First World Sensei
The Meat of this Sory
On this page you will find the bulk of my journal entires organized Chronologically.
Mentors and Friends
Asking a person to write a reference for you is a vulnerable process. You can’t always assume that your first choice will be comfortable with expressing themselves in that way. Luckily, those who referred me were not only mentors but friends.
This process is so nuanced to me that I asked these people if I could read their reviews of my character and my friend had to inform me that asking is considered a faux paus (my first learning experience on this road). None the less, I wondered the impression I had made on the lives of my friends. Moreover, I began to wonder what this trip could potentially impress upon me. Would my life be changed forever? Would I fundamentally become different? These are things I had heard expressed by those I had known who had traveled beyond the boarder of our great country.
Because I’m writing this after having started our China experience course I want to mention that I am so grateful for the new friends I have made. This group of unique and inspiring individuals have the chance to experience something so great. I’ll look to them for support when things seem hard and offer support in return. This means a lot to me
Art Class
Valeria is from Italy. There, they eat sweets for breakfast. What a life. Maybe I’ll cut out that bit of Italian culture and paste it to the collage that is going to display me; my culture.
When I was growing up I used to attend a girls summer and after school camp. Traditionally, at least once every semester we would have an art project which involved old magazines, liquid paste and colored paper. There would be some twenty-something staffer who would encourage us to be inspired by some wholesome ideal like, “what does being a girl mean to you?” I would analyze the pages too critically looking for images that I thought best reflected Denia the female.
Is it possible that I can do the same thing with cultures? I mean, I have enough practice manipulating the tools of this practice, thanks to my tenure at the camp. I can just pick and choose what I like about China and add it to the collection of things I cut from the magazine of human life; Italy, page 2 and Brazil on page 8.
I already have a love for Chinese philosophy and martial arts. Those things have been up on the poster for ages. I wonder what else this land of pioneers has to offer that I may not know about. It’s an exciting prospect that I can only speculate on… for now.
Third Entry
Getting Ready
First things first; I got accepted to the Fellowship! HOLY COW!
After an anxious process of both unbridled hope and accepting defeat, the wait was over and I was chosen. Out of the however many people applied (because they won’t tell us), my personality and reviews of my personality, submitted by my friends, had (mostly) secured this opportunity for me. Elation is the closest word I could find to describe the tense feeling I held in my heart.
Then suddenly, it hit me. Like the day my daughter was running full three-year-old speed toward a parked car, eyes peering over her shoulder...BAM! I was on the ground. “What about my kids?”
The anxiety started in again and my honest first instinct was to decline the fellowship. I would eradicate all that I and my friends had worked for because, “Was I being a good mother? Is this what good mothers do; take off to foreign countries for two weeks, leaving behind your two young children? One of them is too young to even understand the concept of time, will she think I’ve left her forever? Am I being selfish?”
Luckily, I have an amazing support system that anticipated this reaction. After a single phone call, I was convinced by a voice which drummed with confidence and grace of a metronome. I wanted to do this. I needed to do this. I am going to do this.
Professional Chinese Woman
Physically, my mouth will not accept Mandarin. Teach me any of the romance languages. I can roll my tongue like a drunk Antonio Banderas. The Chinese language is lost on this palate.
I know I should just study more but I think subconsciously, I’m relying a bit on my signing (American Sign Language) skills to help me out of this. There are some universal signs like, call (which looks like the sign for Y but you just touch it to your mouth and ear), drink (imaginary cup to mouth), eat (pinched fingers to mouth), etc.
Going to china town I almost felt like I had actually stepped into someone else’s world and I could not speak the language. I may have to purchase a travel size mandarin dictionary. However, interestingly enough our professor almost took on a whole new persona while we explored the district. It was an amazing and seamless transformation. I joked that she was a “professional Chinese” woman, the rest of us just had to keep up.
We touched every bakery that we could and explored the night life of China town. The evening was full of laughs and new experiences. This was an excellent indoctrination into what we would be living for two weeks with the exception of seeing other American college-aged peolpe running to and fro with take-out containers.
Fourth Entry
I am an American
Attending Middlesex and being a part of such a diverse and proud community has forced me to consider what I consider to be my culture. For a long time I felt uncomfortable with what It means to be me. In my life, I’ve always existed in a crossroad. I’m both black and white, a female, a foster child, a young parent and a mix of extrovert and introvert. As an example; my parents represent two different cultures. I grew up with my mom, she is French Canadian and Irish. The only culture I knew was hers but when I look in the mirror, I don’t look like her people. When I went to family gatherings with my father, it was a whole new world of people who kind of look like me but who do not speak like me. I never knew where I fit. This is partly because I didn’t really understand what it was that I wasn’t fitting in to. I had no concept of culture until I reached my college years. I really want to use this time in China as an opportunity to explore what culture means to people who live differently than we (Americans) do.
Kind of like how you find more genetic diversity in a particular people who live in the same region than you can find between people who come from different regions, I wonder that culture might be the same. Do we Americans express culture more differently from other Americans, than do Chinese from Americans? Maybe that’s taking a leap and hard a hypothesis to test but I think I’m going to try. May the Gods of anthropology be on my side.
Aviary Primate
I’m going to have to say that fear of flying cannot be taken up as a cultural norm of mine if I am to be trapped in a plane for 13 hours. At this point, with departure only two weeks away, I am discovering ways to ease my anxiety. I‘ve I taken to watching YouTube videos of what pilots do in the cock pit while in flight and what measure of training will get them there in the first place.
There are a series of courses one must take in order to become an airline pilot and from what the vast consensus suggests, the process will take upwards of eight years to complete. That’s a lot of work. The work ethic of these men and women appear to me mirror the discipline of the martial artists of Chinese culture.
When people think of martial arts the image they may conjure is of Bruce Li kicking butt in spectacular disobedience of gravity. What I’ve learned in my time studying Tai Chi and Kung Fu here in the states is that, offense is not the objective, rather; defense. The mind should be the first muscle that is strengthened. It is required of you to defeat your tendencies of impulse in order to ready yourself for the physical exertion.
Pilots, are similar. First they must erase what preconceived notions they have about what flying is, in order to truly understand its nature. Only then, after proving they are ready, can they take to the skies.
In this, my new revelation, I find light. I find comfort. When I’m flying 36,000 feet in the air I’ll take into perspective the miracle it is that we fly at all. We are the first aviary primates. We taught ourselves to fly.