Spring Festivus for the Rest of Us, Season Finale

After a lovely experience with All Nippon Airways' in-seat individual video screens, Emma and I arrived in Tokyo, ready for a little break from China. We made it to my parents' apartment with no problem, though I was a tad surprised to find that only selected locations in Narita airport would exchange Chinese RMB...I'd love to think there was just some internal issue with the bank, but I'm pretty sure it's just discrimination.

To be honest, there's not quite as much to tell about our time in Tokyo as there is about the weeks preceding it...not because it wasn't delightfully amusing, but because a) I've been there a number of times before (and it wasn't Emma's first time either, since I brought her, Clay and Courtney there in November), and b) we literally just did not try to cram as much activity into a short amount of time as we did in China. There was less of a touristy goal to our Japan time. Some might argue that it was time wasted; on the contrary - I don't know if you've ever travelled for as long as we'd been travelling by that time (about 3 weeks), but it is tiring! We were ready for a vacation from our vacation, and since neither of us was new to Tokyo, we decided to take it easy. Mom was out of town, but Dad used his free time to treat us to lots of home cookin', a photography museum, and a number of meals in Tokyo's fine restaurants. Emma and I even woke up before dawn one morning to check out Tsukiji fish market, which was pretty cool - it bustles with just about every kind of seafood for sale that you could imagine, plus it satisfied my lifelong wish to see a six-foot tuna on ice. Sushi can be such a sterile experience, you know.

Visiting Tokyo always feels like the lap of luxury (especially what with its hot showers and all - something I've learned to live without here in Tongliao). The longer I've lived in China, in a rural area no less, the more I find myself starved for city life, so I eat it up whenever I get to Tokyo (or Beijing or Shanghai...). Turns out discovering what you don't like can be as helpful as what you do like, meaning you can find me in a big city following the end of my Chinese contract. What city? Well that's asking too much. I'm not ready to relinquish my wild card status just yet. Anyway, even though Emma and I soaked up our Japan time with relish, I was still excited for the next move, which was USA for me!

We flew to Beijing, where Emma and I parted ways: she for Shenzhen, me for San Francisco. From the moment I checked in for my United Airlines flight (business class - that's just how I roll. Paid for with my own frequent flyer miles, too!), I was savoring every single moment. From the time I spent sipping cappuccino in the Red Carpet Club looking out the window at the planes...to boarding the aircraft, where I got to sit upstairs and had 2 seats to myself, due to the empty flight...to the delicious cup of warm nuts they give you before dinner...to planning my movie viewing schedule on my personal TV screen (Housesitter followed by Pride and Prejudice and then Walk the Line)...to barely sleeping because I was too busy enjoying the Western plane food and entertainment...to arriving in San Francisco, where I was genuinely shocked when the passport control officer spoke to me in English...to being picked up by my big brother!

Starting with driving out of SFO, I was totally over-stimulated for basically the whole time I spent in California. Reverse culture shock, I think they call it. Fortunately, I didn't spend enough time in the States for it to fully hit, so I only experienced the out-of-body re-adjustment stage and was put back in my Chinese cradle before I had a chance to rebound. To give you an idea of what I mean, the smell of the grocery store, for example, was completely overpowering to me. Anyway, it was so much fun to see Scott, Traci, Cameron, Cole and Connor. Oh and Shadow, their new black lab puppy, who goobered me every chance she got. I got to see their new house and neighborhood of Stockton, as well as Cameron's school (where he's the only white kid) and Scott's newest love: Stockton Nissan, which is a very shagadelic establishment, at least until the new dealership is built. Highlights of my California time included a pro hockey game between none other than the Stockton Thunder and the Fresno...crap I forget. Does it even matter? Fresno's SO one year ago. On with the highlights: the hockey game, a trip to the Jelly Belly factory (seriously, I'd always wondered how jelly beans were made), seeing Curious George with Traci and the boys (my first non-bootleg movie since July!), and a fabulous afternoon on the boat with the whole family. Even in February, the weather was nice and comfortable. Aah, California...it's enough to make a girl want to move there...or is it? I'm not telling yet.

Valentine's Day saw me on a plane to Boston, where I arrived considerably early, but Andre was already there to pick me up, thanks to the wonders of internet flight tracking! We headed out to Ashland, where I'd get to stay with Lane, Andre and my newest niece, Clara, who was born January 20 (I don't even know where I was at that point) and had her 1-month birthday while I was there. On the drive west from Logan, I again had the out-of-body feeling, driving through downtown Boston, looking up at the Prudential building and the Citgo sign...it had been so long since I'd seen Boston, yet it was my home for 4 years, so some part of me could have tricked my brain into thinking this whole China thing was just a dream or something...but then I looked down at the dirt that covered my winter jacket by that point and realized there was no other place in the world that could have made me that filthy. Even a thorough dry-cleaning in Stockton hadn't quite lifted the stains...perhaps one day I'll call that jacket a metaphor for my year in China. Some part of it will always stay with me wherever I go, that's for sure.

In Ashland, I found a weary new mommy and a cute-as-can-be teeny baby. For the week I spent in Massachusetts, which flew by before I knew it, I enjoyed trying to help out with the little things it's harder to accomplish with a newborn in the house. I made more trips to the grocery store than I can count, had fun playing Martha Stewart and laying out breakfast for Lane and Andre each morning, and just tried to be decent company while helping out in general. Mom and Dad were in the States and made a trip up to Mass for one night to see me and Clara, at which point I took the opportunity to rendezvous with some BC buddies in Beantown proper. I stayed with KriSten and Kathleen for a night, and we went out to dinner at Sunset Grille, an old haunt of ours, where way more people turned up than I ever expected to see in one random night, so I was totally tickled to see so many of my favorite familiar faces (something tells me that I cannot take full credit for being the motivation for the reunion, but I can pretend!). We headed over to Lansdowne and stayed at Jake Ivory's til the place closed at 2, and I think I drank every delicious cocktail I could think of that's unavailable to me in China.

