Saturday, January 21, 2006
Well here i am - three weeks back in chengdu and into the new year and i finally have a clear saturday and one full of inspiration - ooohhhh its great to have a day off when i'm up and about at a decent time and not hiding under the covers trying to remember what happened the night before and then trying very hard to forget again !!! Not totally my fault i might add - first weekend, was well, first weekend back ! secong was graeme's birthday so the excuses are all there. but it is lovely to be back at the computer and in the mood for writing, i was worried for a bit that i'd never get back into it !! 
My weeks are taken up so much with working that i really don't want to do aything when i get home except eat and huddle on the sofa watching a movie - now don't get me wrong, i'm really enjoying my work -infact i enjoy it more and more all the time including my extra teaching and this has now shifted a bit so that i actually got home in daylight once last week !!!
So here i am, and listening to Juro's christmas collection (oneof bry's friendsin japan who has a great ear for finding beautiful songs you could never find yourself) - in preparation for this moment i have been trying to remeber what i did last year and i was surprised at how hard that was - do i not care aboutmy life or is it just soo boring that there's nothing to remember. well i'm glad to say that after asking around i've found that i had a really good 2005 !!!! so let me tell you al about it !
the year was seen in with some very special friend and some just as special cocktails -a unch of my favourite people got together and bought lots of booze and mountains of friut and chocolate sauce and then went to graemes house,where with the help of 2 blenders and chefs in shifts we produced a constant stream of the best cocktails i've ever had. Stared about 10pm and were creating and drinking with such a tour de force that we just made the drinks last to midnight !! left the house to share the new year cheer with more friends in the most energised pissed i've ever been- lots of acohol mixed with lots of friut does not take away from the alcohol but definietly adds to the pissed !!!!
New Year was very special and so was being clear headed the next day! it was made even better because it ws spentwith two of the loveliest people i've had the chance to get to know - Heate and Dave - a very special australian couple who left us soon after to go back home to a year that came closer to hell and heaven than any of us would what to get, but that's their story. You just need to know that they were and are wonderful xxx
januray was the same as it would be anywhere, where its winter - cold. but in china at least it comes witha holiday at the end in the form of Chinese New Year - much more spedial than our new year because you get 10 days off work instead of 1 !!! IN 2005 the tibetan new year and the chinese new year were at the same time - they both follow a lunar calendar but apparently they can still be at slightly different times - yeh i don't get it either !!
Anyway Rachel, Jamyang, Graeme, myself ad two of jamyang's mates from beijing, Denny and Toby went up to Aba (Jamyang's home town) for about a week. Now you have to understand that i'veknown jamyang for over 2 years nowand every holiday he has tried to get me to go to aba and its never worked out - everyone else has made it - grae, rach even ben but for whatever reasonsi vnever pulled it off,so this was a super special trip for me - and it didn't disapoint !! We spent the week walking through the snow covered hills, sitting in very warm and cosy houses, eating more momo's (yak meat filled dumpling) than anyone of us thought possible and carving chunks of yummy yak meat off gaint slabs of it !!!
Actually we spet most of the time eating but we did doabit of walking. And i got the chance to walk the pilgrimage route around the monestry - my favourite thing to do with tibetan monestrys.
It was a lovely trip, to be with friends, to see tibetan life and to be invited into someone's family -i couldn't have asked for a better holiday !!!
And this takes me on to May - when you work all year (i guess thatswhat all normal people do, but its weird for me because i only used to write newsletters when i left each country !!) you find that all the interesting things happen in the holiday times. What ihadn't realised was just how many i had last yearad how diverse and special they had all been !!!
The start of May is a 7 day national holiday in china but i took a whole month and went back to england. This was a truely special time, firstly because i hadn't been home for over two years but also because i got t be part of Megan and Leyton's wedding. Two very special friends of mine who had asked me to be bridesmaid - i felt very honoured and excited !!
My mum - as only she can do - organised a three day welcome home party which turned into about 5 days in the end as friends came early and late but meant that i got back to england and sat in mum and dad's garden - my favourite place in the whole country - surrounded by my favourite poeple in the whole country !!!!
I had a lovely weekend !!! and then got to travel around and see everyone again !! so the experience just got better and better. I know i have been really bad at staying in contact= both before i came home and especially now that i'm back here but it was really majical to see you all and i do think of you often.
