Happy One Month Anniversary To Me!

I’m celebrating my month anniversary in China! It feels like it’s been about 5 months, but I think the hardest part is behind me. The weather has cooled down from the 90’s with 80% humidity to the 70’s with about the same humidity. It’s lovely and makes teaching all morning in a non-air conditioned classroom much more bearable. I notice that a lot of my clothes have lost their elasticity and feel very stretched out. I think it’s partly from the hot weather, and partly from the air drying. I have a little wash machine in my apartment that works great, and then I hang dry as there are few dryer in China. It takes a bit more time, and clothes end up more wrinkly and stretched out, but all in all it’s not too bad. I feel more and more at home in my apartment every day. I’ve rearranged the furniture to make it seem more spacious, and bleached it top to bottom. I now feel more comfortable and less lonely spending time by myself here. I have a little gas stove in my place, but have yet to use it. I eat something small for breakfast, lunch at the school, and they make dinner for all the foreign teachers. It is such a huge money saver, and the food is pretty good! I’ve begun to have my first American food cravings though, and those are hard to suppress! There’s a restaurant in Wuhan that’s owned by an American couple that’s famous amongst foreign teachers for having amazing western food, so I’m planning to go there at some point after pay day to get my fix of something other than rice, meat and cabbage. I’m getting better at being able to go places solo. There are a lot of places near the school that I can just walk to, and for places that are far away I take a cab. I keep a little notebook full of addresses written in Chinese (translated by one of my co-teachers usually) and business cards. If I’m having a hard time pronouncing the name of the place I need to go, I just show them the address they usually have no problem getting there. It’s funny how whenever I go somewhere new my priority is to get a business card if I ever wish to go there again…something I never even thought about in my former life. My next task is to learn the bus system, as it is much cheaper, but that will come with time.

There are still days when I don’t really want to be in China. I want to be back in the comfort of my own home with every convenience that that life offers. But I really believe that this is making me a stronger person. After being here and facing these challenges for a year, I can’t imagine anything else seeming quite as difficult. Not to say that life here is "hard" or that living here is a daily struggle, but there are just so many added layers of difficulty and frustration and loneliness when you’re living somewhere foreign where you don’t know the language, understand the culture, or are familiar with your surroundings.

Fun Fact: Chinese people don’t take many pain-killers for everyday aches and pains like we do in the west. They use tea as their medicine, and boy is there an abundance of it here!