Wednesday, March 23, 2005

ask me about the acrobats

i woke up at 10:56 this morning after a full 11 hours of sleep. i don't feel much jet lag yet, but i suppose i've only been awake for 5 hours now. maybe it'll hit me tonight yet. in the meantime, i'm busy sorting through souvenirs, doing laundry and admiring street signs in english.

it's hard to believe i'm back already. i hadn't been anticipating this trip for months or even weeks before i left, so the trip to china feels like a little blip on the screen of my life. it's too hard to write it all down, and so i've decided to cheat a bit and steal some from my journal. i wrote more than i'd imagined i would while away. i think because i have that kind of personality that wants to share even the boring details of my day with friends, the first day was hard when i realized i couldn't make a phone call to anyone. so for those of you anxious to hear the fascinating details of my trek around china with 15 students and 2 adults (ooh!! ooh!! i can see the excitement in your eyes!!), read on ...

march 14, 2005, monday night:
i love beijing. i want to learn how to speak chinese. being here really makes me think about how BIG the world is. not so much just the culture, but the fact that millions of people live and eat and breathe 14 hours ahead of us. their day is done when my day is beginning! it's too weird. makes me understand on a very real level just how many people there are in the world. it's mind-blowing ...

this experience makes me want to travel again. how could i travel? what can i do that would allow me to see the world? i think i am a late bloomer. while everyone else was traveling abroad, i wanted to stay close, to build relationships. but now, i feel like i'm ready to embrace new cultures, new challenges ...

march 15, 2005, tuesday night:
okay, so i don't think i could live here. or maybe it's just that i'm afraid. i think i do really want to travel all over. everytime i'm away from work, i think i never want to go back again. i think i am jealous of erin and wendy, of how they can just pick up and leave and travel. i don't know WHAT i want to do. i don't want You to think i won't be available for You. I guess I just don't know how to be ...

march 16, 2005, wednesday morning on plane from beijing to shanghai:
i am a little disappointed that this group lacks the dynamics of the Project Week in the UK. Kyle is like our Miles only Kyle has so many of the same character and physical characteristics as James' Spader's snotty character Steff in Pretty in Pink that i have a hard time looking at him without prejudice. he has a poor attitude - by this i mean he thinks HE knows best, or he shouts out of turn, or is otherwise indescribably rude. i imagine what goes around, comes around, and i take an evil comfort in that. maybe i should bless him instead, maybe pray that his heart be softened, that he spend a year learning humility and respect. Kyle seems like he'd be an interesting young man to travel with and get to know if only he'd be kind.

of course, jessica and karen and gabrielle i love. and jim and charles are too sweet for words. jessica feels like a little sister to me. we'll talk about our dreams and she tells me that if i want to be an author, she'll send me on all my booksigning trips around the world. it's not easy for me to pick out jessica's character traits and tell you what i like best about her. it's jessica as a whole that the world should rejoice in knowing. she's gonna be good to the world. i hope we will be as good to her.

i do feel really thankful for this opportunity to travel. in fact, though i suppose my boss would like me to realize that the school has given me such incredible opps so i should STAY, i rather feel like God has used the school to give me such incredible opps to show me i should LEAVE. i feel sorry that it's taken me so long to figure this out ...

a few things about yesterday - we went to the Way of the Spirit and the Ming Tombs, the Jade Factory, and a government-sponsored "Friendship Store" for souvenirs. but definitely the highlight of the day was the Great Wall. i climbed all the way to the top and my legs shook all the way down. but, God, what an amazing feeling! really, it was quite possibly one of the top three most exhilarating experiences of my life. when i looked at everyone else's pics of the great wall, it seemed like the wall sloped gently but i could never spot staircases of such heights. incredible. i think we must have climbed the sears tower. unforgettable ...

maybe i am meant to be the real life diane lane-character in "under the tuscan sun." maybe i'll go buy a cottage in italy and finally write my book. all these experiences make me feel like anything is possible.

hmm, i wonder if they sell crystal balls in china ...

march 17, 2005, thursday night:
today we left shanghai for zhouzhuang, the most famous water in china. the food has been getting progressively worse which is a sad disappointment. our meal tonight in suzhou was so awful that the kids begged us to take them to the city center to get pizza and mcdonalds. we gladly obliged. even i was starving but i promised myself that i wouldn't eat american junk food while i was here. but i did allow myself a chocolate-covered ice cream cone. oh my god, it tasted so good.

anyway, i've decided i've been reading too much anne lamott lately. she wrote a whole chapter about feeling unattractive amidst a gathering of teenage girls, and i feel i'm now noticing this. it's being around all these young, beautiful teenagers whose lives are so ahead of them that i get jealous and wonder if my time has passed. that's why it was nice today when our tour guide, sam, told me i looked like a famous Hollywood movie star. he told the other tour guide, Cindy, who agreed, but couldn't think of who. Much, much later, Cindy snapped her fingers and said, "You look like America's Sweetheart!" which, after much guessing between me and a few of our students, we discovered was Meg Ryan. well, i look nothing like meg ryan, but god bless the chinese. sam and cindy have allowed me to be pretty again ...

