Frustrations - PST

It's been raining for days...it's gloomy on non-rainy days. Add in the streets flooding with murky, dirty water, the dismal sky, and the insane exhaustion that comes with the rain and our crazy work-load/studying and it's easy to forget how lucky we are here. My friends and I are cranky, frustrated, and ready for some tension release. Living with a host family is wonderful but incredibly challenging.

My days start at 6 am. I wake up, drink water, write my blog or talk to my family and friends on a messenger service, and go over anything that still needs to be addressed from the day before. In China, showers are taken at night and we merely wash our faces in the morning. By 7:30 am I'm out the door and on my way to my host family's store to grab a quick bite and then walk the six or so blocks to school. Our classes start at 8:30 am. They vary between TEFL, (teaching English as a foreign language) Chinese, and safety and security courses. Some days we have five hours of Chinese, some days five hours of TEFL, but we have an hour of lunch halfway through the day and we finish around 5:30 pm. 

There is always work to be done at night as well as time to be spent with our host families. This is the most exhausting part of the day for me. As tiring as learning Chinese in a seat all day can be, trying to communicate what I have to communicate for homework with my host family, how I'm doing, whether I like the rabbit/pork dishes they made for dinner (I am not a big meat eater and am only not vegetarian/vegan because it's nearly impossible here) and explaining that I can't stay up until midnight again "talking" (miming) when I have homework and other work to do....is exhausting to the point of collapsing. 

I know most trainees feel this way during pre-service training. It's both an intensive course necessary for success in-country as well as a weed-out system for those who can't hack it. It feels like being back in High School. I can't leave my host family's house on weekends without one of them accompanying me, my host mother won't let me purchase anything for myself in her presence, (I tried to buy a parasol/umbrella and she wouldn't allow it, saying she had one I could use...I'm not sure if this is financially motivated or if it would be a cultural affront, so I always comply...I will simply get my own when I head to site) and "Chinese time" where you tell them you are tired and need to go to bed at 8:30 pm and you finally crawl into bed four hours later is really a thing. Sometimes, I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open in class. Then I remember: it's only a little rain cloud, and rain makes the flowers grow.

My capacity to adapt is being tested. My ability to take a situation and learn and grow is being stretched. I'm taking in new language, culture, and teaching methods. This experience is making me stronger, better, and more resilient. These are the skills the Peace Corps picked me specifically for. The skills they felt were necessary for success here, and I have them. This is a honing process, a facilitated and manufactured procedure designed to force me to be ready for in-country obstacles. I came here for this challenge. I desired it. That's why I wake up and I write and I reflect and I just look out my window at the flooding streets and listen to the birds chirping outside my window. Really, when I get down to it, life here isn't all that different from home. I'm stressed, over fed, and enjoying the sound of birds chirping in the morning. It's just like Washington, DC!