I was struck most by how enthusiastically everyone is living life. I told a friend this and she said that sometimes she felt like she was copping out and conforming by buying a house and settling into life but to me everyone seemed to be doing it with so much positive energy. When i left, we were all not long out of university but long enough that we felt we should have achieved more and that we were unsatisfied in our lives. Two years on and there was so much positive engergy - people were enjoying jobs or changing to new ones, becoming very proud house owners, parents and husbands and wives. And they were doing all these what society calls normal things without any 'eastenders' misery !!!
I was jealous, because i felt like i'm treading water and not in a very create or enthusiastic way here in china, but mostly i was really happy and enthusiastic for them.
I came back, happy to be back home in chengdu but also confident that the people i loved most were happy in their lives too.
My only regret was that i got to spend so little time with mum and dad - this however was quickly rectified because what felt like very soon after (actally july) they appeared on my doorstep in chengdu. There is no way to describehowi felt seeing them come through customs in in chengdu area but safe to say that i'm welling up again just thinking about it - my parent are great !! ask anyone !! but it was especially special that they came to see me and my life out here in china.
Mike and Jules were with me for about 4 weeks before they headed off for their own adventure across china, mongolia and tibet - but you'll have to askthem about that bit !! doask them though because iknow they'd love to tell you all about it !!
It was super because igot to show them all the best thingsabout my life here - sitting in a tmepland doing nothing but drinking tea, eating too spicy hotpot and drinking formaldahide filled beer.
They met all my favourite people and i go to take them to all my favourite places around sichuan and china for that matter. Including jamgyang's hometown of Aba - totally transformed by the summer into rolling hills of wild flowers and the bluest brightest sky you've ever seen !!! Xi'an with the teracotta wariors and my faourite and weirdest shrine ever and beijing, wih the best market in the world !
The summer got pretty hectic after mum and dad left - because it was so calm having them with me for only a month ad managing to showthem the best places in china !!! Rachel and jamyang - two of my bestest friends in chengdu - if you hadn't worked that out yet, moved in before leaving us forever to go and live in bejing. and then as they movedout, graeme moved in in preparatiofor taking over my apartment after i left. now as you might of noticed, i didn't leave, but it did take me nearly 6 weeks to makethis desicion while poor old graeme had to live with meand lexia !! but it was great to hav just a busy house - god did lexia and i love it when they all finally left and it was just the two of us again !!!
Just as i made the desicion to stay (in fact just before, and who knows maybe this helped me decide) we had our other chinise national holiday october 1st-7th. A whole group of us went to a small tibetan town in northern sichuan that is famous for horse treking. We didn't go for the horses though. we had decides to hike out to some deserted spot and have own own private party.
We hiked up to what loked like an old gate to the city and whe we inally reached it - weighed down with everything we could carry, we founda bunch of tibetans who were helping to repaint it. they had obviously had the same idea as usbut for their party they had brought up gaint speakers and a sound system !!! We spoke to the local guy living nearby and he agreed tolet us sleep in the gate house - he gave us bedding and fire wood (gave beeing a 'we gave him money and he gave us the things !!!') but what with tibetans, a sound system, lots of vodka and a giant bonfire !! we had such a great tmethat we stayed two nights !!! i tell you its just as well we had the gate house because it was fucking freezing !!!! still a very good time was had by all.
i got to play poi the first time i've played them since being in china !! i hadn't realised how much i missed them, and by the endof the night, everyone had had a go !!!
maybe it was realsing that i still had some very speical friend friends in chengdu (what with haete, dave, rach and jamyang leaving it had felt a little lonely), and the fact that i liked my job and that it was the opposite to everything that i hated about teaching in china and had been getting me down, that i decided to sign on the line and stay another year !
Then it was just a hop, skip and a thanksgiving long weekend beforeit was the christmas holidays and i was off to toyko to see bryony !!!
I flew via beijing which meant i got to see rach and jamyang - hich was just super, although absolute carnage !!! And then i was in toyko looking at a sister who i hadn't seen in 3 years and looked so different and so like my mum and my sister that it was really freaky. actually she had the very moving experince and kept touching my face - i was just comletely hung over and sleep deprived and looking at my mum at 25 yrs old.
We had a great time !!!!!
she worked and i site saw and yet we still had time to be together and do things together. she showed me her favourite spots and i tried to persuade her to come to china so i could show her mine.
