That’s because last year I wasn’t that close with the graduating seniors. Technically I was their teacher, but in China senior year classes are not very important and in a class of 30, four might show up. So while I enjoyed some of them, I just wasn’t that close with them.

But this year is a different story. This year I wasn’t just close, I was CLOSE. The graduates this year were cute sophomores when I came to China. They were my first students, and we got tight pretty fast. (I’ve written about them several times.)

I haven’t seen them for half a year (2nd semester seniors have no class and are expected to leave school) and I knew their departure was inevitable, but it didn’t strike me until last weekend. That’s because last weekend they all came back. They had to give a thesis defense so everyone single one of them was required to be in school for 2 days. Two glorious days (seriously the weather was amazing) in which we got to hang out, take pictures and spend time together.

On the first day they all called me to take pictures. Chinese universities don’t have a graduation ceremony like we do in the west. No assembly, no words of wisdom, no famous speakers. All the school did was provide 30 graduation gowns (there is 120 students all together) and a couple chairs for pictures.

But that didn’t stop anyone from having fun. We stood outside for hours in the broiling sun, swapping robes and taking pictures.

This is a picture from a student. The boys are "peeing" on a petrified thousand years old tree that is the symbol for our school.

After hours of photos a few students and I ate together. Then they headed off to their rooms to prepare their thesis defense and I went home and wallowed in depression. I even listened to depressing music on my iPod.

The next night they all had dinner together. All of them. There are 4 senior classes, each with about 30 students in it, and they were, for the first time in my experience, gathered together in the same room for the first time. It was like prom or something for me. The table I was sitting at was located in the front, so I had to pass by every single student, many who I hadn’t seen in half a year or more. Let me tell you I felt like a rock star with everyone yelling my name and saying hi.

“We were taking bets on how long it would take you to reach us,” said one of my students when I finally sat down with them. “We bet 30 minutes.”

Then the dinner began but people managed only a few bites between taking pictures.

There was, of course, quite a bit of drinking going on. China has no drinking age and you can’t have an important banquet without toasting everyone constantly and draining your glass after every toast.

At one point the food was completely forgotten and everyone was walking around the restaurant. I was having a great time, talking, laughing, taking pictures, when I suddenly turned around and noticed everyone crying. Not just crying but sobbing.

I was totally unprepared for this turn of events, but I guess this momentous occasion and alcohol had done the trick. I then preceded to spend the next hour or so comforting the worst off. “Don’t cry! Don’t cry!” I kept saying. It was one teacher order they did not obey.

There was a whole lotta love going on. (And a whole lotta “I love you man’s!”) I joked that the floor was slick not with spilt beer, but spilt tears.

Some of the students will come back to school one last time to pick up their diploma, but they will come at different times and different dates (and I will probably already be traveling) so this was really the last hurrah. When I felt the time was right, I slipped out the door unnoticed, taking one long glance back at them. 2 students noticed and waved at me.

All the current sophomore students noticed I was depressed over the following days. “Don’t worry,” they said. “You still have us!”

“You don’t understand, that only makes it worse!” I replied.

Not long ago, these graduation seniors were little sophomores sitting in my writing class, speaking class, and reading class thinking graduation was far away. And yet, it arrived in a blink of an eye. Also, while I taught the graduates only one year I have currently taught the sophomores every semester for the past 2 years and will continue for the third year. Their leaving will be the chernobyl of my time in China. I am already steeling myself for it

When I first decided to teach in China, teaching was actually a very small part of my plan. I didn’t really think much about it until we arrived and I was forced to do it. Yet now, being a teacher is a big part of my life and my identity. But in all the teaching websites and planning books I’ve read no one has warned me about this part of teaching.

Nobody told me it would be this hard to say goodbye.

Let’s get the first one out of the way (like eating something bitter before desert.) This one is the most chilling and, so far, has had some pretty wild ramifications. In Beijing, on May 8th, a drunken British man allegedly followed a scantily dressed girl out of the subway and attempted to (allegedly–sorry I was a reporter for a short while and can’t get out of this habit) rape her on the street. Some local guys came to her rescue and beat the shit out of the guy. Much of it was caught on video.

