Site Placement

Written August 18th amid a whirlwind of fast approaching dates.

 The days do not cry of their own accord. No, I have banged my drums and spread my paint across the toes of mountains I will soon scale. I stand on the brink of a new adventure that is as monstrous as a silent room. The challenges I face are far above me. Their outlines are fuzzy, mixing with clouds and stars. I can not tell what is far and what is distant. I wonder: What is within reach and what is beyond the scope of two years as a volunteer?

It was just over a week ago that they called us up, one by one, to dramatically pull from a box a name, below which a school and location was written; “Ben Elmakias” flip page “Gansu Industry Polytechnic College [break] Gansu, Tianshui.” I swooned like a human swirling in a puddle of expectation, prediction, hope, and reality. Reality is the water, the other three are the mud that give it a color worth examining. 


              










Gansu, as I understood at the time of reading my card, was the province to the north. Sparsely polluted, sparsely populated, beautiful rocks and sand, with a hint of green things. As a vegetarian; fear began pulling off the little fat that doesn’t keep me warm from my boney frame. The flip-side; standard Chinese runs rampant across those hills. Ideal for my personal goal of becoming academically fluent in Chinese over these next two years. This is, after all, my home for the next two years.

From inside the translucent yellow packet I pulled a stack of papers: a description of my school filled out my the school, two site guides to my school filled out by previous Peace Corps Volunteers, and a barrage of paperwork that would need careful reading and filling out. The last one was momentarily irrelevant as I skimmed through the precious information. The roar of cheers, histrionics, laughter, and awe all whispered in the background. Much louder were the words in my head drifting past in all bold, all caps, and alternating between italics and underlines. It’s no surprise I was exhausted after 20 minutes of reading.

The Facts:
I’ll be at a school of 8,500 on the outskirts of a small city of 3.5 million.
Ill be teaching students who will enter the tourism and service industries.
It will be a 17 hour train ride to get there.

Following the announcement session, all folks going to Gansu headed upstairs for a briefing on our new homes. It was here we learned of the conservative leanings in Gansu, the gender inequalities we will likely encounter, and that we were chosen for Gansu because we represented three qualities: studious, healthy, and a good attitude amidst challenges. But I’m pretty sure the people in the other three provinces heard reasons they were special, too.
But this all brings me to the moment of revelation. Since Tianshui is in southern Gansu, it is actually quite green and it’s specialty is fruit, particularly apples and peaches. SCORE. Vegetarian, no problem.

The bunk beds stacked three high.
Ryan, my city mate, is on top.
Next came lots of talking, some admin sessions, some more admin sessions, lots of anticipation, and then two days later I got on a train bound for 17 hours to the north. Fortunately, we got beds.


The building I'll be teaching classes in.




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