Water Flowing Under

I awoke every morning to yogurt and hard-boiled eggs. Every day I had hours of Chinese class where I was forced to speak and learn. I spent the afternoons getting to know people from all over the States who were just like me yet delightfully different. Every evening my hosts, the Yang family, made a feast. New dishes seemed to appear every night, and while there were many new challenges to overcome, I convinced myself that mastering chopsticks could become an analogy for Chinese culture and language.

There was so much to love about my Peace Corps Pre-Service Training (PST). After arriving in Chengdu, PR China, I and my 70 new colleagues were divided into four universities around the city. Spending only occasional Fridays and weekends with the other three groups only helped to strengthen our bonds. We all experienced the coming together and attachments that form out of a need for normalcy. After we received our site assignments we experienced the separation that occurs because of China's great distances. Some volunteers ended up separated by a four day train ride.

***

Reminded of the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime", I often wondered how I got here. My journey to Peace Corps began as an idea in the fall of 2010 when I found myself 27 years old and in debt from my travels to Europe. The idea was to apply to Peace Corps and keep all my options open.  I knew I wanted China, but I especially wanted to be out of debt by 2012, regardless of whether China was on the horizon.

During PST volunteers are interviewed by the country director. In late August I sat down with CD Bonnie Thie at Sichuan Normal University (SNU). As I shared with her my experiences in 2008 with Peace Corps Togo she asked if I regretted not receiving a West Africa assignment.

"No!" I replied quickly.

"Then why China?", she asked.

"I can't imagine anyone wanting to be anywhere else", I replied. China is what's happening.

***

On July 2, 2012 Peace Corps China's 18th cohort arrived in Chengdu, China. During the next few days we stayed at a hotel on the campus of Sichuan University. Every morning I asked myself how this happened. Did I really want to be here? What had I just sacrificed to be here? Was this really where I belonged?

The bus ride from the airport and the subsequent few days at the hotel didn't give me much time to digest everything that had happened. The difficult goodbyes in DC, the long orientation day in Los Angeles, the hours on the airplane over the Pacific, the night in Thailand, the awkward and sleepless interactions with strangers: as I replay everything that happened in the space of that week I realize now what a wonderful and exciting time we had.

If waking up the morning of my 29th birthday was the beginning of that wonder and excitement, meeting my host brother Luke Johnson and his family opened the next chapter. I wasn't truly in China until I shook Luke's hand and he said to me in brilliant American English:

"I'm Luke Johnson. You have nothing to worry about."

***

He cussed like an American. He watched WWE. He asked me if I'd seen the latest Family Guy spoof of Return of the Jedi. I knew from the moment he said "China is more open now", that Luke Johnson and I were going to be friends.

Luke represents a new China. Yes, it could be that Luke has spent the last 8 summers hosting Peace Corps volunteers. But I think it's the will to look west that brought the volunteers, not the other way around.

Before arriving in China most of my knowledge about China and its people came from The Economist and KungFu movies. Despite his often grizzled exterior, Luke helped me understand what China looks like today. And while I still woke up wondering how I got here, Luke helped me make a lot more sense of everything.

You may find yourself living in another part of the world...

The Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime

Luke and me at Qingcheng Mountain, where Taoism was founded.

New Adventures

Realizing that the adventures abroad are on hold for the time being, I've been dedicating time to writing about my homeland. For the last weeks I've maintained a weekly column on the Patch news site. It's called Ethnic Suburbian, and you can find it here:

Ethnic Suburbian

Be happy.

Sleepless in Madrid

An email exchange from 7/28/2010:

Me: "I'll get in touch with the people doing the conference in Madrid."

My Editor: "That conference -- hahah -- World Youth Day!"

Me: ...

World Youth Day is a huge deal. It's Catholicism's Super Bowl. I spent 4 sleepless days and nights in Madrid last month and somehow put the following together. Enjoy.

ARTICLE:
Organizers hope World Youth Day helps youths experience joy of faith

PODCAST:
WYD 2011 Madrid

My Own Private Camino

Article #2: Written from a small cave, on the side of a mountain overlooking El Monasterio Leyre in the Pyrenees of the Basque Country. These are the last words I will write in English before I convert formally to Euskara.

Pilgrim-hikers find time for inner reflection along Way of St. James stop in France

Il est Américain

Recently I've thought a lot about how to explain the difficulties of learning French. I can't say it's that special. It's difficult in the way training for a marathon is difficult. It's difficult the way calculus is difficult. How difficult is that? It's difficult enough to make you reconsider the value of your time.

French isn't Spanish, this is true. However, I've found that Spanish often lets me read French. Also, thanks to William the Conqueror, English has more than a little to do with French. Recently I sat around the dinner table eating fromage and talking with my buddy and his folks. When faced with a specific word absent from my French vocabulary I'd ask him to translate only to have him repeat the word back to me with a French accent.

