So, before I forget, something I forgot to talk about yesterday was that when we were having lunch with Daisy, we asked her what she was studying and she said international relations. We asked her if she chose that, and she said no, her parents chose it for her. And then we asked her if she liked it or if she kind of is sad that her parents chose it for her. The funny thing is, she compared it to marriage. She said it’s a lot like marriage in that it was chosen for her, but she likes it now. I guess that’s how she feels about marriage. She feels like the husband will be chosen for her, and then she’ll fall in love with him after she’s married him. I thought it was so interesting that she compared it to marriage! I mean, I would never marry a guy if I didn’t love him. And I always make jokes about how Asian parents decide everything for their kids like, oh all the people at UCSD are Asian, why do you think so many are pre-med? Because their parents want them to be doctors, of course. But like, it never occurred to me that maybe they would COME to like it. And it never occurred to me that it was OKAY with the children that their parents were choosing it for them. Daisy said she didn’t mind that they chose international relations for her, because she had no idea what she wanted to do anyways. It’s just so interesting to me that a world where you DON’T make your own choices is okay. And like, people of a different culture don’t EXPECT to make their own choices. They just come to love them later. It’s soo interesting that she said that…Dang, I really have a lot more to study as a psychologist. I’m only learning things about American people, but things can be SO different in another country. Before I thought like, well, how different could it be in another country? But MAN, it can be A LOT different. I’m learning things that never even occurred to me here.
Anyways, ONTO MY DAY! Today was a pretty good day! Let’s see….to start our day, Joanna and me went to get breakfast as always. We went to the convenient store again, and bought some breads. Then, we walked to class as always…Morning session was Professor Pan Tianshu again, but this time he spoke about China’s rural socioeconomic changes (yesterday he talked about the urban socioeconomic changes). Still not interesting, but I did a much better job of listening today I think. He did end with a very interesting thought, though, that the healthiest countries may not be those who have great healthcare programs and things like that, but rather the countries that have the least gap between the rich and poor. So this would mean and countries like China and the US would be the unhealthy countries and countries like Japan and Sweden would be healthy countries. Interesting to think about.
Anyways, after morning session we went to lunch. Daisy (the grad student) took us to a noodle shop on the student street. It was DEEELICIOUS :) I got wonton mein (hahaha, just like at home) and it as pretty good. It was different from home though. Usually at home wonton mein comes with egg noodles but this one came with like thick, white noodles. I think some type of rice noodle. And the wonton skins were super duper thin, with very little meat. It’s kinda the opposite at home. But its okay, it was still good because I love wonton mein. Afterwards, me Joanna Tim Jaime and Geneva went to get ice cream because I’ve been craving it for like 3 days now J except I didn’t actually end up getting ice cream, because I ended up getting a red bean popsicle because it just looked SO good and I love red bean. My popsicle started melting really fast though, because it was so hot outside, so I had to eat it really fast. Faster than I would have preferred.
After lunch we went back to class for afternoon session, except this class was different. We shared the class with the exchange program students (their program is focused on cultural exchange while ours is focused on studying, but both programs are from the same organization). We also shared the class with Chinese University students, who we’ll be working with next week at the migrant schools service project. It was pretty cool meeting them…we had a lecture by Carol Chyau, who co-founded and is president of a social enterprise company in Shanghai, on social enterprise (duh). She also kinda made it interactive and has us break into groups and brainstorm ideas about how to address the problems of the migrant schools. So, if you don’t know what I’m talking about when I talk about migrant schools, this is what happens. The children who live in the rural parts of China get rural residency cards. These residency cards indicate what type of education and healthcare you receive. Urban residency cards are definitely a privilege; public schools in the cities and healthcare is much better. So there is this huge discrepancy in the education of rural and urban students. The urban students are allowed to go to public schools, which has good teachers and provides a good education. But rural students are forced to go to migrant schools, which has much worse facilities and not as qualified teachers. I believe the stats were 60% of migrant school teachers graduated w/ a university degree while the other 40% have some sort of lesser education. And another issue is the instability of teachers and students. The teachers are constantly looking for a better job because migrant schools don’t pay well, so they always think of their job at migrant schools as temporary. So there’s always a cycling of teachers and the teachers never stay long enough to get to know the students. You can see how this would be a major problem in the students’ lives. I know for me, if my teachers knew me and were there to encourage me the whole way, I felt a lot more confident and more motivated to do well in school. But migrant school kids don’t have this type of encouragement. And the students’ parents are always moving too, so the students don’t always stay at the same school for a long time. So the students definitely have a hard time restarting, especially if the curriculum isn’t the same. Oh I forgot to mention, the rural students are allowed to go to public schools, but have to pay a much higher fee that the family definitely can’t afford. And even if the family can afford it, the migrant students are usually discriminated against in public schools because they just don’t know how to fit in. Their mannerisms and everything are different, so it’s just difficult for them to WANT to go to a public school. Dan called it apartheid, but based on social class. So it seems like there’s no way to break out of this cycle, because migrant school students aren’t getting educated enough to do really well in mainstream society and get out of the rural residency. So, their kids end up going to migrant schools too, and so on. So these are the kids we’ll be working with