A Touch of Normal

September 1st, 2007

It's my third day here at the Ma house, and Carina is already warming up to me. I think she wants me to like her and she's trying hard to speak more English with me. Her friend and roomate, Erica, is attending the class with her and is quite a bright little girl. She's twelve years old as well and speaks Korean (her native language), Chinese and English. She has only been speaking Chinese for 6 months, and she told me she learned it just by listening to the other girls talk all the time. She's been studying English since she was 9 years old and went to an English school in Sweden. She is eager to please and is a big help with Carina. Erica not only helps translate when it is needed but also helps to keep the mood up and goes along with my lessons as though they were the best thing since buttered toast. Just now, I read them a bed time story and Erica made sure to act as interested as possible. The book turned out to be a bit of a waste of money as the stories were simplified boring versions of the real fairy tales, but she went along just the same. I think she knows how quickly Carina loses interest and how much she needs some focus and guidance. Erica is the best thing for her.

Tonight it was a little easier to speak with Uncle Li and the Chinese girl who doesn't speak English. Uncle Li's real name is Li Xiao Ping and his daughter is Li sa yi, who I've named Lisa. With Erica helping me, I can understand the gist of what Uncle Li says and Erica fills me in on the words I don't' know. It's much smoother this way and it allows me to talk more with her and build a bond. I feel more inclined to build a bond with her than I do with Carina, but that's to be expected. Erica is very intelligent and polite and eager to please, whereas Carina has sporadic focus, has been spoiled and so has very few manners and is eager to be pleased. They're practically opposites.

In the room across from me, Lisa and her parents sleep together. Lisa seems like a bit of the odd girl out. She's very boyish looking, with close cropped hair and a slim straight build. When explaining how her body is built to a Chinese friend of mine, I said "Ta kanshilai yige quaizi." She looks like a chopstick. It's the closest thing I knew to calling her a twig. She's very shy and likes to stay in her room while the other two hang out. I'm not sure if this is from preference or from ostracization.

Carina is not half as difficult as I was prepared for, though I'm happier for it. The only difficulty is finding a lesson plan that will both interest her and Erica and be simple enough for Carina to follow without holding Erica back too much. The other problem is finding material that is simple enough for her level but interesting enough for her age. I'm thinking of giving Erica further reading on the side.

The downside of all of this is the inconvenience factor. For this job, I have to travel to Jiangmen for four days of the week every week. I stay in this room and have very little time to myself. I'm not comfortable yet in the house and I don't like being away from Andy this much. It doesn't' help that Andy and I had a fight before I left. We have never been away from each other for this long. I realize 4 days isn't a long time, but it is when it's never happened before, and Andy and I are infused in each others lives. We live together, work together, play together, learn together. It's strange and uncomfortable to be doing something that he is not involved with. Since we've been together, we've hardly ever gone 4 days without being intimate either. Three days seems to be my limit before I reach a breaking point to the degree where I'm intent on "fixing this problem", so I'll have to cope with that as well.

Living at the house for the four days has presented a few problems for me that I'll have to work out. While I'm there, I am comfortable and the day is very scheduled and routine. The girls have breakfast at 7 am, go to school and return at either 11:30 or 12:30 depending on how much slack they're getting for tennis practice. (This is usually determined by whether or not Carina's schedule has changed. If she is attending school, they all follow her schedule and come home at 11:30; if she's not attending school however, the other two girls will stay at the school until lunch time). We have lunch together, have some after meal fruit and have class for an hour and a half. After class, they relax for 30 minutes and then take a nap. At 3:30, they go to tennis practice and come home at 8:30 for dinner. We have dinner together, have some after meal fruit, talk and hang out for a while, and then they have an hour of personal time where they'll often write in their diaries or talk to their parents before I read them a bedtime story and they go to sleep.

This is all very routine. Ayi usually comes into my room and asks for my dirty laundry at the same hour every day and returns the clean clothes on time as well. When I wake up there is baotzi waiting for me steaming in the wok while the kids eat their breakfast. While they're at school, Ayi goes cleans up breakfast, does laundry and goes shopping. After they leave for tennis practice, Ayi cleans the house, mops the floors (including mine) and takes a nap on the couch. Thirty minutes before they come back from practice, Ayi washes her hair in my bathroom with door open, wearing all her clothes with the apron still fixed about her neck, and washes her feet with a toothbrush. Dinner is always on time. There is always fruit. The house is always clean. It's stable and has made me a bit uncomfortable.

I enjoy the relaxation and having an Ayi is deffinetely nice. However, I do not feel at ease in the usual sense. I'm not at home there. I am visiting and feel that my time is catagorized and labeled and I have a hard time sitting down for a good long stint of work. At home, when I work I dive into it and don't come out for hours despite hunger or bodily needs. I'll work round the clock and throw out any pretense of a sleeping schedule in light of the more pressing matter of the project at hand. I can't do that at the Ma. house. If I sink into my work and throw off my schedule, I'll rock the schedule of the house. I have to be ready the next day. I have to keep a schedule, and I've never had to do that when it comes to our work.

So far, the best I can do is alternate between reading my fiction books, studying my linguistics books, writing lesson plans and personal writing like this when I have time to myself. I see the value in these things, but I'm not cranking out the work, and so I feel unbalanced, off put and strange. This is not normal. When we move out to Jiangmen, I'll have more freedom and will be able to work at home while they're at practice and at night which should solve that problem. Until then, though, I'll need to enforce a work schedule for myself, allotting hours of work for separate projects. Having a semblance of a work schedule could be a good thing for us. We're so inclined to spend all of our time working that we've omitted any outside social life or exercise, so maybe this could add the touch of normal to our lives that we might need. Just a touch, no more.