"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing..." -Helen Keller
 
This year as we sit around the Thanksgiving table, I'll be giving a shout-out to roll-on deodorant. Who knew? It's fantastic! Last summer, however, our first summer in China, I was using solid sticks of deodorant. While riding the bus downtown in a big city, I noticed some man looking at my underarm with great confusion... likely because of some small bits of white that had gathered up during the daily hustle & bustle.

Why the confusion? Well, friends, apparently deodorant is not such a universal product as one might have imagined. Now, when I'm chilling in my apartment blogging with my sweet-smelling underarms, this is no problem. HOWEVER, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when I enter a classroom packed with 80 high school students... we have a problem. Somebody needs to get the deodorant train over here. Fast.

One final note: I have no idea what's going on in this picture, but it was mildly related to the topic of deodorant and made me laugh, so here's as good a place as any, right?
Picture
Photo Source: http://www.bedbugmundo.com/bad-smells-may-fend-off-bed-bugs.html
 
Wow! It's amazing to see that I didn't blog at all during June. Since the last time I posted,
-I've started grad school.
-I finished my third year of teaching.
-I celebrated by second anniversary.
-I've watched High School Musical
-I've bough Austin two soccer balls, one of which was eaten by a dog and the other of which was punctured by a nail within the first 2 hours of him owning it.

I'm loving grad school, and teaching was really good too. We're excited, however to move across town to teach at a local college next month. I'll be teaching 3 sections of spoken English and 4 sections of American literature (ah, what to do with the assumption that because I'm American, I should know anything at all about American literature!). No, really, I remember loving it in high school, so I'll spend the summer brushing up and I'll be good to go.

We're coming to the close of our second year living in China. I'm learning a lot and have been challenged in lots of ways lately. I've seen my fear of engaging with people, my fear of awkward moments, my extreme selfishness & hesitancy to love anyone but myself, a certain ethnocentricity and pride that I've come to hate, and I've seen a need for change. And so slowly, I'm learning to engage more and more, to stop what I'm doing to spend time with somebody, to truly come to love the people around me, to see things through the eyes of love and be broken.

Someone asked me the other day what I missed about America. Just for fun, here's my list in no particular order:
1. Cereal
2. Dishwasher
3. The appreciation of funny, sarcastic comments
4. Events to get really dressed up for
5. Community
6. Canned vegetables

I think that's mostly it. And yet, none of those things are enough to send me packing right now. I love living here, and there are actually a whole lot of things about China that I'm sure I will grieve the loss of whenever it's time to head for the hills... But that's a post for another day.
 
I'm not normally one to let my heart bleed over all the internet, but I'm having a not-so-hot weekend. I've just felt so incredibly anti-social and awkward the past few days, like I don't want to talk with or be with anyone, and it makes me feel so purposeless. I feel like I don't even have it in me to be super smiley or make small talk or anything.

Today we had some people over for lunch. Our house was super duper messy, which already had me stressed out, so I ran around and cleaned it, then I got to cooking. Well, I got the tomato soup going on the gas grill, the single heating unit in our kitchen that works. Five minutes later, I noticed it wasn't getting warm. The gas was out, and the guests were due to arrive any minute. In a hurry, I grabbed our old, functions-about-30-percent-of-the-time dolphin hot pad. Luckily, it turned on. Unluckily, when I lifted the huge pot of tomato soup to move it from the gas grill to the hot pad, one of the handles snapped off and tomato soup went everywhere-- the walls, over all the clean dishes, the floor. There was still enough left to heat up, except that I was distracted by how badly everything was going and I forgot about and burned the soup. (I was talented enough at this point to be doing two things at once: burning the soup and burning the toasted cheese sandwiches. Awesome.)

By this point, I wasn't really in the mood to be super social with our lunch guests and I felt like a total loser, so I just hung out and ate some of the burned soup and cleaned some stuff while Austin hung out with them.

I guess sometimes I don't really understand why I feel down. I mean, I think about my life and it's really pretty great. I live in a beautiful country and experience really interesting things every day. I have an amazing & supportive husband and best friend, who amazingly enough just about never has a bad day, or at least never has a bad attitude about it. I have hilarious sisters and some of the greatest parents I know, including a few new ones I inherited two years ago. And there are really a million other reasons for celebrating. Life is good, and most of the time I love it. I guess it was just one of those days.
 
"Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible."

I read this quote the other day and pasted it into a new blog entry because I wanted to take some time to reflect on it. If there's one thing I've learned from being so close to another person in relationship, engagement, and marriage, its that I don't love very well.

I am incredibly selfish. I love when it's convenient. I do what someone else wants after I've already had my way, or when I think the crazy & mildly unpleasant venture I 'm about to agree to will end in a great story to tell. I serve when it makes me feel better about myself.

This is what I've learned about love lately. Love is simple. Love is daring. Love doesn't consider how much strength must be reserved for tasks, challenges, opportunities later in the day. It doesn't avoid conversations for fear of awkwardness. It says it's sorry when I've messed up really badly. When I love, my pride must away, and going out of my way to care for another becomes infinitely more important than saving face. When I love, no price is too big, no amount of time too long, no inconvenience too inconvenient.

I've seen this kind of love. I've been loved with patience, with a love full of grace and forgiveness again and again and again when I certainly did not deserve it. The love was beautiful, bigger than the ugliness in my heart and powerful enough to change the one who was undeservingly loved.

I want to love like that.
 
