Tourist Time

I've always loved being a tourist in my own area, whether it was going to the Space Needle for a cup of coffee when I lived for Washington or walking around People's Park in Chengdu on a Saturday morning.  I love to see things I've seen dozens of times from a new perspective, and I love sharing these places that I love with people that I love.

This month has been a month of tourism in this country that I now call home.  My parents made the long trek from Ethiopia to China for Christmas, coming to this massive country for the first time since 1993.  To say that they stepped in to a China they have never seen before would be an understatement.  China in 1993 is nothing like China in 2015.

Since they arrived on December 10th, we've seen just about all there is to see in Chengdu, they went up to Xi'an to see the famous Terra-cotta Warriors, we spent six days in Harbin where my brother Jonathan lives, and now we've spent four or so days in Beijing, the nations capital.  By far the coldest place we've been on this journey was Harbin, where we had a glorious white Christmas at the Ice Festival (it is the Ice City, after all) and 'enjoyed' temperatures of -30C.

The traveling has been fun, and seeing new parts of China is always exciting, but the best bit about our Christmas this year was being together.  Showing my parents my new home is surreal.  Who wouldn't thought that Jonathan and I would both be living in China?  I sure didn't!  But now, three and a half years into calling this home, I can't imagine how different my life would be if I hadn't started on this journey.  To say that I'm thankful would be a serious understatement.  I'm sad to see my parents leave tonight to go back to Ethiopia, but I'm so thankful that we were able to spend this Holiday season together, celebrating the gift of family and the Gift of the Savior.  Merry Christmas!


Rather than go into the whole trip in detail, here are a few pictures to highlight our adventures:

They rode in a pedi-cab all by themselves!

Real Sichuan HotPot

Heading to the bus with my roommate

Ready for whatever the pollution brings our way

Family Picture - Panda Style!

Playing an Ice Grand Piano

At the Harbin Ice Festival

Made of ice.  Wow...

On the Great Wall of China

Thankful.

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday to reflect on after living overseas.  As I sit on my couch, waiting for the tea kettle to boil water for some chai (that’s festive, right?), I’ve found myself thinking back over a lifetime of Thanksgivings.  Allow me to let you walk down my memory lane for a moment as I reminisce…

My first memories of Thanksgiving are from when we lived in Western Washington.  I’m sure we celebrated it in Rwanda when I was smaller, but my first memory of the holiday has me at 8 or 9 years old.  My parents would wake up and cook.  By the time my eyes opened, the turkey would be in the oven and the first round of dishes would be ready to go in the dishwasher.  (I don’t know how they got all of that done so quickly…even now I’m pretty sure they had some sort of a time-turner!)  Sometime mid-morning, my dad and one of us kids (got to have 2 people for the HOV lane to be an option in King County) would go and get my Uncle Steve.  It would just be the four of us and him at the table if my memory is right.  It was perfect.  After our mid-afternoon feast, we would all take naps.  At least, that was the idea.  Uncle Steve would nap on the couch while we watched Andy Griffith episodes, and that meant his wheelchair was available for Jonathan and I to whisk around our driveway in.  Thinking back on it, that was a most excellent way to get us out of the house while the adults slept.  Well played, parental units…well played.

I’m sure we celebrated Thanksgiving when we lived in Ethiopia, but I don’t remember it as clearly as those years that we lived in Kent.  Once I went to boarding school, Thanksgiving wasn’t event spent at home.  I suppose I should feel sad about that, and I do in a way because we had traditions that I still can’t imagine not having the memories of, but sometime in there I think the Lord did something in my heart that I didn’t have a clue about.  He gave me a release from traditions and societal constructs that, without which, would have made it impossible for me to survive holidays for the next decade without tears and sorrow.  He allowed me to see that it wasn’t about location or situation, but attitude.

Which leads me to Thanksgivings in college.  When I think of the holiday, I think of driving for hours in a minivan packed with my friends from Kenya.  I think of Turkey Trots, sleeping wherever there is a flat surface, and feasts at the homes of strangers.  I think of Christmas lights and cold walks, of BB guns being shot at each other for the sake of initiation, of hours of intense card games, and of spoons thrown into snow.  My traditions are totally not traditional and non-repeatable.  For four years, we met in small towns in Illinois or West Virginia and made our home with friends that are and forever will be family.

After college, Thanksgiving meant time with extended family in the Northwest and memories that I will cherish with sweet nieces and tofurkey leftovers, but those memories don’t settle in my mind like those days in college.

Now, Thanksgiving is a day of work and an incredible feast put on by our Parent-Teacher Organization with food from around the world and so many smiles and hugs from the moms of my precious students.  We have staff feast and time together on Wednesday night, and I’ll celebrate with other friends over the weekend, but it’s more about an attitude of gratitude then the turkey or the after-meal food-coma.

