Thanksgiving in China

I didn't plan anything this Thursday but a chicken dinner, some wine and maybe a cultural movie to make myself feel like I was doing immersion when really I was trying to forget the fact I wouldn't be having a turkey dinner.

My lesson plan the week of Thanksgiving consisted of teaching the students a brief history, making some artsy hand turkeys and watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It was a laid back lesson as I've been doing because I find drilling vocabulary all the time into the students was way too heavy handed and they pretty much got that all day from their Chinese English teachers. I was told by the previous girl who worked as a foreign teacher here that not only were cultural lessons better because the students were more receptive, but they were easier to make. She couldn't have been more right. I haven't given a single test really except for one time when the senior class pissed me off with their incessant talking and lack of attention during a vocab lesson. Then half of them cheated and I made the cheaters retake a harder test. They fell in line more after that.

Thursday though was unbelievably mellow. I taught my lesson, went home and cleaned up and a student visited me. Her English name was Sandy. Sandy is a shy 17 year old sophomore girl who loves American pop music (in particular Avril Lavigne), reading books, shopping and she is extremely interested in traveling abroad. So she visits my apartment every week to chat and try to practice her English. It's endearing. I've had students grant me small favors of kindness but since we're all awkward introverts, well it just makes things delightfully awkward and as much as I try to force myself to be outgoing sometimes I'm just stuck for conversation topics. I'm not the exciting, bold, boisterous American they probably expected but I'm generally liked and somewhat popular despite this.

After Sandy left, I organized some school papers, half-heartedly listened to a Chinese lesson, downloaded a movie and grabbed my leftover KFC dinner that was soon to be my "turkey" dinner. As I nibbled my first bite around 6pm I got a message on my messaging app WeChat from Rose. "Hey what are you up to? Happy Thanksgiving! Do you want to grab dinner!"

Rose is a local Chinese English teacher who speaks incredibly fluent English at an international learning school across the street from my school. She loves taking selfies, talking about herself, American boys, shopping, and talking about all her outfits she bought for the day. 

Our dialogues mostly consist of "how do you say <insert garbled English word here>?," "I want an American boy," "I want a RICH American boy," "I want to go to America," "Can you take this picture of me?" and "What should I wear? Do you like this?"

Needless to say, I can take her in small doses and luckily she is not a clingy friend. Yet her westernized attitude about sex and relationships, frustration with her traditional Chinese family (she's 28 and unmarried and her mother pairs her up on blind dates with older, unattractive Chinese men) and her mulling over her silly encounters with boys and what she wants to do when she gets to America kind of make for a strange, bizarre entertainment. 

At the same time, Rose can also be generous often treating me to dinners, paying cab fares, introducing me to friends (she has many both Chinese and foreign), being a tour guide and loaning me helpful advice on getting around and/or Chinese culture.

It beat eating leftover KFC in my house watching Hulu so I took her up on the offer.

I met her at the school where she was wrapping up a lesson with a bunch of young children aged 9-11 and she was teaching them tourist places in Beijing. Yvette and Lisa were the two most outspoken. Yvette, a small frail girl in a white little sweater over a blue dress her hair in a ponytail, asked me if I could speak Chinese. "Not really," I replied. "Why don't we practice?" said Rose. She staged a introductory Chinese dialogue and then had them ask some questions in English directed towards me about the reading they were doing ie "Do you like to travel?" "How do you travel?" It was actually sweet and the kids spoke incredibly well. Actually , better than most of my high school students. 

"They speak so well," I said to Rose after the class was over. 

"REALLY?," she said. It was enough to stroke her ego into talking about how she's selective with the kids she chooses to stay in her class and her frustration with less qualified (as compared to her) teachers botching kids pronunciations of words. Also, her desire to not confuse them with American/British dialogues (the textbooks they used were British, as are most in China).

"What do you want to eat?" she said as we entered the cab. 

"I don't know. I'm up for anything really."