I've fried my voice. With 19 classes of 65-80 excited students each, I'm often left projecting a little louder than humanly healthy. And so finally, I have joined the line-up of local teachers with raspy, hoarse, dysfunctional voices. Hopefully, I'll not end up in the line who have taken it to an unrecoverable extreme and have needed surgery.

Fortunately, I traded classes with another teacher and taught his classes last weekend, so he's teaching mine today, which leaves me with a day at home. I made a bet with Austin that I could keep from talking all day long, so my day of silence began 1 hour and 37 minutes ago.

Ah... blessed silence. Maybe sometimes I even need a break from my own voice.
 
So really, I'm not really a big fan of this page of my blog. I think it's a good idea, and I'd love to write more about my heart, I'm just not so sure about publishing it out for the world to see.

But I'd like to try a little. Lately, (and by lately I mean pretty much my whole life, though lately it's been particularly driving me crazy), I've had a ridiculous preoccupation with what others think of me. Here, in this place, especially, I am so often anxious of what others think of me. I'm living in a place where the subtler qualities of one's personality (subtle humor, occasional sarcasm, a quiet raise of the eyebrows to jest at something ridiculous going down, a quiet word, clearly and quietly understanding the local language) are not often noticed. I'm also living alongside of my best friend, someone with a not-so-subtle personality in many ways. He's my partner and my soul mate in every way; he's perfect for me. However, as he cracks jokes, unreservedly enters into conversations in a foreign language, and is often applauded as the life of the party in this culture, it's caused me to reflect a whole lot more on what it means for me to be secure, what it means for me to truly not care what others think, pretty much for my self worth not to hang on whether someone else thinks I'm cool.

I ran across this quote today... There are so many intertwined wires in my brain that I don't know whether reading the quote in the context of what I'm writing will make sense to others, but it's my heart on my sleeve, and it makes sense to me:

"Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame."

I want this tranquility of heart, to be the girl who cares for neither praise nor blame. I don't want my self-worth, my security, to hang on whether another person likes me, whether they think I'm great because I'm a foreigner or they think I'm unintelligent because I can't think on my feet to utter words in a foreign language, whether they think I'm pretty because my eyes or blue or they think that my fashion is crazy because I don't care if my clothes are dirty or my hair is out of place, whether they think I'm the best teacher in the world because I'm creative or they think I'm awful because I'll gladly abandon a lesson plan to re-direct toward student needs and issues at hand, whether they think I'm fun or they think I'm clueless as I sit thinking hilarious thoughts that I just can't quite express across the language barrier.

I want to love. I want to be free. I want to run, unashamedly, unhindered by what others think. I just want to be me. I want to forget who others want to me to be, for my ears to be deafened to the roaring applause and the mocking laughter for long enough to consider only what I was made for, who I am.
 
I have this issue with certain words. The kind of issue that makes me want to strike their entries from the dictionary, and permanently blot their existence and use from the world.

A few years ago, I met Austin. He struck me as they sort of person who, if made aware of the contents of this list, would exploit it. After making some sort of a statement that he would not, in fact, be the type of person to use it against me, I spilled the list. Worst. Mistake. Ever. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Austin was, in fact, a trustworthy guy, and he kept his word... for a while. Little did I know I would end up marrying this Austin, and those dreadful words would eventually find their way into daily conversation in the most unsuspecting moments. When he recently defended the truthfulness of his initial vow to me, he explained that did, in fact, remain true to his word at first and honor my hatred of these words. "But now," he explained, "I have no choice." Here are the words, friends. The terrible words:

moist, creamy, ointment, supple, succulent, postulate, nubs, tender, gooey, nodule, chunky, chewy, cluster, pus, fester, flaccid, smear, follicle, scabies, phlegm, secrete, mucus, salve, flesh, coagulate, curdle, congeal, filmy, balm/balmy

There are more words; i know it. They pop up when I least expect it. Around every corner, in every dark alley, and yes, even in my own apartment, there is no rest from the dreadful list.
 
We had vacation from school this week because it was the country's birthday. It has been so busy, and to be honest, I am met again with that it's-the-end-of-vacation-you're-supposed-to-feel-refreshed-but-you-don't feeling.

In two weeks I will start grad school. I don't know exactly what that will look like, just that it will be more hours of studying, though i think it will be interesting... and a good chance to use my Chinese since I'll have to be going into schools and talking with students, teachers, administrators...

I'm also preparing to run a book club, well it actually turned into 2 book clubs. I offered to host a club with about 10 students-- a maximum of 15-- but our school, completely not understanding the idea of small classes or interactive discussion, "offered" the idea that I include 20 students so more could participate. With these students and their English levels, 20 would be disastrous in my opinion, so now there are 2 10-person book clubs. Then, I bought a book, "Peter Pan," a very simplified version, and the school ordered 20 of them. I made a study/discussion guide for each chapter and felt like we were good to go. Then we found out that the school had accidentally ordered the MP3 discs for the book, but that the book itself was unavailable. SO... back to the semi-distant town with a bookstore that carries English books, and now I'm working on a discussion guide for "The Adventures of Pinocchio."

With the arrival of mini-muffin tins, and the discovery of making healthy soft pretzels and savory scones, you could say that I've been keeping busy in the kitchen once again.

Of course, when there's nothing to be done, there's always the endless mass of Chinese words, grammar, and conversation to be studied and practiced.

And just when I was getting bored... here come the students... it's almost time for class.

Really though, we do have a most excellent life here. There are more pictures of our weeks on our family blog, but here are a couple of pictures from our time together this week.