hammy that you loved,
But the truth is they arent really lost,
They are in hammy heaven,
Watching oer you like you did them,
So keep your head up high and look to the sky,
Where your hammy watches as your life goes by.

If you\’re bored at work, seriously, cruise through some of this – the fiction ranges from adorable to pricelessly bad.

The other big drama this weekend involved Badass\’s boyfriend, who I shall call the Christ until further notice. He will be called the Christ because he\’s like that kid in the Ursula K. Le Guin story \”The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas\” who experienced all the suffering for the town so everyone else could be happy (we all had to read that at some point, right?). It\’s like he goes through all of the worst case scenarios so the rest of us don\’t have to. I guess only two bad things have happened to him, but one of them was getting hit by a bus on his bike, and the other was emergency dental surgery in China. Do you see my point here? Anyway, a crown broke off while he was eating dinner, and he had to go to see a dentist. He had a translator and a girlfriend there to support him, but when he told the story, all I could think was, \”thank god this didn\’t happen to me.\” It sounded like a nice enough dental clinic – but the language was different. I was freaked out enough in a US dentist chair, with people telling me exactly what was going on, reassuring me, and reminding me to take deep breaths. The Christ just saw terrifying equipment being aimed at his mouth, and all he could do was periodically shriek for his translator, who was having some work done next door. Badass described how horrible it was sitting in the waiting room and hearing the Christ scream, \”NEEDLES! ONE NEEDLE ONE PERSON! TELL THEM! TELL THEM!\” She said every time he would holler, everyone in the waiting room would jump and get really quiet. Poor guy.

But they did a nice job repairing it, and he did live to tell the tale. The lesson here is that Chinese dentistry is survivable. Apparently, so is getting hit by a bus and tossed several feet in the air… I just kind of hope that everyone in that clinic now thinks that NEEDLES! is an American curse word.

Ok, I am now going to respond to all of the comments you sweet people have left. Thank you so much for reading this – it actually means quite a lot to me, now that I\’m here on the other side of the looking glass. You have no idea how good support feels from familiar sources and I can use as much as you can dish out.

Remember how I got back from visiting China and was all, \”I didn\’t even notice the pollution?\” Ok, I take that back. Yesterday was about the most disgustingly hazy day I\’ve ever seen in my life. I woke up and thought, wow, it\’s really foggy out, and when I walked down the hall to go to class made a mental note to clean my glasses – even the hallway looked hazy. You can see across the street, but not much further. It\’s kind of disturbingly impressive how nasty and stinky the air managed to get over the last two days. I woke up this morning and blew my nose, and had the black snot – I don\’t even mean the kind of black snot I\’ve had before in New York or London. It was like there was tar coming out of my nose, and also coating the back of my throat. This is going on the list of things that may take a while to get used to. I don\’t know if that\’s why I\’ve been feeling vaguely sick to my stomach all day or what. I really almost threw up in a taxi on the way back from Jin Run Fa, which is sort of Chinese Wal-Mart x 1000.

On a more positive note, we went to a German restaurant called Swede and Kraut last night (which I really hope has nothing to do with my queasiness) that was one of the best places I\’ve eaten at in a long time. Tomato soup, chicken smothered in this mushroom/onion sauce, red cabbage, and some kind of potato/bacon/cheese/onion thing with a name that sounded like a severe respiratory symptom, German beer, and an absurd dessert that involved cake, ice cream, whipped cream, sour cherries – GOOD. If you\’re ever in Nanjing, you should definitely eat there. A huge group of English speakers sat next to us, and I suddenly realized that the only thing I\’m extremely used to is being able to talk about whatever I want with the chances of any passersby understanding me being next to zero. One of the first things these people said when they sat down was, \”Chinese people have no sense of humor,\” and I reflexively started to mock them, remembering just in time that they did in fact speak English and would understand every word I said.