next week. The students are underprivileged and usually lead really hard lives, because their parents are out working and they have to care for the family and cook and clean and help their parents work. It’s definitely a tough issue to deal with and I don’t know how we’ll be helping at the schools. I think we’ll probably be teaching, but I’m not sure what we’ll be teaching. I am excited to see what we’ll be doing though. The only thing I worry about is not being good with kids. I mean, I am okay with them, but not really good. And whenever a kid comes along and everyone goes, “AWWWWWWW, SOO CUUUUTE” in their baby voice, I just don’t feel the same way. I mean yeah, babies can be cute, but they’re not all cute, and I guess I have pretty high standards of cute. And so I’m not sure I’d be such a good nurturer. This is one of the reasons I don’t know if I’ll have kids in the future. Like, I can be a kid’s playmate (I have many examples…one of them being that I really like to play pokemon with my 7 and 12 year old neighbors down the street), but I don’t know if I can be a kid’s nurturer. My mom’s really good at that though. She’s really good at nurturing a kid’s spirit and making them feel really special. She definitely did that with me and my sister, and I can see her do it with other people’s kids now that I’m older. I think she and my dad are both really good at it. They always spoil the kid and let him/her have whatever they want, but when they’re doing this, I find myself frowning on it. I mean, I think it’s really nice of them to do it, but I feel like the kid should learn things on their own, not just get everything he ever wants. I don’t know. Maybe that’s how you nurture them and make them feel good. But see that’s why I think I can’t be a good nurturer, because I’m constantly thinking that kids should figure things out themselves and earn things on their own. I know I shouldn’t be that way, because they don’t know any better and they need help, but that’s how I’ve always felt. Maybe that’s why I’m sometimes disrespectful to my grandma, because I feel like she needs to earn respect from me. But that’s definitely not a good thing. I know I should respect her no matter what, just because she’s my elder and she’s my GRANDMA, and she’s given so much to me throughout her life. But sometimes I just feel like, gosh! She’s so BITTER and NAGGING and UNPLEASANT that I don’t WANT to give her respect. But I digress. That’s what I’m worried about – not being a good nurturer.
So, I had a major breakthrough in feelings today…one of the girls on the program is just like me, I found out. It happened while we were working in groups and brainstorming with the cultural exchange students and Chinese university students. So my group was me, Michelle (from my program), Stephanie & Joy (from the cultural exchange program), and two Chinese university students (I didn’t catch their names…). But the Chinese university students were kinda fobby, right, and they don’t’ speak English very well. So Michelle and I are looking at each other with a bit of impatience, and she starts talking to me about how…she’s kinda getting annoyed by them. And I ask her why and she explains that she has always kinda mocked the culture. She said that whenever she’s with her friends, they always make fun of fobs and get irritated by them. I told her that I’m kinda the same way…I don’t think I’m as bad as her, but my friends and I do make fun of fobs sometimes. And yes, sometimes I find myself getting irritated with them just for being so helpless and seemingly out of place. So we kept talking about that and she was like, “Yeah, I feel really bad because everyone here just seems so..spiritual, and here I am, making fun of them.” And I told her that I also felt really…out of place with our group, because everyone talked about G on the first day when we were talking about our goals for this trip. And everyone said “yeah, I wanna see how G is working in China,” but I was like, “Uhh…is it bad that I don’t? I’m here for other reasons.” And Michelle TOTALLY felt the same way. Like we definitely aren’t totally in line with G right now, and even though we both believe in G and know he is the ruler of the universe, we kinda suck at…well, being spiritual. Anyways, I was so relieved to find out that Michelle is kinda on the same spiritul level as me – level 0 (to quote Kung Fu Panda :) ). So I’m definitely really glad I found out about that. I feel now like we have a special bond, because we’re the only people who know each other’s secret – that we’re not as spiritually in line as everyone else here. So we’re more the realistic ones, that aren’t feeling totally spiritual and faith-oriented while we’re here. Like when people share, sometimes they talk about G and what he's teaching them, but me and Michelle are like “uhh…”. So I don’t feel so alone now. I’m really glad I found out about her. But on the other hand, I’m really scared that I found out about her. I have to admit, it was relieving to know that someone else felt the same way as me, but I’m also REALLY scared that it’s going to have a bad influence on me. Like, knowing that she feels the same way as me is going to make me feel really comfortable where I am because I’ll always think, “Oh, Michelle feels the same way, it’s okay.” I won’t be motivated to change or to see things from a faith-oriented perspective. And I know that if I get too comfortable here in this position, I’ll be happy to just put up a front and let everyone (except for Michelle) think I’m a really good Chrstin and live the rest of my 2 months like that. And then I’ll return home and be the same exact person in the same exact position. I know that at first, I was feeling really lonely because I thought I was the black sheep among a bunch of good Chrstins, but it sort of motivated me to try to be like them and to find my path with G. Now that I know about Michelle, I am afraid that I’ll be too lazy to do that because I don’t need to. I mean, being one black sheep out of two is a lot easier than being the ONLY black sheep of the bunch. So I find myself wondering, then, why G put Michelle here? No wait, that sounded bad. I mean it like, why did G let me find out about Michelle? Why would he let me know that I have a partner in my feelings? If I was motivated to be on track with him before, why would he throw this curveball at me and give me Michelle? Is it a test to see how motivated I am, how much I truly want to be with him? Or maybe it’s not G. Maybe it’s S. Is S trying to throw me off the path? Maybe this is one of the temptations that S is giving me to keep me away from G. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it? I don’t know the answer. But I do know that I definitely want to stay motivated to try to get on the right track with G, while feeling a lot more at ease now that Michelle is here.