And of course I awoke the next morning completely sober and clear-headed.

Satisfied that I'd seen just about as many friends as I could possibly expect to see in one night in Boston, I managed to cram in a couple more Beantown essentials before heading back to Ashland: a burrito at Anna's Taqueria, a dish of JP Licks coffee-oreo ice cream, a tall skim one-pump mocha latte at Starbucks, a purchase-free pilgrimage to Trader Joe's to visit Kara at work, a stroll around Coolidge Corner (which resulted in a $75 purchase at Barnes and Noble...pretty much a month's salary for me...), slices of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake for myself, Lane and Andre (Craig's Crazy Carrot Cake Cheesecake, Godiva, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, respectively), and even a visit to my now-alma mater, Boston College, where I sat in on a Synergy rehearsal. Walking across that campus as a graduate was definitely one of the trippier experiences I've had recently, realizing that I might as well be any old Joe wandering onto campus, as far as the other students I saw walking around were concerned. Leaving college has been one of the harder things I've had to do in life, and thank God I jumped right into a job that yanked me from Boston completely, because it was not just a few memories that assaulted my consciousness as I walked to O'Connell house and drove the familiar surrounding streets back to Ashland.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't anticipate the day of my flight back to Beijing with some degree of dread. I'd done all I could do to convince myself it was no big deal, since I'd be basically staring down the homestretch of my time here by the time I got back, which even included 3 more week-long vacations, plus the fact that my sister was completely composed upon my departure. ;) The fact was, however, that this was the first time since arriving here on July 14, 2005, that I'd allowed myself to think the words, "I don't want to be in China anymore."

The catalyst of that thought was actually none other than fellow foreign teacher Patrick, who played a DIRTY, ROTTEN, NO-GOOD trick on us all by emailing us around New Year's Day, saying he'd been elected to Canadian Parliament and wouldn't be returning to Tongliao. Before you think I'm a COMPLETE sucker (which I am, because I still fell for it), I should tell you that this email was supported by a website that proved as much. Where he found that website, I don't know, but the punchline is that it hit me like a ton of bricks. First Adam, then Courtney and Jacob, and now Pat? The most enthusiastic member of our foreign clan? The one who's a couple of chopsticks away from becoming a Party member? My world was rocked, needless to say. By the time I went back to Beijing, I knew the truth, of course, but I was still jarred into double-checking my own motivation to be here. I can't be entirely sure what impression of the big picture I've given to the outside world through my blogging, but let me assure you that this is not an easy job. I take it in stride and spend a lot of energy putting a positive spin on everything; in fact I honestly feel guilty whenever I have something bad to say about it or find myself not wanting to do my work - that's how bad I want this to have been a positive experience. And that's not to say it hasn't. I'm glad every day I made the decision I made. This has been very worthwhile and I do not for a minute regret coming here. But it's still hard, and that's one fact I can't dress up and put bows and flowers around.

I digress. I did in fact board a plane bound for Beijing on February 23rd, and I arrived on the 24th, a little thrown by the time change, but none too worse for wear otherwise. No mental breakdowns or anything, I'm happy to report. I was actually the last of the foreigners to arrive home to Tongliao. We all spent a day or two recovering from our various degrees of jet lag, catching up on travel stories, buying groceries, eating Bobo Loban's delicious food, and basically putting our lives back together in anticipation of the return to teaching, which was no small task. Six weeks away from work has more of an effect than one might think. It took a lot of putting myself in the zone, forcibly so, to reestablish myself as an English teacher.

This task was made a bit harder by the no-less-than doubling of students I was responsible for teaching. Let me remind you that Courtney and Jacob had left our beloved NHIS by this point, leaving somewhat of a void in English teaching for the high school and kindergarten. The remaining 6 of us were, as a result, redistributed, and I was given the Primary School's 4th grade to teach in addition to my 1st and 2nd grade. Interestingly, however, my schedule did not suffer. It was the students who were dealt the blow, unfortunately. Because the school was now short of foreign English teachers, the students were scheduled 2 English lessons per week instructed by myself, as opposed to the previous 4. I actually adjusted to my new students and distribution of lessons quite quickly and easily. The 4th grade is really a pleasure to teach, as they're capable of so much more in the reading and writing department than the 1st and 2nd grades, who are practically babies. Discipline is also somewhat less of an ongoing battle with them, which is refreshing.

Flash forward to the present, which finds us mid-April, and me 2 months and a trip to Beijing with Mike later, only about 2 months away from the end of my time in China. I'll go to Tokyo to spend some time with Mom and celebrate my 23rd (yuck) birthday next week, following which it'll be only 4 weeks of teaching til the next week-long vacation, following which it'll be only 2 weeks til we blow this joint, which is crazy to think about. But who's counting, right? (That's one of those things I feel guilty about - counting the weeks til I'm done here.)

I guess the punchline is that there's only so much more you'll be hearing from me in China. I mean, can I in good conscience continue the Inner Mongolian China Brog when I am in fact not brogging from Inner Mongoria? Well, we'll see. The real question for Diana at this point is, where to next? I wish I knew, but wherever, whatever it is, I will no doubt be extremely fashionable, important, and influential. Hmph.