Today, I came home from school and took a two-hour nap.  I can’t necessarily blame it on a food-coma, but for the sake of tradition I might as well.

All that said, I’m thankful.  I’m thankful for where I live and where I’ve been.  I’m thankful for friends spread far and near that I cherish.  I’m thankful for my students and their families and the incredible blessing that it is to be a part of their lives.

I’m also thankful for you, whoever you are and whatever you’re up to this holiday.  I’m thankful that our lives have intersected, maybe just for a few moments or for a majority of my 28 years.  Thank you for reading to the end this reflection of a heart in multiple places and times.

Whatever you’re up to this holiday, I pray that you and your traditions (or lack there of) would cause you to take a moment to sit back and be thankful.

Thanksgiving 2006 in Pekin, Illinois

Thanksgiving 2007, West Virginia

Thanksgiving 2007, West Virginia

The Fabulous Five, Thanksgiving 2008, West Virginia

Change is in the air...

It’s been a long while since I blogged.  Maybe that’s because life has been crazy (which it has), or because nothing has been overly stressful (which it hasn’t, really, for a change...either that or the stress is becoming normal which makes it less stressful...), or because I’m finally in a “normal” routine (which is really no routine at all, but that lack of routine is the normal routine at last).  But for some reason the words haven’t been ready to fly, so I haven’t taken the time to sit down and write them.

But today feels like a day to write.

It feels like a day that needs to be documented, because change is in the air and yet that change is almost no change at all.

What brings this on?  Well, let me tell you.

Today, I bought dishes.

Not generic plates and bowls that anyone could have in their apartment, purchased quickly at Ikea for the going rate.  Not those plates at all.  I bought nice plates.  Plates that I love.  Plates that are so much cheaper than the Ikea alternative and yet make my heart sing because of how perfect they are for me. Plates that I can’t wait to use for dinners and breakfasts; plates that I hope to have on my shelves and sitting in my drying rack for years.  

There in lies the stress.

I bought plates that I hope to have for years…in China.

So often I get the words from that one song in the musical, Wicked, stuck in my head.  “Something has changed within me, something is not the same.  I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game.”  That’s how I feel about this overseas life right now, in this moment of plate purchasing.  I came here for 2 years, will have stayed for 4 by the end of this school year, and now I’m buying plates.  The rules have changed.  The season has changed.  I have changed.  And here I am...with plates.

If that’s not commitment to a country in the life of this Teusink, I don’t know what is.

And so the change that is the air is no change at all.  In fact, that change is a level of comfort in a place that is at times oh so uncomfortable.  It is feeling at "home" in the furthest place from "home".  It’s staying when my nature is to move.

Change comes in many shapes and sizes.  Sometimes it comes in stability.

Mine came and manifested itself in plates.

June, How I Loathe Thee

June is the worst.

Seriously, I hate it.

As a teacher, I hate June because I say goodbye to students…some who are leaving for good and some who are simply leaving my daily life.  Sure, I teach middle school now…it shouldn’t be as emotional or hard since most of my students will still have me for math next year.  But not all of them will.  That’s reason #4 for June being my least favorite.

Reason #3 is the unknown of summer.  I never realized how much I like structure, but I do.  I love it.  I long for it.  Rules are there to be followed and to help the world make sense.  (I know, I know…doesn’t sound like something a normal person would say.  I know I’m not normal…I came to grips with that long ago.)  Summer is a time of unknowns and chaos.  Sure, it’s fun for a week or two, but then it stops being fun and starts being semi annoying.  That’s the point where I stop being a useful human being and start watching a Korean drama while living on my couch for 2 weeks…

Reason #2 for my loathing of June is graduation.  I’ve never enjoyed graduations, but at least in the States there is the summer after the ceremony to enjoy your friends and have one last hurrah before heading off to college.  In the international community, however, graduation means something very different.  Graduation is that last big event before everyone leaves.  You won’t see your friends at the grocery store the next week, because most of them will have already flown to a totally different region of the world.  Making plans to go to the movies? Not happening without a $2000 plane ticket thrown into the mix.  Well then, there's always Christmas break, right?  Some of the families will be relocating in the next few weeks, maybe never to return to your beloved city of graduation again.  It's over.  Normal has officially disappeared and the unknown is all there seems to be.

I have yet to attend a graduation at CDIS.  I can’t handle it.  The pain that washes over me when I think of the loss that those students are about to experience is too vast.  It brings back my past pain in a way that little else can.  Being a TCK is hard, and graduations in this setting are a very real and wonderful yet horrible reminder of one of the toughest aspects of this life.