I realize I\’ve only been here for a week, and I\’m not really in a position to start judging people who\’ve been here for years, but I\’ve noticed some of the weirdest attitudes toward our host country in the foreign population. I mean, yeah, this is sort of a weird place to live, and there\’s plenty to be annoyed about, but at the same time, we\’re voluntary guests here and it just seems beyond rude to me to say horrible things about the people who actually live here, like \”Chinese people have no sense of humor,\” \”Chinese people can\’t get anything done,\” \”Chinese people are stupid because they can\’t speak English,\” etc. I\’ve heard that most people who stay in China for any length of time develop a bit of a love/hate relationship with the place, and that makes a lot of sense (I\’ve had a love/hate relationship with just about everywhere I\’ve ever lived). It does NOT make sense to expatriate to a radically foreign country if all you\’re going to do is sit around and complain about it, right?

Anyway, for the record, I know Chinese people with a FANTASTIC sense of humor. I see nineteen of them every day.

So I got lazy in class today and showed them a movie. I made up a little quiz about it to pay a little bit of lip service to education, but they\’re not going to have \”comic book,\” \”damsel in distress,\” or \”superhero\” on their final exam, so I didn\’t press them too hard on it. We watched the Tim Burton Batman. Incidentally, it was kind of fun coming up with a Batman test… and fun trying to make sure everyone was staying with the program. I kept running up to the board to write things like CRAZY or PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE. I think they enjoyed the movie – my class is a lot of fun to watch movies with. They laugh really loudly and react very vocally to explosions, kisses, tragic demises, and things like that. I was worried that they weren\’t getting much, though, because the character of the Joker speaks almost entirely in puns and cliches, and he\’s entirely based on circus trappings and joke shop gadgets – stuff my students probably aren\’t familiar with. They got the main point, though, that he was completely insane, and they really wanted to watch the sequel, so I guess it was a success. Another teacher was showing his class The Princess Bride, which sounded like a much better idea to me, since you hardly need any cultural grounding to get a grip on that one. So maybe I\’ll do that the next time I show a movie.

Right now, I\’m just hanging out hoping the Pepto will kick in and I\’ll be able to go out tonight after all. Upchucking doesn\’t feel quite as eminent as it did a few minutes ago, so tonight may a success after all. You guys have a good weekend, when you get around to it – it\’s not even 6 am there yet, I guess.

Hi internet! I live in China!

God. I feel so displaced. I don\’t mean that in a negative sense, everything is just so different that I don\\\\\\\’t even know how to start living a normal life. I was walking down the street a few days ago, and noticed that I was entirely comfortable and not freaked out in the slightest. I thought, weird, did I really adjust that fast? Gradually, I realized that adjustment had nothing to do with it – I was just so overwhelmed that I\\\\\\\’d stopped processing anything at all.

That\\\\\\\’s getting a little better – I\\\\\\\’ve started putting things together (this is a drug store, that\\\\\\\’s a bicycle repairman setting up shop, there\\\\\\\’s a news stand, here are some students, that\\\\\\\’s … fetal chickens in a barrel? OH GOD IT IS, etc.). I still require an awful lot of hand holding, though. Remember how I lived in Fayetteville for two years and still had to ask directions every time I tried to get to Hugo\\\\\\\’s? Yeah. This is a much harder game to play. A. The street signs aren\\\\\\\’t in English. B. What street signs? Plus, my school is located down a twisty little alley, and there are a few different ways to leave. Basically, I never have any idea where I am. The good news, though, is that I have got some patient, patient people in my corner.