Reaction has been huge, with this video being watched more than 10 million times in just a few days. On Yoku alone, it has almost 3,000 pages of comments. You can find some of the comments translated into english over at ChinaSmack. I should warn you though, they are tough to read. Some call for the beating of the man, for the outlawing (or beating) of all foreigners and several actually blame the girl for it (or say she liked it, people are sick).

But this has had real-world ramifications as well. The Beijing gov’t can’t let something like this go. It was just announced that in Beijing, the local police will be doing a major crackdown on foreigners working illegally in China. That means spot checks, home questioning and god knows what else. They’ve even got the locals in on it, asking everyone to report where foreigners live so the police can go check them out. (They have a special toll-free number to call and everything.) So even legal foreigners can expect to be hassled, and illegal foreigners, well, I would leave Beijing for awhile if I were them.

Here’s the video, don’t worry, you don’t see much of the beating, but be duly warned; it is a shocking video.

Okay, we got the bitter out of the way, let’s go for something sweeter. This is a video I heard about from Niel at Confused Laowai and I am already a fan. It’s a short (very short, about 3 minutes each) comedy series made in Taiwan. It takes place at a diner place around breakfast (hence the name BreakFAST) and has some funny little vignettes. They only have 4 little episodes, but already I see some story lines coming out (come on ego guy, the girl is talking about you, duh!) Anyway, I cheat and read the english subtitles, but maybe I’ll try watching them with my eyes closed of something to see how much of it I understand.

This video has been tossed around renren (Chinese Facebook) and several students e-mailed it to me telling me I have to watch it. This guy us half-chinese/ half-something (sorry I don’t know) and he does 12 different characters in one short film, some of whom are foreigners speaking Chinese, others are chinese from different parts of china speaking with the local accent.

If u don’t speak Chinese it might not be so interesting (though he does speak plenty of English in it) and some of the different characters are slightly racist, but it’s interesting to watch.

And last but not least here is a video called “The Titty Boom Box.” It has nothing to do with China, and I have no idea how I found it in the first place, but it’s quite funny (and totally mesmerizing). And it’s always good to end things with a smile on your face.

It’s pretty well known around my school that I’m tea crazy. So during a recent short break I had several students come back with bags of tea for me. And not just any tea, but hand-picked and roasted green tea made by their mothers. So far I have only had one handmade tea (by my friends grandma) and honestly, I think it is one of the coolest gifts I could ever get.

So I was extremely excited when not one, but TWO students gave me some homemade tea. Both are green tea and both are special kinds of tea from their local area.

Now fresh homemade tea is a little different than the store bought stuff. This is made to be drunk, and drunk quickly. One friend told me that I should store the tea in the fridge to keep it from spoiling and try to drink it within a few weeks. Of course, just one of these bags is enough green tea for me for a year, but I’ll try to use as much as I can in the next few months (who want’s to come over for a tea party?)

You can tell this tea is fresh just by looking at it. No bitter, broken leaves in these bags. Just total fresh leaves.

As this tea is so fresh, it is totally strong. A bit too strong in fact. I like my green tea quite mild so I have to be careful not to put too many leaves in it. This is potent stuff and to me, can taste like a cupful of kelp if I’m not careful.

So what about the virgins I so salaciously added to the title? Well, these teas were picked by students parents, so obviously not virgins, but some tea, especially the higher end stuff, is actually still picked by virgins. And not just picked, but plucked by their teeth and placed in a basket nestled between their perfect c-cup breasts. (Don’t believe me? Check out this article. It made quite the stir last year.)

It sounds positively medieval and  it is. It is the way the tea leaves were picked for the emperor in ancient times. Some emperors had virgins pick it with their mouths while other allowed them to snip the leaves with golden scissors and place them in golden baskets. (Woven out of the hair of unicorns?)

Well, whoever picks my tea, I’m quite happy to enjoy it. And if you get a chance to try some hand picked, fresh roasted tea I would suggest you try it too (even if it tastes a little like kelp.)

So I thought a little arts and crafts in class would liven things up. A few weeks prior I asked the students to write down an anonymous secret and give them too me. Then I re-distributed them out to the class (so it was anonymous as it could be) and had them do a 30-minute free write about the secret. You see, what I really wanted to do was have each student make a postSecret. But I thought they would be too shy to share anything really sensitive. But this way, but doing a different “secret” activity first I gave them the option of using someone else’s secret.

