China Gray

View of the river that my Apartment complex sits next to. Typical scene of China: Old people dancing in the evening. View from Qingcheng Mountain just north of Chengdu. A weekend trip with the host family and relatives. Qingcheng Mountain again Chinese, TEFL, food, TEFL, Chinese, was the basic arc of my last week. This week is closer to: Chinese, TEFL, food, prep for teaching, teach, self/peer review. To summarize the period  between my last post and right now: brain blisters. Brain blisters are these spots on your brain that hurt whenever you think about the topic associated with that spot. To be clear, I’ve made this up. But this is kinda what a big chunk of my day feels like as I struggle to lift my foot high enough to get through the next threshold. I’m confident that through one I’ll find something soft to sleep on, or at least an air conditioner.  The past days have been sincerely arduous. Time has been tight and even tighter for me as I ...

Friday morning marked our final day at the hotel; we’re all moving on and out into our host family's homes. Each of us has a sheet of paper with their names, phone numbers, and two sentences to describe our life for the next (almost) 3 months: “The host mother works in a company as an administrative staff (sic). Her son is a 15-year-old boy.” Reality: she runs her own company but the boy really is 15 and probably will be for about a year or so. But, who can say for sure? As the Peace Corps manta goes “it depends.”  Ancient Street. I had actually just returned from lunch with Maria. We picked up some food from one of the many “C” rated restaurants around town. That’s a “C” for “didn’t pass a lot of health inspection guidelines.” It sat comfortably in my stomach as rain brushed across my don’t-shoot-me orange raincoat.  The reality of what was happening twisted my head from my neck as I watched Sarah walk past me with her new Chinese family and her next two years in...