“I have noticed that you are different from the Chinese.” Fang Laoshi said to me today. While the comment was specifically about how I prefer to take pictures of tourist attractions without people posed in the foreground, I have found that this statement most adequately summarizes my experiences in China thus far. I am different. While I expected this when I prepared to start this fellowship, I could not prepare for everything that being different entailed. However, negotiating my difference from day to day has resulted in just as many joyful experiences as challenging ones.
The Joys
Living in China is amazing. In many ways, Nanjing feels like any American city. There is a subway, tons of restaurants, gyms, parks, and shopping malls. However, unlike an American city, Nanjing is not built using a grid system, which makes travelling throughout the city an adventure as busy roads suddenly change names or become alleyways. While this factor could be considered a challenge, to me the possibility of continually happening across new and exciting places is one of the most joyous aspects about living in China.
Another joy about living in Nanjing, as more than ten years of fellows have done, is that we live in the same dorm room that at least four years of past fellows have inhabited. This means that there are tons of teaching and living resources and homey things in what would otherwise be a barren room. Also, living in the foreign student’s dormitory means that “home” is conveniently located among a smattering of Chinese and Western style restaurants and that English speakers abound.
Being a teacher also makes living in Nanjing a joyful experience. Caroline and I each teach twelve classes and NanDaFuZhong (fourteen if you include the weekly teachers’ class and English corner). Our classes range in ability level from eleven and twelve year olds who have difficulty forming complete sentences in the present tense to seventeen and eighteen year olds who stay after class to discuss when exactly to use the future conditional tense. Conversing and getting to know the students is one of the most rewarding things. They are eager to share themselves with me and they are eager to learn about all the ways in which I am different from them. They frequently ask me how things are in America, and I am continually at a loss for how to speak for an entire nation of people. My fledging answers about my life in the United States seem to substitute as satisfactory answers.
Also, because NDFZ has been working with recent Grinnell graduates for at least ten years, it is encouraging to interact with the other teachers who truly understand what our role is in the school. When the teachers at the school travel on school functions or celebrate events with banquets, we are invited and welcomed into the large NDFZ family. Our fellow teachers all want to practice their English and will spend hours communicating with us. Fang Laoshi is an amazing support system and resource. She understands what we are capable of and can predict and head off potential difficulties we might have.
The Challenges
A challenge that has been salient to my time in China is more related to dealing with life after Grinnell in general and not directly related to dealing with life in China. In Grinnell I felt truly at home. I find that now that I am with different people, who are in a different life stage, in a different geographical place, I miss my Grinnell friends almost daily. While there are a variety of people living in the immediate vicinity who speak English, I have never had to make and maintain friendships outside of an education institution before. In short, I find myself struggling to approximate the supportive, diverse, and interesting friend group I had at Grinnell.
Many of the previous Grinnell Corps fellows have elaborated on the challenges that come with being in a foreign place where they are different; I face many of the same challenges. It is hard living in a place where I do not speak the language. Simple things, like ordering a salad not covered in mayonnaise, become ordeals. However, as previously mentioned, this challenge makes way for little everyday joys, such as the small sense of accomplishment that comes after taking a huge bite of mayonnaise free lettuce or realizing that you effectively communicated the directions to the cabdriver despite the fact that you had forgotten the word for airport.
Also, as previous fellows have stressed, it is hard to be a first year teacher especially to a classroom full of rambunctious boys. How do I have a conversation class with thirty students? How do I keep eleven year olds on task when they have already been at school, sitting quietly in their seats, for seven hours? This challenge is especially demotivating for me. However, for every day that I feel absolutely defeated after work, there is another day that same week where by the end of the day I cannot wait to go back and engage with the students again.
I cannot say that I have felt that I have had any significant impact on the students here. However, I have read past fellows reports where they have similarly doubted their ability to be a positive influence in the students lives, and so far in the three months I have been here countless older students have come to talk to me about previous fellows who have filled the role I now inhabit– I only hope that I have as much of an impact on the students as previous fellows have had.
