Maybe I will stay in Beijing for another year. That means that maybe I will stay in Beijing until 2012, and maybe I won’t go to Spain until the 2012-2013 school year.
This is the option I am considering: after finishing my year of work at American House in June, I could get an apartment in the inner east side of Beijing, closer to the Cervantes Institute, close to the GuLou area, and close to Natooke. As my primary occupation, I could help Fede teach juggling and acrobatics to children in international schools, as well as performing juggling and acrobatics around town with Fede and his Beijing Performers group. It would be fairly easy to extend my visa. I could also still go to Spain, just a year later than I had originally planned on. It has been there for several hundred years already, I imagine that it will still be there for the next decade.
Living on the east side would put me closer to the Cervantes Institute. Currently it takes me about 90 minutes to get to the Cervantes Institute by public transit or by biking. Taking a taxi is certainly much quicker, but the price of it causes me to avoid it in most situations. This potential life of next year would allow me to have less than a 40 hour work week, thereby allowing me to spend more time doing Spanish language activities, whether that is studying, conversing, or watching movies. Both a professional focus on juggling and a less than 40 hour work week would allow and encourage me to improve my juggling skill. The same goes for the other skills that I could perform, such as fire staff and partner acrobatics. Although a less than 40 hour work week is a big desire of mine, even if I spent 45 hours a week doing it, I think I would enjoy 45 hours of teaching and performing juggling and acrobatics more than most jobs.
I think that one of the biggest benefits would be that when someone asks me what I do, I could honestly respond “I am a juggler.” Call it a dream, but I would love to be ably to honestly consider myself a professional performer and a teacher of circus skills. Fede says that there would be enough work to make a living from. I tend to not frivolously spent too much money, and although my standard of what counts as enough money might be a bit higher than Fede’s (due to monthly payments of college debt), I can always do other freelance jobs to supplement my juggling income. If I felt that I needed extra money to supplement that income I could always do a few hours of English teaching here or there.
Fede has also said that he would welcome my help to teach and spread his Body Foundation method (a health and fitness centered curriculum), which is another thing that I would love to be a part of. He has already said that, if the budget he receives allows it, he would welcome me to go with him to Tibet next summer to train the local teachers in his method. That would also serve as my training in how to teach the method, after which I would be able to do the training without Fede’s supervision. Fede has already taught some preliminary form of his program in Sudan and around Beijing. I have no doubt that he may try to teach it when he is visiting his girlfriend in the Central African Republic in January and February. If I were to help him with this project it could potentially give me a lot of opportunities to travel to various African countries to train local staff at schools and NGOs. I would love it if it involved some Latin American countries as well, and there is no reason why the curriculum could only be applied in China and Africa.
Even if I end up pursuing this future, I would still fly back to the United States during the summer of 2011; I want to take care of my oral assessment with the State Department and I want to go to Jocco and Allie’s wedding. There is also an important person or two that, although I did not make explicit promises to, I said that I would see very much like to see during the summer.
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