the title

Now that I've slept for a bit longer I can explain the title.

Eat, Pray, Teach is yes, an homage to Eat, Pray, Love, which was a great book before it's film counterpart.  I first saw the trailer for the movie while abroad in New Zealand and I bought the book once home.  It was a quick read and after spending 4.5 months "studying" in a foreign country, this book filled me with desire to go abroad as soon as possible.

Eat.
Food is an important part in my life.  Raised on homemade dinners and desserts, I have an appetite for fresh, flavorful food.  And prefer it to be made with love.  This love of food prompted my summer plan of farming in upstate New York on an organic farm.  Access to fresh herbs, fruit, vegetables, meat, and eggs is wonderful.  Chengdu, China is provincial city of the Sichuan Province where their food is the fame of China (or so they say here).  It is a spicy cuisine rich in flavor.  The locals swear by spicy's power to cure any ailment.  My first bites of slightly spicy food were wonderful.  Full of new flavors that my taste buds savored.  While here in Chengdu, I hope to work on my spicy tolerance and document my foods.  I am silly for leaving my camera behind when I sampled rabbit among other delicious meats and veggies.

Pray.
Chengdu is an important city for Buddhism, at least according to my travel guide and is also the birthplace of Taoism.  Many Eastern religious traditions have interested me for quite some time and I hope to learn much more about them while here.  However, the pray will most likely refer to the prayers I send to myself.  Without a higher deity, these prayers will be to myself.  Constant reassurance that I can do this.  This goal of studying Eastern prayer and praying will hopefully build more self-love, something that can be hard to hold on to while growing up.  Just think back to when you were five with that confidence to do anything, say anything, be anything? What happened to that?  Exactly.  Perhaps I'm on a quest to rediscover the five-year-old.

Teach.
Although Liz Gilbert ended her story falling in love in Bali, I highly doubt this will be the course for me.  Instead I would rather focus on teaching and being taught.  I seek to learn much about China and to speak Chinese.  As a teacher, I will be teaching AP Psychology.  Though I will also be teaching them what Americans are like.  The teacher part of my job will probably be the most challenging as I have no prior experience.  But I am open to life and willing to try.  I will also be a counselor, helping the students work on college things.  The details are not all fleshed out, but this will also be an area of teaching.  Education has been at the forefront of my life for most of it and will continue to be, even in China.

Thus I hope to Eat new foods that may scare me with their spice and origin, Pray away self-doubts, and Teach psychology and the small bit of wisdom I know while learning in return what others have to offer.

Eat, Pray, Teach.  Could be fun, eh?