I\\\\\\\’ve got to say, though, Nanjing is fine by me. This is by far the biggest city I\\\\\\\’ve ever lived in, unless you count the ten weeks I spent in London without having to pay for anything. I really do feel safer walking down the street here than I ever did in Fayetteville, though. Fayetteville\\\\\\\’s all dark and weird, and people got shot near my house and there was a serial rapist running around campus, etc. I mean, I\\\\\\\’m sure violent crime happens here, but no where near the scale of the average US city. It just feels so much less threatening than American standards. There\\\\\\\’s a little bit of a sense that no one expects the worst from each other, and consequently, few people ever get it. I\\\\\\\’m not being stupid – I know that pickpocketing is pretty common, and I know there are a large amount of scary scams aimed at foreigners. For example, in Shanghai (right after my plane had landed the first time I visited), we were approached by a couple of kids who said they were art students and invited us to come see their work. Chris brushed them off, really emphatically, and that startled me – it didn\\\\\\\’t seem like the Chris I knew to yell at art students. Later, though, he explained that it was a big ol\\\\\\\’ scam to invite people into a \\\\\\\”gallery\\\\\\\” with some hotel-style paintings on the walls, give them a cup of tea, and charge them an exorbitant amount of money as soon as they try to leave. If the tourist doesn\\\\\\\’t want to pay for something she didn\\\\\\\’t know she was buying, there are usually scary, large men on hand to enforce the transaction. It\\\\\\\’s things like this that make me really happy to know people who have been here a while – I would have fallen for that much faster than you can say \\\\\\\”Anne trusts everyone.\\\\\\\”

Anyway. Monday was my first day of class. I have landed a job at a fairly prestigious school that hires experienced, excellent teachers… and me. I would advise that all of you think twice before you accept a job offer made entirely on the basis of your connections. Because WOW I don\\\\\\\’t have a clue what I\\\\\\\’m doing. And no one really had much to tell me, either. So at 8 am Monday morning, I stumbled into a classroom feeling like I was going to throw up and found nineteen Chinese teenagers staring at me with the bleary-eyed hangdog look of Monday morning students, waiting to see my first move.

I honestly don\\\\\\\’t remember the last time I was that scared. I was pretty nervous before my senior piano recital, but at least I was ready for that – I knew what I had to do, and I knew I could do it. I guess I was nervous the first time I led a tour at Mystic Caverns, but there was a script for that, and I\\\\\\\’d shadowed other guides. But last Monday, I was absolutely petrified, and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It was one of those experiences that I\\\\\\\’m just glad is over, and hopefully I\\\\\\\’ll never have to have again.

The bell rang and I took a deep breath, which seemed oddly devoid of any oxygen. I told the class my name, and wrote my email address on the board. I glanced around the room – no response. I tried to sympathetically ask if they were tired – nothing. I asked if they had a good a weekend. It was like I\\\\\\\’d never spoken. OH MY GOD, I thought, and instead of running screaming from the room, I started passing out my silly little getting-to-know-you questionnaire I\\\\\\\’d frantically thrown together the night before. As the kids flipped through it, their eyes went from sleepily wary to out and out miserable, and it occurred to me that maybe I\\\\\\\’d gone a little overboard – what was supposed to be fun was going to be a ton of work for non-native speakers. But every single one of them ATTACKED it. I\\\\\\\’ve been to funerals much less serious than this class answering questions about their favorite colors and three words that described themselves. I stood behind the podium willing myself not to hyperventilate while they scribbled furiously, flipping earnestly through their dictionaries, pausing to bury their heads in their hands, etc.

As the thirty minute mark came and went, I guiltily felt glad that at least this was taking up so much class time, since I didn\\\\\\\’t have much else for them to do. They spent the first hour of class on the damn thing. Then the break bell rang, and I tore upstairs to drink some water, go to the bathroom, and give myself a hard look in the mirror, telling myself \\\\\\\”Anne, you will survive this.\\\\\\\” I went back to the classroom, and to my horror I\\\\\\\’d developed a fullblown case of the shakes. I took a few more deep breaths, and started taking up the quizzes. I told the class in my highest, fastest, most nervous voice that I was going to read the answers out loud, and we\\\\\\\’d try to guess who wrote what.