"Do you want to try some traditional Chinese food? It'll be cheaper than the Mexican restaurant we went to the other day."

I hesitated. I actually since orientation in Shanghai had not had any local Chinese food.  Each region has specialties and Wuxi is known  fish as it is a town surrounded by water, rivers and lakes. I am usually a huge fan of seafood but the way fish is prepared here in China usually doesn't whet my appetite. Perhaps it's the smell as it is particularly strong but also somewhat pungent. In terms of looks, the meat gray and the bones are left in. Despite all that, I thought it would be nice to break my custom and try something that actually would immerse me more into the local culture....at least try. I had only had the cafeteria food at my school and even the staff here hated the school food. Perhaps in a restaurant it might be different.

 This is Rose. Here's her taking one of her many selfies of the night. Her many, many, many selfies (btw she wanted me to take this picture of her taking a selfie...yeah.)

 This soup is a specialty here in Wuxi. I really wish I could remember the name. But it was fish, some octopus and and some greens. It actually didn't taste bad, a bit salty, but the texture was kind of gluey and the fish smell was kind of unbearable. I mustered and braved through a half a bowl.

 This was fried octopus and it was probably the best thing I've ever had here in my life. The sauce over it was kind of slightly tangy and sweet. It kind of also had a sandy texture to it but it was great. I love octopus.

 This was a seafood assortment with leeks and carrots on a seashell. Rose didn't explain it any further than "seafood." I ate it anyway and asked no questions. Sometimes that's best when it comes to Chinese food...something will often look good till I realize what part of the animal its from.

This was actually duck and inside (you can kind of see poking out) was rice but it was a special kind of rice usually put inside buns. It was a sweetish rice, with fatty duck mean, and a sweet grounded up powder to dunk it in on the side. It was ok, I think the duck was mostly fatty parts than meat and it was near the end of the night so I don't think they put as much love into it as they should have.

Needless to say it was a lovely time. We went shopping where she bought some hand lotions and we looked out at the beautiful city lights as we walked around cobblestone alleyways littered with small shops selling food, clothes and beauty products making our way back to the street to take a taxi home.

It was a different, but lovely Thanksgiving.

Hope yours went well.

Being Black in a Foreign Country

This past Sunday night, a thunderstorm blew through Wuxi that awoken and terrified me in the middle of the night. It was 5 am and the rain battered my windows as thunder clapped so loud it sounded as if the dark sky was being broken in half.

I am not generally afraid of lightning or thunderstorms (in fact I usually enjoy them), but my heart shook with a bit of fear as the winds beat upon my house so violently like an angry, abandoned, vengeful lover that I thought it would soon burst through and violate my space with its gusting rage and salty sky tears. At one point, in my sleepy fogginess, I heavily considered the possibility that it might be a hurricane.

I wrapped myself in my quilt, rolled myself into a cocoon and hurriedly drop-rolled onto the floor and under the bed where I stayed for a minute or two before I realized the windows would not break and my room would not be flooded.

The next morning, tree branches and leaves were scattered all through the campus and large muddy puddles speckled the ground. Small trees were bent in half, some broken in half or large portions of it whipped away. I felt disoriented, hazy, unable to focus the whole day no matter what I did. I felt depressed .I do not consider myself a superstitious person but there have been times in my life where I have felt a stirring of disturbance deep within my conscience and a premonition of something awry and it has never steered me wrong.

Something bad was going to happen.

Monday, the verdict was revealed for the Mike Brown case. As the days led up to the verdict I knew with the questionable evidence and shaky testimony that most likely there would be no indictment and that the officer that shot Brown would likely walk free. I talked myself into the fact that this was justice, that it was as the system should work, There was simply not enough evidence to indict. And I still believe that that might be the case despite a bad prosecution and the uncertainty of the events that occurred behind the scenes.

