This is China

It's starting to rain lightly but darkly outside the window from my office. I know that I'm a long way from home today, and although it didn't seem so prevalent earlier, it seems to be setting in right now. Surrounding me are the voices of a culture and language that I don't understand and have only experienced closely for the past twelve days. Even these past twelve days have had me avoiding cultural integration here and there as I spend time with Canadian friends and familiar faces while carrying on familiar activities that I knew back just a few weeks ago on North American soil.

So far, this trip has been a great experience. Every day that I live here I am confronted with my own assumptions about learning and about language and about culture. Regularly… no, constantly, I ask questions relating to "why" when looking into the habits of the people and the country that surrounds me. And just as constantly, I find myself coming up with the same response that Leo DiCaprio's character in Blood Diamonds has when discussing Africa: TIA. Except in my case, it's TIC: This is China.

I've adjusted to a few things so far… riding the bus (at least to one single location) is something I can manage on my own, as is taking the Dalian LRT. I've started figuring out the supermarkets (although I only really know what less than half of the items on the shelves REALLY are). And I've even started to get used to the public mannerisms a bit. Being a white person in a VERY quiet and VERY Chinese area of the city makes me the object of blatant staring, particularly when I slip on my running shoes and go for a run up along the highway by the ocean. Workers stop what they are doing and literally gawk. I've learned quite quickly that it's more out of curiosity and the simple fact that there's a very pasty kid in a-typical clothes doing an activity that few Chinese people do. Sometimes it can be unnerving, but there always seems to be the odd person who will go out of their way to say "Ni hao" and smile. This is definitely the exception, though, not the rule, and it takes some getting used to.

It can also be isolating out here. I'm a long way from the city, and although the area I'm in is very beautiful, my contact with the outside world is limited to my teaching officemates, the kids, and the few people I can contact via the internet. I didn't have internet access at my apartment for the first week, so the nights were quite dark and quiet. But in this quiet, I have found a little bit of calm. There is still a bit of anxiety lingering from everything over the past year, and I can't say that I've really moved on from what I've immersed myself in over the past 8 years. But new days bring new experiences, and I do my best to control what is in my ability to control while making an attempt to enjoy the challenges of this new, strange place I'm calling home for the next year or two.

I've been posting a bit more on the other blog site so I can keep my friends/family up to date with the day to day living out here. Writing is helping me feel connected to everyone back in Canada, even though it feels a bit like a one-way connection. For now, though, it's enough.  From the Bohai Sea…

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