march 19, 2005, saturday afternoon:
sam has decided to play this obnoxious hong kong girl-band music on the bus, but i've put my headphones on and am wielding patty griffin against him. how long must this last???

so far today we stopped in hangzhou for a relatively western lunch (the only meal in china which has made me sick), visited the gorgeous gardens by the Buddhist University, and went to the green tea center. they say that hangzhou and suzhou are the paradises on earth, and it's evident why. the lakes, the greenery, this is not at all how i imagined china. it's so peaceful here, the air is so clean, and everyone smiles easily. perhaps this is the place i will someday call home. so beautiful ...

march 21, 2005, monday night:
(there are so many details here about the shanghai experience, i'll just have to tell you in person) ...
i've had a blast here. never did i dream i'd be in CHINA this year ...
i've had such limited access to email and no access to my phone, so it's easy to forget about life back home. don't get me wrong, i miss being in on the details of my friends' lives, but it's like i've been living another life here. i wondered today as i wandered around the shanghai museum, could i really do this on my own? another city? another culture? ... LIFE? yes, probably. i'm not saying it wouldn't be hard, but i feel less and less like my life is my own. the things i thought i wanted, well, none of that is happening. and i think, ok, if God wants my dreams, He can have them. what new ones does He have for me? if God said, "Mary, move to Shanghai and become an English teacher," i think i would say ok. if He said, "Mary, take a year off and write while you travel around Europe," i think i would also say ok.

anne lamott may be a bit cooky at times in her theology, but i hear her when she says she thinks we'll discover in heaven that the things we thought were most important here will be of much lower ranking on God's scale. Amen. she writes, "i know two things now that i didn't at thirty: that when we get to heaven, we will discover that the appearance of our butts and our skin was 127th on the list of what mattered on this earth. and that i am not going to live forever. knowing these things has set me free."

you know what? i do think this trip was divinely orchestrated. "seek Me and you will find Me," that's true. but maybe so is "let Me push you blindfolded into an unknown and wait for you to find Me there." thank You. thank You. thank You.

china has been good.

8 Comments:

At 4:23 PM, Blogger allan said...

I liked reading "Mary's thoughts in China" over the potential travel magazine entry. I think Anne is right about God's scale of importance compared to ours. Like someone said. "Many people will be deeply sad when they get to heaven to find that they chose a car over a country." Yeah well.
Good thoughts mare.
Glad you're back.

 
At 8:19 PM, Blogger Laura said...

Mary mary... I miss traveling so much reading your entry. Good thing I should at least get to Mexico for a week before the end of this year - more on that later. Anyway, it was so great to see your thoughts on Beijing, the Great Wall etc etc. God I miss it. I totally want to go to Beijing with you. Glad you're back too.

 
At 9:03 AM, Blogger Laura said...

by the way, what about the acrobats??!

 
At 12:08 PM, Blogger jenn said...

the record of your journey sounds like you were in a whirlwind...it's brilliant!! I've often wondered what kind of a job takes you around the world because I too would apply in a heartbeat. Surely there has to be some poor sucker who'd part with his millions to send me trekking across the globe in search of truth, adventure and the world's largest collection of shot glasses?? I'm happy you're back...

 
At 9:58 PM, Blogger bwhawk said...

Ah, China... it sounds grand. I'm very glad it was wonderful, but I'm also glad that you came back to post your thoughts. It was good to see a post here, and wonderful to find such a great account of your travels. Thanks for sharing. Also, like Laura, I would like to know "what about the acrobats?" because they seem somehow fascinating.

 
At 1:45 PM, Blogger Mary said...

okay, the shanghai acrobats were the second most amazing thing about my trip. seriously, feats that are completely humanly impossible. for example, they had this man and woman who were carried up into the air where they performed ridiculously death-defying stunts on a hula-hoop from at least 60 feet up in the air. if you ever ever get the chance to see them live, do. but don't do it if you're prone to heart attacks because mine almost stopped a dozen times throughout the performance. amazing. breathtaking. unreal. go now.

 
At 2:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, Mary, it was such a good read!
I was right there with you, except I couldn't make it up all the steps and I couldn't quite make out what everything looked like from the top of THE Wall. I had to imagine that, which I did quite well considering it was my only option, and oh the sun was so warm!Such a good trip!

 
At 8:30 PM, Blogger Laura said...

ahh.. the Shanghai acrobats must be related to the beijing acrobats - which I also remember being stunned and amazed by. I remember there being what looked like a 5-year-old boy doing amazing combinations of rolls and sommersaults through various sizes of constantly moving hoops - it was crazy...

 

Post a Comment

<< Home