Dang, so I just got back from our first tutorial & reflection session over dinner. The point of these sessions is just to talk about what we’ve liked/not liked about these past 5 days, and how it’s changed our thinking or affected us. So basically I just talked a little bit about what I’ve been writing in here. But Dan brought up some good points and we talked a lot about prejudices and how we are called to value people. Like especially since I don’t know the language here, I treat people as what they look like to me. Like a waiter is a waiter to me. He serves me and I say thank you, but that’s it. I don’t need to engage him, I don’t need to go out of my way to make him feel special, because he’s my waiter. And this is a really prominent view among us Americans, since we are the most powerful country in the world. And this also reflects on why I haven’t learned Chinese until now. For the longest time I didn’t want to learn Chinese because I just figured I didn’t need to and I don’t really like the culture anyways, so what’s the point. But just recently I’m realizing that that is a really arrogant point of view, and it’s one that I’m not alone in holding. Most Americans will just go to other countries but not speak the language because, well, everyone else learns or will learn our language since we’re the most powerful country. But Dan brought up that learning a language is a way of valuing a person as a person who is loved by G. By learning their language, we’re humbling ourselves by kind of saying that we like their language and want to try to be a part of it; we believe that their language is valuable and that’s why we’re learning it. Even if we can’t speak it well, it’s still the fact that we’ve taken the time to learn their language that reflects that we value them and their language. By speaking only English, we sort of imply that speaking English is the best way to do things; we don’t need to learn any other language. I’m really glad I figured that out before it was too late and now I’m taking the steps I need to learn a lot of different languages. And it’s not even just learning languages. By looking someone in the eye and saying, “Hi, how are you?” we’re valuing them. We don’t even really have to be interested; even if it sounds like it’s just making small talk, just the fact that we’re paying attention to them an allowing them to converse with us is significant. For example, Dan told us about how he always gets into a cab and simply makes it a cab driver-passenger relationship. The cab driver drives, and the passenger sits until he has reached his destination. Then, the passenger gets out and says, “Thank you” and pays the driver. But that’s it. The relationship doesn’t need to extend further. But what if we strike up a conversation with the driver? What if we ask a lot of questions about him and his life? What if we really took the time to get to know them, and ask them how they’re feeling? I never really thought of it like this, even though I should have. G calls us to love everyone and accept everyone just as he loves and accepts us. But we can’t even do that. We give people labels like “driver” or “waiter” and treat them accordingly. It never occurred to me that maybe I should give these people the time of day, and LOOK them in the eye and sincerely ask them how they are doing. I’m now realizing how incredibly arrogant I’ve been and we are as Americans to think that people are here to serve US and we don’t really have to talk to them. Like, Dan talked about how that is in a way dishonoring G because G loves him and cares for them, and we don’t accept them or love them. We’re rejecting them and in a sense we’re rejecting G in them. It’s really interesting…and I know that was definitely a big jumble mess of things, but I just got back from listening to all this and wanted to get everything down before I forgot it, so I just typed like a madman. So to recap (this is more for my purposes than for whoever’s reading this), we as Americans come from a society that is prone to rejecting people and labeling them. But that dishonors G because G loves these people and is in all of them, but we reject them and don’t accept them. We don’t value people enough because we put labels on them instead of giving them the label “person loved by G.” And valuing them can be something as simple as looking them in the eye when saying “thank you” or striking up a conversation with them. Definitely making them feel special is something to aim for, whether they are a cashier or a waiter or a driver or a maid. We need to treat them the same as we would treat the CEO of a huge company. Their vocation is not indicative of who they are, because each person on this Earth is a person loved by G. And we need to treat them like that.
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