Yup. Still in China. Since my last post I have moved to and am about to move from Chongqing. There is much more to the story and I plan to tell it soon. This post is an excercise in, um, posting. A flexing of a long un-used muscle. I’ll be moving during the next week but unlike Jesus, I will tell you about the lost months . . . soon . . .
Wow. So Mark and I have been traveling for two weeks and despite some net bar stops this is my first chance to give an substantive update. Well, sort of substantive.
Mark arrived on Monday evening into Beijing and despite his hitting the Sichuan Airlines desk at 9:02PM they had already closed and just couldn’t possibly get him on to the 9:30PM connecting flight to Chengdu where I was waiting to meet him. Things were off to a bit of a rough start but he was taking it pretty well.
Think back to your first love? Can’t you? Think about it, you may be able to recall their scent and how happy you felt. Maybe a song can help you as you think back and try recall the happy times spent together. Your entire life has been a quest to find a love as thrilling as the love you felt that first time.
Your first love also entails your first encounter of hearbreak. The truly gut wrenching heartache that leaves you unable to think about anything else. Heartache that threatens to tear you into nothing, sapping your will to go on. Heartache that makes you question if you can ever really get over it but ultimately only makes you stronger.
This is one such tale.
I mentioned to my sister, family et al that I would dig a frisbee to show to the students as I hadn’t seen one. I was pretty pleased when I received a box from my sister that had a Dunkin Donuts promotional frisbee included with the other cool stuff that she is always sure to include. Postage stamps, a map of her hometown, assorted spice packets including Fish Taco and Salsa. Yum.
I immediately began carrying the frisbee to my classes and began to show them how to correctly throw it, (wrist not arm), with limited success. The following day after my classes had ended and I was headed across the commons on my way to my pad when I saw some students coming in from the playground. Now, for a second, think back to your high school experience. If a teacher was crossing paths with you, even if from afar, and waved a disc at you before tossing it your way you’d have been happy to catch it, right? Meh. Not so much in China. In a culture that is devoid of contact sports anything that is unknown is looked at as a possibility for inflicting pain. The sight of grown men ducking and running when a frisbee is headed their way was both comical and aggravating. I should have known better than to toss it to students that I had no chance of instructing how to throw it. Less than 24 hours after receiving the frisbee from my sister it was destroyed by a student who, in all fairness, had no idea how to throw it and hurled it with his arm in a manner that caused it to land on its edge and shatter. Ouch.