Brown wasn't necessarily the ideal martyr to expose the corruption in the justice system in my mind but at the same time I didn't feel he deserved to die and his body left out for hours before being removed from the scene. What Brown became, however, was a catalyst for pent-up aggression and anger over the unheard frustrations of decades of police violence, brutality, harm and judicial injustic that black communities often experience. I recall my own experiences when I was searched illegally and cursed at and badgered by a police officer a few years ago....for trying to swerve out of the way of a PennDot truck that almost hit me merging onto the highway. I had cut the officer off trying avoid the truck who merged without seeing me and the officer honked aggressively at me. He then pulled along side of me so I could see him, screamed obscenities, flipped me the bird and then flipped his lights on and pulled me over. I explained what happened and as I did he illegally searched my car (myself being so stunned by his behavior and my near-death experience with the truck was unable to think clearly about stopping it)all while asking me repetitively if I had anything valuable in my car as he prepared to tow my car (I was on my way to renew my license and had explained that to him, being 1 exit away from the DMV center to do so but since my license wasn't technically valid he would not let me drive). I answered multiple times just my laptop and he kept searching through compartments and my trunk. He had no reason to be suspicious of me but he was and nonetheless questioned me, towed my car off the highway and then dropped me off at a gas station instead of the DMV that was only a couple of miles further so that I could renew my license. He didn't wait to see if a friend would even pick me up before he drove off and left me abandoned there.

The officer looked very much like Officer Wilson. A white, blond male in his mid-20's. Badge, gun, power.

My parents have been harassed by cops and pulled over.

My brothers have been harassed by cops just walking around the neighborhood where we live in broad daylight.

And we live in a suburb with little crime.

For the record, I do not hate cops. Quite the opposite, I have always admired them. I encouraged my boyfriend, who is a blond-haired, blue-eyed white male, to go be a cop when he wanted to pursue that endeavor. His brother is going into the police academy. Some of my absolute favorite customers when I worked at Starbucks for 4 years were police officers who I always gave free drinks to despite it technically being against company policy and whom I was always excited to converse with.

But people who say race doesn't matter don't understand how the rest of the world truly works. Simply wishing something out of existence doesn't make it go away. People are naturally flawed and centuries old ideologies and stereotypes are hard to shake overnight. Ignorance will exist so long as people are unwilling to communicate and understand the consequences of history and there were plenty taking that stance of ignorance when what happened Monday night occurred. To provide any real change, we need confrontation and we start by confronting those that are spreading hateful ideologies. That takes action that may not necessarily be pleasant. but it is necessary. And I'm not talking about looting and rioting. I mean having candid discussions with other races, protests, demands for change, calls to action and holding those accountable who do abuse their power. These are the only ways to stop these tragedies from occurring. At the same time,  while I don't condone the violence that ensued afterwards, I do understand people not having a place to vent and siphon the rage over not being heard and not being able to have those demands met historically for approximately 400 years. At the same time, the media didn't show it but there were plenty of protests in major urban cities and neighborhoods where no looting occurred at all and people peacefully gathered and demanded changes. Unfortunately, peaceful protests don't sell papers (ie the democratic peaceful protests still going on in Hong Kong kept the interest of American media for perhaps 2 days at most). So the media has drowned out an important message because fires ablaze and angry blacks running amuck make for better, more interesting reads.

My experience here being black in a foreign country has surprisingly been mostly a non-issue. I researched racial slurs and braced myself for angry slurs and stereotypes when I arrived here because I had read some stories where blacks were not taken seriously as teachers or figures of authority based on racial perceptions in Asia (ironically the same ideas that have been spread by Western media).When the Chinese ask me about my experiences as an American, they ask me about it as an American. They don't ask me about my experiences as a "black American" and although sometimes I get occasional questions about stereotypes (ironically again ones perpetrated through American media) it is from a place of to understand something they really don't know about having come from a homogeneous society and access to this information only through media. I am not saying China is better than America or that China is perfect. It is a communist country riddled with oppression of the poor, sanitary/environmental issues, mistreatment and lack of regard for women and has a government willing to take away civil liberties deemed a threat in the blink of an eye.