So last week I gave them a blank index card, a pile of magazines, glue sticks and pens and gave them free reign to make whatever PostSecret postcard they wanted to.

I also like how some of these secrets shed light on some modern Chinese culture.

In China the students usually have assigned seating and their desk mate usually is their closest friend. (It stands to reason, seeing as how they spent close to 10 hours a day at school.) A lot of secret love was had between desk mates I think.

A shockingly large amount of students believe 2012 will be the "beginning of the end." They point to all the strange weather as proof. My reply is always, "well, if the world is going to end soon, what are you doing in school? Shouldn't you quit and enjoy the small amount of time you have left?" They usually say they are staying in school, "just in case."

The one child policy affects a lot less people than you think but it does affect them nonetheless. In China it is illegal to know the gender of your baby for fear that parents will abort girls (though I've heard for a generous "donation" to the doctor you can find it out.) Another interesting fact is that my students are very confused why abortion is such a big issue in the US. Here it is acceptable, and even advertised heavily on billboards, posters and for a short time on the seats of my local bus.

Traditionally in China boys are valued higher than girls. Things are changing, and I've heard many students say they wish for a baby girl someday, but for some, the "disappointment" of being a girl still stings.

I'm not sure if this is true with just the one student or all chinese girls, but I do know the boys were very interested in this one. It was like they were getting a secret look into the inner workings of the young female mind.

I’m going to send the secrets to Postsecret website, but even if they are never published there I am proud of my students for making art cards and sharing their secrets.

So what was the pressure? A test of course. A stupid, meaningless test that has dictated their classwork and will actually be important in their future jobs.

The test is called TEM-4 and it is a nation-wide requirement for every university english major. (TEM stands for Test for English Majors.) Every sophomore has to take it, and as I always teach sophomores, I have been through this test several times. I’ve seen it crush spirits, steal souls and turn cute, happy-go-lucky girls into trembling towers of anger, and reduce proud students to tears.

You think I might be exaggerating a little, but I assure you, not much. Every college approaches the TEM-4 differently, and unfortunately for my students this school treats it very, very seriously. I say unfortunately because at other schools they just study on their free time, but continue learning normal things in class.

But at my school every class is dedicated to preparing for this stupid test. In listening class, they just do TEM-4 exercises, in reading class, they just do TEM-4 exercises, in comprehensive class they stop using their textbooks and just study, yeah you know, TEM-4 exercise. Then after class they go to the library and study more.

The foreign teachers are exempt from teaching TEM-4 stuff because, frankly, we just cannot be trusted. We are totally clueless and would probably lead the students down the totally wrong path if we tried. I’m a big “tests are bullshit” advocate, but I know my words can only go so far. Yes, tests ARE bullshit, and in 5 years from now they will barely remember them. But it IS important for them and their future careers so I can’t entirely dismiss them.

That’s why, this year, I decided to also take the TEM-4. Not the real thing of course, but I had a student give me a sample test, and I sat down one recent afternoon to take it. Here are my results:

Dictation and Listening: (I didn’t have the audio portion so I skipped this one, but let’s assume I would have gotten 100, although my spelling is not quite perfect so maybe I would have gotten one or two wrong.)

Cloze: In this section you are asked to “fill in the blanks” in a non-fiction article. In the test I took the story was about different styles of money throughout history. I had 15 minutes to answer 20 questions, but it only took me 3 minutes. I got 4 wrong.

I feel like this section is made to trick the students. Check out this sentence, “Iron, in lumps, bars or rings, is still used in many countries ____ paper money.”

The answer choices were, “in spite of,” “instead of,” “along with,” or “in line with.”  Grammatically speaking I thought ‘instead of” or ‘along with’ were the best answers. But of course they have totally opposite meanings. This is an English test, not a general knowledge test, so I kind of felt it was unfair and a trick. (Naturally I just guessed and ended up guessing the wrong one. I’m a terrible test taker.)

Grammar & Vocab: In this section you have a sentence with a missing word and 4 options to choose from. This section took me 5 minutes and I got 6 out of 29 wrong.

One I agree with, the other “wrong” answers were totally not wrong in my opinion, but were actually poor english. For instance: “Had Judy been more careful on the maths exam, she ____ much better results now.”

