Sorry for the inconsistent updates. I'd like to use the spotty internet as an excuse, but it really comes down to the fact that raising three young children in China is not really any different than raising three children in the US. This means: A) Raising children consumes so much of my physical and emotional reserves that even in my most motivated moments, the best I can do is stare at a blank document on the computer screen long enough to realize raising children has also consumed my mental reserve to the point I can no longer construct a coherent sentence (as the previous sentence demonstrates). And B) I'm still pretty much feeding kids and cleaning up poop and puke all day. When so much of your life revolves around bodily functions, suitable writing material is hard to come by.
Besides that, I don't think we've assimilated enough to really experience Chinese culture, which means our experience thus far has just been a really crappy version of US culture. John buys exclusively what he can recognize in the grocery store, so while I idealistically anticipated having a delicious healthy diet that took advantage of all the produce they grow in the area, we've mostly eaten musty oatmeal imported from Australia and Skippy straight out of the jar. We also have a television for the first time in our life, so sometimes John breaks up the monotony by watching the Chinese sports channel. They mostly show table tennis as well as some curling, synchronized diving and what looks like reruns of Yao Ming's high school basketball games.
So in case you're wondering why we didn't stay in the States, where junk food and mindless entertainment are superior in both quantity and variety, they do have some things here that we don't back home, like jobs. Apparently you can stand out by the road with a sign that says "tutor" and Chinese parents will start lining up to hire you. They're so desperate to get their children "ahead" that preschoolers often follow up their 9 hour school days with "night sessions" from 6-9 PM at night. I'm not sure how the additional English tutoring, piano, violin and whatever else they think will give their child a leg up will fit in to that schedule, but somehow it does.
Since I don't like the idea of being an illegal immigrant selling cash-only services on the street, I applied for more legitimate work. After applying to the first 7 classifieds I saw, I had 4 responses within 3 hours, 2 interviews within 12 hours and 1 job within 24 hours. Then, in the interview, I told them my husband was certified to teach too, and now, within a day of looking, we both have jobs. All I have to do is show up at the kindergarten and channel my Crossroads day camp days (If you're happy and you know it...etc...). My bilingual assistant and the kindergarten teachers write the lesson plans, translate, manage the class and basically take care of any tasks that actually require qualified, experienced teachers. Probably be cause they all had to be qualified, experienced teachers to get a teaching job, whereas I just had to be white and breathing.
I try not to let it bother me that I get paid six times what they do, but I can't help thinking that the world seems grossly unfair in my favor. I don't mean that in an arrogant way, as in "I'm so lucky to have been born American, because we are awesome," but that I am NOT awesome and yet I still have an incredible quality of life which I am constantly cynical about and thoroughly ungrateful for. Our generation likes to pretend we're oppressed by everything, mostly because we've never been oppressed by anything. I suppose we like to have a cause. I, for one, have always wanted to stick it to the big food production companies with my own little local self-sustaining farm. I think I'm oppressed by big government and big business and want to get back to a "simple" life. It's not a simple life. That's why the self-sustaining farmers here send their daughters to preschool until 9 at night and sell their produce out of a wagon by the side of the road to pay for English tutors in the hopes that one day, if they're really lucky, she might be one of the select students who gets to go to university, get a teaching degree and make $3.50 and hour as a kindergarten teacher. I can choose to start my little farm if I want, because I get to choose to do pretty much whatever I find fulfilling. I live in a land of plenty and can afford to indulge aesthetic idealism. I won't starve in a bad harvest.
That doesn't mean I'm opposed to having a cause. Mine, for the time being, is to practice gratitude, There's a whole lot I take for granted.
grass for starters...
And maybe, in spite of being both vastly underqualified and woefully ignorant, I can do my best to tip the scales.