But even with the pain of graduation, that’s not the worst thing about June.  Reason #1 that I detest June is that everyone leaves.  It’s not just the graduates, and alright it’s not actually everyone, but so many people do leave.  Good friends leave.  People you never really got a chance to know leave.  Students leave. Coworkers leave.  Random strangers leave.  Someone important to me always seems to leave. I thought that as I lived in this city longer things would get easier. Ha!  Not even close.  Every year dearer and dearer friends leave.  They were here before I got here, so they’ve been around at least 4 years at this point. I’ve been here 3.  That’s 36 months of bonding, movie nights, dinners out, after parties, and discussing work stress.  That’s 156 weeks of Sunday mornings, Wednesday meetings, and Mondays.  That’s 1068 days of living life in the same city.  And then they’re gone.

And most people that leave don’t come back, even for a visit.

And suddenly, life will never be the same…

…but it always manages to go on.

Welcome to June.  Ew.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is a funny word to ponder when applying it to daily life.  What do I sacrifice to do what I do?  And when I say sacrifice, I mean truly sacrifice.  According to the Oxford dictionary, sacrifice is "an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure."  There are a lot of little things that I suppose that I sacrificed temporarily when I moved to China.  I have sacrificed a few friendships along the way, trying to keep up with as many people as possible but often falling very very short.  I have sacrificed apartments that I loved, earthly possessions, familiarity, ease of getting certain foods, and more.  Sure, these have all been tricky at times, even painful (that's the friendships, not food...), but most of these sacrifices can be restored at some point.

Then I start to think about actual things that I have given up.  The years of lives that I've missed that cannot be reclaimed.  I'll never be able to go to my cousin's daughter's 5th birthday party.  It's done.  I'll never get to go to my best friend from college's baby shower.  A dear friends funeral that I couldn't attend can't and won't be replayed.  Time passes and with it events, both big and small.  You can look at pictures and try to imagine how it was, and although pictures are worth a thousand words most of the time, they don't quite cut it.

Why am I thinking about all of this?  Well, a friend just posted a picture of her going to meet her boyfriend's parents.  I'm used to seeing this kind of thing and the progression that follows (trips to meet the other side of the family, proposals, engagement photos, and then the inevitable wedding invitation in the mail, etc.), but for some reason this one is harder than most.  Oh I know why...I'm officially the last one from our group that is single.  And by single I mean very single.  No prospects.  No one on the horizon.  Nada.  I'm okay with being single (and I'm not just saying that), but seeing yet another friend switch into that next stage of life while I sink deeper in this current one is hard.

Singleness has been an act of sacrifice for me.  I know that the Lord holds me in the palm of His hand and that His ways are oh so much better than my ways, but I can't help thinking of that "comfortable" life that I have sacrificed along the way.

And then for a bit of perspective, I think about Jesus.  It is the season of Easter, after all.

He was a TCK, you know.  He left His home to go somewhere totally foreign, where they really didn't get Him and some didn't try to.  Then, on top of that first transition, His earthly family had to relocate to yet another country and stay a while.  After 30 years of transitions and preparations, He ministered for 3 years and then was killed.  Killed for an eternal purpose, but killed. Because He was different.  He didn't quite fit in either, and He was okay with it.

If He can do it, I know that I can, too.

Besides, He understands how it feels.

And so, I readily sacrifice...whatever it and for however long this season lasts, I surrender all...

My kiddos

After posting last night, I looked back over previous posts from years gone by.  I only started this blog when I decided to move to China, so it's obvious that I'm in a different place than I was way back then, but it still surprises me to see just how different everything was.

Looking back over those early posts and comments, I can't help but think of my students back then.  We developed a code so that they could post comments and not have to write their name or give away any personal information, but that I would know who they were.  I still know who each of those codes represented and can still close my eyes and remember being in the front of them in class.  I miss them.  I miss their 5th grade questions and thoughts and love.  My goodness those kiddos knew how to love.  They meant the world to me, each and every one of them.  I love that I am still in touch with many of their parents and get to hear little snippets of how life keeps on going for each of them on that side of the world.

When I think back to those kids and other than I have taught, I sometimes wonder if I should have stayed.  I could have taught their younger siblings, watched them grow up, been that teacher that they could stop by and say hi to long after they had left my classroom.  I could have gone to that state-championship softball game, watched that swim meet, or been their YoungLife leader once they changed schools.  I could have answered that phone call to meet up for coffee and hear the scoop on life in high school.  So many could haves...

And yet I don't regret leaving.  They knew that I needed to.

And the kids here need me to.

I love my kiddos now to the moon and back, just as I have all of my students over the past 6 years.  They are going to change the world some day, each and every one of them.  I'm teaching kids who are from every corner of the globe and whose impact goes far beyond what I can imagine.  I am so grateful to be a part of each of their lives.

