Today I faced my Chinese food fear head on. Today I decided that I may never eat soup in China again and that I am okay with that. It all started with a lesson on feelings. Sad, happy, embarrassed, shocked, depressed, frightened, ecstatic etc.
It is very hard to get the kids to speak about anything other than school because that's all these poor kids do, is attend lessons. What makes you sad, getting bad grades. What makes you happy, getting good grades. When were you embarrassed, when I didn’t do well in the test. Who frightens you, my maths teacher.
Anyway, I asked the student what makes her scared besides school work and she told me her grandmother. Take all the cliché’s and stereotypes you have heard about Chinese people and eating and animals etc and throw them all together and you have this Ouma. Ouma got mother to kill the family dog a few years ago because the meat is not only delicious but keeps you warm in the winter. Apparently in the old days, dog soup was a stable winter food like spag bol or gluwine.
The family dog, I kid you not. Apparently this woman now walks the streets after dinner and watches all the people taking their family pets for walks and remarks to her family how delicious they all look. So of course I asked, “What about cats,”…No, tiffany said, she will eat them but she doesn’t think they are delicious!
My student found this conversation highly amusing and I have to admit, when she was telling me how the grandmother comes home after a visit with the family to the zoo just to tell the mother which animal she would like to eat first, I laughed a bit myself, picturing this tiny old Chinese ouma with a carving knife running after a lion.
I have decided not to meet that grandmother for fear that she might want to taste a bit of foreign meet. That is not a way I want to go…chopped up in dog soup, fed to all the sweet looking marjong playing ladies with grey hair in buns and slippers on.
P.s – pledged to braai on national braai day so look out for pics. I am not sure if this will get us arrested but for this South African tradition, I am willing to risk it!
Friends, family and random people who find themselves reading this who like to hear the rantings of an crazy person... Hello
If you had said to me, 5 years ago, that I would be in a classroom at a private English training centre using a laminater to make Pirate themed flash cards for a class of 4 deliciously cute five year old Chinese kids.. I would have laughed and called you Feng zi (crazy). But here I sit. Surrounded by Chinese, teaching English and in awe by the adventures that have brought me here. To a place so different from where I started five years ago but yet in a lot of ways the same.
In every community or work place, despite cultural differences, the issues and dynamics are all the same. The one person who thinks they better than everyone else and talks down to everyone.. the likable person that everyone loves as soon as as they meet them... the joker; funny one (this used to be me but I am still finding my groove) that can spin a joke out of anything....The boss who treats the people that make him money like gold and the people who do the grunt work like crap..The miserable person who always complains and hates their job, my close friends will laugh with me on this one as it used to be me. My not so close friends will also laugh and say this used to be me but behind my back.
It is true what they say...you can not run away from your problems. If you are kleptomaniac in South Africa, moving to Poland is not going to fix that. Seeking some professional help or brandy may fix that...well until you steal the shrinks pen and the ashtray from the bar that is. Your cat died in China (and probably got eaten in some rural village by a family of 13 kids), the cat is still dead when you go to Columbia...Although I do hear they have very good chemicals there to numb any pain...Er of course I mean the coffee! So you run away from one boss,and when you get to the new place, turns out they all the same. Then perhaps its the approach to them that needs to change? Drinking at work, baseball to the head... all things i have considered...
We spend our lives saying when I get a better job I will be happy...when I get a man I will be happy... when I learn to pole dance like a professional and drink tequila till it turns me into a stripper...I will be happy. The trick is, to be happy now. In this moment. At this second of the day, as you read this...Just be happy. You hate your boss, you have three choices... rise above, shoot him in the head, quit...but the key is you have choices and you can choose to be happy. Every time I see someone spitting in the street, or hear the know-it-all knowing it all, miss my friends, or get elbowed by some 90 year old woman on the buss... I have two choices, to let it upset me...or to ignore it, turn my Ipod up and just enjoy where I am. You have choices to change the things you can and to ignore or medicate the things you can't (A little creative plagiary as I adapt and steal some AA logic...well not the medication part...
I can not lie. This has not been as easy as it sounds. The first four weeks impossible. Two spitting people, some communication mishaps and the discovery that I may not own another pair of pretty shoes again! But it gets easier, and easier and I have good days and bad days. I started Yoga... I know three bus routes. Enjoyed lunch some teachers. Decided to do at least on tourist thing a month and have made some great Chinese friends who for some reason think I am awesome. I take one day at a time, one moment a time and try (sometimes unsuccessfully) to be happy in that moment. I know it sounds all very Zen but I am in the east and I am tired of being unhappy in a rat race i can't figure out, working for increasing amounts of money that will never be enough...so I figure all this airy fairy thinking can' hurt can it.
I have this incredible opportunity to travel many places that I have always wanted to go. I have amazing I-can't-believe-my-luck friends and family who have helped and supported and fed me wine every step of the way. It turns out, I am not a bad teacher, I am a pretty good writer, photography is art and one day I will master the fitness to noodle ratio. Life is good. Not perfect, but as when is it ever supposed to be perfect! It is all about how we get there right? And I am enjoying the ride and feel very blessed!
