Miscellaneous

It’s funny because I can’t picture my students speaking Chinese. To me, they’ve always spoken English. And, they have a Chinese name that I don’t know. They are not just Chinese students to me anymore, they are my friends. We have spent a lot of time together, and it will be sad to see them go. I wonder if I will love the next batch of students as much as I do these…
On Sunday we went to the same church. I think the Haidian church is one of my favorite parts of China. It’s so strange to me that I can be only one of 25 white people in a room of 500 Chinese, and feel so at home. They have such a good community at this church. It really is quite amazing. I hope that one day I will be able to be part of a church with this mindset.
It has been exactly one month since I have had American food, watched TV, slept on a mattress etc, and I can honestly say I don’t miss most things. Ok well maybe the American food  But I don’t miss TV at all, and I’m so tired every night that I don’t care that I’m sleeping on a board. It is really refreshing to live so simply, because I’ve realized how much I don’t need to be happy. A simple life is much easier. Yesterday one of my students asked me why I change my outfit everyday. I told her that we do that in America. The Chinese wear the same outfit for at least 5 days in a row. I’m not sure why they do this, because they wash their clothes every night. It’s funny because since there are no dryers, they hang ALL of their clothes outside. They have absolutely no shame about hanging their underwear out for the world to see! It makes me laugh. But it is nice to be somewhere where you can look horrible, and they still think you’re beautiful! They don’t care about clothes. To them, the brighter and more patterns in one outfit the better! Haha. I suppose my clothes are a bit boring to them.
I discovered something sad the other day. I was visiting one of my students the other night, and we were talking about the one child policy. I asked her if she would like to have more children. She gave me a strange look and said, “No! We have a metaphor for this in China. When you open up your hand, all of your fingers are different lengths. When you have more that one child, like the fingers, not all are equal. You will love one more than the others.” Interesting. I think this is what the government tells the people in order to keep them satisfied with the one child policy.
It’s also sad how much the government shelters the people. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard anymore information about the riots. I thought I was just in my own little world because we are so busy with our program. But I learned that the Chinese people don’t even know what’s going on. There is no CNN or BBC or any unbiased news in China. All they see is what the government lets them see. I guess it is kind of like propaganda because they want the people to think that everything is good and that they have it all under control. So I think Americans know more about what happens in China than the Chinese people do.