But it is trying to catch up with the rest of the world having been isolated for so long. In it, I have found surprising comforts where there are glimmers of kindness, generosity, concern, understanding, curiosity, eagerness to help, and a sense of community and togetherness that I respect.

In China, they say the individual doesn't matter. That who you are depends on the types of people you surround yourself with. In America, we focus on standing out, being an individual and helping ourselves more than the collective. Both have their pros and cons, but there is something to be learned from the other. Perhaps, if we had more compassion for each other in our own culture we would have a little less suffering of humanity and those who struggle behind. At the same time, sometimes standing out and standing up for something, not being apart of the crowd can have it's advantages.

The Brown incident has helped me realize the types of people I've surrounded myself with may not necessarily be the best types of people. I have been a strong, vocal advocate of gay rights, women rights and pro-military. But those same people I stood by and advocated for many of whom I consider my dearest, closest friends have been deafeningly silent on being an advocate for me and causes that affect me. I cannot say this doesn't hurt but I also sadly cannot say I didn't expect it.

To some, Mike Brown is simply a criminal who stole cigarettes, assaulted a cop and deservedly got shot. And perhaps, Wilson was in the right given the evidence.

But the message isn't simply about a criminal kid who got shot deservedly. After all, Wilson was not actively pursuing Brown as a suspect for a crime when he pulled along the road and demanded they walk on the sidewalk. The racial message is missed because it is not overt. It's about a culture that naturally fears African-Americans and the fear is so ingrained and innate in our culture we cannot realize when encounter it and cannot bear to face it. For every Mike Brown, there have been a number of innocent blacks who, just based on perception, have gotten killed, harassed, or beaten for simply doing nothing at all but being at the wrong place and time. Brown's case reverberated around multiple themes that occur daily in these communities. Perceived fears by the majority of minorities and justice and fairness denied in legal systems. It has been about over a year of repeated shootings of blacks and exoneration of their killers. It's been a year of racial profiling through stop-and-frisks. Of kids grabbing skittles or listening to loud music but being killed for because they were considered a threat based on the way they looked. It's a build-up of anger and frustration over a justice system that has given stricter punishments to blacks for crimes that their white criminal counterparts escape completely with little to no judgement.

People say all lives matter. That's true. But the reality is that some people's lives end up mattering less than others and no one wants to acknowledge that ugly truth.

Just two generations ago, my grandparents were denied the right to education and access to better jobs. Can you overcome being in the hood as a black person? Absolutely. But what people don't get is you start at a disadvantage further back than most. If you're surrounded and raised by parents who were not exposed to having opportunities for education and job choices, they aren't going to be able to help guide future generations in achieving something they themselves never experienced or were given the opportunity for in their youth. They also aren't going to be able to explain it's importance or benefits because they seemingly survived without these things and don't know how to navigate them. Some kids realize this and work hard and overcome, but most don't because you can't be what you can't see and you can't do what you don't know. Poor neighborhoods lead to poor education because of poor schools which are poorly funded by poor people who can barely pay taxes to maintain them and are generally denied jobs because they couldn't afford an education. Add slavery, segregation, racial discrimination and fast forward these problems for two generations, you can see there is a cycle that does have some effect on the reason that blacks continue to struggle.

My father tackled this thought. "The fact remains that we have to start. We can't be caught powerless or those who don't want us around will be successful. Not everyone is going to be a lawyer or investment banker or teacher, but everyone can do something."

And there is a sense of collective unity in challenging these problems that seems to be making headway now as social media and technology revolutionizes sociological problems rapidly (women's rights, gay rights, rape culture).

But too many people focused on a single case instead of what the outcomes of the case meant: that is not even having a chance to be heard at all.

