Confessions

After being here for almost 2 months (how is that possible?), I suffered through my very first I Hate China Day. Actually, it's basically been this entire week, and it's totally sucked.

Contributing factors as to why I hated China:
-I was sick with a cold so bad that I was nearly unable to leave the house.
-My parents are visiting my sister in NYC this week. They're all excited, as it's their first visit since she moved there in August, and I'm all jealous that I won't be joining in on the fun.
-I kiiiind of miss my friends.
-I am sometimes lacking direction here. I definitely have goals and things that I want to accomplish, but they're "big picture" for the most part (ie, learn Mandarin), and my purpose here is quite vague. Consequently, it's difficult to remain motivated and direction-ful without breaking these things down into something a bit more tangible, something I have yet to do.
-Nothing functions like it's supposed to in China and everything is much more complicated than I could imagine. Little things, incessantly.
-Yes it's very nice to want to learn a new language, but this one's a lot harder to "fake" in the beginning stages compared to languages I've encountered before, and it makes things quite frustrating. It would also be nice if I could look up Chinese characters in my dictionary, but I can't. See, characters are alphabetized based on their pinyin, but seeing as how I do not know the character (which is why I am looking it up), I don't know what the pinyin is, I have no idea how it's spelled, and I can't look it up unless I want to sift through my dictionary for 20 minutes. So I'm limited to English-Chinese and no Chinese-English.
-I'm more isolated here than I thought I would be. It's difficult to meet people, and though those I've met have been extremely kind and welcoming, I haven't met anyone else who's new this semester (most come in the fall) and under the age of 50. Everyone is already in their routine and has had their "transition" period... and I have yet to meet a female teacher my age who's not married (eeeew). Though the community here is quite close-knit, it's not like we're all in the same building at the same time. Everyone's teaching at different schools on different schedules, and I go many days where I don't see anyone who's not Chinese. Of course I hope to make friends with locals as well, but not surprisingly there are a few barriers that make such a friendship seem slightly less than natural.

I expect many of my frustrations to diminish as I spend more time here, and I know much of the problem is my attitude. It's uncharacteristic of me not to push myself in such situations, but these days I've found comfort in the ease of coming home and studying Chinese (ok usually just sitting on Facebook) rather than forcing myself to be out there, in the middle of it all. If I spend the rest of my time in China acting like I have the past week, it'll be a total waste. Of course, no serious thoughts of wanting to pack up and head home. More just "ugh this sucks."

But don't cry for me, Argentina! FORTUNATELY I woke up yesterday with a new perspective. Things that I hated a few days ago are now a "challenge," simply "different" from what I'm familiar with. As I left for class yesterday, I looked up at the sun, already shining through the early morning smog, and I knew that my new-found optimism was going to stick around for a while.