I immediately looked for the “would have gotten,” answer, but it wasn’t one of the choices. Instead, I chose the next closest thing (in my mind) “would be getting,” but no, the answer key said that “could have got,” was the right answer.

Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I asked some other foreign teachers (American). I read the sentence without giving the choices and they also guess “would have gotten,” so I’m not totally insane. I’m not sure if this is just plain wrong, or old fashioned type grammar. Anyway, it kind of made me mad.

Reading comprehension: In this section you read a short story then answer questions. It took me 9 minutes, and I got 3 out of 20 wrong.

The students only have 25 minutes to complete this part, and it took me 9 minutes (and I’m a fast reader even for native speakers), so I feel like it is actually a lot of work in a short amount of time. I was surprised to find the articles were mildly interesting, especially one about the mythical beginnings of many english words. Like the word tantalized, comes from the name of a king in Greek mythology. I am a fan of ancient myths, but I didn’t know this one.

Anyway, so this section was fine, I just had some problems with pieces in the story. I laughed out loud when they called hell, “the lower world,” (Just to afraid to say the word hell, eh?) but I got mad when there was blatant sexism in the public speaking essay. “Women hate it (public speaking) most, since girls are pressurized from an early age to be concerned with appearances of all kinds.” Well thanks test, just in case some girls thought public speaking was fun, this will surely knock a little wind from their sails.

So I estimate my score was about 85-90%. Shockingly low for a native speaker right? But I shared my results with my students in hopes of relieving their pressure. I wanted to show them even a native speaker couldn’t get a perfect score, so they should worry less. Instead, they took the opposite message from it, “I’m so jealous!” and “you are so smart!” was what I heard the most. Oh well, I tried…

I know, some other foreign teachers probably think I’m nuts, doing more work for free. But I actually love my office hours and don’t want to give them up. It’s a time to see my students in a new, casual light, and a time just to talk to them not as student/teacher but as friends. (Also, as a foreigner I get a lot of requests to talk to people I don’t know who might have questions about America, or some English test. Instead of spending all my free time running around meeting strangers I just tell them, “come to my office hours!” It totally works.)

For the past year, my office hours always includes tea and cookies. I figure it is much nicer to talk when you have a snack and some delicious tea. And recently I have decided to do some more interesting things than just sitting in the office and talking. This semester my office hours have been much more active. Here are some pictures.

One day I brought in my cooker and pot, and we made some popcorn. In China, popcorn is sweet, like kettle corn, so the students weren't so impressed with "American-Style" popcorn (salty.) They wanted to add sugar.

On the first nice day of spring, we went outside and sat at the track, which is the “hangout” spot in the school.

We ate our cookies outside.

Then we played "Duck, Duck, Goose."

And just had a generally fun time.

I also try not to talk too much during office hours. I mean, it’s not class, and I’m not teaching anything. So I let them choose the topics and talk about what they want. This has led to some really interesting conversations, and one time a student led us through a psychological exercise she did in another class.

First the student told us to draw a picture of our favorite animal. Then, draw a picture of our self. Then, she told us to write one word that described our favorite animal. She told us that the word actually described our feelings about ourselves.

There is a local, a retired teacher, who has made learning English a priority in his life. He attends class and came to my office hour one time. During the class prior he asked me if I liked “social dancing,” and if i would “social dance,” with him sometime. I said yes, never really thinking it would happen, but then he showed up at office hours and we had our dance.

I never know who is coming, or how many people to expect. Sometimes just 4 or 5 come, while other times 18 people might show up. (Which is usually a little awkward as everyone gets shy with such a big group.)

But my most epic office hours was on the second nicest day of spring. I really wanted to fly kites, so after a few people came to my office we went outside and met some more students, and then students called their friends, and then a number of kites arrived, and then more students joined us, and by the end we must have had about 25-30 people flying kites, eating cookies and playing soccer. It was really fun and totally relaxing.

It all started because I wanted to fly a kite.

A few of the boys are budding entrepreneurs. They bought a large stock of kites to sell during the weekends. So we got to "test drive" some of their merchandise.

The weather wasn’t exactly good for flying kites, their wasn’t much wind, but that didn’t stop everyone from running themselves ragged trying to get their kites in the air. Also, all the strings kept getting tangled up. It was really funny.

