This is day #40 of my China adventure:

Hmm, where to begin? How did I feel as the plane was lifting off to Asia? Many different feelings, excitement, exhaustion, happy, joyful….. I remember looking out into the sky as we left JFK Airport and I was blessed with a window seat on the side of the plane looking out to the moon, it was full. I remembered thinking Grandmother Moon was watching and I felt safe and divinely guided. And thank God when I finally arrived in Shantou! After ~21 hours in the air with the travels spanning 2 days (left Wednesday night, arrived Friday late morning), I was very thankful to reach my final destination.

I began teaching the first week of my arrival. My first class was at the private school, Chengnan in the neighboring city of Chaozhou (sounds like chow-joe). I teach there Thursdays and Fridays, 5 classes each day with 50 students in each class. Yes, 50. Ironically, those classes are my more enjoyable ones. For example, I recently had a class of unruly kids and I was an inch away from walking out and going back to bed. Instead, I just walked out of the room and got a drink of water. That class has only 5 students. Yes, 5. Isn’t it ironic.

My teaching schedule has been revised each week since my arrival. So I’m looking forward to the first week when the schedule doe not change. I may throw a party, especially since I’ve been looking for an excuse to throw one anyway. Teaching itself is OK. It’s a bit challenging for several reasons (note: I am highly impressed by anyone’s effort to learn a foreign language so I constantly commend my students on their effort alone). I teach children, teens and adults at varying levels using 10 different course books. Another challenge is what seems so easy to me but is complicated for another. How do I simplify the complicated when it’s hard for me to recognize how it is complicated? For example, pronunciation, many students pronounce the word “so” as “show”. Many of the “s” words come out with the “sh” sound. I keep trying to stress to them that mispronouncing “sit” and “sat” in this way may get them into trouble in the States.

I take walks around the neighborhood trying new streets and new grocery stores (thanks Daddy, I now have your habit of daily food shopping). Actually here, it is very common for people to go to the market 2x/day (morning & evening). They usually buy the food and cook it immediately for their meal. And mostly everything is fresh. It’s quite normal to see people buying fresh goat’s milk from a vendor who has goats in a wooden cart and expresses their milk into plastic bags.

1. Followed (kids took a break from following me to play)
2. Outside my bedroom window
3. Scene on Champing Lu
4. Ancient bridge
5. Across the river
6. Ethnic Chinese crafts

My roommate is also my coworker who is Chinese-Canadian. We sometimes go exploring together to different parts of the city. We both enjoy visiting quieter areas like parks and Buddhist temples. We visited one temple that was built around 900 AD. We visited another temple that the locals consider new but it did not look new at all but I think the idea of newness here is relative.

I’I've met some other foreigners who are also teaching English here. They include people from the States, Canada, Cameroon and the Philippines. Please note: Shantou is not an international city. It is a small common city of China. There are not many foreigners here. Most are usually passing through on business with the factories. Since there are so few of us, I get stared at much of the time when I’m out. I respond to the stares differently depending on my mood. When I’m feeling good, I pretend that I’m a famous movie star and wave to my fans and greet them with “Ni Hao!”

Oh yeah, that reminds me, I was privy to a private tour of a sample storage floor in a toy factory. My friend from Cameroon invited me to meet with her friend who owns a toy company with her husband. I felt like I was in Santa’s workshop especially since most of the toys on display were for the Christmas holidays (elves, santas, angels, etc.). The average Chinese works in a factory. And many times these factories will provide housing for their employees since many of them come in from the countryside for work. The weather has been hot, humid and rainy. We are entering the rainy season. It’s wild how the sky may dump tons of water at once and then shortly afterward, the sun will shine bright and hot. But there are periods (like this one) where it rains for days. Its been raining now for 4 days with intermittent delays but constant gray skies. At times, it may get to me and I feel like sleeping all day or just feel gray myself.

In this recent period of feeling gray, I began to scrutinize my living & work situation here. I focused on everything that was wrong with it: the classes, the workload, the pay, the weather, the lack of social activities, this and that and that and this. And this led to the question WHY? Why did I come here? Why now? What is my purpose here? What is my life purpose? And the answers that I had once believed now had holes in them. So what is true? What is my truth? Right now, in this moment, that is the real question: What is my Truth?

I was struggling to find the answer and became frustrated and down when no answer would sustain me. I felt restless, unsettled, direction-less, unfulfilled. But I had to admit these feeling were not new. They were not born here in China. They were with me in NYC, with me in Brazil, with me in DC, with me while I looked out of our 12th floor Brooklyn apartment terrace at 12yrs old wondering what was for me beyond the horizon. This journey that I am on is beyond the physical. Sometimes I get wrapped up in the physical (I think it’s to distract me from my real work). I was wrestling with this feeling of unrest, even considering leaving the city and going somewhere else (still considering).

Then a much needed breath of light was sent to me via email. I usually do not open "Fw:" emails or announcements but I mistakenly opened one sent by a friend announcing her performance at Galapagos. I thought she was traveling to the Galapagos Islands so I wanted to read about her next adventure abroad but it turned out to be a night club in NY. The email opened with a poem that spoke to my soul. Directly to my soul. It was the energy of the poem, the pure creative energy. Creative energy knows no boundaries. Time, space, distance are all illusions that disintegrate with the experience of creativity: the pure expression of love, life itself, the life that flows in every living being, organism, particle of this universe. Words, sounds, bodies are only vehicles channeling this energy. So to express and experience this is to be ONE, we become living demonstrations of love.

This act of love touched that part of me that can’t be touched by any of our human physical senses. So there was no way to guard that place (especially when my expectation of the email was so off). I was wide open and I didn't’t even know it. And it touched me. And I cried, and cried and cried. I didn't’t realize just how tender that spot was or that it even existed. But the tears came (and some nose snot as well) and washed me, comforted me, soothed me, caressed me and communed with me. And it is in the spirit of communion that I reach out to you and share my story with you. In that vulnerable place I saw a glimpse of my gifts, my precious gifts of songs unsung, pictures unpainted, moves yet danced. That tender place inside is as vast as an ocean and never ending as the sky and it is real, for real, its really real--- I just started crying again reliving that moment of the glimpse into the eternal vastness of my soul.

So I graciously ask that you each give yourself the gift of vulnerability. Whatever that form takes- a poem, a song, a meal, a scent, a breeze, a touch, a dance, a whisper, a sight, silence, and laughter- whatever the form is- be open. Unlock the key to your soul. We all have vast oceans, stars, sands, wind, and songs still to be sung in ways we can’t even imagine. And only you can sing your song. This universe must hear it. We must experience your song that only you know the words to and only you can sing. I believe this to be True, Truth.

I leave you with the poem:

This one goes out to the green of summer
that follows me all the way down the block now
wants to come inside too, I say yes,
To the JMZ grumbling quietly across the tangle
of rooftops, carrying itself and a few others somewhere slowly
To the sun and the blue moon it followed
To this darker browning of my skin, by degrees,
over days, through the gray clouds even
This one goes out to windows open the whole length of night
To pineapple icees sold through car windows
To store windows full of short skirts, to windows and the breeze they bring
This one goes out to June, and the month she was not born in
To each bead of heat rolling from your brow
To water and the breeze it brings
To music and the breeze it brings
This one goes out,
and it will go
and it will come again.
~Sparlha Swa