On Being Song-ed

The last Sunday night at HuaQiao, before I left for good, to take the train to Shenyang and then fly to Xiamen with my mom -- that was a hard night.  I said goodbye to my friend Peter, and my student Savis pressed last gifts into my hands -- a necklace for me and a fan for my mother -- and claimed a hug (which is uncharacteristic for Chinese guys); my dear friend Alicia at dinner with Mom and me, and Bridge and Caston came by to say goodbye.  I think I shoved Bridge out the door after I hugged her because I didn't want to sob in the middle of cooking.  Or with so many people.

After dinner, Mom and Alicia and I walked to the store inside the stadium to get some kind of icecream on a stick and met up with a few of my students, who had put together a photo album for me.  Then I gave the key to Simon and walked Alicia back to her dorm.

It was a night filled with giggling and thank yous and goodbyes and tears.  But then there were things that needed to be done, because no matter how important and emotional goodbyes are, backpacks still must be packed and the bunny's room ought to be cleaned up.  It was a beautiful night because it was full of so many of the students who are really dear to me.

Alarms were set and we went to sleep, planning to leave around 6 the next morning and get ourselves to the train station.

It was a few minutes after my alarm went off the next morning that there was a knock on the door.

I opened the door and found no one there.  Which made me think that it was either Bridge or Alicia.

I looked around the door.  Alicia!  And Peter!

They came in and sat with us while we ate breakfast and finished getting ready to leave.

Then they walked us to the metro.

Then they rode with us to the train station.

Then they sat with us in the train station until it was time for us to board our train.

In China, it is a very honored tradition to song people who you are close to.  To see them off.

And while, as an American, it is not nearly as strong as a tradition for me, I felt incredibly loved by these two dear sibs waking up so early and going out of their way to take us as far on our journey as they could.

And I still totally cry when I read Alicia's goodbye to me...

But as she told me when I cried, "We're all in His hands."

I delight in knowing of the dear friends who I will absolutely see again.  When we won't have to see anyone off, because there won't be goodbyes.

Same Same... But Different

So a lot of people have done posts about things that are strange about being back in the US.  However... here are a few things that are weird to me.

Drinking water from the tap.
Flushing paper in the toilet.
How clean everything is... especially the floors at the grocery store... I bet you could eat off of it.
Traffic.  There's so little of it... and I'm pretty sure drivers would freak out if I meandered halfway across the road.
Everything is in English.
There are so many people who I know!  It's kinda crazy....

I miss my students and friends from China and my teammates.  I skyped with Hilary and G and called Danielle and keep sending ridiculous messages to Simon on wechat.

It's awesome to see my family again and to run into friends and get to hear about what they've been up to this past year.

One thing I don't have to miss is the quotes.  ^_^

Ib, flipping through my notebook:  "Hannah, I've been trying to crack your code for months."
me:  "Ib, that isn't a code.  It's Hebrew."
Ib:  "I KNOW THAT.  I meant the Elvish."

Naptime

On the last day in China, I finally took Mom to see the Great Wall.  ^_^  I was very proud of myself and my navigation skills... they've definitely improved as I learn to read more characters!  Haha.

Anyway, on the way back, we decided to head to Tiananmen Square, which meant a trip in a bus.

Please note:  buses in China are often crowded.  That's normal.  Even to the extent that a lot of people are standing and you may not have much room to maneuver and have to shove a little bit.

However sometimes the buses are beyond crowded.  I don't even know how to describe it, besides that you have people's elbows in your ears and it really isn't the most enjoyable experience, unless you want to have more sympathy for sardines.

This bus was in that state.

A family got on -- two kids in high school, a little boy who was about seven, and a mom.  They ended up pretty close to where Mom and I were sitting on the wheel well (and couldn't budge from) and we exchanged smiles and shrugs as the bus continued to have yet more people jammed into it.  After a few minutes, there was a sluggish flurry of motion (trust me, it happens on these buses) as the high school aged girl tried shoving the little boy (probably her cousin) towards me.

