Moving, QEs, Language

This week has been insane. It's another moving week. Did I mention I hate moving? Really, I know HOW to do it, I know what I can buy elsewhere, I know what needs to get done, I know (sort of) how to minimize and trash ETC. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be writing QE statements for my PhD exams in early September. It's really difficult to concentrate when you have a million other things happening all at once. And I only finished my last seminar and its accompanying, mediocre, 30 page paper, about a week and a half ago.

In other news, I have decided that my Chinese is currently below sub-par. Pourquoi, oh pourquoi! I knew I should have chosen something more reasonable in the history field. Part of the last week I have spent contacting people in Beijing over the phone and through e-mail, and the last week I have started my self-taught Chinese lessons again. Currently: Reading/Writing: OK to good, thank god; Listening: OK; Speaking: very poor. My tones have gone downhill and I have lost a lot of vocabulary. I catch myself talking around the word until someone gives it to me. Example: today I couldn't remember something fairly obvious -- "you know in the 1930s when the Japanese went into China... uh, entered China because of the war... uh the Chinese didn't like that when they came in or entered China... uh..." my new (Skype!) Chinese teacher "you mean invaded?" me: "yes... when Japan INVADED China... thank you" [mental me: FML]. (The new Skype thing is pretty cool though. Yay for Skype video!)

The question is, will I be able to make my research happen? I am seriously worried.

Research money, living alone, friendship

Next year I'll be in Beijing doing my research and somebody will be paying me to do it. Why am I not happier about this? I started to think while I was out running and it turns out I'm really scared. No, I'm not scared about doing my research (although I should be). I'm scared and nervous because the official award notification came today and there's a clause in there about living in the country for a full 12 months -- without leaving. Vacations and holidays are not allowed. Sure, medical and family emergencies are an exception, but they must be approved and even then you might lose part of your award money. This got me to thinking about the ridiculousness of the way research has been done in my field, and it's probably also a reason why more people don't do it. How can they expect someone to plant themselves in a country for so long without *ever* leaving. Look, I understand that research requires a significant amount of time in the country and my full attention. I plan to spend nearly every waking moment in Beijing on my project. I even look forward to the "deep hanging out" element with other athletes, coaches, professors, students, and even archivists. I have no intentions of using any award money to go on holiday or travel anywhere outside of what my proposal stated. But I also need my sanity. I'm worried because I think back to my lowest, most depressing points when I sat alone in a room in Taipei and cried. In fact, that was pretty much a daily ritual until I acclimated to Taipei (whatever that means). After that it became more of a every-other-day sort of thing, until finally it only occurred weekly (basically, when I started my 8 week countdown to leaving permanently).

The other major thing I'm scared of is living in Beijing without my husband and without the companionship/friendship of someone nearby. (Bear with me here.) I have never been good at keeping friends, and I think a lot of this stems from my childhood. I have no close childhood friends, and I have no one I keep in close contact with from before the last years of high school (and then only 2). I am in semi-regular contact with only one friend from my undergraduate years. Prior to moving to Santa Cruz I had no close friends in the DC area (my parents being the exception). It made moving a lot easier. Furthermore, when something "big" happens to someone I used to be close friends with (e.g. when someone graduates, gets a new job, gets married, has a baby, or even visits where I now live--to name a few major situations over the last few months) I am not usually the first person people contact, and sometimes I am not contacted at all (good thing for facebook?) I have two close friends from high school (the only people I still talk to from high school aside from a teacher). When one got married a few years back, I was in her wedding, but I was far from being the maid of honor. I didn't hear much about her pregnancies and births until after they occurred, although I can probably be blamed for some of that. The other friend still lives in the DC area, but we typically only grab lunch or dinner together when I'm in town. I don't know what I need to do to be better about remaining friends or becoming closer to other people. I feel like when I leave SC everyone will just forget me, just like everywhere else I have ever lived. I never seem to be able to stay steady and contribute to a deep friendship so I guess I shouldn't expect them to do so either. Why am I so terrible at friendship?

Anyways, I think the reason this all bothers me right now is that L is probably one of only people I have even been very close to in my whole life (the other people would be my parents). Luckily, he felt the same way -- and we have been like two peas in a pod since. My other close friends (ok hmm maybe < 5 people) will be or are spread across the globe (literally on 3 different continents). None live in Beijing. In the past this has never been a huge problem, but this time I really don't want to move somewhere without anyone I am close to right there with me.

EDIT: While in the shower, I realized a better title for this post might have been "I run for sanity."

DC, Berlin, Santa Cruz, Beijing

I got my money to go do my research! As excited as I am about this, and as ecstatic as I am that this means I can leave Santa Cruz and not come back for a few years, I am a little nervous about all that must be accomplished in the next few months and even more worried about my hopping around the world. If I follow the schedule exactly, this is what it looks like:

- end of June -> DC (conference in Philly last weekend in June), then off to Berlin! :D

- late June or early July->early September: Berlin, while working on my QEs, perhaps working a part-time online job (for the uni) and 3-4 weeks in July of German classes (e.g. 3 hours/ 4 days per week, at the same time L takes his classes). I'm OK with all this 1) because I will get permanent residency in Germany after I reach A1 level in German and 2) because, most importantly, L and I will be working at the same time during the day and spending all of our leisure time together. In August, we will likely take a trip to Spain to see his parents, but aside from that I'll be work work working for the QEs!