But I won't be able to have a coffee with them when they're in high school, because most of them will have moved by then.

There is an amazingly enticing quality to life in one town for the rest of my life. 

Being a TCK really stinks sometimes...




Location: Chengdu, China
Local Time (CST -- GMT+8): 8:11 p.m. (3/22/2015)
Auburn Time (PST -- GMT-7): 5:11 a.m. (3/22/2015)

Silence is Golden?

The quiet game was a pretty normal thing in our family when I was growing up.  And when I say that, I mean people tried to make me play it.  Tried is the key word.  It never really worked, because I always lost in about 2.3 seconds.

I feel like this blog often becomes a bit of a quiet game for me, seeing how long I can go before I feel an irresistible urge to share everything that is on my mind in one foul fell swoop.  (Speaking of foul fell swoop - I've never written that before.  Is it fowl swoop or foul swoop.  Goodness homonyms mess everything up!  Oh wait, they are both wrong.  One fell swoop.  Thank you Google!)

It's been a fairly wonderful winter/spring.  Busy and crazy at times, but there isn't much that I can complain about.  I have a student teacher right now, and she is amazing and helpful and marvelously competent, so I'm getting a lot of things done that I generally don't have time for.  Grades? Complete.  Comments? Started.  Committee details for our upcoming accreditation visit? Planned.  Can I please please please have a permanent student teacher?  I would be so much more efficient and well rested! :)

In other news, I'm feeling restless.  I didn't realize why until a friend was in town (well, he's more of a cultural counselor, but now that I've known him for a few years I'd call him a friend) and pointed out that in a few months Chengdu will be the longest place I've lived by choice. (You should all check out his blog.  It's great. Seriously...read it!) Isn't that odd?  The African TCK has chosen to call China home.  And because of that little newsflash, my brain goes into overdrive and I start scoping out what I could be doing and where I could be living.  I so desperately wish that wasn't my instinct, but it's so deeply engrained in the very fiber of who I am that it's impossible to ignore and oh so hard to fight.  Thankfully my contract is for one more year so I have time to either fight the urge or start listing out the possible destinations. :)

Okay, enough randomness for one day.  Well, almost enough.  Here are a few bits and pieces I found while browsing Pinterest today that I feel the world needs to see :)

Location: Chengdu, China
Local Time (CST -- GMT+8): 7:33 a.m. (3/22/2015)
Auburn Time (PST -- GMT-7): 4:33 p.m. (3/21/2015)

2015.

2015.

How did it get here so fast?

It seems like just yesterday I was setting up my ethigirl05 email address, sure that the year 2005 would one day come but certain that it wouldn’t get here fast enough.

And now it’s 2015.  10 years after the year that was once so far away and so monumental on the horizon.

It’s hard to believe sometimes that so much time has passed; not just in the world around me but in my own life.  A lot can happen in ten years.

In the past ten years, I’ve…

…walked on the Great Wall of China.

…driven down the Great Ocean Road in Australia.

…ridden camels around the Pyramids of Giza.

…earned a high school diploma.

…earned a college diploma.

…earned a masters degree.

…started college in Michigan.

…moved to Washington State.

…moved to Chengdu, China.

…lived in 13 different apartments or houses.

…had my heart broken a time or two.

…broken a heart or two.

…learned to embrace this marvelous state of singleness that I find myself in.

…visited five continents.

…taught 500+ students (I should have kept track of the actual numbers!).

...celebrated countless hellos.

…mourned countless goodbyes.

…made a fool of myself more than I’d care to admit to.

…grown up…somewhat.

…made countless mistakes.

…celebrated victories in multiple languages.

…missed out on so many birthdays/weddings/births because I’m on the wrong continent or in the wrong time zone.

…and so much more….

The past ten years have been hard, but marvelous years.  And now here I sit, in my room in Ethiopia, thinking about the next ten years.  I never would have been able to imagine, even in my wildest dreams, where I am now back when 2005 started.  Nothing that I expected really happened, but everything that happened has been so much better in so many ways.  Who knows what the next ten years will bring.  I can’t even begin to imagine…

I do know a bit of what 2015 will hold.  I’ll attempt new things, and probably fail at a few (or most) of them.  I’ll have good days in my classroom and bad days in my classroom.  I'm sure to shed many tears, some of joy and some in sorrow.  I’ll say goodbye to more people that I love, and meet people that will change my life in ways that I can’t dream of.

2015 brings with it so much anticipation and expectation, but if there is one thing that I’ve learned in the past ten years, it’s that you can’t predict what the next year(s) will bring.

Whatever it is, both good and bad, I’m ready for it.

Bring it on, 2015!