At that point, one of my best students (I know now), developed the nerve to raise his hand and ask me to speak more slowly. I could have kissed him, I was so glad someone had said something. Then I broke one of the fundamental rules of teaching – never show your weakness – by accidentally explaining to the class that I speak really fast when I get nervous, and that I\\\\\\\’m a very shy person. I realize you\\\\\\\’re not supposed to do that, but BANG that broke the ice. All of a sudden, all of them were saying, \\\\\\\”Teacher! Don\\\\\\\’t be shy! We are shy too!\\\\\\\” And then suddenly they had thousands of questions for me – where was I from, why did I come to China? did I like China? did I play football? etc. We spent the rest of the hour doing fuck all academically, but I felt really good about it afterward. They gave me a Chinese name (Zhao Min). I really like the sound of it, but I later found out that while it means \\\\\\\”beautiful lady\\\\\\\” (what they told me), it also is culturally understood to mean, \\\\\\\”Wife of [Chris\\\\\\\'s Chinese name].\\\\\\\” This is a subject my students have boundless interest in. I thought I\\\\\\\’d dealt with it by telling the class that I\\\\\\\’d tell them all about my friendship with Chris as soon as one of them explained how such knowledge would improve their English, which got a laugh, but every time that name comes up, I get a chorus of kissy noises. Anyway, It was really obvious that I had a kickass class of really friendly, funny, smart kids who took school very seriously and who would be a lot of fun to teach…

… and Monday night I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown when I realized I was going to have to figure out how to teach them, from scratch. This was a classic Anne freak out moment, that developed very quickly from \\\\\\\”I don\\\\\\\’t have a lesson plan\\\\\\\” to \\\\\\\”I will never learn how to live in China\\\\\\\” to \\\\\\\”I fail at everything,\\\\\\\” and if there were points to be awarded for dealing with me in that kind of state, I know who would have the maximum possible. I did get calmed down, and with a lot of help and a lot of hand holding, wound up with a very good lesson about describing graphs. These kids are all studying to go to college in Australia, and they need to pass the IELTS test (like the TOEFL). The IELTS test usually has graph questions, and so this was something they actually needed to know. So we went over vocabulary (increase/decrease, slight/dramatic, remains constant, stuff like that), and I managed to fake over the fact that I haven\\\\\\\’t tried to personally describe a graph since high school. I was kind of amazed at how quickly they picked it up, and I gave them a writing assignment and we called it a day. Wednesday, we reviewed all that vocabulary and worked with graphs a little more, and then played the only game I could remember actually enjoying from French class. Every student wrote the first sentence of a story on a piece of paper, and then passed it to their right. Then the next sentence, and so forth. Each sentence had rules – for example, it had to be in the past tense, or it had to be a question, or it had to contain the word \\\\\\\”panda.\\\\\\\” Once they caught on, it turned into one of the funniest things I\\\\\\\’ve ever seen in my life. I\\\\\\\’m on a mission to figure out who taught all of them \\\\\\\”make love\\\\\\\” because that showed up an awful lot. They also married one of their classmates to a panda with alarming frequency. That\\\\\\\’s a stack of homework that I will be treasuring for the rest of my life. Today they did a grammar review quiz (that I made myself! that my support told me was really good! yes!), and we went over that, and then corrected some sentences on the blackboard together. Then we played the weirdest game of charades I have ever seen in my entire life. It started out like foreign language class charades – simple verbs and phrases, like \\\\\\\”swimming,\\\\\\\” \\\\\\\”taking the dog for a walk,\\\\\\\” easy stuff. Before too long, the class told me that my choices were too easy, and they wanted something harder. I gave them a few – \\\\\\\”cheating at this game,\\\\\\\” \\\\\\\”growing vegetables,\\\\\\\” you know. But that wasn\\\\\\\’t good enough. So I started letting them give the opposing teams their own phrases. This became absolutely insane, very quickly. They kept one-upping each other on the strangeness until one poor kid wound up trying to enact the sentence \\\\\\\”The dinosaurs were very beautiful last year, but they ate too many girls.\\\\\\\” Damned if his team didn\\\\\\\’t get it, too.