- early September -> return to Santa Cruz and pass QEs (fingers crossed)

- mid September -> return to Berlin, run marathon with L, prepare for Beijing

- late September or early October -> Beijing for a year-ish with the last 6 weeks in Taipei

I'm a little worried because I hate flying and moving around so much. Yeah yeah OK so I used to NOT hate it so much before the last year or two... It's not the adaptation to a new environment that worries me. Hell, I LIKE that part of it--it's like a fun challenge figuring out where to go run or buy my groceries (although finding an apartment would be one of the REALLY NOT FUN parts of this). I'm even excited to get paid for a year to do something I LIKE to do: putz around in research materials and discover new ones leading to new research directions. I just wish L could come along with me to BJ. Luckily I think I'm just going to make trips back and forth occasionally, and I'll get him to come visit me on his break from the uni. I suppose the best part about all this is that I'm receiving a fellowship that provides enough money for a decent place to live (*happy dance*) for the first time in my life. So even if everything else sucks, at least I won't be extremely poor--I'll be able to afford decent housing AND drinks!

Making Connetions

Today I went to couchsurfing weekly Pub meeting trying to meet locals and travelers. As usual, there were a mixed of couchsurfers from mostly Montreal, but they were nice people. I met a writer and basically I told her I cannot write.

It is not too easy to meet people in Montreal though, and for rootless people I guess we have to learn to make friends "fast" since we move around. I think by now I have a formula of how to seek and pinpoint my "friends". Still, it takes times and effort, and sometimes I am just so tired of making more connections like these. However, I should never give up!

Another thing to point out is: It is DAMN HARD to ask girls for a date in Montreal. I am sorry I am not hot but I am not ugly.

Anyway, it takes times to adapt to a new place, and as my friend said, sometimes I am fighting with local culture too so. I will take it easy.

Unmotivated and sad

I miss L. I want to move to Germany. They will offer me subsidized German classes, which I'd rather take instead of writing or revising PhD statements. Sequestering myself in random places to read has begun to take its toll and I feel disconnected with the community here (not sure I have ever been 100% connected?). My immediate colleagues and friends have been supportive by letting me sit in their office(s) and work instead of having to spend hours in libraries and cafes. This helps a bit, although it doesn't make me want to write my statements any faster. Why bother when I still have no funding?

Maybe I should have followed the recommendation of the aptitude test I took in tenth grade and studied to be an interpreter/translator.

Sigh.


P.S. On a brighter note, I bought my colleague and his wife some stuff on Amazon for the baby that's arriving on Wednesday-ish. It's from their registry so hopefully they'll like it. What did people do before registries could be put on the internet--seriously?

April showers bring May flowers?

It's been raining on my parade all month.

1. Apparently, when applying for funding from a U.S. government agency to travel abroad, being a rootless third culture kid screws you. Why? They (seems to be both the U.S. and China) want people to have a unique study abroad experience and share "culture" (whatever the hell that means). They don't want people who have traveled a lot and are likely to instead tell them how much b.s. it is to "share culture" (again, what the hell does that mean).

So, I wasn't entirely denied the money---I was named an "alternate". Based on the anonymous forum (and spreadsheet someone started in GoogleDocs) for aforementioned grant, the people receiving this grant have never spent much time abroad. In fact, most of them are just SO EXCITED! to be OMG LIVING IN CHINA FOR A YEAR!!!

Nevermind that I have thus far paid every @!@@#& trip and year abroad out of my own pocket because my PhD program requires me to be nearly fluent in Chinese before getting to this point in the first place. Argh.

2. I won't be taking my PhD qualifying exams until September. This has its benefits, but it also has its drawbacks. Namely that while I'll have the whole summer to prepare, I will likely have to spend most of this summer unfunded. Of course, given that the economy is crap, our university seems to be imploding, and the library caught on fire spreading soot all over the fourth floor -- the books I need for QE prep -- I'm OK with eating the cost. Besides, I'll be with L in Germany all summer, then come back for the exam in September and then return to Germany. At that point (although hopefully much earlier) the rest of the funding agencies will have gotten back to me or not, and I'll be deciding whether or not it's worth trying to go to China before another season of proposal writing. If I don't get funding for China for next year, I'm not going. I'll keep applying, but I refuse to fund my own dissertation research. I already ate the cost for this PhD program once (Taiwan) and I'm not doing it again.

Noncoupable and Yen Ching Re-united!!

It was surreal and awesome that I finally re-united with noncoupable after two years, and noncoupable's wedding is the sweetest I have ever been to.

It is funny that my good friends are everywhere, and since a lot of my friends are rootless, we move everywhere too. So I think next time I will meet noncoupable in Europe! What I love about us is that we are not afraid of moving, and we go with the flow. However, recently, Yenching finally felt a little old first time in his life. Yesterday was my 29th birthday, and people around me are either getting married or having kids. I seems to "float" always. I really need to start to fulfill my dream soon!