Brookline High School in China

China 19: Rainy Days

Chinese Food Theory: According Mama Host, spicy food ("la jiu") is bad for the stomach (ya think?), gives you big, beautiful eyes (hmm), and gives you zits if eaten to often. (good to know)
weather: high 50's, showers, gloomy

It's raining today in Xi'an. I guess after so many dry days we need a little rain to settle all the dust that floats around this city. The rain was odd because it started as a shower and stayed a constant shower throughout the entire day. Usually, if it rains all day the rain will pick up at certain points but today was just constant showers. And the group was in a lazy, cranky, rainy mood.

At the beginning of the trip we were told we would have our ups and downs. I thought Gaelen, our teacher, told us this so that people wouldn't freak out when they got homesick, and those who weren't homesick would be udnerstanding of those who were. I thought I wouldn't have to experience these downs since homesickeness has never been a huge problem for me.

But rainy dys tend to expedite the downs before you have a chance to react. Today in class, Gaelen asked us how we felt about people leaving the group for periods of time since Celine and Christina have left Xi'an for a week. (Celine w/ family to Shanghai and Christina to UVA for a very important scholarship interview.) So we stated out talking about whether or not it disrupted the group dynamic and our ability to gel. We never really came to a conclusion partly because I digressed by asking the question I've been frustrated w/ since school started. I complained that even without these people leaving the group wasn't gelling as well as I'd like because we had to go to school all day which left the group with very little opportunity to do much besides shop for DVDs together occasionally or talk about which boy likes which girl among the the Chinese students. So, I said that I felt the group needed more time to do "more productive things together."

I said this in the spirit of helping us as a group, not because I was frustrated with the group; in fact, I think the people in this group are some of the best people I've met in high school. However, to make this story shorter, things eventually evolved in the discussion or in my comments to paint the picture that I didn't feel connected to the group and that we weren't a very tight knit group. Needless to say, this picture wasn't pretty to everyone in the group nor would it have been to me if someone else was saying that. They took offense b/c they felt that "we really were really tight, and just b/c we weren't doing 'meaningful' things didn't mean we were any less of a group." And it was after this comment, which I couldn't agree more with, that I just shut up. I felt like everything that I had said had been completely reversed and misinterpretted, and if I were to say any more it would just get me in a deeper whole. So I just shut up, and took a few more comments. Finally Gaelen, suggested we write down what we wanted to say before we went any further.

I began scribbling my protests, but that wasn't enough. I broke. I watched myself furiously trying to explain that all I had wanted to do was make this group even better, the best group that had ever gone to China, but instead I felt as if I was being isolated and thrown out of the group simply because I wanted to help. I watched myself as tears began to fall on the ink-filled paper. I was really breaking down.

So I took a bathroom break and went out into the rain and added my frustrations to the water running down the drains. I went back to the classroom swollen eyed and sniffling, and we easily worked everything out after people saw me. (What a caring group.)

But questions arise from my experience today:

1) I never cry especially about things like this, why was I so emotional today? Could it be more than today? Maybe this is the culmination of all the frustrations of being in China that I've turned a blind eye to? Or perhaps this is an effect of being away among only 8 people who can really understand you?

2)Did I come to China to bond with this group? What exactly are my responsibilities to the group? What are the group's responsibilities to me? Thinking quite honestly I think one one of my main reasons of coming was to be in a close knit group of friends that didn't have to fall victim to the ever changing social scene of Brookline High.


Mais c'est la vie. Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny I think.

posted by dAVID @ 8:52 AM