Coming Home

I opened the door to my house at 2:00am after 18 hours of air time, 4 different cities, and a little over a full day of travel. I was pretty tired and smelled even worse. It was an interesting trip: in San Francisco I found out that the airline of the flight which I booked my ticket to Jacksonville no longer served Jacksonville…so that was interesting. To make a long story short, because they had me on all kinds of different flights, my bags didn’t make it to Jacksonville until I once again arrived at the Jax airport the same day to board a flight to Nashville (had to get to school). But all is well, and I’m home…or rather at school.

Just before we left I got a picture with Yinglian (Helen), Daniel, and Xiao Yan. Xiao Yan, who was the stay-in-home-maid, would always get up to let me in at night, even when I came home past midnight, and then she’d be awake again at 6am or earlier, chopping away at something in the kitchen. She would get me all taken care of with food, and even did some ironing and laundry one time when I was busy. She was so nice, and I did make sure to thank her often, but it probably wasn’t enough. Daniel, Yinglian’s son, had just gotten home the day before from a summer session at Exeter in Boston, so it was cool to get to hang out with him a bit.

During these last few days, for example during the lunch they treated me to with all of the family, including the super-busy Mr. Wang, I’ve realized how lucky I am to know this many people in China already, and pretty nice ones at that. From Kunming, to Mile, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing, I have friends in every city which would be willing to hang out with me or take me into their homes.

When I got back home, my mom asked me what the best part of the trip was. If I had to pinpoint one event, it would have to be the cultural camp in Mile. While some of the planning and communication wasn’t perfect, in the end it didn’t really matter. I got to meet a lot of really cool kids and experience teaching on steroids: I don’t think many teachers arrive at the school with no teaching experience and are told that they have to teach to a group of students the next day with no teaching materials and no guidelines on how to teach. Oh, and by the way, they don’t speak your language and the class includes a wide range of English speaking abilities. That was the challenging part—I made it interesting, and I think the kids had fun…even Oscar with his busted eye. But probably even better than the teaching was getting to know all the volunteers and hanging with them. In China, as a foreigner, you can be pretty stupid (see that night in Mile). Most Americans won’t hear about it and most Chinese will just write it off as “well, they’re foreigners”. I think I made some good friends at the camp, and I sincerely intend on annoying Jes by dropping by on her in Orlando unsuspectingly.

This time in Beijing, on top of my previous two, raises some real questions as I head to Vandy. I gotta figure out what I’m going to do my life. Will I start out in China or in the US? Will it be in consulting, banking, or non-profit? I hope that by doing some more research and applying for jobs, I’ll figure this out, but if anyone knows the answer, please tell me.

Until my next China exodus, Rob.