Jet Lagged

I want to curl up into myself and sleep forever.  I want to find a dark cave with soft mattresses unlike the brick I currently inhabit.  I want to find the fountain of youth and find my younger spirit again.
Or...something.
I have jet lag like woah.  I go from hungry to nauseous, tired to wide-awake, muscle aches to endless energy, etc. etc.  It makes it hard to want to explore or feed myself.  Oh and the fact that I don't speak Chinese isn't helping.

Yesterday (the 4th -- I finally just altered this blog's time stamp for the new timezone - 12 hours ahead of NYC), I did not do much.  I withdrew money from the ATM and it worked--thanks to English directions.  Thus I have an access to money, which feels good.  Breakfast consisted of some toast, ham, and orange juice, thanks to Gregory's fridge.  Maybe it's a Russian tradition to just let guests do what they please, but he never really showed me where anything is but tells me to eat, or cook for myself of whatever.  I guess that means he is helpful and I am grateful, but I couldn't seem to find much in the kitchen yesterday.  Today I just made an omelette with Chinese gas burners, which are intense!  Very large flame and even all the way down, my eggs were bubbling like mad.  But effective.  Can't wait to have my own place and make culinary messes in privacy :)

Gregory is interesting to me.  He always talks about physics or American high school system or phones or anything really, maybe he is not use to company? Or trying to cheer me out of jet lag? I'm not certain.  He has taught in the US as well as Russia and is very bright.  He had some good strong criticisms of American private and public high schools, but is quite a fan of our universities.  We went for a walk with his dog, Gwy-gwy, which means cute in Chinese, though I may be wrong about the pronunciation.  We walked to a new nicer area of the International Community--which is where we live.  Though it's mostly Chinese--and by mostly, I mean pretty much everyone is Chinese--it is called the international community.  Apparently Chengdu hopes the other expats will move here.  The newer places are villas, a rarity in the apartment world of Chengdu, and are very very expensive, though very cheap for American standards, but not affordable by my intern salary or the teacher's salary.  They are nice with ponds, grass, and trees.  Gregory had much to say about...everything as usual.  We visited a store where he purchased some flour and things and I purchased Oreos.  They have more flavors of everything, including Oreos and Lays potato chips.  The Oreos were a silly purchase, I admit, and tasted all wrong.  But I was starving as breakfast was little and I thought we were headed for lunch.  Apparently I don't really understand Gregory...at all.

So after lounging around his apartment, we were visited by Charles, another teacher.  I purchased AP World History books for him and he came to collect.  He is American and maybe 50 with a large American gut, a tad bigger than Gregory's.  They told me that the school health insurance found them unhealthy, which they protested, and the school has changed insurance since.  Chinese are very thin.  Then again many countries have thinner populations than the US.  Charles asked if we had found food, which I thought meant maybe we would eat soon!  But, no, Gregory was saving room for dinner and Charles had already eaten.  After Charles left, I went to find food.

It was 3:30pm and I hadn't eaten much (besides Oreos) since around 8:00am.  Thus I picked the first restaurant I saw.  As I walked in, the waitresses laughed a lot.  Then I saw the menu and I laughed a lot too.  It was a clipboard where you check what you want.  And there were no pictures nor English.  Oh that's right, I'm in China!  After maybe 20 minutes of failed communication where ideas to communicated included looking at pictures in front of restaurant (which were all seafood and CHICKEN HEADS), the waitress saying fishy or chicken, which is great but not enough to pick food in a spicy spicy area with a jet lag stomach, and showing me raw CHICKEN HEADS in the back, a customer (I think) had the idea to take me into the kitchen, where he showed me raw meat (maybe pork? not really sure) and some veggies to which I nodded very very enthusiastically.  With my circadian rhythm all off and no food in hours I was just about to fall asleep from pure exhaustion.  The food arrived to the table just in time.  There was a plate of greens, cooked, and unidentifiable and a plate with the meat and light green slimy delicious vegetables.  I don't know what I ate, but the 2nd dish was delicious.  My right hand, however, was cramping with the chopsticks--perhaps also part of jet lag muscle fatigue as my body just aches or maybe new hand muscles developing, chopstick muscles.  They laughed a little at me trying to eat, but I was in heaven with food finally finding my stomach.  I took a while to enjoy my food, mostly due to the slow rate that I can eat with chopsticks.  The waitress urged me to use a spoon and I refused.  I need to learn.  I paid at the counter, 35 RMB, so about 5 dollars.  I said "xièxiè" or thank you, to which they smiled and then tried to tip them 10 RMB as I was so grateful (granted that's only $1.50 American).  The woman circled the 35 and I nodded and tried to articulate that it was extra, then left.  This of course, it NOT okay so the waitresses chased me outside and tried to stuff the 10 RMB into my pocket.  They eventually won and the entire street was paused watching.  My first meal on my own, what a country!  This is going to be difficult, but it did work, I did find food.  Life is all about the small victories.

