Home for the Holidays

Well, I'm back.

I wasn't sure what to expect from myself when I arrived back in the United States for the first time since moving to China.  Would I freak out at how different it felt?  Kiss the ground?  Start sobbing wildly?

But as always, arriving in New York felt like slipping into a comfortable, battered jacket.  The only real difference between my usual trip between the airport and my aunt's apartment and this one is that I babbled incessantly at my cab driver, ecstatic to be able to communicate with him in words more complicated than "Straight ahead!" or "Right at the traffic light."  (Fortunately, he was happy to be babbled at:  "Yo, you live in CHINA?  That's crazy!  Hey, how much is your rent?")

An Explanation For Why All My Blog Posts Are Late These Days

What it's like to teach in the last few weeks before Christmas, with examples from teachers around the world (well, Beijing and Federal Way):

"Today I put my class into two groups: those who did their homework (so they could work on the new thing) and those who didn't (so they could work on catching up).  You would THINK that the group who was behind would be the ones who were working diligently, and the group who was caught up would be the ones who were being ridiculous and off-task.  YOU WOULD THINK."

"I just finished world religions, on to the Middle East, so my enthusiasm is ramped up to irritating levels.  Freshmen leave the class with glazed-over expressions of awe."

"I am giving you a piece of paper, children.  You will bring it back on Tuesday so we can look at it again.  You will bring it back, or I will kill you."

When I Was Thirty-One, I

I still remember the night before I turned nineteen.  I was lying on the top bunk of my dorm in the ITHAKA compound on Crete, and I felt like maybe someday I might be beautiful.

I was feeling a lot of other things, too.  Thinking about my nineteen-y-ness inevitably made me think about my incipient twenty-y-ness (twenty-ness?), and all I could focus on were the things I hadn't done yet.  I'd never been to a party with people my own age.  I hadn't sung a solo longer than one line.  I hadn't been kissed (let alone that other thing).  I'd never written a paper longer than five paragraphs, and less than a year from then, I'd be at Yale University.  College.  People did things in college, right?  They kissed people and wrote papers and went to parties.  Probably.

And because of my gap year, I'd be almost twenty years old when I got there.  I'd be even more behind.

Victory Noodles

When I got on the bus to go home this afternoon, I knew that my biweekly blog post would be overdue if I didn't post it today but I just didn't see how it was going to happen.   I woke up with the typical pre-cold sore throat, and all day, my brain's been fuzzy.  When trying to tally up quiz scores, I found that simple arithmetic was beyond my capabilities.  I'm way behind on grading (mainly because of my own laziness), and there are a thousand school things clamoring for my attention.  Finally, I'm behind on writing my letters of recommendation, and the first early decision deadlines are this Friday.

So I didn't think there was going to be a blog post.  But then my sickness led me to crave noodles, and I decided to try one.  More.  Noodle place.  Maybe this one will be different, I thought wistfully.  Maybe this time I'll find a great noodle place and then people will come visit me and I'll take them to the great noodle place and they'll say, "Hey, Becca, what a great noodle place!" 

I will admit that I didn't have a lot of hope.  But then?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:  Victory Noodles.

Wide and chewy hand-pulled noodles with pulled pork and bok choy.  HECK YEAH.

Thank you, and good night.

New Breath

The weekend of September 21st was similar to most of my previous Beijing weekends.  I got up absurdly early on a Saturday morning to go into town do things for my new apartment.  The next day, I trucked out of Shunyi once again on public transportation to meet a friend and go on a bicycle tour of Lido.  So, waking up at an ungodly hour on a weekend:  check.  Running errands from Shunyi to Sanlitun:  check.  Energy-demanding social engagement:  check.  Same as it ever was.

But I noticed something new when I walked home from the bus that Sunday.

I wasn't exhausted.

Goals

This post was going to be about moving and settling into Beijing and how I don't feel exhausted all the time anymore and this one time when I walked into a noodle shop and asked for noodles and they took one look at me and gave me spaghetti with tomato sauce.  (Don't worry, that post is coming.  I've already started writing it.)

What changed, you ask?  Well, I'm listening to Janelle Monáe's new album, which is amazing, by the way, and makes me feel kind of bold and spiky (and if you haven't listened to Dance Apocalyptic while dancing around your place of residence like a crazy person, DO IT NOW).  And it's October break here in Beijing, so I've had a lot more time than usual to think about life, the universe, and everything.

But mostly it's that I met my grading goal for the afternoon.

Moving Slowly

This is the first time I've missed my deadline for posting to this blog, and I don't completely know why that is.  It might be that life has settled into such a rhythm here -- wake up, teach, plan, grade, navigate Beijing, be exhausted -- that I feel I don't have anything to write about.

That's so untrue, though.  So many things have happened.  For example, I have an apartment:  a tiny one-bedroom with light hardwood floors in a fabulous, tree-strewn neighborhood.  While every day seems to throw up another obstacle to actually being able to move into the place it feels enormously satisfying to have a place to stay, and when I walk on the streets around my new place I feel the most comfortable I've felt outside of school here.