So while technically I am doing extra work for no pay, it is something I am happy doing. After all, I didn’t come to China just to sit in my room and watch movies. I came here to be active, and spending time with my students outside of class is a part of that. And it’s one of the most fun and meaningful parts of being a teacher.

When I was in Hong Kong I got a good look at the process of the final moments of a fish here in China. From the tank to the mouth. Here is this one little fish’s story.

The one picture I didn’t get was when the fish was still alive. My friend picked it out of a tank in the local supermarket, and the butcher grabbed it, killed it quickly and handed it to us in a clear bag with a bunch of spring onions.

Once home, it was put in the plate as the chef was preparing to cook it.

Then it was thrown in a pan, and cooked, or simmered, in a sauce with some vegs. Food is cooked fast in China and the same is true with fish. Then, it’s put on a plate and ready to serve.

Fish is almost always served whole and intact. And you just go at it with chopsticks, peeling away the flesh. But what about the bones, I hear you ask? Yeah, well that’s a problem. I mean, you try to avoid them, but they are so tiny it is hard not to occasionally eat one. When that happens it seems like everyone has their favorite “cure,” much like westerners and hiccoughs. Some people say you should eat rice, to push the bone down, other suggest drinking an apple vinegar drink to “dissolve” the bone. Either way, no one is too concerned about having a bone stuck in their throat as they know it will eventually work its way out.

As you can see, not an ounce is wasted. With a bigger fish half of it is picked clean, and then it is ceremoniously flipped over allowing everyone to get at the meat on the other side. You wll notice one thing, the head is still pretty much intact. Is that because they think it is gross and don’t want to eat it? Of course not. They are just saving the best for last. Eyeballs and all.

My friend ate the head, and I do have pictures, but I’ll save you from that gruesome sight and show you the fish at the end of the meal.

The final product is just some bones and a little piece of the tail. In some ways I find this totally repulsive, and in other ways I feel shame. I mean, in the west we waste so much. If we had a fish we would cut it all up, throw away a lot of the different parts, and just cook and eat the meaty center. I mean, what happens to all the fish heads in America? I’m sure some hearty chef’s cook it up in a stew or something for flavor, but I have a feeling most end up in “seafood flavor” dog food.

So while I could never do it myself, Chinese people, I salute you.

First, my blog got hacked, and it’s still not up to snuff. You’ll notice if you try to go to any page on this website you will get a 404 error. I’m not quite sure why that is happening, or how to fix it, but it was annoying enough to discourage me from adding any new content until I solved the problem.

Then, like I said last post, I got really sick. I’m thinking it was bronchitis. It made me exhausted and while I managed not to cancel class, teaching was about all I had the energy for. The weather, about 8-weeks of solid rain, didn’t help my health or my general energy level.

Then, things kind of flipped the other way. The rain stopped the sun shone and the flowers and trees decided to bloom all at once. It was amazing, especially after the hellish weather we had been having, and I couldn’t stand to be inside. My school is a forestry university, and as such has one of the most beautiful campus’ in China. I taught my classes outside, had my office hours outside and spent as much time as possible outside (despite still feeling pretty sick).

Alice, one of my cute students, working hard in outdoor writing class. Check out the blooming trees right behind her.

Then, Qingming day came. Qingming is known as “Tomb Sweeping Day,” and is a national holiday in China. The school gave us three days off. But thanks to my awesome schedule (and re-arranging one class) I managed to have an entire week off. There was no way I was going to waste that.

So, I headed off to Shanghai to see an old friend. No, not an old person friend, but a person from my past. Waaaaaaaaay long ago. Megan and I were really close friends in middle school and the beginning of high school, but haven’t kept in touch much since graduation almost 18 years ago. We saw each other at our 10-year reunion, and chit-chatted, but we haven’t talked since. But thanks to the magic of Facebook, she got in touch with me when she was planning a trip to China. So as soon as my last class was over I hopped on a bus and spent the next 2 days with her and her husband.

It was really fun. We looked at some interesting French Concession architecture, ate some western and chinese food, and reminisced about old times. Megan brought up the fact that our younger selves would never believe this meeting. I mean, virtually no communication for decades and then a meeting in Shanghai, China of all place?! I love how unexpected life is sometimes.

