Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Back from Beijing / Back to Work

My New Years holiday spent in China's capitol city proved to be very helpful, not only to my future decisions, but also to my minds tranquility.  

When I first looked for a job in China I wanted someplace small, although people would say a city of over a million people isn't small it is for China, so I chose Xianyang.  Xianyang is a nice area to work because it's quiet and the people are nice, you can leave the city in order to find excitement, but ultimately come home to some peace.  Xianyang is closest to Xi'an, which is China's original capitol city and also where the TerraCotta Army is still being uncovered to this day.  Xianyang and Xi'an are also found right in the middle of China, which makes it a good travel spot; nothing is too far away.  So when I was given the option of teaching for my holiday I said no, yes I could have earned more money, but I didn't just come to China to teach, I also wanted to explore. 



If I didn't know anyone in Beijing, I probably wouldn't have went, but I made a friend and had a friend tagging along for the experience as well, so off I went.  I stayed in Beijing for 5.5 days during the Spring Festival/Chinese New Year celebration.  It was really cold there, so the pollution wasn't bad as I had been hearing on the news recently.  Most of the Beijing residents were gone visiting family and friends in smaller cities around China, and of course the foreigners went back to their homes or they too took the opportunity to travel like me; which means the city was pretty empty for most of the time I visited. I saw a lot of things, not just landmarks or touristy places but also places where I could work and/or shop for products that aren't found where I am working now.  I didn't get to see the Great Wall, as I had a feeling I would be coming back to Beijing, probably in the summer.


I traveled to Beijing to see if I liked the city and I ended up loving it.  Small cities are nice for a year, for the experience of being in a place where every day you are uncomfortable and you have to adapt, but more than a year is too much.  I want to work in Beijing where the people may not always be nice, but where I can earn more and gain more.  In Xianyang, you can only go so far and I want more. Is it greed? Maybe, but Beijing showed me that I liked seeing many different people in one place, it's a lot like California in that way, the diversity is crazy good!  

You can do so many things in Beijing and be so many things; you can get so many connections to people from around the world.  In September I will hopefully move to Beijing with my own apartment and another teaching job for at least another year, after that who knows (maybe go back to the states if the economy is better), but that will be my next journey.



Now I am back home in Xianyang, the first term has just ended, it's hard to believe 6 months in China has flown by so quickly, but I am reminded that time does fly because my friends that I met when I first arrived 6 months prior are leaving; their journeys are ending here and beginning elsewhere.  7 months away from your home country changes you, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse.  That is when you have to ask yourself is the changing worse for you or for the people you left behind? These are your choices not theirs. I'm sure people in some sort of military service ask themselves the same questions as I am.  We don't stay the same, we change, it's part of living your own life.  


I remember when I first started teaching, I was scared to death, but now with experience under my belt I am more comfortable and can think on my feet. My students, I learned, liked me and even though some of them are leaving the school they wanted my contact information, which I gave them gladly.  In these next 6 months I will meet more people and gain more friends and experiences, but hopefully not a new laptop (as I have already bought a new one).  I will again, make choices that may not be smiled upon by everybody, but this is my life and my choices, just as my choice was to live and work in China.  I will turn 23 in the coming months, the anniversary of my mother's death will come again, I will get new students and classes and a new job with new opportunities to expand my future for the better.  We will see, I guess, and I will definitely share it with you, so that hopefully one day when an opportunity presents itself you too, will take it and find yourself on a wonderful adventure, like mine is for me.

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