The writing project is going very well, even though I still haven’t actually gotten around to bashing any of it out. It takes an hour to get to Chinese classes in Futian using the combination of Bus 72 and Line 1 of the Shenzhen Metro, and I use the time to sit there and think about my novel. I feel pretty lucky that this works, because as any student assigned a paper to write knows, it’s hard to prompt yourself to think of something original – the frame of mind in which you give yourself such an order is too rigid to start generating thoughts from thin air (okay, think about your breathing. Now force yourself to stop thinking about it without suffocating. See?) Something about being in transit lets my mind out to graze very happily!
To help the process I carry around a little steno pad. I think other people must think I’m crazy when I randomly stop walking down the street, pull it out and jot some notes to myself before I forget them. Maybe I am.
Like many other days, I wandered around Futian with some of the other CTLC teachers after our group Chinese lessons (that is, the classes that we go to learn Chinese in, not the ones we teach in English). I ended up spending the entire evening with them just meandering around and playing board games at the NYPD pizza stand again in central Futian. While it’s been nice to get to know my friends here (last night Hunter hosted dinner for 8 of us in Nanshan District at his apartment nearby the Walmart, and we chatted late into the night), I am a bit concerned that my Chinese isn’t making as much progress as it could if I were to “go native” as another CTLC guy (whom I don’t know very well, but don’t feel like that’s a problem) kind of condescendingly put it once.
Tomorrow the Yucai Group schools are making their foreign teachers go to dinner together for some function that they only told us about a few days ago, so I’ll see Katie (Yucai First High), Emily (Yucai Second Primary), and Hunter (Yucai Third Primary) again while I rep for Yucai Third Middle. Following that is a Sunday of teaching Wednesday classes…what? On Thursday the week-long October holiday begins…and so I have to teach Wednesday classes twice in one week?
Who knows why that makes sense. Thing is, it probably DOES, but I’m just illiterate.
Andrew, you look good but thinner. Get some food to eat.