Your experinces of a new place are formed from what is your norm - like with any experiment, in order to make conclusions you have to have a control group. what moved me the most was how much my experience of toyko came from my life in china. i don't think i'd realised how much this life has changed me and effected me and become me. i feel so much that i am doing nothing here and that its just shy of wasting time, and although i know that people say that every experince you have shapes the person you are, it was visiting tokyo that really knocked it home. I have lived in chengdu china for nearly three years now and it has shaped the person i am. If i had come to toyko from living in winchester or london,i would have had two completely different experiences. and i'm really looking forward to what linda has to say about toyko when she goes to visit bryony after living in norwich.
Toyko is so much the same as chengdu and so competely different and opposite, i have no idea how it is in relation to england.
this is where i am now and who i am - weird.
And this is me - in some ways or rightthis second anyway - i am much happier nothats the wrong word, much more content in chengdu than i have ben in a long time. My job is a challenge and i'm getting job satisfaction something that has eenmssing for too long and thatabove all is whats making life good. I will leae in september and travel on down to new zealand, at the moment i really want to get there and start a life but i know this will ease off when i start trabeling and i alsofeel that that is still something i have to do. it is important to me to travel again before i get to new zealand. thanks to thisob i will have some money behind when when i get there, which not only gives me security but possibilities and both of these things have become very important to me.
But let me slow down a bit, cause i'm not writig this year off yet !!! i'm off to beijing next week for chinese new year to go with rachel and jamyang up to harbin to see the ice festival something i really wanted to do last year and didn't manage - not quite sure why though because the average daily temperature is -25 celcius , yes that -25 !!! and then a little skiing. not sure what May holiday will hold but linda's planning on coming out in the summer and then when i leave chengdu i'm going to travel out through southern yunnan into loas - a trip i've been saving for when i leave chengdu and one i've been looking forward to since getting here. (lots of hill tribes and laos influences)
Sorry i didn't talk much aout japan - it was a great experince and really beautiful. a respectful and contiplative relgion such a change to the money aggressiveness of china. and i don't know what i can say about my time with bryony - she looks great and seems a lot happier. they were both very magical xx i'm not sure if i just haven't preocessed the experince enough to talk about it yet or if i'm all talked out but as i'm sure you'll agree this blog entry is long enough !!!
if you're lucky i'll come back to japan and if not, or you can;t wait then check out bryony's blog - she's better at talking about it anyway. i will say though, that i now have a japanese house god in my house (got him fromthe temple on new years eve/day) and that i have a japanese bell on my key chain that reminds me of japan and bryony everytime i hear it - and that its makes me calm and happy and smilling all at the same time.
till next time
please hug the one you love and get one back xx
love tess xx
My weeks are taken up so much with working that i really don't want to do aything when i get home except eat and huddle on the sofa watching a movie - now don't get me wrong, i'm really enjoying my work -infact i enjoy it more and more all the time including my extra teaching and this has now shifted a bit so that i actually got home in daylight once last week !!!So here i am, and listening to Juro's christmas collection (oneof bry's friendsin japan who has a great ear for finding beautiful songs you could never find yourself) - in preparation for this moment i have been trying to remeber what i did last year and i was surprised at how hard that was - do i not care aboutmy life or is it just soo boring that there's nothing to remember. well i'm glad to say that after asking around i've found that i had a really good 2005 !!!! so let me tell you al about it !
the year was seen in with some very special friend and some just as special cocktails -a unch of my favourite people got together and bought lots of booze and mountains of friut and chocolate sauce and then went to graemes house,where with the help of 2 blenders and chefs in shifts we produced a constant stream of the best cocktails i've ever had. Stared about 10pm and were creating and drinking with such a tour de force that we just made the drinks last to midnight !! left the house to share the new year cheer with more friends in the most energised pissed i've ever been- lots of acohol mixed with lots of friut does not take away from the alcohol but definietly adds to the pissed !!!!
New Year was very special and so was being clear headed the next day! it was made even better because it ws spentwith two of the loveliest people i've had the chance to get to know - Heate and Dave - a very special australian couple who left us soon after to go back home to a year that came closer to hell and heaven than any of us would what to get, but that's their story. You just need to know that they were and are wonderful xxx
januray was the same as it would be anywhere, where its winter - cold. but in china at least it comes witha holiday at the end in the form of Chinese New Year - much more spedial than our new year because you get 10 days off work instead of 1 !!! IN 2005 the tibetan new year and the chinese new year were at the same time - they both follow a lunar calendar but apparently they can still be at slightly different times - yeh i don't get it either !!
