Christina in China

            I’m hiding out in Eunice’s apartment right now.

            Sometimes I feel guilty about this.  After all, I came to China not to be in Eunice’s apartment but to be in China, outside, with Chinese people, not by myself typing on Microsoft Word.  Last semester, I found myself hiding out in order to escape and sometimes had to make myself go outside just because I felt like being outside for a little bit and being annoyed was better than being inside and feeling afraid of something imaginary.

But oddly enough, I’ve heard nary a “laowai” call in the past couple weeks and am feeling pretty good about being in China.  To the question, “Are you used to being in China,” the question that I get all the time in both languages, I feel like I can answer that, yes, I am.

I’m still in Eunice’s apartment, though, this afternoon, not in the office, not in the classroom with the Thai students, since I’ve dropped some of my Chinese classes.  Like the supposed “culture” class that really is working through a grammar textbook.  (Can’t fool me!)  I don’t feel like I’m escaping anything.  This morning, I found that I had more things to say (or muddle through saying) about my college life to Lai Laoshi that I had time to say.  Yesterday evening, I taught Wang Xue, one of my “cousins” how to play Uno, explaining in broken Chinese, which I found is not quite as easy when you don’t know how to say “skip” or “reverse.”  I don’t feel panicky or weird for the most part about being in China.

I just feel like I need introvert time.  When I was a kid, I hung out by myself a lot or with a constantly changing “best friend.”  But I mostly read.  And then sometime in my teen years, I discovered that I liked books but that I also liked people.

Last weekend, in Nanchong, someone mentioned that the CEE people, at least the ones that I sometimes hang out with, always mention the Myers-Briggs when we get together.  I’m an ENFP on the Myers-Briggs: extroverted, intuiting, feeling, and perceiving.  Which basically means that I’m an artistic, unpractical, procrastinating type.  The other characteristics are very definite, but I’m closer to the line on the extrovert/introvert trait, which I sometimes forget.  I’m finding myself in China often in the same boat as I was in at Houghton.  Wanting to be with people, to “make the most of every opportunity,” whatever that means.  But the poor little introvert side has given up even trying to speak up.  At my host family’s house, I try to spend time with them, since I’m only there in the evenings and weekends (and mornings when I eat my rice porridge and pickled vegetables and wash my face), and in the weekends, I’m often away, at church, doing stuff with the foreign language department, or something.

So I have come to several conclusions:

 

Conclusion the First: I should not feel guilty about not assigning homework to grade in listening and speaking classes.

 

Conclusion the Second: I should not feel guilty about only having 3-4 hours of Chinese class a week because I’m getting practice with my host family.

 

Conclusion the Third: I am allowed to sit in Eunice’s house and listen to music or type on the laptop or read a book and do other things that My Little Inner Introvert likes to do.

 

It’s like my own little anti-guilt constitution, to which I can add that I don’t have to feel guilty about not being fluent in the language here or about the fact that my students aren’t fluent in English or about the fact that I can’t accept every invitation from people who ask me to go see peach blossoms or come to their house and shua (Sichuanhua for “hang out”) or fold paper roses.  Or that I’m not staying longer in China.

            I guess what I’m really saying with “hiding out” is that I’m taking down time, which is a perfectly normal human activity.  It’s not like I don’t relax—after all, playing Uno with a 13-year-old or watching and semi-understanding Chinese TV is not exactly brain surgery—but it’s also not I-time, introvert time.

 

Conclusion the Fourth: All this blah-blah-blah to say that I’m resting like every other member of the human race.

Tags: Travel

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