I went to Walmart after lunch.  Yes, Walmart.  A new store for Chengdu, but apparently it is the reason to live around here in the international community.  I bought some hangers, my first pair of Chinese slippers for indoor use, some toasting bread, and some oranges.  I failed to find the weighing station, though the checkout girl was kind enough to do it for me.  One has to weigh produce before checking out.  I felt like a stupid foreigner.  A food coma, or real coma, or jet lag coma, or something was setting in fast so I walked back to Gregory's and took a nap, a 3.5 hour nap.

I awoke in darkness and found Gregory, already back from dinner with some friends. After the humorous but exhausting lunch ordeal, I was not very interested in struggling for dinner so I had an orange, some toast, and found some leftover pasta in the fridge (that was made for me the previous night, I should add).  Gregory and I discussed a bit more about teaching and I started thinking about my first class.  That was about as far as I got when another jet lag coma (I like that phrase) set in and I went off to bed.

I have never been so jet lagged, though I've never changed time zones by 13 hours before (or alternatively 11).  Though NZ was 18 hours ahead, it felt much more like 6 behind.  I read something online that suggested a day for each time zone crossed to which I laughed loudly at.  I'm not going to spend 11 days feeling like this, I have classes to prepare and food to find.

Today will be better.  It already is with an omlette and some coffee to wake up my circadian rhythm.  And I still can't believe I'm in China.  Hopefully my brain will be back online soon.

EDIT:
Today I went out with Gregory to walmart, just to follow him around and he was very helpful about where to find things.  So much fresh food at walmart, crabs and fish all alive, meat that is very very fresh, and more.  But on the CHICKEN HEADS, I was mistaken, I swear there was a beak, but apparently I didn't see the whole picture, they were RABBIT HEADS.  Which means the meat I had for lunch yesterday was also probably rabbit, which is still delicious.  Gregory says the heads are more difficult to eat but delicious.  We'll see...

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?

Beginnings

“I’m in Chengdu, China.”  No matter how much I say it to myself, it doesn’t seem believable.  How did I get here? What am I doing where? And, more importantly, why am I here?

How did I get here?

An delayed airplane from Chicago took me to Beijing on October 1^st landing on October 2^nd where I missed my 2^nd flight.  United was nice enough to give me a hotel reservation and a meal ticket good for 15 dollars.  Which I thought was fifteen RMB or yuan.  Mary, a rather new grandmother trying in vain to connect to her flight, was kind enough to point this out to me as we sat down for a late 10:45pm dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Mary was headed to (insert unpronounceable Chinese city #1 here) to see her son, daughter-in-law, and two Chinese-Canadian grandkids. “Everything happens for a reason” was her mantra, at least for a day of flight delays.

Dinner was not what I was hoping for for my first meal in China: minestrone soup with garlic bread and fresh green salad.  However, it’s what my body craved after who knows how many hours on a plane.  I could not understand what time it was and didn’t care.  All I knew was I had a bed upstairs in a very swanky hotel room with keycard activated lights.  Bed time came fast, but morning faster.

The phone rang at 4:30 AM on October 3^rd, with almost 5 hours of sleep (plus the 2 on the plane, but how many hours ago was that? A day? A month? A year? Another exaggerated period of time?), I awoke in Beijing and headed to the airport to speak with Sichuan Airlines.  Though they had told me the day before to be there at 5:30, they could not help me until 6:40.  After finding some food in the form of mysterious muffins with maybe fruit inside(?), served warm, a mocha, and a bottle of water, which all set me back nearly 60 RMB ($8.50?), I returned to Sichuan Airlines to pester them into letting my fly.  After being told that this is “holiday week, all full, all full”, I landed a standby (which in Chinese airlines means that you actually have a seat and were never standing by to wait for one). I raced to the gate with 5 minutes to get there after checking two bags, that for whatever reason had no baggage cost.  I was aided in my attempt to meet the plane by a Chinese man on a cart, who tricked me by offering me a ride and then revealing there was a fee (Chinese lesson #1).  The 10 RMB was gladly doubled as we raced towards the gate, action-movie style.  At the gate, I got on a bus(?) which drove us to the plane out on the tarmac.  I made it, I was headed to Chengdu.

Sichuan airlines serves food, on a 2.25 hour flight!  Not that I could identify much of what I ate: a potato piece, a weird dry-cake-like-rice-like/really-not-sure-what, and some other things.  As we descended through Chengdu’s clouds, I saw the city in the distance and farmland with dirt paths underneath our path.

At the baggage claim, both my bags were together, side-by-side.  Perhaps my luck was turning.  (After an exhausting week at home in Evanston, IL where everything that could go wrong seemed to, minus the wonderful support from both my parents, it was about time for things to start going my way.  Right?)  I turned to exit, knowing that I had yet to tell Sarah from Dipont that I had a flight, and was greeted by Sarah!  Tina, another Dipont employee in the office had called Sichaun Airlines and found out that I was on a plane.  I was very impressed and presented Sarah with a Chicago Bears hat that I had picked up in O’hare as thanks.  I mentioned I was a bit hungry and thirsty and we drove into the heart of Chengdu.  Bikes and bicycles were everywhere as were pedestrians crossing the street.  Every second it seems an accident is just averted.  Sarah mentioned that every teacher has a bike.  We’ll see.