My reaction:  Oh, she's trying to get him close to me so that he'll have a little more space to stand.  Even on the most crowded of buses, typically foreigners are given a tiny bit more space.  I didn't have any problem with this so I smiled and tried shoving other people with my knee so that the little boy would have somewhere to stand.

And he did stand for a minute, holding onto my knee and looking not entirely sure of his surroundings.

And then he sat down on my knee, which was a little strange but not a bad idea.

And then he fell asleep.

Okay, for the record, I have not ever had a stranger-child climb up on my lap in a Chinese bus before and conk out.  It was funny, but I wasn't entirely sure about it.  His family was all very entertained, as were all of the rest of the people who were stuck at such angles that they could see us.

My main fear was that the kid would wake up, realize he was on a stranger's lap, and freak out.

He did wake up at one point.

But he didn't freak out; he just rearranged positions to be more comfortable (and to cuddle closer to me) and fell back asleep.

So this arrangement continued until we arrived at Tiananmen Square, where I picked him up and shoved him at the older boy with a sorry, we're getting off now, and we exited the bus.

China never disappoints.

In the words of Samwise Gamgee: "Well, I'm back."

Back from China, through Canada (and immigration there was not exactly a cakewalk... who knew the officers get really jumpy if you bring back chicken feet?) and in America.

America is strange.  I can get on facebook without a vpn, toilet paper gets flushed rather than thrown in a trash can, and I can drink water straight out of the tap.  Also, there is cheese in the refrigerator.

My stuff is mostly unpacked and put away.  I love having my books back, because it's so much easier to write and to study when many of the resources that I want are readily available.

And I still have a ton of stories to tell, and many pictures, so there will probably be most posts for a while yet.

Mystery: Solved

We were waiting for a bus in Xiamen and talking about shoes for some reason.

"What are those shoes with little holes called?" Alex asked.

"Tennis shoes?" I suggested.

He didn't look convinced, but this led to a lengthy-ish discussion between Mom and me about evolving terms for different types of shoes.

As Alex hadn't been throughly satisfied with "tennis shoes," he and I went on trying to hash out what term he wanted.  

Shoes with little holes.

And then... it dawned on me.

Crocs.

They're very popular in China.  

^_^

Passport Face

"You have a passport face," my friend Alex informed me (and my mother).  It's true in a lot of situations -- clearly I'm not Chinese, and so sometimes guards don't really bother checking my ID.  It's fairly plausible that I'm a wai jiao, a foreign teacher.

Another advantage of having a passport face is the great reactions from people that happen when I'm least expecting them.  

Yesterday, for example, Mom and I were walking back to our hostel when I noticed a young man dodging through traffic with a plastic bottle of tea in his hand.  He noticed us too.  As he got to the sidewalk and began chugging his tea, he stared... and stared... and stared... and then started coughing.

My sympathies for any of the guys who half-drown themselves on tea because they're so busy gawking at the foreigners are, well, limited.  

Story number two is even better.

So one afternoon in Xiamen (which, you should note, is a pretty hopping metropolis, not a rural village somewhere in western China), Mom and I went into KFC to get lunch.  In restaurants that have picture menus, I almost always get what I was trying to order, because it is fairly fool proof.  So I went to the counter, looked at the menu there, and began pointing to it, telling the cashier (in Chinese, mind you...) how many of each thing I wanted.

He.  Freaked.  Out.  

He took one look at me and instantly began hollering for one of his coworkers to come over and help him, because his coworker's English was better.  His coworker was busy with something and he continued yelling as if I was a bank robber and they should all be instantly dropping to the floor.  After a minute, his coworker finished up what he was doing and came over.  

His English was up to the task of taking my order (two sandwiches, a bowl of soup, and two cokes) and telling us to sit down and wait for tswo minutes.  We got our food and went upstairs.  

As we went up the stairs, I glanced back, and he was standing by the cash registers, hands on his head, clearly in a state of distress and feeling that he had been taxed near to the limit of human endurance.

Sometimes...

I really just don't understand.

I've certainly been in situations where that response would be merited from whoever I was trying to talk with.  (Particularly in taxis.)  

But in KFC... really... that was not one of them.  I can order food.

