Re-entry

I've been putting off writing this post for, oh, the last three weeks or so.  I kept thinking that if I could only wait to feel better, less unhinged, less slightly completely insane, then I'd be able to write about my re-entry to Beijing with poise and grace.  I'd wink sideways at my insecurities and chuckle at my follies and be totally mature and adult and sane.

And to some extent, that's true.  I feel pretty sane now, mostly because of the end of the semester and some extremely therapeutic Days Of Fun with some extremely excellent people.  But the fact is that the last few weeks have been difficult, and I still don't feel completely settled.  Something about re-entry has pitched me tumbling up into the air and shaken me hard.

It doesn't help that I came sailing back into the city on the Ridiculous Plane Journey From Hell, the kind that makes you remember that episode of Morning Edition that was playing on NPR when your dad drove you into the airport and count your blessings that at least you're not in war-torn South Sudan.  Everything short of the plane crashing happened:  the first leg of my flight was cancelled; my re-routed flight missed my connection; because there are only two Air China flights out of Los Angeles each day I had to sit outside of security in LAX for twelve hours; and even with a twelve-hour connection, my bag was somehow still left in LA.

Let me tell you, when you're running on thirty-eight hours of sleeplessness, pleading your case in the lost luggage office of the Beijing airport is the last place you want to be and the last thing you want to be doing.

Nonetheless, I thought I was okay.  And I was!  I saw friends, I drank beer, I had a nice first couple of days back at school.  I was excited to see my kids.

Quickly, though, teaching became hard.  It became difficult in a way that teaching just shouldn't be, at least for long; it's the sort of job that we have to do for the joy of it because there's no other way forward.  I was tired all the time (partly jet lag, to be sure).  I was moody, irritable.  I'd be elated by one class of students and furious at the next.  I couldn't make myself begin to grade, and then I'd end up in a grading hole; frantic, I'd mark my way through an inhuman number of papers and then be mush for the next twenty-four hours.

I recognized this as the slump it was -- I've had them before and I'll have them again -- and was prepared to endure and then move on.  I kept feeling as if I was getting the rug pulled out from under me, though, and it seemed to dig me deeper into my exhaustion every time.

For example:  I remember sitting there two weeks ago when my junior class started their IB orals, and thinking, "Oh yes, this.  I know this."  In Federal Way and Beijing, orals are orals; I scribble notes and listen hard.  The students are nervous.  As each presentation goes on, I think about questions I'll ask at the end of the oral: questions to unlock meaning from the text, questions to help students remember what they've forgotten to say, questions to expose whether or not the students have actually read the text.  There's a sort of peace in this, in hearing precisely what you've managed to teach your kids over the semester, in knowing that they've learned something.  As I listened to my students, I felt like a teacher who knew what she was doing.

I felt like a teacher who knew what she was doing, and then I walked into the English office and found out that I'd been doing it kinda wrong.  I wanted to cry, and I really didn't want anyone else to know that I wanted to cry, and I was pretty sure that they could tell that I was overreacting to what was actually a fairly honest mistake, and I wanted to sink through the floor into oblivion.  For example.

Part of being a teacher is sometimes realizing that you're an idiot who thought she could stop learning.  I've done this about a million times, and each time I'm able to grit my teeth, give myself a mental smack, tell myself to get over it, and move forward.  No fuss, no muss.

The problem is that during all this time, my re-entry to China was going about as poorly as my re-entry to school.  I can't put my finger on any part of it specifically except to say that Beijing wasn't difficult and exciting anymore; it was just difficult.  Anyone could've predicted this would happen -- I predicted it would happen! -- but for some reason (ego?) I thought I'd be immune to the logic of how humans work.

I was tired of missing my friends in Seattle, and I was tired of having bizarro cultural interactions with everyone under the sun, and I was tired of being so unsure of myself and my abilities, and I was tired of being so goddamned tired.

However!  You may be pleased to hear that this long and self-pitying screed is going to come to a happy end (or, at the very least, a happy middle).  And it is happy for four reasons:

1.  I can't overstate this:  a support network, at home and in Beijing, that was there for me and responded ridiculously-close-to-instantaneously whenever I needed them.  And somehow, despite the depths of my ridiculousness, they still seem to want to be my friends (God bless 'em).

2.  Somehow, I finished my grading and wrote all my reports.  The endorphins that rushed in as soon as I typed my last sentence kicked like a mule, so my unhinged feeling didn't really go away.  All of a sudden, though, I had a giggly (if weary) energy that I'd been missing for at least a month.  I actually finished my reports. 

3.  Consequently, I began to trust myself as a teacher again.  It's second semester; I get to teach content again after focusing on assessment for what has felt like a thousand million years.  I don't even know how to describe that feeling to a non-teacher.  Maybe this:  it's like being on the brink of re-reading a book you've loved and knowing that you're going to see new things about it this time.  That's the closest I can get.

4.  I started exploring Beijing again.  On Friday, I got a massage and went to Burns night with an amazing friend.  (I also got sort-of aggressed on the street while I was walking home alone, and the fact that I could handle it without having a breakdown showed me more than anything that I was starting to feel better about the world.)  On Saturday and Sunday, I explored the Pearl Market and the Cow Mosque and had lunch with some other amazing friends. 

At the top of the Pearl Market, there's an outside porch with an amazing view of the city.  The view only works if you're tall enough to see over the balcony, though, so I hoisted myself up onto a (completely secure, Mom) shelf.  The air was clean.  In the distance, the sun was setting over the Temple of Heaven.  I snapped a picture.

I felt great.