Lunch was delicious.  Sarah ordered for the table and plate after plate of food danced to the table.  First was some kind of mushroom that’s not quite a mushroom, or at least I think that’s what Sarah explained.  She had decided not to tell me what most dished are until I have tried them.  Served with the first dish was lettuce with a peanut-sauce, I think.  I had mentioned to Sarah that I would like to stay away from spicy food at the present as I do not have a high tolerance.  The next dish was beef served over bean sprouts.  Delicious and it had a kick though Sarah did not agree.  She did warn me that the next one would be a little spicy.  I put a bite of, I think very very slim beef, into my mouth and was met with a rush of unknown flavors.  This, this was Chinese food and wow is it flavorful.  My silly American taste buds tried to understand the depth of flavor, but eventually the spiciness won.  My chopsticks steered themselves toward the cool lettuce for a rest.  The most interesting dish was what appeared to be cantaloupe, and might have been but tasted a bit off, with a firmly set brown and white pudding.  Sarah could not explain this one well enough for me to understand.  Tofu soup entered the table, as did dumplings.  The dumplings were served all connected by a crispy fried lattice-like thing (I dislike the use of thing here but really don’t possess the words to describe this).  Breaking the dumpling free was the easiest chopstick move in the meal.  The meal was wonderful and quite filling.

Chinese food is served in big dishes and everyone using his or her chopstick to take food; chopsticks that go into one’s mouth.  And speaking of chopsticks, they are not my best friend…yet.  Sarah thought I was poorly skilled, and yet I was overjoyed that the food was continually making it to my mouth!   Sarah paid on Dipont and we headed over to Gregory, another teacher’s apartment.

Gregory teaches AP Physics and has for three years.  He is the longest lasting teacher at the Chengdu Foreign Languages School, where I will work.  There is a high turn-over rate.  He has a thick Russian accent and very energized spirit.  With a 31-year-old son who was recently married, Gregory is not in my age bracket.  I don’t think the other teachers will be either.  Granted, I was not originally hired to be a teacher.  The AP Psychology course was mentioned only a few weeks before I got here.  I hope I don’t disappoint, but every other teacher is, as I thought, a teacher—like a real teacher: older, with teaching experience, and a great knowledge of their subject matter.  I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get there—which will be Saturday when I have my first class, an 80 min class.  Class is usually Monday through Friday, but we are making up for this week not having school, as it is Chinese national holiday.  Thankfully that means I have a couple days to make a lesson plan or sleep.  Maybe even both.

Gregory lives in the same apartment complex as many of the other teachers.   Thus after watching some Chinese television with Sarah, it was time to look for my apartment.  I followed Sarah and the realtor around.  Sarah translated and we saw 5 different apartments for all different prices.  I had yet to unpack my camera (still haven’t) and should have: I couldn’t keep them straight.  We spent maybe 2 minutes in each one.  Chinese are quick!  Reckless? Perhaps, but quick.  The first one was quite dirty, though very cheap.  The second one is already forgotten.  The third one was nice, only because it was on the 5^th floor.  The fourth one had a shower door!   It is not custom here for shower doors/shower curtains/wall for shower, so this one was tempting, but it was the most expensive and had three bedrooms.  My two bags would not be able to fill the space at all.  The fifth apartment (first 5) on the fifth floor (second 5) inside the door marked 5 (third 5) was somehow very nice.  No shower curtain means just a showerhead next to the toilet with a drain in the floor.  Thus, I’ll need a mop.  The mattresses, unlike the other four places, where 2 inches thick and rock hard.  I told Sarah that if we could switch the mattresses and negotiate the price down, I would take it.  We were able to do both and when the landlord returns after holiday I will pay have a place to call home.  Sarah thinks I’m very lucky for the deal that I got.  My first apartment that I will own will be in China.  But this still feels like a dream.

I went to Sarah’s apartment for dinner with her husband, mom, and cousin.  Her mom wanted Sarah to tell me that I’m cute.  Lily, the hiring manager, told Sarah to look for a tall cute guy at the airport; so much for rugged American.  Dinner conversation was all in Chinese and I sampled all but one dish.  It had been a long day of new things so I gave myself a pass on duck legs? Sarah insisted they were hands, but I couldn’t handle that…yet.  I did bite into some delicious meat and Sarah asked me if I liked it and then mentioned it was rabbit.  I could care less about eating rabbit; it’s delicious–like chicken plus beef in texture.  The family enjoyed watching me try to use chopsticks.

We bused home and I found some time to start thinking about: what I have just done?

So I got here by airplane.  What am I doing here?  This question will probably need to wait.  I was hired to have a college counselor-type position as well as teach AP psychology.  I do not know much about my job responsibilities, so we’ll see what happens.  Going to be an interesting first month for sure.

Why am I here?  Haha, your guess is as good as mine.  I have a yearning for travel.  I want to experience a life that is full.  But perhaps, and I say this on the 2^nd day that I may have bitten off way more than I can chopstick, which as I was reminded of today, is not much.  However, I am willing.