I saw reporter Lisa Ling vent her frustration on social media like so many focusing on the destruction instead of the message:

"Michael Brown's family called for peaceful protests. Those rioting are hurting are themselves--their community is going up in flames. How does that help them? It's all so sad. My heart breaks for Michael Brown's family, and the whole community of Ferguson."

But it was Sharonda Huff, a facebook poster, who answered eloquently what the real message in the bottle gliding on a turbulent sea was about. She echoed and broke down the frustrations and sentiments felt collectively by African-Americans:

"I don't really think it's really about Michael Brown at all. I think it's about our collective experiences as blacks in America. It's about our repeated experiences of injustice. It's about the grade teacher who treats you like you are nothing when you're 7 years old, and you don't know why. It's about getting handcuffed, frisked, and put in the back of a police car while your 9 month old screams in his car seat, because you have ran a yellow light. It's about being blocked for 4 miles on the freeway by a guy on a motorcycle with a confederate flag on the back of his jacket. It's about the automatic suspicion when you walk into a store. It's having someone be so afraid of you, when they don't know you at all. It's hearing that Michael Brown's body was left in the street, uncovered for hours. It eats at you. It is a daily struggle to not let it ruin you.
I have friends of all colors. And at the moment, I lean on them, knowing that all others aren't all bad. But I am struggling to keep down this visceral reaction. This visceral fear for my young black son's life makes me feel inwardly militant. There is a war happening inside of me. Love VS Hate. Your truth VS My experiences. Racism makes me sad. The looting makes me sad. The violence makes me sad. So, no, it is not about Michael Brown. It's about facing a world that is so brutal, and you not having the ability to do a damn thing about it. I wont let it ruin me though. I won't give into hate. I will continue to love all people. I stand with Michael Brown's parents. Please be civil. Please be peaceful. And PLEASE, let us get body cameras for the police. #Ferguson I lift you in prayer. #BlackLivesMatter#WeALLHaveAStory"

Sometimes, it's actually not about the journey. It's about the destination.

Why I've Been Silent

I know I haven't blogged exactly as promised and it's not for lack of experiences that aren't worth sharing.

I woke up today with horrible depression overriding my body as undeniable waves of culture shock shook me to tears. Earlier, I had glanced over at my phone and entered an app called WeChat, an instant messenger service more popular with international countries. I had looked and saw notifications under a tab called Discover, where one can post pics of themselves. I saw several people from my program going through incredible experiences, sight-seeing in Hong Kong, hanging out in foreign clubs and temples posing for pictures with other people in our program.

I was stationed out in Wuxi, 40 min from Shanghai but mostly I've been alone with the exception of one girl in my program and even though we've reached out to each other several times, I found her circle of expat friends from Britain that worked within her school to be very focused on themselves and maintaining their western experiences and privilege rather than immersing themselves in the culture around them. I didn't want to focus on drinking in a foreign place when I could drink at home. Still, I tried to blend because having English-speaking friends could prove valuable.

It seemed better than being alone, but was it?

The Brits drink, in my opinion, considerably more than Americans. They were interested in pub-hopping and dancing on top of the bars drunk singing American pop songs (yes, Brits singing American pop songs).I'm turning 30 in 2 months. I don't even enjoy clubs or drinking anymore for that matter. I wanted to come out to China for a career opportunity, to gain knowledge of a foreign culture, to experience something outside my comfort zone, to learn another language and experience a different world. But I'm finding that my wanting those experiences is likely a lone venture and I was both prepared and unprepared for the toll it would take on my psyche. I considered myself quite a nomadic soul, easily able to detach from things for the sake of new experiences and able to adjust even in solitude. So I thought I would be able to handle this adjustment not without difficulty but easier than most, however, China has pushed me to my limits and I know that if I can just endure (and I fully intend to) I hope to find I won't be the same...and that that change will be for the better.

But truth is I'm still quite lonely out here.

I expressed this to my boyfriend, Charles, this morning via Skype after my crying fit had subsided and he offered words of encouragement.