I hope that he's getting as much mileage out of talking about the terrifying foreigners who came to KFC as I am about the cashiers who freaked out the moment they saw foreign faces.

Learning new idioms

As you might expect, Chinese has some idioms that English doesn't, so sometimes even if my friends are "speaking English" I really have no clue what they're saying and it takes some explanation.

Example #1)

me:  "Hey, who is that girl that J. is with?"

Caston:  "I don't know."  *laughing*  "He's a flower flower boy."

me:  "...um... what?"

Caston:  "He's a flower flower boy."

me:  "I don't know what that means."

There was a great deal of back and forth (and Dan backing me up on the fact that we had no clue what this meant) before Caston sort of explained it... that he's a good looking guy who all the girls like, and so he's always with a girl, but it's always a different girl.

Turns out it's a Korean term.

However, the difficulties in idioms are not always so easily resolved.

Example #2)

My friend Simon was telling me how he doesn't look like his siblings and is also a good bit younger as we were walking through the mall one day.

Simon:  "I was a pig in the dustbin."

me:  *confused*

Simon:  "Do you know what that means?"

me:  *picturing pigs-in-a-blanket*  *deciding that this is maybe an idiom for a surprise baby?*  "No...."

Simon:  "Pig in a dustbin.... hmm... it means that maybe I wasn't really from that family, just they found me somewhere.  But it's just a joke, not really."

me:  "Oh, okay."

And so I accepted this pig-in-a-dustbin idiom.

Only to realize several weeks later, when he was trying to explain this to my mom, that he hadn't said pig in a dustbin, or pig anything at all.  He said picked up in a dustbin.

...facepalm.

My Heart Is Full...

Danielle has a few signs in her apartment that say My Heart Is Full.

And that is how my heart feels right now.

It has been great to be back in Xiamen, where I spent a semester studying, to revisit streets and see some old friends, to eat some of the same foods, and to have time to hang out and catch up and keep up on relationships.  Also, it is fun to share these things with my mom.

My heart is also full with all the conversations that are still happening and that I've been a part of in these past few weeks, conversations that sometimes take very different turns from what I was expecting.

The class monitor -- who is one of the best class monitors I know -- who talks about stress and how he gets his ear pierced every time there is too much stress to handle.

The student at EC who tells us he is halfway.  He still has a lot of questions and wants to be sure before he commits his life to something.

Another student who is very shy at the beginning of English Corner.  He just finished his freshman year of university and came home for the summer and his mom told him to go practice his English, but he said he had never talked with a foreigner before.  And then we found a connection:  he goes to school across the street from where I've been teaching all year, yet we meet here in Xiamen.  Instant friends.  

Brothers and sisters... everywhere...

And I am so blessed to have been here.  To have gotten to become friends with so many students, to have loved and to have been loved, to have learned about teaching and about talking and how to cross space to communicate what I care about most.

Yep... my heart is full.

Let's go to Gulangyu first.

We text each other with these plans like it's a normal thing, as if we haven't been separated by more than a year and a half, by thousands of miles of distance. Like this is any vacation and of course we'll meet up and hang out.

It just amazes me to be able to say it: I'm waiting for Jill's bus. Waiting for the little sister I said goodbye to in December 2011, both of us crying so hard, not knowing if we'd see each other again.

And then I couldn't get China out of my head, couldn't get her out of my heart, and came back.

So now I'm waiting for her bus.

And thanking the Giver of all good gifts.

Happy Fourth of July!!

I looked at the screen that was alerting me to a new message.

Hannah ~ Happy Independent Day~

followed by a second message five minutes later

sorry... it's Independence Day.

I looked at the calendar; yep, it is indeed July 4.  In a country that sets off firecrackers every day (really, just ask my mother... she's been here a short enough time that she still notices the sound!), somehow I hadn't thought much about the biggest day of fireworks in America.

What I find a little interesting is that I've been in at least 5 very different locations for the fourth of July so far in my life.

Indiana PA

Beaver Falls/Beaver PA

Orlando Florida

Stillwater Oklahoma

and now...

Changchun, China

^_^