Not so today.
Today I just turned on my computer and thought, "Hey, let's write a blog post." So, apologies, if this post is neither riveting nor well-organized.
To be honest, my lack of pre-writing planning is due largely to the fact that I don't have much to say. Generally, I'll reach some sort of month-a-versary and therefore feel the need to sum up what's transpired in the last few months. Or I'll have just returned from a trip and be positively pulsating with news about my experiences (see previous post).
But today is March 24th. It is a pleasantly unremarkable day. It is not a month-a-versary. I did not just come back from backpacking through Tibet or scaling the Andes. And so I feel a bit un-tethered.
What does one say on a travel blog when there has been no recent traveling and when the novelty of adjusting to a new country has subsided?
Perhaps this is the part of living abroad when a travel blog begins the subtle shift into just...a blog. When your routines are now well entrenched. When your Saturday evenings begin to resemble the Saturday evening from the week before and the week before that. When you make small talk (very small talk with my limited Chinese) with the lady at the corner store because you're there every week to buy your usual two liters of water. When you no longer step out your door waiting to be accosted by some new "culturalism" that you've yet to encounter. "Life in China" suddenly becomes just "life."
So, then, instead of mulling over the pros and cons of squat toilets or rehashing one of my many "Xiamen-cidents," I can talk about just "life" things. I can tell you about my job and how I have this one class that drives me absolutely bonkers and has left me questioning the practicality of continuing a teaching career. I can tell you about meeting friends for lunch after church on Sundays or for Friday movie nights. I can tell you about the cute necklace I picked up at H&M the other day. Or the guy I met. Or the new restaurant we decided to check out. Or the novel I just finished reading. Or the million other moments that fill our lives and subsequent conversations that have nothing to do with traveling/adventuring/adapting to a new country.
I like this phase. For all of my misgivings about China, I would be lying if I said it hasn't grown on me in its own strange way. It's certainly been a slow and tenuous process, but I'm not quite in the hurry I was to leave even just a month ago. I feel...settled. (To the extent that someone like me will ever feel settled anyway.) I feel like finally, after 7 months of being here and after all of the ups and downs, I've begun to make my peace with China.
I still get squeamish when people spit near me or when I have to give a wide berth to the toddler peeing on the sidewalk or any of the myriad things I've blogged about before. But I feel like I've started to build a community here. And one thing I've learned is that having community trumps traveling any day. You could be living in the most exotic, breathtaking place on earth, but that elation and novelty isn't sustainable. As the months wear on you find that if all of your relationships are of the superficial, travelers-passing-in-the-night kind, you either begin to long for home or yet another, even more intriguing locale to distract you from the loneliness.
Buuut I'm not quite ready for a total blog conversion (and will likely never be) and this is still a travel blog, so I'm happy to announce a few upcoming trips between now and the end of the school year. At the beginning of April I will be headed to Beijing to see that Great Wall and also the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and whatever else I can squeeze into the three days I will be there. Then, at the end of May, I'll be headed to South Korea to spend a few days touring Seoul and finally, in July, I'll be making one last trek to Hong Kong to see all that I was unable to during my brief visa run in November. Then I'll be stateside once again on July 14th!
So next up...Beijing!