"Rasheeda, I know you will argue this and refute it 10 different ways from Sunday but when I was in Korea, all I did was drink," he said, speaking of his experience of his semester abroad when he was in college, "And yeah I went sight-seeing with [Korean] friends but we drank. We drank even as we went sight-seeing. We even went to Buchan Temple, one of the only original temples still standing after the Korean war, and we drank there. We drank everywhere."

"Those people in your program, they're going to all those places and more than likely they're drinking and yeah the photos look fun," he said, "It's like this bottle of tabasco sauce." He picked up a bottle of the sauce that was on his desk. "You're looking at it from here," he pushed it up to the camera, "when really it's back here." He pulled it back. And I understood what he meant. He was inferring that things look better from one perspective but when you look at the whole picture it wasn't what it seemed.

"And you have to remember, you came out here for a career purpose," he said, "sight-seeing and all that is nice but it really comes second to what you're doing. People don't want to read, 'oh today was a lovely autumn day in China,' they want to read how you came to experience and understand a different culture."

"Like that story about how you witnessed that girl getting punched in Shanghai and no one did anything about it," he said, "That's the kind of stuff people want to read about."

He's referring to my first week in China when I had orientation and training with other prospective teachers at Shanghai for 2 weeks before my placement program, Ameson, dispersed our group to our respective schools. During one of my group's last free nights before the TEFL exam ( the Teaching English as Foreign Language exam which gives us our official teacher certifications) a few of us went to a club where they offered foreigners free bottle service.

Upon entering the subway station and buying our tickets, we were about to walk downstairs to the train platform when we saw a drunk man screaming at whom we presumed to be his wife, as she was holding the hand of a small girl probably no older than five years old. He was in the woman's face screaming loudly and we stopped at the top of the stairs to the platform and stared. He swung at her and hit her in the face, his fist making direct contact with her left cheek. She stood there in silence, stone-faced, unflinching. He swung at her again and she ducked. He kept screaming and swinging at her dropping the take out food he was holding in a plastic bag and she dodged his attacks with the deftness of a skilled boxer, never screaming back, saying anything or even so much raising her hands to defend herself. Her daughter stood nearby staring in silence.

The lady at the subway customer service stand and the guard at the bag check (they have a belt where they do random screenings on large bags in Chinese subways) just stood there and stared and passer-bys walked by without so much as glancing over. Finally, coming to our senses we yelled at the staff to help and they didn't move. A police officer walked by the scene. He was heading towards where the man and woman were fighting. We thought he'd stop them as the guy was still going at her even with the cop present and he continued to walk right by them to the other side of the station never looking back.

In China, saving face is the most important thing. Bringing to light someone's flaws or errors is a huge sign of disrespect and looked down upoon. So many Chinese will not confront people so not to embarrass them. It's a strange concept foreign to us westerners. For example, one of our trainers told usa true story about a woman in China was diagnosed with breast cancer and had both her breasts removed. The doctor told the family she had cancer and advised them not to tell her as it would likely embarrass and upset her. So the family kept their silence and the woman went through surgery without ever really knowing why her breasts were missing.

You stay out of people's business to say the least. So people who say that Chinese lie, they don't get it. It's not technically lying. It's that they think they're saving you from embarrassment if they just omit acknowledgement of the truth. That your mental well-being is more important than correction.

So when we saw the fight unfold at the train station, it really registered me what they meant when they were talking about the cultural differences and how saving face was important. A strange sensation overwhelmed me.

"Oh my god," I thought, "We can't do anything for this woman. We can't do anything at all."

I looked at the little girl.

"This will only perpetuate into a circle of domestic violence." I thought. I looked sadly at the girl, hoping she wouldn't find someone like her father thinking that was affection.

We couldn't meddle because we were told interfering would likely get us arrested and that the law would be against us as foreigners. And seeing as a police officer did nothing, that only reaffirmed that fact.