So that\\\\\\\’s been my work week thus far, and I\\\\\\\’m pretty ready for the weekend. Last weekend involved the most vile substance I have ever put in my body – baijiu, Chinese liquor. It\\\\\\\’s made from fermented sorghum, which sounds more like an Arkansan thing than a Chinese one, right? I\\\\\\\’ve been hearing about this stuff for a while, and I took a sniff when we opened the bottle and was pleasantly surprised – it smelled a little sweet and a little like apples. So I innocently downed a shot. The first half second it was in my mouth, it didn\\\\\\\’t taste bad at all – sweet and a little fruity – but then just before I swallowed it, something else happened entirely. Let me tell you, that is some nasty, nasty stuff. I gulped as much water as I could after shooting it, but later realized in horror that every time I burped, hiccuped, or breathed too forcefully the taste came back.

And yet I kept drinking it, feeling manlier and manlier every shot I took. I think I could get used to it, but that is going to be an uphill battle. I\\\\\\\’m really not the sort to put a huge priority on developing a tolerance for hard liquor, but there are some cultural expectations here that mean that I really should learn to take a shot of the stuff without yelping and running in circles. I\\\\\\\’m pretty sure that there are plenty of formal situations you can get into in China where gratuitous baijiu drinking is compulsory, and failure to comply can really hurt your social standing. I guess I\\\\\\\’m better off learning to fly in the comfort of the apartment, right?

Other than that, oh dear, I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’ve been watching a lot of Animal Planet and eating a lot of Mexican food… I know, right? But come ON, I haven\\\\\\\’t had Animal Planet outside of holidays at my parents\\\\\\\’ house, um, ever. Plus, there is some damned good Mexican to be found here. I mean, it\\\\\\\’s not what I\\\\\\\’d expect from Northwest Arkansas, but it\\\\\\\’s still awfully tasty. There\\\\\\\’s a place called Salsa that just serves some all around excellent food. Duck quesadillas? Who\\\\\\\’d have thought?

I\\\\\\\’ve gotten a little more adventurous over the last few days, though, and I have been eating honest Chinese food. There\\\\\\\’s a restaurant very nearby called Gold and Silver, which has a menu written in English and Chinese. And the menu is HUGE. Very good food. The only thing that really tanked was the lemon chicken. There\\\\\\\’s this dish that\\\\\\\’s basically just tomatoes and eggs that I\\\\\\\’m kind of in love with, and some killer spicy chicken with peanuts. Plus, the owner felt obliged to intervene in my laborious eating process – the guy actually came over and showed me how to use my chop sticks (I was pretty grateful – there was no point in being embarrassed, honestly. I have to learn how to eat). I get really excited about lunch, because lunch usually comes off the street and is FANTASTIC. Within a two minute walking radius, I\\\\\\\’ve got noodles, fried meat buns (soooooo much better than that sounds), lamb sandwiches, kebabs, and, um, fetal chickens in barrels.

That\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’s enough for today, I guess. Hopefully I\\\\\\\’ll be able to figure out how to post this (that\\\\\\\’s the reason you haven\\\\\\\’t heard from me via this medium all week, incidentally).

Also, if you haven\\\\\\\’t had the opportunity, congratulate Matt and Karen – they\\\\\\\’re freaking married! And apparently it was a hell of a party that I\\\\\\\’m very sad to have missed.

[Edit: Ok, there are some formatting problems. I will work on this... but not today, I\\\'m afraid. Sorry for all the slashes.]

