Things I Have Missed, Things I Will Miss

It is just over two weeks until my return so I have been thinking a lot about the things I am looking forward to when I get back as well as the things I will miss from China.

At the top of the list, I am looking forward to seeing friends and family again. As much as I love travel and adventure, I am also a home-body. The two must be kept in balance. My times away make me appreciate my home-life and when my daily routine becomes boring or stressful, I know it is time to get away for a while.

There are a few people here who have become "friends" but I'm putting that in quotation marks because it is really hard to make a genuine connection through the language/cultural barrier. People in China tell me, "we are good friends," but really, our friendships seem very superficial to me. I am sure that I won't hear from many of them ever again. Still, they have been friendly and kind and a part of my experience here so I will remember them and wonder how they are like one does about childhood friends.

I have missed the beauty and simplicity of the American countryside. I am not really a city-girl and people use their car horns here like I've never heard before. Sometimes I am able to forget the constant noise but it will not be something I miss.

I am also looking forward to regaining my independence. It sounds a bit strange since I am obviously on my own here but I can't problem-solve in China the way I can in America. The resources are different or non-existant. When I need something in America, I know where to get it, or at least I have a general idea or there are ways to find out. For example, when I was looking for hay for Tuza, first I needed a translation for the word and everyone kept saying "grass" and I was trying to explain that it is a particular type of grass. I would ask them what their horses eat and they would say, "grass". I know hay exists here because I have seen it when I went out to the villages. I couldn't get it on my own, however, because 1. I don't have a way to get out to the countryside on my own, 2. I can't speak to the farmers to ask them for some. I would ask people I know to help me out and they would always say they could get some for me but they never did.

I guess the biggest question is, will I miss teaching here? In some ways it is the easiest job ever. I can talk about anything I want, the students love me, and there is no tests or standards to meet. However, these blessings have a dark side.

Yes, I can talk about anything but if I talk about something new to the students, I need to explain things and that gets really tricky. There are no teaching tools here except a blackboard and some chalk. No maps (except a few world maps that students buy, and these have China in the center so all of Europe is squished on the left and all of America is squished on the right), no pictures, no printer, a copier that is only available at certain times a day, etc. Recently, I started downloading pictures from the Internet, saving them to a flash drive, taking them to a computer shop to print, then showing them to help explain parts of my lesson.

Yes, many (but not all) of the students are fans of the foreign teachers. I don't know if I will ever get applause when I walk into a classroom again. However, just because they like me does not necessarily translate that they pay attention to me in class. For some of them, they don't really care what I have to say, they just like me because I'm a foreigner. They will greet me in the hall or when I enter class like I'm their best friend but they won't listen to a word I say during the lesson.

Yes, one of the worst parts of teaching in America was testing and grading and I have escaped that here but when there is no accountability for what they have learned, there is no incentive for them to pay attention in class other than their own interest, and let's be honest, they are teenagers so how interested in school can they be? Classroom management is nearly impossible when there are 60+ students in the room.

To be completely honest, I think I will miss China a lot more when it is a memory and not my reality. I know that sounds really bad. We all have memories of some of the seemingly horrible times in our life that we are able to look back on and appreciate much more when it is done. For example, my parents used to drag five whining kids across lava fields in Hawaii, up mountains to see glaciers in New Zealand, across the desert of Australia to watering holes, etc. As torturous as it seemed at the time, I appreciate it now.