The fear of contentment

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So I think that I must start this entry off with a quote from my good friend Sarah Clapp's travelblog (to those of you who don't know she was a good friend of mine from Denison University). "I’m getting to the point that I don’t want to hear about my Japanese anymore. I want it better—doesn’t really matter what it currently is, eh?" Now granted she's currently teaching English in Japan and not China but I totally feel the same thing. I barely even comment any more when I hear the "you're Chinese is really good. How long have you been here? And you never studied in America before then? Wow! You're so "lihi" (closest translation = "great" but not quite)" It gets quite repetitive and she's right it doesn't matter where it currently is because I still want it to be better.

It's funny how some things don't really translate well. This evening after going to Kendra and Genie's house for dinner I went over to meet Camillo at the pool place and Alex said to me "Ni zenme lai zher li?" Now the literal translation for this would be "How did you come here?" which would probably mean something like "How did you get here?" But instead of telling him I took a taxi I ignored him. Was I being rude? No. Why? Because he knew the answer to the question he was asking me. The true cultural translation of this phrase is more "What are you doing here?" and to that he knew the answer had something to do with Camillo. He had probably even heard Camillo on the phone talking with me telling me he was there. And he would soon see that I was taking Camillo's camera. Plus he had long grown accustomed to the fact that I might show up if Camillo was there so my ignoring the question wasn't rude at all. I think the true question to this is how exactly did I know that was what he was asking if the literal translation is different. I guess one just grows accustomed not only to how to translate things into Chinese but also the culture behind a particular translation. Which is why it's probably best that one gets beyond that point in one's language where one hears one's mother tongue before saying the other language. I no longer do that with my Chinese I just speak it.

The other day I told Sara Moran that I finally realized what Camillo was saying when he told me I was stupid. He tells me I'm stupid pretty often but it doesn't mean that I'm literally stupid. It means that he cares about me.

There are also other things that we have in English like little phrases that mean something to us but not to anyone else. In high school one of my phrases was red skittles. Just simply that. It doesn't mean anyone to anyone else but it was a running joke between some of my friends. Now here one of my teacher assistants often comments to me "gei ta" which means "give him/her" but she's not telling me to give something to someone, she's teasing me. A long time ago I said this phrase with the wrong tones to her and it made her laugh so now she says it to me every so often to make fun of me. Again if someone else heard it, even one of our kids (who speak fluent Chinese) they wouldn't have any idea. Those are kind of the cool little phrases to have around.

Another perfect example of this is yesterday Camillo told me he "lost the bicycle" in perfect english. I was like "um, Camillo. I don't think you said that right. What's the Chinese?" "diu le" he translated it perfectly. I was like "um, okay. Camillo how do you lose a bike? did someone take it? did you forget where it is?" "it's lost. that's it, it's lost." And again today I told one of my friends that i "lost my pin number to my credit card". He turned around and said "that's not English, you've been hanging out with the Chinese too much" "oh, really?" "yeah. how do you lose a pin number? you either replaced it or something else." "oh, right. I forgot it, not lost it, sorry" "it's okay. I find myself talking in Chinglish sometimes too."

Today was a bit of a crazy day for money. Yesterday I tried to go to the ATM to get some money out (something I haven't done for quite a while) and I couldn't remember my pin number so I couldn't get money out. Today I went again to the bank this time and tried to get money out again but again I needed my pin number and couldn't remember it. So I finally found the number but then I had to teach till 5pm and when I went back to the ATM, since the bank was closed, it said I had tried too many times and couldn't get any money out. Finally Camillo suggested to me that I go and use my Visa card to get some money out so I tried and again I had forgotten my pin number to that one. Fortunately I remembered it and got some money out in the end but what a crazy little spin.

We were talking about Chinese driving on the way to the pool parlor today. Kelvin's friend Pierre said "You know with all the crosswalks and lanes painted on the roads you could easily follow the rules here while driving but no one does." My comment was "You could take all of the lines off the road and they'd still be driving the same way." The number of people in Dalian who can't drive is crazy. The other day I was walking with Kendra and Genie and we were walking on the street for a little while. Genie went over to the sidewalk and said "I feel more comfortable walking here where I can't get run over." "Yeah, even though people drive their cars on the sidewalks too" Kendra responded. I laughed at the irony of it becaus she was right.

I'm having a bit of difficulties with one of my classes. The whole class is designed for us to teach an adjective one class, an adverb one class, prepositional phrases the next class and appositives the following. So the kids found the last three classes easy but this past one was pretty impossible for them to do. I really need to rely on my Chinese teacher a lot more and I'm not sure she knows enough for me to do that. Instead of going to me for something she went straight to my boss to complain about it. That doesn't help me in my teaching because I don't know what the problem is and also it's crap to get a bad rep with your boss. So it doesn't help anyone in the end. Fortunately all of my three other classes are working really well. One of my kids was totally out of line today in the strangest ways so that was a bit weird but kids will be kids and hopefully he'll be fine soon. One of my other kids parents complained that he couldn't understand me in class all the time. I told Lucy "well obviously. The way we teach our classes if he understood me the whole time he would totally be in the wrong level of English class because sometimes I'm giving the other teacher instructions in English and I'm also talking a little more difficult for them to learn something not for them to find it easy to understand." Granted I want them to understand when I'm talking at what I think their level is but even then there are some kids who aren't on the same level as the rest and won't understand as much. That's just how these things work.

Camillo finally switched houses. It's been really nice to have them at this new place. Attitudes are changing in the four of them. Alex used to be the one to stick up for me and chill with me but now he's not doing it quite as much. He's becoming one of my teasers. Instead Eason is sitting in as the mother figure, making sure that I've eaten and whether or not I'm coming over for dinner. Making sure they have what I want to eat in the house. Leason's the one to stick up for me and chill with me now. And Cam's just Cam. Today the two of us were supposed to go shopping together but we didn't end up doing it because he had work to do and I wanted to go over and finally see Raphael, Genie, Kendra and Michael's house for "Canadian night". Cat, Kelvin and Pierre made us Kraft dinner (quite a specialty for us) along with pork and beans (again a specialty) and cabbage salad (a Chinese dish). We also had pizza ordered by Kendra and Genie since they don't eat meat, they're vegetarians here and vegans in the US.

As for the fear of contentment Jason warned Kendra the other day that this place is not one to stay for too long because you end up settling into a state of contentment that leaves you ignoring all of your other dreams and goals. I can definitely say that after a long time of not being happy here in Dalian I'm finally happy. I'm still swearing to myself that I'm going to travel when my contract is done here but I am a little frightened by this idea of getting too content here.

It's off to Da Hei Mountain (literally Big Black Mountain) tomorrow for me so I should get some sleep to rest up for it.

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