"Man," said one of the guys in our group, "This is bullshit. This would've never happened in America."

He wasn't talking about domestic violence. He was talking about the shock of this happening in a public place where a man was beating a woman without any reservation in front of a child and a police officer wouldn't even so much glance in their direction as he passed right next to them.

We walked down the stairs and boarded our train.

That was during my first week in China.

So, I got what Charles meant.

"You're right," I said.

It's the stories like that that unfold when you least expect it that are worth telling. Giving people an inside look into something they can't or don't fully understand even as I'm struggling to understand it myself. It's why I like writing. It's why I wanted to be a journalist. And up until now, I had lacked motivation and focus to do anything else but self-pity myself for not being able to do more.

But truth is there's plenty I've already seen and done that is worth sharing. From my interactions with my students, to just walking down the street, to just trying to communicate where I want to go with a taxi driver. Even my interactions with other expats. All of it has been new. All of it adding itself onto the culture shock that overwhelms me at times.

So instead of curling up in bed crying, I realized that the best way to deal with it was staring me right in the face. The very thing I didn't want to do because the emotions were so overbearing. And that was writing about it.

So here's to a fresh start. Let's start from the beginning. I'll tell you everything I know and all I've seen and at the end of this experience I hope we both are changed from the experience.

Thank you for reading.

Wuxi Wisdom

Upon coming here, I always knew I'd find strange little traditional customs and old wives tales that people would believe passionately. My coworker, Heather, who is the head Chinese English teacher of the English department here on campus, seems to be filled with these.

Heather is small and petite coming up barely to my chin. She wears big thick, black-rimmed glasses and her hair in a ponytail most of the time. She's also extremely blunt, honest, and questions a lot about American customs. (I had to explain how American middle and surnames have nothing to do with family history a lot of times and how our names thrive on being individualistic and not typically for the part of displaying family heritage)

On the first day of my arrival, she gave me a small tour of the shopping district near the school. We walked past a K-TV (a karaoke bar that is popular and found pretty much everywhere in China). 

"You guys have a lot of karaoke bars here I noticed," I said.

"Yes, do you go?" she asked.

"Not really," I said, "I'm not very good at singing."

Heather laughed and shook her head at my unapparent naivety. 

"It's not about singing," she said, "it's about sharing your heart and soul with others around you. It's about opening up. The song you pick is supposed to reveal what's in your heart."

"Oh." was pretty much all I could muster. It did make sense actually. Letting your guard down, being vulnerable and letting those close to you see an unusual side of you. I mean, I guess it made sense....

I had everyone in my room a few days later. Bed bugs had attacked. Heather, Annie, and another campus worker were measuring my mattress and considering their options. Heather saw my loose leaf tea thermos and my green tea I had won from a writing contest at orientation (I can put up the essay later). 

"Is this green tea?" Heather asked.

"Yes! It is. It's my first time drinking loose-leaf tea. It was quite good."

"Good," she said, "you should drink green tea when it's hot out. It is healthy and will keep your inner temperature cooler."

"And then when it is winter," she continued, "switch to black tea, it will improve digestion and your immune system."

I just blinked...."Um okay, I'll do that."

The next day, after a bed bug fiasco in my room, the school put me up in a hotel room. Heather escorted me and had a bag of fruit. She asked me if I liked peaches and then gave me a few. Later, that night she text me to make sure I washed the fruit and peeled the skin otherwise I would "get itchy from eating the fuzzy skin." I didn't bother to tell her Americans eat peach fuzz all the time and that it never itches the skin. I felt it would've just blown her mind. Peeling a peach seemed real funny to me. "Ok thanks! They were delicious!" was all I text back. 

Those peaches were so sweet though.

Heather usually is filled with this old traditional wisdom especially when it comes to tea and medicine. I'll be sure to post more as I hear them.