Then I jetted off to Hong Kong. I know, I know, I was just there. But my friend Color lives there (so I had a free place to stay) and I still had many things I wanted to do (in the warm weather) so I went for 4 days. It was totally fun. I got to see a bunch of new things, catch up with my friend Danlee (and her super nice roommates), and got to eat a bunch of western food. One night Color even had a small dinner party (in which his poor classmate spent hours in the kitchen cooking delicious food for us all–I made mashed potatoes.) Hong Kong felt very familiar to me (well, I was there only a few months ago) and it was the perfect place to relax for a few days.

But as for cheap place to go, it didn’t exactly turn out like that. Color changed from my friend to little devil on my shoulder, and kept talking about buying a mac at the Apple store. I wasn’t buying into his peer pressure, but we did go to the store together so I could buy some headphones. Of course we played with all the computers and I have to say I was totally impressed. I’ve been researching laptops for several weeks in anticipation of buying a new one this summer, and on every “top 10 list” mac’s were always on the top. I finally understood why.

But they are of course expensive. Enter Heather, one of the best sales people I’ve ever met. She was queen of the soft sell, totally agreeing with me it was expensive, and even agreeing with some of Apple’s faults as a company. I was still pretty much a “no,” but she saw my hesitation and pounced on it. “Are you a student?” she asked. Color is. “Well, you are eligible for the education discount.”  It knocked the already discounted price down to similarly priced computers I was looking into. I still walked away but to think about it. I’m a total miser when it comes to technology and money, I do not need the latest or greatest of anything, but even I couldn’t talk myself out of this purchase, the price was just too good. We went back and I bought one.

We celebrated my new purchase by drinking martinis and tequila in the famous Lan Kwai Fong bar area of Hong Kong.

The next day I went back home, with one day to relax before class started. I didn’t get much relaxation time because some of the foreign students from Indonesia called and invited me to have a picnic with them at the nearby reservoir. The weather wasn’t perfect, but there was no rain and the reservoir was incredibly peaceful. The sandwiches, made my Fami and Susan, were also amazing.  It was also nice to just have a totally relaxing, fun time outside.

So, I think all that is a pretty good excuse for not being online much. I still haven’t figured out my websites problem, but I figure I should add some new content while I’m trying to fix it. So come back soon for updates!

Despite a ton of info online (it seems thousands, if not tens of thousands of websites were affected in the same way mine was) I couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem. Most websites assume a level of computer proficeny that I just don’t have. For instance, it would say “re-install wordpress.” Sounds easy, right? Only I had no idea how to do that manually. (When I started this site the web hosting company did it for me automatically with just one click.)

I went down a rabbit hole of more minute and minute directions but kept coming up against roadblocks. Finally, I begged for mercy from my hosting company and they totally came through, both re-installing wordpress fro me, then later helping me activate my backup.

So despite the web hosting company doing most of the heavy lifting I feel like a crazy genius who fixed one of the most complex computer problems the world has ever known. (Yes people, it felt that difficult.)

Now of course there are all sorts of broken links and small problems with the website (most have to do with re-installing wordpress which erased all my plugins and I haven’t reinstalled them yet) so please just be patient with me. Unfortunately this problem got fixed in the beginning of the week when I am busiest with class and other things. So,  I will be tinkering around with it for the next few days (okay, weeks) and if you find something that doesn’t work right now, please check back. I will get it to work (fingers crossed.)

This whole thing couldn’t have happened at a worse time either. My relaxing “break time” from going INSANE trying to fix my website was to do my taxes. And on top of both of those nightmares I think I have bronchitis that is just not going away.  So, not exactly the funnest, most relaxing weekend I’ve ever had.

And I would like to give a shout out to Dreamhost, my web hosting company, for helping me out. Technically, according to most people on the internet it looks like the hack might have originated on their end of things, but no matter what happened, they did help me out in a (semi) prompt manner. So kudos to them.

And please bear with me as I attempt to find, and fix the problems on my blog. Also, while I’m at it, I might be making a few changes. Well see what happens!

2 months ago Ryan and I agreed to separate.

