China blog 5

So I have gotten back home with an hour before I should think about sleeping, nothing to do and a somewhat talkative mood. I suppose that means I should put another entry into what is becoming a very thin blog. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing for this thing. In fact I do. Whenever I can force myself to begin something, it doesn’t take long before I’ve put down an entire page or two, still wanting to write more. The problem lies in getting myself to start. See, I really have to have a perfect combination of free time, the right mood, and an interesting topic to begin with that is immediately on my mind. I always end up having plenty of weird stories to tell, but it never seems worth it to write any of them down unless I have one particularly important subject on my mind. After that, it just takes a moment before all the other strange tales come out.
The topic that is on my mind isn’t really that immediately interesting, nor is it even a very concrete subject. I was just thinking on my way home tonight that it would be a good idea to write about my general observations of my situation here, now that I’ve had plenty of time to get into the swing of things. There has really been so much going on that I feel it’s time for a state of the union sort of entry.
The first thing to mention is time. I have so much less of it than I expected (btw, I always felt it wasn’t correct to say “so much less,” seems rather oxymoronic, but oh well). Before arriving I had big ambitions about all the things I would do while here. Study Chinese, read loads of books, do some writing (meaning besides this blog), exercise, travel, see the city, meet the locals, start a barbecue restaurant (just you wait!). The sad thing that I have realized is just how limited my time really is. Teaching at the school leaves has left me pretty much exhausted by the time I get off work, which is usually a little after 4. Once I get home to change, it’s already time for dinner, which usually means quite a long expedition at a restaurant. After that I might as well start getting ready for bed before too long, since I have to wake up at 6:30. I probably have a little time each evening to study some Chinese, read some of my book, or talk to friends online, but not for all three. Whenever I try that, I just end up staying up too late and making myself exhausted by the end of school, something that already happens even when I get enough sleep. Then on the weekends we all go out and do something fun for at least one of the nights, if not both. Saturday or Sunday we have been going on some sort of day-long trip into town. One of the things that has really been taking up my time is playing football…er, soccer. Sorry, I am indeed becoming British. I of course enjoy every second of it, but it has become the biggest part of two of my days each week. Wednesdays we leave pretty much immediately after school is over to travel to literally the opposite side of town, where we play against another international school. Saturdays we play on a field a good bit closer. For both days we end up going out to eat afterwards, so the whole endeavor really ends up taking up almost the whole day.
What is most frustrating about my time limitations is that it means I really have to force myself to include the things I really feel I should be doing, or else the day could easily slip by without me doing them. This is mainly a problem with Chinese. I underestimated how much work I would have to put into the language to be able to improve a lot. My interactions with Chinese people could be incredibly minimal if I really wanted it to. With all the westerners I work with, it isn’t hard to keep myself in a foreigner bubble. While at work I make sure to talk with the Chinese teachers as much as I can, but even then I only get to say a few sentences back and forth. My pronunciation is also apparently horrid, and I find myself having to repeat the simplest phrases literally six times before I am understood. Part of it is the different dialect in Nanjing, but mainly I picked up very bad habits with my tones. I think this has come from me being a bit careless and lazy without having a teacher who would yell “WRONG!” at me every time I pronounced something slightly incorrectly. Maybe the traditional Chinese way of teaching, where anything less than perfection is totally incorrect, is what I needed all along. I actually seem to have switched around my ideas of what each tone sounds like, so when I know I am supposed to use a falling tone and try to say a falling tone, what comes out is a strange rising tone. I’ve been trying to practice this as much as I can, and already I can see what I have been doing wrong. I think my pronunciation has improved a good bit now, but it’s something I have to constantly concentrate on, or I will quickly slip back into my poor habits. This is a bit disheartening because I feel like I’m suddenly 10 steps further back from where I thought I was. When I thought I was ready to perfect my grammar and use complicated sentence structures, instead I’m back practicing the things people learn in year 1 of Chinese. I have hardly even been able to begin working on grammar. Yet, I think this is only a minor setback. I am constantly surprised at how much I do remember, although it may be buried deep inside my head. Once I improve my tones, I feel it won’t be long before I can do a lot with the language. Also I have managed to make some friends around town, which is the best way to learn the language. I think this has just been a snap back to reality on how much work it will require to really improve my Chinese. I am making sure to study every day if I can, and if I am serious about this I am going to have to continue doing that. Fortunately in a day I do spend a good deal speaking Chinese. Whenever I am not working or at home, I am using Chinese. As one of about three people who speak Chinese among the westerners at my work, I have pretty much become the translator for any outing. This of course I don’t mind, because it gives me plenty of chance for practice. The only real problem is that speaking and thinking in Chinese has made my English pretty unbelievably bad. Already re-reading some of my sentences has made me cringe a bit. But you know what? My time is precious, so most of the time I’m going to leave it how it is.
So yes, time. It’s an issue. So much so that I’m going to have to stop things here, much sooner than I wanted to. I will try to write some more in the next day or two, just to make sure I jot down the rest of my observations about things here. I will just say that overall things are amazing and I am extremely happy here. I couldn’t think of a better situation for me to be in right now, in more ways than one.