Anyway Rachel, Jamyang, Graeme, myself ad two of jamyang's mates from beijing, Denny and Toby went up to Aba (Jamyang's home town) for about a week. Now you have to understand that i'veknown jamyang for over 2 years nowand every holiday he has tried to get me to go to aba and its never worked out - everyone else has made it - grae, rach even ben but for whatever reasonsi vnever pulled it off,so this was a super special trip for me - and it didn't disapoint !! We spent the week walking through the snow covered hills, sitting in very warm and cosy houses, eating more momo's (yak meat filled dumpling) than anyone of us thought possible and carving chunks of yummy yak meat off gaint slabs of it !!!
Actually we spet most of the time eating but we did doabit of walking. And i got the chance to walk the pilgrimage route around the monestry - my favourite thing to do with tibetan monestrys. It was a lovely trip, to be with friends, to see tibetan life and to be invited into someone's family -i couldn't have asked for a better holiday !!!
And this takes me on to May - when you work all year (i guess thatswhat all normal people do, but its weird for me because i only used to write newsletters when i left each country !!) you find that all the interesting things happen in the holiday times. What ihadn't realised was just how many i had last yearad how diverse and special they had all been !!!
The start of May is a 7 day national holiday in china but i took a whole month and went back to england. This was a truely special time, firstly because i hadn't been home for over two years but also because i got t be part of Megan and Leyton's wedding. Two very special friends of mine who had asked me to be bridesmaid - i felt very honoured and excited !!
My mum - as only she can do - organised a three day welcome home party which turned into about 5 days in the end as friends came early and late but meant that i got back to england and sat in mum and dad's garden - my favourite place in the whole country - surrounded by my favourite poeple in the whole country !!!!
I had a lovely weekend !!! and then got to travel around and see everyone again !! so the experience just got better and better. I know i have been really bad at staying in contact= both before i came home and especially now that i'm back here but it was really majical to see you all and i do think of you often.
I was struck most by how enthusiastically everyone is living life. I told a friend this and she said that sometimes she felt like she was copping out and conforming by buying a house and settling into life but to me everyone seemed to be doing it with so much positive energy. When i left, we were all not long out of university but long enough that we felt we should have achieved more and that we were unsatisfied in our lives. Two years on and there was so much positive engergy - people were enjoying jobs or changing to new ones, becoming very proud house owners, parents and husbands and wives. And they were doing all these what society calls normal things without any 'eastenders' misery !!!
I was jealous, because i felt like i'm treading water and not in a very create or enthusiastic way here in china, but mostly i was really happy and enthusiastic for them.
I came back, happy to be back home in chengdu but also confident that the people i loved most were happy in their lives too.
My only regret was that i got to spend so little time with mum and dad - this however was quickly rectified because what felt like very soon after (actally july) they appeared on my doorstep in chengdu. There is no way to describehowi felt seeing them come through customs in in chengdu area but safe to say that i'm welling up again just thinking about it - my parent are great !! ask anyone !! but it was especially special that they came to see me and my life out here in china.
Mike and Jules were with me for about 4 weeks before they headed off for their own adventure across china, mongolia and tibet - but you'll have to askthem about that bit !! doask them though because iknow they'd love to tell you all about it !!
It was super because igot to show them all the best thingsabout my life here - sitting in a tmepland doing nothing but drinking tea, eating too spicy hotpot and drinking formaldahide filled beer.
They met all my favourite people and i go to take them to all my favourite places around sichuan and china for that matter. Including jamgyang's hometown of Aba - totally transformed by the summer into rolling hills of wild flowers and the bluest brightest sky you've ever seen !!! Xi'an with the teracotta wariors and my faourite and weirdest shrine ever and beijing, wih the best market in the world !The summer got pretty hectic after mum and dad left - because it was so calm having them with me for only a month ad managing to showthem the best places in china !!! Rachel and jamyang - two of my bestest friends in chengdu - if you hadn't worked that out yet, moved in before leaving us forever to go and live in bejing. and then as they movedout, graeme moved in in preparatiofor taking over my apartment after i left. now as you might of noticed, i didn't leave, but it did take me nearly 6 weeks to makethis desicion while poor old graeme had to live with meand lexia !! but it was great to hav just a busy house - god did lexia and i love it when they all finally left and it was just the two of us again !!!
Just as i made the desicion to stay (in fact just before, and who knows maybe this helped me decide) we had our other chinise national holiday october 1st-7th. A whole group of us went to a small tibetan town in northern sichuan that is famous for horse treking. We didn't go for the horses though. we had decides to hike out to some deserted spot and have own own private party.
