Classes End; Changes Begin: December 2019 Reflections

When you are super busy, do you sometimes forget what it feels like to not be busy?

I’ve felt so busy throughout the entire fall semester that when my classes at the polytechnic ended on the 19th, I finally had time to do all the things I had sacrificed – like eating and laughing. I had been feeling overwhelmed for so long, I had forgotten what it felt like to feel relaxed and unstressed.

When the extra class I was teaching at the hospital ended on the 26th, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. As much as I enjoyed teaching that class, it was a massive responsibility. For the final class, the doctors and nurses asked me to teach them travel related language! Whew. For once I felt comfortable in the language I was teaching them.

In the middle of December, about a week before most of my classes ended, I was feeling at my breaking point, as so many teachers feel at the end of a semester. Even though I had taught two of my three classes before, the addition of the one new class had pushed me to my edge. Just at that moment, my teaching secretary gave me devastating news about my spring semester schedule.

For the past two years, my spring semester schedule has been an easier teaching load, mostly because I have worked with a lead teacher who has been in charge of all the exams, the curriculum schedule, and other administrative tasks that take up a crazy amount of time. Obviously, I was desperately looking forward to an easier spring semester.

But this year everything changed.

No lead teacher. As a result, all of my classes changed and became filled with unknown responsibilities. I had a million questions, none of which my teaching secretary could answer. This broke me. Just when I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, the light went out. It was like reaching mile 22 in a marathon only to be told I now had to run another marathon tomorrow too.

The main reason we stayed in China was so I could have the same teaching responsibilities as previous years and have more time to focus on grad school. Now the opposite had happened. We were living in a city we didn’t love; a city we were so over.

Unpredictability makes life interesting.

I never know what I’m going to find when exploring with Martin.

So I took a deep breath. I remembered that everything is temporary. Sometimes changes happen without me wanting them to happen, and sometimes they don’t happen even when I desperately want a change. Life is riddled with unknowns, and all I can do is focus on right now.

Grad school became my primary focus at the end of the month with two essays to write by the end of February. These essays are already better than the ones I wrote for my first block of grad school. One essay is on grammar and the other is on phonology and pronunciation teaching. I’m not surprised at how much fun the grammar class is. I am surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed the phonology class. Even though I struggle with accurately transcribing all the pronunciation features of natural speech, I like the challenge.

I finally had the energy to bake some blueberry pancakes and pumpkin muffins.

Christmas Eve and Day were a bit of a non-event.

Martin worked both days and got the 26th and 27th off instead. We reserved Friday to spend the day doing fun things together – our Christmas gift to each other.

The day began at a new coffee shop (Blend, near Chegongmiao Metro Station) with a delicious oat milk latte, an impressive brunch menu, and Tom and Jerry cartoons on repeat. We saw the newest Star Wars movie (The Last Jedi), which we both thought was entertaining. As an added bonus the movie theater wasn’t crowded, too hot, too loud, or filled with people using their phones during the movie. We finished the day with dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant.

Other notable December events

We finally invested in an air purifier for our house, which has made a huge difference in our health as you can see from these before and after the air purifier air quality readings.

I got my new passport. Yet, we didn’t leave the country, which shows just how busy I was.

Meditation has always been important, but I had gotten lax on doing it every day. This month I recommitted to meditating for 20 minutes every single day. This has really helped me during this exceptionally stressful month. And so did spending quality time with some cats at the Lovely Meow Club.

A friend of ours invited us to go to a tea exhibition! Of course we had a dim sum brunch beforehand.

After classes finished I had some time to spend with friends.

Welcoming a new decade

I have a lot of thoughts I’d like to share reflecting on the past year, the past 10 years, and looking forward to the next year, the next 10 years. Hopefully, I can get my ducks in a row and write an extra post at the beginning of January.