I’m more than half way into my stay here in China, and I’ve lost track of time. During the first couple weeks of our trip, a time of excitement and adjustment, I could recite from the top of my head exactly how many days had passed since we had left America, our home, and entered the confusion and combustion that is China. Now, weeks later, when faced with the question of just how long I’ve been in this foreign place, I have to sift through calendars to find the answer.
Perhaps my hardship in finding an answer to this question, however, lies within the question itself. After months of living here, China has morphed from foreign to comfortable. Customs and qualities that I found strange, maybe even comical upon my arrival are now a part of my daily life. I am no longer surprised when I see a man peeing on the side of a busy street, or when my grandmother spits mucus onto the marble floor of my lobby. I’ve adapted to my life as a student enrolled in a Chinese high school and as an older sister and daughter to the members a Chinese family. Just as I don’t number my days in Brookline, I don’t number my days in China. This trip is no longer a vacation, but instead has become a life experience.
With this said, it would be utterly disrespectful and ignorant to say that in only a few months I've gained a complete understanding of China's culture, backed up by over 3,500 years of history. Though my eyes, skin, and voice will never look or sound Chinese, for the time being I am as close as I will ever get to being a part of this amazing, complex culture. My ancestors never kowtowed to emperors, had their feet bound, or protested at Tiananmen Sq, but through becoming a partial member of a Chinese family, I've gained an understanding for who the people of China are and the lives that they lead. I will never fully know or understand the country surrounding me, but feel that this exchange program, the wonderful opportunity that it is, gives me a chance to try.
Though I no longer regard China as a foreign country, I realize that the people of China still regard me as a foreign person. I am now able to turn my head and look beyond the bewildered stares of the people I pass by on the street, but know that they remain. While I’d like to think that I am now a part of the “Chinese lifestyle”, no matter where I go in this entire country, I will be picked out of the population of over 1 billion as the American. I am different, and though I may resent it, the dissimilarities between my appearance and thinking and that of the Chinese people are what make me who I am. In the back of my mind I know that my time here is limited- that in only a couple of weeks I will return to my home in America, filled with American ideals and customs. There will be no more men peeing on streets and no more mucus filled lobbies. I will no longer be stared out or looked at as an outsider, and I will blend in with those surrounding me. It’s disheartening that I’ll have to leave the little life that I’ve created here for myself, but I’m starting to understand that that’s the way things are meant to be. Just as the Chinese have their own culture, I have mine. We can’t change who we are, and in adapting to life here I’ve come to understand my own culture and roots- the story of a first generation Ethiopian parent, a name change at Ellis Island, and thousands of years of both European and African tradition. Being in China has given me a better grasp for the importance of both my family and country’s history. They make up who I am, and will always have a place in my identity, no matter which continent I may be living in.

Friday April 10th, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
I sit on a couch in an apartment located in the modern complex of Feng Ye Xin Du Shi. The chest of the baby I hold in my lap rises and falls as the lungs it contains grasp for a breath of cool, refreshing air. A series of short, raspy coughs pierce the silence every ten seconds, arising from the throats of the fifteen other babies that surround me. The life I hold in my hands is that of Nick, an adorable baby boy who arrived at the orphanage one week ago. Although he is already two months old, he weighs as much as a premature newborn, and has the heart problems of a seventy-year old living off a diet of french-fries and hamburgers. A fold sprouting from his top lip, rising up through his nose, makes feeding him a grueling task; formula creates a river down his chin and onto his periwinkle onsie.
Nick looks up at me. Despite the grief they’ve witnessed, his eyes are the epitome innocence and purity. His pencil thin fingers wrap around my thumb like boa constrictors, and although he has one of the softest touches, he locks me into this moment.
I lift him up and into his bed as he drifts to sleep. His shaven head has left a pool of sweat in the inside of my elbow; Nick’s fever is spiking.
Friday April 10th, 2009, 9:00 p.m.
I sit on a couch in an apartment located in the modern complex of Feng Ye Xin Du Shi. The chest of the baby I hold in my lap rises and falls as the lungs in contains take a break from laughter in order to inhale a breath of cool, refreshing air. This is my host sister Xin Xin, and this brief moment of tranquility is broken by a scream. “Maya!” arises from her vocal cords, ands rings through my ears. Although her face is only six inches away from my own, she proceeds to speak to me as if I’m at the other side of the apartment. I play along, slapping my hands together during hand games and singing along to songs that play on the fifty-seven inch flat-screen TV.
We stand up and begin dancing, marking the beginning of Xin Xin’s pesky antics. Our hands and hips bounce to the lighthearted beating of drums, and when I look down at my feet I notice a splotch of liquid spreading from my toes to the arch of my foot. Xin Xin has spit on me, one of her new favorite activities, and begins chasing me around the house, her mouth like a gun to my newly washed clothes. “Huai!” I repeat over and over as I dodge the balls of saliva that fly through the air like grenades. She is enthralled with our little game of cat and mouse, but after about three minutes gets bored, and decides to start throwing calendars at me.
* * *
Being in Xi’an for the past two months, I’ve become immersed in the lives of young children around me. When I’m not playing with my younger sister, I’m feeding and changing babies at the orphanage, both rewarding and special in their own way. At the same time, the two worlds of the children I play with clash. I often find myself resentful of the spoiled life that Xin Xin leads, surrounded by any toy she could ever want, and all the family members she could ever need. She throws tantrums when her parents say no to the simplest things, but I’ve found that her tears yield little sympathy for me. Contrasting with this is the life of the children at the orphanage, who have next to nothing, but remain calm and content. When they cry I know that it is because they are truly suffering, and I cry with them on the inside.
To Xin Xin’s defense, under her tantrums and pesky antics lies a girl I have become attached to, a girl who I know will grow up to be caring and generous. Sometimes though, during her frequent tantrums, I want to grasp Xin Xin by the arms and drag her to that other couch in that other apartment in Feng Ye Xin Du Shi.

Last Couple of Days...

Last weekend was the national Qingming festival, a time when people pay homage to their deceased ancestors. We had a three day weekend, and my family and I went to Yan'an, the site of the end of the Long March of 1934- about a 4 hour drive from Xi'an. The trip was overall very fun, besides the lack of indoor plumbing and the fact that my family decided Yan'ans food is bu hao chi (not delicious), resulting in us not eating a real meal for three days.

I tried talking to my host mom about the Tiananmen Square massacre. She denied that anyone died, then immediately changed the subject, asking if America was in a "national crisis".

Apparantly in China the numbers 8 and 4 are unlucky, so if you have either of them in your phone number, you get money from the phone company each month.

I've taken a lot of pictures but have been too lazy to update them to picasa...