Time

A little birdie reminded me that I have been neglecting updating this journal for some time. I apologize that those of you interested have had to suffer through the crushing eroticism of my previous post.

That said, Merry Christmas. I had mashed potatoes ("potato mud" in Chinese) and roast chicken for dinner with a couple of Americans and a couple of New Zealanders. I've enjoyed getting close to a few other people who also teach English, some of whom are quite experienced and, I daresay, wise about the whole thing.

Around Thanksgiving I realized how lucky I am as a recent graduate teaching without oversight to a group of scholarship Tibetan students. More recently I've begun to appreciate the significance of being a high school English teacher. Half of the people I know rate their high school English teachers as one of the most important adults in their lives before university. Although I teach English as a foreign language, this job is the most rewarding thing I've done, ever, including those summers I spent as a backpacking guide in New Mexico.

Critical thinking, debate, active questioning: these are the things my students have begun to explore with the least bit of prodding from me. They open up to me in their diaries like no American student would dare, and share the traumatic and ecstatic generously. Life is short, they say, or life is long. We must do good to help Tibetans, they explain, to prepare us for our next lives. Why do half of Tibetans seem uninterested in learning the Tibetan language, they ask without answer, and how should they feel about the Government and Party? Is there an intangible cost to redeveloping their hometowns to industry and tourism?

They haven't the vocabulary or grammar to express these ideas in such terms, but they are showing signs of real creative thinking, albeit tenuously. While I don't have anyone directly evaluating my progress or observing my class, I still tread a fairly fine line when it comes to shaping their debates and opinions about some pretty heavy issues.

And these issues don't have clear answers, of course, and I'm particularly glad to have first had a familiarity and affinity for China and Chinese before being confronted with the reality here. The Tibetan Buddhism is thick, but the people of Kham are rough and most are far from saintly.

My student is informing me that the power will be cut off shortly. On Wednesday I will go to Chengdu, and from their head to Kathmandu on Saturday. I will head back to Sichuan via Tibet over land in buses and trains. If you think I have been lazy updating this blog now, just wait.

I will ring in the New Year with my two brothers in Kittymandu. I can't believe I even just wrote that sentence. I've been so stressed recently and now I am seeing light. The winter holiday lasts for two months here. By the time I teach again, I will be 24, it will be the fire year of the boar, the year of my own zodiac sign, purportedly an unlucky year for me. We will be through another Mardi Gras as well.

Time.