The Factory of Fitness Examinations

I walked past two huge lions, their presence thunderously ominous as I headed up the stairs with Annie, my school coordinator. She was helping me get my physical. My introductory mandarin and her english choppy at best we walked in silence into a building that was washed with white like one of those dreams people have about heaven...or maybe just creepy hospitals. It was, in fact, as impersonal as any hospital could be. When we entered the hallway, a machine that looked like an ATM barked at us to take a ticket number. We did and sat down. Annie asked me some questions about my class, the comfort of my room, and other things. She seemed genuinely sincere.

"The class was really nice," I said, smiling my most reassuring smile.

It had actually been a disaster. I planned for a 40 minute class only to be told I was actually teaching the same class back to back for two periods. After introductions and a brief discussion about the class for the rest of the year, the last half was a blur and all I recalled were bored faces.

We were up. Annie handed the lady at the registration counter some form. The lady glanced at it, wrote a bunch of stuff, took my picture with a small desk camera and sent us to another table where another lady looked at forms and wrote a bunch of stuff.

On the form was a passport-style picture I had to take the other day for various paperwork to stay here and a bunch of numbers. Room numbers. About 7 or 8 of them. I don't recall. All of the sudden we were on our way. A couple of kindly old ladies were behind the desk. Blood draw. God, th
ey wasted no time. In my mind, I groaned mentally.

She pricked me and she wasn't gentle about it, drawing about 3 tubes of blood. She was speaking in mandarin to Annie. I sat there timid. Finally, she handed me a cotton ball (no band-aid), a small plastic cup and a test tube. I had to head to the bathroom to piss in a cup and then I had to pour it into the test tube and then there was a test tube tray outside of the bathroom I had to put the tube in.

Talk about contamination.

I did as I was told, washed my hands and we bolted to the next room where a nurse had me lay down stick a couple of sticky pads on me and then clamped on the pads. She took my heart reading after a few minutes. Signed the paper, handed it to Annie, next room...

That doctor had me stick out my arms and felt my throat, next room....

Weight and height and BMI, next room....

Ears, eyes and mouth checked, next room, upstairs...

Ultrasound....wait a second.

The nurse here said something to Annie asking her a question and pointing to the screen. I glanced. Some kind of organ.
 "Do you have any pain in your gall bladder?" Annie asked.
"No," I said, slightly alarmed.
Annie and the nurse talked again. Annie looked at me,
"You need to eat less eggs, and drink less wine, and eat more breakfast otherwise you will get pain in your gall bladder."

I almost laughed except she had my diet down to a T. I rarely ever eat breakfast but I do love eating eggs later in the day and wine...well, I had guzzled several bottles for "celebrations" before leaving for China and had several cups on the plane ride here. Given Asian life expectancy, perhaps she was on to something. I nodded. Next room....

I laid down. An old, male doctor pushed down around my abdomen and throat again....next room, last room....

X-ray. I saw one of those mats you place over your chest. The room was large and there was a window to the right where 3 people were working on something on a computer. A small, old man with black strands of hair on his balding head pushed me over to the machine grunting and poised me there. I looked behind me and saw one of those chest mats they usually throw over you before they take the X-ray. I wasn't asked to wear any gown, or mat, or strip for the X-ray. Guess there was no need for that here.

I can just tell everyone "well, I went to China and all I got was cancer."

He took the X-ray. Annie met me in the hallway. "Done." She said.

On the way out, I saw another foreigner. He was with his coordinator also doing his paperwork. I guess this was a thing.

I had sore bites from the bed bugs earlier this week and a piece of wisdom tooth that had been jutting from my gum causing that I wanted to ask to be removed or at least something to numb the pain while the gum heals and pushes it out (apparently, this is a normal thing during the healing process). I didn't even know who to ask about remedies or what happened.

People always talk about hospitals and doctors' offices seeming cold, unapproachable and impersonal. But by far that had to be the most invasive, impersonal physical exam I've ever taken an I don't think it lasted longer than 15 minutes....