Man, I wish my psycho nine hour layover had been in this airport. I love this place! I usually hate airports, but this one is very nicely laid out, low stress, and generally extremely pleasant, with the cleanest bathrooms I’ve ever seen in an airport. I guess you can’t really judge a city by its airport, but if you could, I am down with Hong Kong. However, Fayetteville’s airport, XNA, is a small, friendly, simple little thing that’s easy to deal with. Much like Fayetteville. At LAX, I felt stressed, rushed, compelled to spend money just to calm my nerves, and distressingly unattractive – which sounds about like LA to me. I love O’Hare – it’s big and messy and friendly, and matches Chicago.

I don’t really feel like I’ve even left the states – everyone speaks English. Also, taking money out of the ATM was stupid. Every place here seems to accept USD and RMB, as well as HKD. I just got worried when I found a beer vending machine (my only not-in-kansas-anymore moment so far) that only took Hong Kong money. But it’s pretty currency, at least. I wound up making friends with a really, really, really freaked out older lady who was in the middle of some kind of personal crisis and had charged off on an Asian adventure by herself. I spent most of my Hong Kong money getting her some comfort food at Starbucks. I sort of hate that my first Chinese meal was a green tea frappachino (I know, could it get any tackier?) and a banana nut muffin, but I felt much better after eating and much calmer after hanging out with someone who actually was freaked out to the max.

I’m sitting at my gate now, and I’ve got about an hour before my flight to Nanjing starts boarding. Until then, I’m going to enjoy this bizarre pastry I got from a store called Yum Yum Treat and read some more comics.

…and feeling a little less chipper. I had a good enough time in LAX, considering I was there for NINE HOURS. And now I’m here, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I’ve got a wallet stuffed with USD and RMB… which apparently don’t work here. I just really need some water, so I guess I’ll see what happens when I try to use an ATM? Um, I have no idea what’s going on with my checked luggage. I followed the herd through another security screening, and I’m hoping I didn’t somehow blitz through customs/immigration somehow. I mean, I guess if I did, there’s no harm, right? Provided I can find my gate, I can’t think of any reason that I won’t be able to get on the final leg of this monster journey. 34 hours total travel time, which I feel earns me eternal toughness points.

The flight was fine. I did have screaming babies in front and behind me, but my absolutely adorable Indian seat mate was nice. I had the little personal screen and everything, but I didn’t watch any movies. I mostly just slept fitfully and drooled all over my adorable seat mate, and woke up to eat and to make horrible faces at screaming babies. Then we landed, and it was rainy and foggy. This airport’s fine by me – there’s no one here (it’s 6:30 am), but it’s really pleasant in here and there are lots of big red couches (they’re all full, but still). If I can just figure out where I’m supposed to be, I’ll be in good shape. That shouldn’t be a problem, since I’ve got four more hours to do so.

It’s a little freaky being somewhere where my cell phone won’t work, I don’t have the proper currency, etc., but it seems like everyone in here speaks English, and I’ve got wireless. I stink very badly, and I cannot tell you how excited I am about brushing my teeth approximately seven hours from now.

I guess I’ll get off of here and conserve my battery, since I’m not sure about being able to plug it in anywhere and this is more or less my only means of communication. Fun!

Oh my GOD. I’m sitting at gate 104 in the international terminal at LAX, struggling through the layover that positively will not end. I’ve hit the bookstores, the duty free stores, and the donuts to the point that my luggage is bursting, and I will never be able to carry all of it. Want to see something impressive? Here’s what’s coming to China with me:

Maybe it’s not that impressive. And it definitely weighs all of seventy pounds (a little more than half of one Anne Gresham, for perspective), which I will be hauling all by my lonesome all over creation in about eighteen hours (creation=Hong Kong airport). By the end of this, my luggage is probably going to weigh considerably more than half of one Anne Gresham.