Language learning has become a much smaller part of my trip than I anticipated. After one month I'm neither disappointed nor discouraged. I've spend July appreciating France. From here, the language I learn will reflect a deepening affection for the culture and people. This is the way language learning should be.

No Leaning

Danger: Images not suitable for my father. If you are my father, do not read any further. Failure to yield to this warning could result in extreme bouts of acrophobia.

Last Wednesday was a special day. After several days in Lyon I decided to explore the Alps. Here is a running diary of one of the scariest days of my life. (Times are color coded by location.)

8:30am - Up to get the petit déjeuner offered at the Vagabond Hostel in Chamonix. My roommates, who were Finnish and much better hikers than I, were up at 5:30 to get on the train. The more extreme the route, the earlier you get up. The good climbers don't sleep.
 

10:00am - I arrive at the train station. Train station? Okay, I need to explain. I'm hiking along the mountain, not up the mountain. (Registers a 0 on the Dad Scale)

Ode to a Russian Seminary

Can I interest you in the first article of the trip?

"Catholicism in Russia"

Between La Tour and Le Tour

Just inside the entrance to The National Museum of the American Indian in DC there's a large room with a circular space in the middle. The whole arena is earth-tone: wood, sand, and lots of light. The circular space at the center acts as a stage where the museum displays American Indian culture, crafts, and events.

A few years back I observed something really brilliant on that stage. A craftsman from Bolivia was making a boat of reeds. The reeds were long and green and flexible. He would gather them into a bunch and tie them really tightly. Then he'd carefully gather another bunch, and he would tie those too. When he had a bunch of bunches, he would bunch them together until he had a gorgeous green canoe with reeds bound up all along the hull. The craft was simple, elegant, and quite sturdy.

The other day I began thinking about how I learned Spanish. Looking back there seemed to be formative moments where a conversation synthesized all the little pieces of Spanish I'd been gathering. These milestone moments seemed to gel the reeds of a growing vocabulary, tying them together, making them fit.

My favorite reed boat moment came after my American classmates went home for winter break. I stayed behind to travel with my father. While in Bilbao, we stayed for about a week with a lovely Spanish/Basque family in Getxo. Every morning Rosa, la madre, would wake me up and demand that I tell her how I slept, what I wanted for breakfast, and what I wanted to do that day. She didn't give me a chance to think in English, just speak Spanish.

I'm writing about all this today because I just had my first French reed boat moment. After two weeks of staring at my French computer program and feeling embarrassed as I listened to my French friends tell each other what I can only assume are the most entertaining stories ever told, some of the small French pieces began to gel.

It happened as I managed to get a ride from Lyon to Chamonix with a French gent baring a delightful resemblance to Harrison Ford. Whereas I've found it difficult to get new people to speak slow, well-enunciated French to me the last few weeks, he obliged. Every new sentence seemed to unlock some hidden word I'd learned somewhere, waiting for confirmation in a real-world setting.

As I'll discuss in a later post, French presents challenges that don't exist in Spanish. But for now, at least, I've begun tying together the reeds of a simple, but sturdy French vocabulary.

Toulouse à Vélo

Gérard Manset - Il Voyage En Solitaire

Keys to Photographing Le Canal du Midi

On Sunday my host Raoul took me on a bike ride along the Canal du Midi. It's like the C&O canal in DC except businessman don't cut down trees along the canal that block the view from their mansion.

Riding back I noticed a gorgeous field of sunflowers just on the other side of the canal, protected by a barbed wire fence. The flowers obviously needed to be photographed. Monday, I obliged the sunflowers. I learned a lot along the way. Enough to present to you:

The Keys to Photographing Sunflowers along the Canal du Midi in Southern France

1) Do not, under any circumstances, bring a map. French roads are generally laid out in a circular pattern, as opposed to English streets which use a grid pattern. Also, all the houses in suburban France conveniently look the same. This is perfect when searching for a field of sunflowers. Not only won't you find the sunflowers, but your frustration will be compounded when you realize you're incapable of finding a HUGE FIELD OF SUNFLOWERS.

2) Make sure you bring a heavy metal camera-stand that's large and black and doesn't fit in your backpack. That way, when you ride down the streets of Toulouse, all the French people will think you're carrying a semi-automatic rifle.

3) If you do nothing else, go in the middle of the day. The light from the sun will be incredibly ordinary AND it'll be as hot as possible when you get lost.

4) Oh, and when that cute French girl approaches you on the way back, make sure not to speak any French. You'll be too tired, frustrated, and sunburned to care about missing the chance to meet the future French mother of your children.

Okay, you're all set. Follow all the keys and here are some pictures you'll take: