A new era with new dreams.

last week i taught for the first time, first-year chinese. i am teaching this month without prior training due to a teacher shortage (one is on maternity leave, another has passport issues and so is stuck in china until march). last week i also turned 25, which of course got me reflecting on my acheivements thus far, and what the next 25 may have in store.

i used to have school nightmares where i couldn't find the classroom or was failing my math class. i would either wander narrow halls and fret about how last i was, or wonder why i had to take calc, and why i couldn't hack it, when i already had my BA and MA.

last night i dreamt i was in front of a chinese class and had not looked at the textbook, had no lesson plan, and didn' even bring the roster to call students up and grade them. one of the other teachers was monitoring our class, and in desperation i took his textbook to get some clue of what i needed to do. "hey!" he yelled. "why didn't you bring your own?"

and so i comes full circle--from student's bad dreams to teacher's bad dreams. why can't i just have flying dreams like i used to?

Scary?

My life is too comfortable and predictable at times to be worth posting about, but my dreams are always a riot. Like the one a few days ago where I meet Sarah Palin in a locker room and get to talking to her about girly things, and think to myself, "Hey, she's actually pretty nice. We should hang out more." M. asked if this wasn't really a nightmare. But no, despite my vitriol a month before, despite watching Obama's acceptance speech with a box of tissues in my lap, Dream Palin was not scary.

Dream update.

Two dreams from the weekend:

(1) S. was getting married to a nice Jewish boy from the U.S. But the wedding was in Lhasa. In a hotel. My family was just hanging out in the hotel, and I couldn't get anyone to come outside and have a look around. "This is a great opportunity," I told my Dad. "Nah," he replied, "I'll just stick around here." Then I decided to go visit the Potala Palace myself, but it was in the basement of the hotel, quite small (just a white, gold-tipped stupa and some one-level buildings), and they charged $10 admission. I woke up before I got in.

(2) We had a pet frog the size of a thumbtack, which I needed to put back in its test-tube cage. I chased it around the room, but the bright green little guy was quick. I caught him twice, but couldn't get him in the test tube because I didn't want to pinch him too hard. He just slipped away.
Posted by anne.h at 13:45 0 comments Links to this post

A Quaker Buckeye

A few days ago I was flipping through the Penn* alumni magazine over dinner. I haven't been to any alumni events yet. I don't particularly miss Penn or my college years. In fact, I feel that I've come into my own since I graduated two years ago. At Penn, I was still a kid, perhaps more so than other college students: I still didn't know how to handle boys, or how to have fun and make friends on my own terms, or how to balance a checkbook. I've learned all that now. My life is far from settled, but I'm beyond that first day of class freshman year when I wept for joy on my way to second-year Chinese. I'm an adult now, with an income and a departmental mailbox. And I understand myself now--I couldn't have found M. if I hadn't found myself beforehand.

People have asked whether I prefer Penn or OSU**. It's an impossible comparison. At Penn, I was an undergrad, a kid, taking astronomy and creative writing and intro classes. Now I'm a grad student. I'm in the largest university in the U.S. (60,000 students), but since I spend all my time at the department, it feels small. I'm delving deep into language and culture, in a way I was incapable of a few years ago. At OSU, I'm happily out of the loop: I watch undergrads going off to frats and think, "I'm so glad I don't force myself to try and like to party anymore." I'm better at being older.

I do miss Philly sometimes. The Greenline Cafe on 45th and Baltimore, so named for thr trolley that runs nearby; walking in the hushed snowy night, lit orange by streetlight, to the Kimmel Center; a cat named Orchard who waited for me to wake up just so that I could rub her belly. I miss the real friends I made--not the sometimes friends, but the one I had a real connection with. But this is modern life: movement, uprooting, never really settling down. I'll miss Columbus someday, too.

*University of Pennsylvania
**The Ohio State University

the itch to swim.

rie kaneto, rebecca soni, and mirna jukic in the 200 meter breast semifinal, 14.08.08 (new york times)

i've been an on-and-off swimmer for years. i try to get back into it every 6 mo. or so, only to be washed away by coursework, errands, and puttering. (i tell myself i don't have time to swim, but then how to i have time to surf the web or bake homemade oreos?) my slow pace in all sports deters me. in my high school swim team, kids in back of me inevitably caught my toes. and you should have seen me sprint in track junior year (i think my fastest mile was 8.5 min.). as i do backstroke and crash into the lane rope for the umpteenth time, i think to myself, "i'm a terrible swimmer... but hey, i can speak chinese!"

but i love swimming. i don't fly through the water, but i ache for that cool, clear, floating feeling. it's my favorite physical activity by far--well, next to hiking and cycling. but somehow, i love sports which take me on far-away adventures as much as the sport in which i go back and forth between two concrete walls. it's the water itself that's liberating.

m. and i watch olympic swimming every night. and now i'm trying to get in the pool 2x / week. i don't care if it's slow, i still want to fly.