We hiked up to what loked like an old gate to the city and whe we inally reached it - weighed down with everything we could carry, we founda bunch of tibetans who were helping to repaint it. they had obviously had the same idea as usbut for their party they had brought up gaint speakers and a sound system !!! We spoke to the local guy living nearby and he agreed tolet us sleep in the gate house - he gave us bedding and fire wood (gave beeing a 'we gave him money and he gave us the things !!!') but what with tibetans, a sound system, lots of vodka and a giant bonfire !! we had such a great tmethat we stayed two nights !!! i tell you its just as well we had the gate house because it was fucking freezing !!!! still a very good time was had by all.i got to play poi the first time i've played them since being in china !! i hadn't realised how much i missed them, and by the endof the night, everyone had had a go !!!
maybe it was realsing that i still had some very speical friend friends in chengdu (what with haete, dave, rach and jamyang leaving it had felt a little lonely), and the fact that i liked my job and that it was the opposite to everything that i hated about teaching in china and had been getting me down, that i decided to sign on the line and stay another year !
Then it was just a hop, skip and a thanksgiving long weekend beforeit was the christmas holidays and i was off to toyko to see bryony !!!
I flew via beijing which meant i got to see rach and jamyang - hich was just super, although absolute carnage !!! And then i was in toyko looking at a sister who i hadn't seen in 3 years and looked so different and so like my mum and my sister that it was really freaky. actually she had the very moving experince and kept touching my face - i was just comletely hung over and sleep deprived and looking at my mum at 25 yrs old.
We had a great time !!!!!
she worked and i site saw and yet we still had time to be together and do things together. she showed me her favourite spots and i tried to persuade her to come to china so i could show her mine.
Your experinces of a new place are formed from what is your norm - like with any experiment, in order to make conclusions you have to have a control group. what moved me the most was how much my experience of toyko came from my life in china. i don't think i'd realised how much this life has changed me and effected me and become me. i feel so much that i am doing nothing here and that its just shy of wasting time, and although i know that people say that every experince you have shapes the person you are, it was visiting tokyo that really knocked it home. I have lived in chengdu china for nearly three years now and it has shaped the person i am. If i had come to toyko from living in winchester or london,i would have had two completely different experiences. and i'm really looking forward to what linda has to say about toyko when she goes to visit bryony after living in norwich.
Toyko is so much the same as chengdu and so competely different and opposite, i have no idea how it is in relation to england.
this is where i am now and who i am - weird.
And this is me - in some ways or rightthis second anyway - i am much happier nothats the wrong word, much more content in chengdu than i have ben in a long time. My job is a challenge and i'm getting job satisfaction something that has eenmssing for too long and thatabove all is whats making life good. I will leae in september and travel on down to new zealand, at the moment i really want to get there and start a life but i know this will ease off when i start trabeling and i alsofeel that that is still something i have to do. it is important to me to travel again before i get to new zealand. thanks to thisob i will have some money behind when when i get there, which not only gives me security but possibilities and both of these things have become very important to me.
But let me slow down a bit, cause i'm not writig this year off yet !!! i'm off to beijing next week for chinese new year to go with rachel and jamyang up to harbin to see the ice festival something i really wanted to do last year and didn't manage - not quite sure why though because the average daily temperature is -25 celcius , yes that -25 !!! and then a little skiing. not sure what May holiday will hold but linda's planning on coming out in the summer and then when i leave chengdu i'm going to travel out through southern yunnan into loas - a trip i've been saving for when i leave chengdu and one i've been looking forward to since getting here. (lots of hill tribes and laos influences)
Sorry i didn't talk much aout japan - it was a great experince and really beautiful. a respectful and contiplative relgion such a change to the money aggressiveness of china. and i don't know what i can say about my time with bryony - she looks great and seems a lot happier. they were both very magical xx i'm not sure if i just haven't preocessed the experince enough to talk about it yet or if i'm all talked out but as i'm sure you'll agree this blog entry is long enough !!!
if you're lucky i'll come back to japan and if not, or you can;t wait then check out bryony's blog - she's better at talking about it anyway. i will say though, that i now have a japanese house god in my house (got him fromthe temple on new years eve/day) and that i have a japanese bell on my key chain that reminds me of japan and bryony everytime i hear it - and that its makes me calm and happy and smilling all at the same time.
till next time
please hug the one you love and get one back xx
love tess xx
# posted by Tess @ 12:28 AM 