Um, let’s see (you’re going to have to forgive me, I’m feeling about as cracked out and crazy as I ever have in my entire life, and this is going to be incredibly stream of conscious-y). Friday, the moving crew showed up at my house, and moved all of my junk and a piano out of my house. I followed the truck to Harrison with my screaming cats in tow, and proceeded to spend the next twenty-four hours or so in an advanced state of freaked out craziness. I went back to Fayetteville on Saturday to clean out my apartment. It was one of those projects that never seemed to end – I thought I was needing to spend an hour or so, tops, on it, but it wound up taking all afternoon. While I was throwing things out of closets in the middle of the floor and running back and forth from the dumpster, I started feeling a little bit like I wasn’t voluntarily relocating to an awesome city in pursuit  of a great opportunity, but rather that I was fleeing the country… I decided to roll with that, since it made the time pass much faster, and spent the rest of the frantic final touches pretending like I was some sort of ruthless mercenary/double agent character who’d just found out that the game was up and was trying to stay a step ahead of her enemies. Her enemies, of course, being everyone. That wound up getting really detailed – some overseas military organization had found out the one human weakness in my steely heart, and I was desperately trying to make it across the world before said bad guys were able to capture that person. Then it started involving a plucky hooker sidekick named Candy who lived in New York and gave me a place to stay and never asked questions but let me know that she cared, in that hooker with a heart of gold sort of way, and my Short Round-esque contact in Thailand, and I had a big nasty German shepherd who’d saved my life more times than I could count, etc. Everybody else still plays in their head, right? I’m not a complete lunatic? Anyway, the truth is that I’m not a timid or passive person at all, I just expend my considerable levels of machismo daydreaming…

End of story, I did get my apartment close to satisfactorily clean and empty. And it was really weird.

Every time I opened the apartment door and two cats didn’t run out to say hello, I died inside a little bit. Look, I promise, I’m not going to spend all of my time in China crying about my cats, but WOW has that one been a little rough. I mean, just look at them.

However, things should be good for Parker and Ipso. They’re both staying with my parents, they’ll be able to go outside eventually, and they’ll have more room and more stuff to do. They really upset me this morning by not understanding that I needed to say goodbye to them and being more interested in breakfast than me, but I understand that cats aren’t the sort of animal to say goodbye. And I’ll see them again, I guess. It still sucked.

Then I went out with my peeps Saturday night, and that got extremely emotional eventually, but most of the time it just looked like this:

It was Halloween weekend, and so there were a lot of costumes, the best by far being Amy and Justin as Moby Dick and Captain Ahab, and Shaun as Jesse Custer from Preacher, somehow managing to look even hotter than the comic book character.

(I don’t really know those other people, but don’t you absolutely love them? I became completely hypnotized by Wonder Woman’s bottom – I mean, I realize it’s trashy to take pictures of people’s bottoms and then post them on the internet, but WOW!)

Ack, good grief, I was really planning on taking a lot of time with this post and summing up what it felt like to drive out of Fayetteville for the last time, how hard it was to leave my apartment and turn in my keys, what a hard time I had trying to pack, how mushy I got realizing that I was taking Battlecat on his last voyage, etc., but I just don’t feel like it right now. I’ve been sitting in this airport for several hours, and I’ll be here for several more, and then I’m headed to Hong Kong, and then to Nanjing, to find out whatever aspects of my personality I never knew existed are waiting for me on the other side of the world. It’s been a pretty rough few days, honestly – I absolutely detest saying goodbye, and there’s been a lot of that.  It’s not that I don’t want to say goodbye to everyone, I just really hate doing it, and I was feeling pretty rotten and upset in the middle of all of that. But the second I was on the plane, it got fun again – every thing’s taken care of, and I am well on my way.

My coworker made me a going-away card that had the Chinese characters for bon voyage, although the closest she could get were the characters for “happiness” and “journey.” So this is my happiness journey! I love it! And I’ve got a cheeseball title for my travelogue, should I write one. Because if there’s one thing the world needs, it’s another account of a white American teaching in China…

So yeah. Moving on/up/over/out, feeling a little spastic, but excited.

The next time I talk to anyone I know, I’ll be somewhere very different.