Preparation E

The breeze shuffling the leaves of the thirty-year-old cotton wood beyond my parents' backyard soothe my listlessness and my anxieties. The listlessness and anxiety go hand-in-hand, I suppose.

I feel listless because of my awareness of the imminent excitement that will inundate my life: I am moving to China in less than a week.

In fact, one week from the moment when I am writing this will be a moment in which I am recovering from a day lost to air travel and a fourteen-hour-time-shift. My, how my back will ache and my lids will want to shut; but, oh how I will want to take pictures of the signs with aesthetically pleasing script and nonsensical translations.

More after the jump


And I feel anxious not for the very same reason (a move half-way around the world), but because I am eager to begin establishing my understanding of what daily life in Shenzhen necessitates. Between information provided by my program and  by various readings (travel books, articles, blogs, etc.), I have no idea what to expect. I may teach 15 SAT prep classes a week to three groups of 18 students at a private high school in the suburbs, or I may teach 18 basic English communication lessons to 18 groups of 60 students at an elementary school for the children of factory workers in the industrial downtown. The mystery excites me.

My parents' back porch comforts and reassures me--with its wicker basket full of pine cones--in a way that childhood homes ought. I am, however, restless to escape into my future: mysterious street food, floods of people pushing me onto a bus I do not need to take as if I were a twig in a rushing river, shoddy market products sold at a fraction of prices to which I am accustomed, learning calligraphy, comprehending the importance of intonation beyond expressing emotion, creating lesson plans, and, of course, achieving zen-like enlightenment.

To make it easy on my students, I have decided to assume an appropriate pseudonym-of-sorts: Elie 洋葱. This transliterates to Elie Yangtsong. This is not the technical pinyin Romanization, but the translation remains the same: Elie Onion.

As of yet, I do not know if I will be able to use this blog from behind the Great Firewall; however, I promise I will find an alternative source of mass-communication should this one not pan-out.

Be well, my friends and family. And start practicing your game.



Recent Films I Recommend: "Inception," "Manhattan Murder Mystery"
Recent Reading: I will be starting "The Oracle Bones" on my new Kindle come Thursday.
Recent Tunes: Pretty Lights, "XXXO" M.I.A., Gramophonedzie, "Do The Astral Plane" Flying Lotus, Tony Allen