Now it sounds very dramatic (and looks dramatic when written in it’s own little paragraph like that), but I can assure you it’s not. It’s not because of some crazy blow-up or singular event. Instead it has to do with two people, slowly, almost imperceptibly, changing and growing apart. It has to do with lost affections and different wants and needs.  Ryan and I have done some great things in our lives, and neither of us have regrets, but we know  the parties over and it’s time to clean up and turn off the lights. We remain friendly, (and will continue to work on new Moo-Cow books together,) but we won’t be hanging out or traveling together again.

Of course this means a lot of changes, one of which is traveling. We made our decision just two day, two days, before traveling. We had booked (and paid) for our hotel room in Xiamen, and we had also bought 2 plane tickets since the train tickets were sold out. The prudent thing to might have just swallow our loss and use our holiday to deal with the situation at hand.

But when have I ever done the prudent thing?

Instead, we agreed to keep it a secret until I came back and we could deal with it. Then I packed my bags and left. Traveling in China is one of the main reasons I am here and if I gave it up, simply to deal with logistical things of getting a divorce, well, I would regret it. I don’t know how much longer I will be in China so I want to use all my time, every minute, to the fullest.

I was also a little eager to challenge myself. As a wanderlust soul I have also been hiding a dirty little secret: I have never traveled by myself. I’ve been to more than 20 countries, traveled all around the globe and yet, I’ve always done it in the company of others. In high school I went with classmates, in college my roommate. And ever since then I have always traveled with Ryan. Oh sure, I’ve gone on little trip, road trips, by myself, but nothing for more than a day or two.

So I was a little nervous to set out by myself. While I feel very comfortable traveling around China I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Would I be lonely? Would I be more vulnerable to scams? Would I worry more?

Well, I got my answer: no. Traveling by myself turned out to be so much more fun then with someone. I never had a bad days where I was crabby to someone, I didn’t have to fight or argue about where to go for dinner and I didn’t have to make compromises. I don’t want to make it sound like traveling with Ryan was a burden I had to endure (it wasn’t–most of the time) I just never realized how much I was giving up when I traveled with someone.

As a woman traveling by myself I was afraid people would treat me differently. And they did, only they treated me better than before. In general men treat women respectfully in China, and seeing me by myself brought out the gentleman in many people. For instance, when I was touring the tulou’s another (male) teacher was with me. He wasn’t pushy, he didn’t lead me around or anything, but he followed behind me at first (to make sure I didn’t get lost?) and then slowly, as we talked, he became my companion for the day. A few local people asked him if I could speak Chinese and he would answer harshly, like they were idiots for asking, “Of course she speaks Chinese, she speaks it very well.” (Which wasn’t true but nice nonetheless.) And several times he would grab my camera from me and take a picture of me standing in front of some interesting place.

Other times, just the logistics of a single traveler led me to meet a lot of people. For instance on the flight on my first day. If I was with Ryan we would take up 2 of the three seats in the aisle and likely be put next to a single business traveler or something. (That’s what has happened on flights before.) But this time I was the single person and I sat next to 2 friends who were going to run a marathon in Xiamen. For the entire flight the woman next to me and I talked and talked, her using a few words of high school english and me using my poor chinese.

And once, when I was sitting by the water, a man sat down in the empty spot next to me and we struck up a conversation. He was a teacher and had amazingly clear Chinese, and we talked about all manner of things in about 20 minutes. As we left he gave me his number and made me promise to call if I ever go to his hometown (Xi’an).

In fact, I found only 2 negatives about traveling by yourself: getting good shots of yourself (I am not very photogenic to begin with, and self-portraits definitely don’t so me justice) and going to the bathroom when you have your bags with you. (You ever try using a squat toilet while wearing a traveling backpack? Little tricky.)  But those are two very minor things, and all in all the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

After I came back from traveling, we broke it first to the family, then to the friends, then to the world via Facebook. (Although it has come to my attention that some people thought it was a joke. Its not.) It’s a big change, but, surprisingly hasn’t changed much in my life. I’m not the type to sacrifice myself and change for another person and instead of having a life crisis, as one is suppose to have after a breakup of more than 16 years, my life has continued on the same course. I didn’t buy a new wardrobe, change my hairstyle, or immediately start dieting. Turns out I like my life the way it is, whether I have a partner in it or not.

And for that I’m grateful.