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I want to make some additions to the last email that I sent out from China. I had written that email on Sunday night (11/26) prior to my vision becoming blurry. I was quite pleased with it, especially the last few paragraphs. However, the computer that I was using garbled these same paragraphs when I saved the email to disk. I tried to remember everything when I rewrote it for you, but it just wasn’t the same as I was not in the best of moods at the time. I left out two main points.

My mother had sent me in addition to the pen-pal letters from her students, several pictures of her class. I pasted these pictures along with a letter from my mother to a poster to show to the class (I could feel my teacher genes becoming dominant as I searched for construction paper for the project). The students, teachers and my Chinese friends were very intrigued by the pictures. One question that I got was why some students had black hair. A common stereotype here in China is that all foreigners have blond hair and blue eyes. While I personally am doing nothing to set the record straight, hopefully the pictures are. The small class size, the computers in the classroom and the class pet (a rabbit) were also sources of amazement.

Once I told everyone that I was leaving early due to my ankle (prior to leaving even earlier due to my eye), I was confronted with a whole new set of cures. There was one suggestion in particular that stood out and that I want to share with you. The idea was to start with a glass of beijou. Beijou is this nasty liquor that is a favorite at banquets. It has a very high alcohol concentration which is what is required for the cure. So, you get this glass of beijou and light it on fire. The liquid is then applied to the ankle. I never tried this cure, despite numerous dares. Maybe I will regret my choice, but it hasn’t happened yet.

OK, now on to the current stuff. My vision is improving with each passing day, but at this point is still a bit blurry. However, the pain that I was experiencing last week is a thing of the past. The current theory is that once I was removed from all of the pollution, my eye had the chance to start healing. The healing process will take a few months and will hopefully be complete at that time. I am still on crutches which is terribly frustrating. However, I can not get an appointment before next week to see a doctor. Bu hao.

I have found that returning to the US has been a disturbingly easy transition. Not that I do not appreciate being able to drink tap water or not having to worry about contaminating foods with the water while cooking. It just was not the momentous, jarring experience that I expected. The only trouble that I had was the cheese and cranberry juice that I ate the first day upsetting my stomach. I still keep my mouth closed in the shower and I still occasionally look for a glass to bring with me to rinse my toothbrush with clean water.

One thing that I have found is that I miss is the constant human interaction that I had in Yantai. In Yantai, I was surrounded by thousands of kids. If I wanted to get food, to use a computer or to go for a walk, I encountered and communicated with dozens of people. Here everything can be done from home or without talking with a single person during your errands. Since there is no need to haggle for many things, you just don’t need to talk or to struggle to communicate in a new language. It is possible just to drift through the day in your own world.

I used to like living in suburbia, but now it feels just too isolated from the world. Not that walking around the city of Boston is a cure. Walking around Boston I am struck by how cold and dead the city is. The coldness is not due to a lack of pedestrians or a lack of beautiful architecture. But, in a Chinese city, the first floor of each building would be teeming with stores and people. You just don’t see anything like that here in Boston and it makes the buildings appear less inviting to me.

Being home is an emotional struggle in many ways. Being home is nice and comfortable and I am happy to see my family. But, I would really rather still be in China until it was my time to go home and my work was done. I need to keep reminding myself that returning early does not mean that I have failed in everything that I wanted to accomplish by going to China. I acknowledge that this may sound foolish, but it is a real struggle for me. Being ripped out of my life in China like that was just so difficult. But, I will work through this and it will get easier as I begin to piece together my future plans. Everything just feels on hold right now until I know what will happen with my ankle. So, for now I will concentrate on finding funding for graduate school and on getting healthy.

One thing that is not included in my future plans is to return to Yantai immediately. I had a great experience teaching in Yantai and I can not imagine not returning to the school at some point in my life. I also hope to volunteer internationally again at some point in my life. Maybe in China, but the world is a big place. WorldTeach also runs a program to teach English on the Galapagos Islands. Now that would be an experience. Ideally, I would like to volunteer again once I get married some day. What an incredible opportunity it would be to share experiences like that with someone that you love. Now I just need to find the right girl….

One thing that I do want to do is to say thank you to all of you who have supported me in Yantai and continue to do so through your emails. The idea of writing these emails to you started as a way to thank people for their generosity and support. But, over time it grew into much more, at least for me. I have enjoyed writing these emails to you and I was constantly coming up with ideas about what to write. Writing the emails could be very therapeutic for me and as I have said, writing often kept me on the edge of sanity. The emails have also been a great means of keeping in touch with people.

The distribution list has included about eighty addresses in seven different countries (China, Japan, Indonesia, Uganda, Ireland, Germany and the US). Within the US, the emails were distributed to people fifteen states (WA, CA, MO, WI, IA, MS, CT, NY, MA, ME, VI, PA, NJ, MT, IL). (Sorry if I left anyone out!)

For those of you who do reside in the US, on that I think is important for you to remember is how so many people in the world look at you. In both my travels to India and China, I was struck by how much the US is idolized for our lifestyle and our wealth. Furthermore, at election time I heard over and over how people in China wish that they could choose their own leaders. I was at a loss to explain to people why people in the US would choose not to vote. Despite how foolish the election may now seem, it is a right that people all over the world are willing to die for (see "student accident" in Tiananmen 1989), yet too many people take for granted. My friends Amy and Mike in Uganda have also echoed these sentiments.

I will conclude this last email from my time in China by being a bit more philosophical. I think that as people who live in the US, we lose sight of just how much so many people in the developing wold would be willing to do to come here to have a piece of what is all around us. I am not going to theorize about whether this idolization of the US culture is misplaced or not. Nor am I going to suggest that the US has a monopoly on good things as I think that we could learn a thing or two from the Chinese. But, I am simply going to say that the next time that you:

turn on the heat
drink water from the tap
breathe clean air
look up into a blue sky not gray with waste
freely move to another city
freely change jobs
have hot water come from the tap
have water come from the tap at all
drive a car
walk on the grass
see your own doctor
throw your laundry into a washer and dryer
send your children to public school for free (other than taxes)
choose your own career path, not based on your test scores
read whatever books you want and visit whatever web sites you want to see
decide to have a 2^nd child,

please remember that these are all luxuries to so many others in the world.

One last note. I am going to set up a web site complete with my journal entries that you have been sent as well as pictures from China. The web site is not even close to being set up yet, so please give me a month before you visit this address:

Also, due to popular request, I am sending out a few more pictures. The files will be sent in two different emails.

It is sad that this is the last of the emails. Please take care!