Moving, Trivial Pursuit, and Being Busy

Today is a somewhat exciting day, as I am going to be moving into a new apartment. It will be cheaper and the people who I will be living with seem to be more friendly as well. I've spent the past few hours packing my possessions into bags, and there is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that I have so little in the world that I can just set it on my back and go (so little here at least, I have a few more duffel bags full of stuff stored away in Minnesota). I still have a few hours before I am due to meet up with my new flatmates at the new apartment, but I am full of energy and excitement. I really enjoy this feeling. It is not quite the same as being on the road, but it is a transition, and I do enjoy these little changes through space in a similar manner to big trips.

Since returning to Albacete in early January I have been busy. I have taken on an additional class at Monkey Business, so that now in addition to working in the mornings at the high school, (from which I get home anywhere between 1:30 and 3:00, depending on the day) I am working four hours (from 4:00pm to 8:00pm) on Mondays and Wednesdays and I am working three hours (4:00pm-6:00pm, and then 8:30-9:30). It is pretty exhausting, especially since I go to a mediocre-quality (but free!) Spanish class Monday and Wednesday from 8:00pm until about 9:45. This makes Mondays and Wednesdays quite full, and makes me which that there wasn't such a gap between the classes I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am earning the money I need, though, which is good: I don't want to be in debt forever. If I keep up this rate for a few months I should make a good dent in my debt, and potentially have a little bit stored away for the summer. All in all, most of my life has consisted of working during the week, and doing a lot of reading online, running, and solo language practice during the weekends. I have been using italki quite a bit to practice my writing and to ask language based questions (mostly in Chinese, but some in Spanish). It is a pattern that works. Although I would certainly enjoy working fewer hours and socializing for one or two hours more each week, I know that I need to take advantage of being able to earn money while I can, since there may be times (potentially this summer/autumn) when I will not be able to earn as much as easily, so I want to build up a buffer for that possibility.

"Why not go out on the weekends?," one might ask. A mixture of reasons: the standard "I don't know anybody here" excuse is my main one, but my desire to save money affects that decision as well. My recent preference for going to sleep at or before midnight makes it kind of pointless to go out, since parties get going late here. My attempts to hang out with co-workers have mostly ended in my discovery that they go to other cities for the weekends to spend time with friends/family there, and finally the feeling that "I am gonna be leaving in a few months so why bother" is also present. Fortunately, although I enjoy socializing, I am not the kind of person who is made miserable by spending time alone. Sometimes I feel neutral about it, and sometimes I am quite excited to get home and practice writing, to study, or to watch a particular movie. This is something that I think my co-workers don't really understand. They were asking me the other day why I don't have a Spanish girlfriend yet (the first level answer being: "because I am not making that a priority", which by necessity leads to the second level answer of "because I don't want one"), and when I explained that I didn't have the time (read: I wasn't making the time) they didn't understand. They all get off work at 2:00pm, with the rest of the day free, where as I feel as though I only have my weekends free (I do have a few hours on Tuesday and Thursday between classes, but I don't feel that I can do much in that time since it is so limited). With this schedule going on, life seems pretty similar from day to day, form week to week. I can only think of one event/musing that really does seem blog-worthy.

This past Friday, a co-worker of mine had a birthday party. The first part of the party was a lot of fun: just socializing in Spanish, munching on snacks, making myself understood suprisingly well, and understanding a surprising amount of what was being said around me as well. I really enjoyed that, since I don't often get to socialize with people (aside from the brief socializing that happens at work). The food was tasty and the conversation mostly held my attention and kept me focused. When I learned that we were going to play Trivial Pursuit after dinner I was super excited. From what I recall, I excel at games like this. I have such a random and wide knowledge of so many different subjects (although I only have a depth of knowledge in a few) that I have a good record of succeeding at random quiz-like competitions. I always wanted to do more Pub quizzes in Beijing, where they abound. The language and cultural differences made it so challenging as to be impossible for me, though. I didn't realize how hard it would be! There were only about three or four of the  questions that I understood throughout the whole game without having someone repeat it a few times or being able to read it for myself. And even for the few time in which I understood the question, the subject of the information was often completely foreign to me. Things like What famous match was the first played between these two teams in 1929?, or Who was José Luís Aztiazarán the president of when he left the Royal Society? For me, lacking the cultural knowledge that is assumable widespread here due to being raised elsewhere, there was only a single question which I both understood (after having it explained to me) and knew the answer to: What is the only animal in which the male gives birth? Seahorse is the answer according to Trivial Pursuit, but I remembered from elementary school that the female actually gives birth and the male stores the young in a pouch, making the Trivial Pursuit answer wrong, which thereby makes my "knowing" of that answer questionable. The whole experience was variously boring and frustrating, but it served as a great lesson in humility: I often consider myself such a global and multi-cultural person, and yet what I really know is so incredibly little.

Christmas time is coming

The past few days have been busy, stressful, frustrating, and various other emotions that are not always negative, but often are. A combination of work-related stress due to long hours and high pressure, and social frustrations. I would write in detail about a few stressful things that have happened recently, but I see that as pointless a waste of energy, so instead I will recognize those negative emotions, and then let them go. I have been enjoying the Buddhist podcasts lately.

Since coming into (something which vaguely resembles) adulthood, I have never found myself overly pre-occupied with Christmas. I recall that during December of my Junior year of college I was traveling through the south of China, and I was only vaguely aware when it was Christmas: a lack of westerners around combined with being immersed in a culture to which Christmas is still fairly foreign made me not realize until partway though the day, and at that point not care. I was in XiaMen at the point, and a stroll on the beach, kicking Jianzi with Zhang Hui or a climb up to a local temple seemed much more interesting to me. Most years, what I felt around Christmas time boredom of being away from school and friends combined with an impression of (what I saw as) a fairly artificial presentation of affection and gift giving (why not give presents at other points of the year to show your appreciation without having a social pressure to do so?). Conversely, I am finding myself strangely preoccupied with it this year.

Christmas is this weekend; It is a strange feeling, but I am suddenly (somewhat desperately) getting in touch with people to try and set up plans to spend time together with other people this weekend. I am suddenly and unexplainably very averse to spending this weekend alone. Logically, it's not horribly unusual for me to spend an evening without going out: although I often try to go out to a music show or a theater event or something, it sometimes happens that my Friday consists of getting off from work, having dinner, reading and writing, watching a movie and going to sleep. Likewise, sometimes I find no interesting events going on for a Saturday and I can't get in touch with a friend to go out dancing, so sometimes my Saturday is just going to dance class in the afternoon and chilling at home for the evening. I feel that there is a big social pressure against spending time alone like that (I recall back in college mentioning to someone that I watched a movie and I was asked "who did you watch it with," as though it wasn't even considered that I would watch it alone) I am pretty okay with spending an evening alone in my apartment. I don't want every weekend to be like that, but neither do I feel the necessity to avoid that kind of weekend completely. In fact, I sometimes yearn for it when I feel overwhelmed with other tasks. However, that doesn't change the fact that I have felt a great need to make plans with people for this weekend.

A side-effect of my chosen lifestyle as a globe trotter, a world traveller, a citizen of the world is that I am far away from family, the people that Christmas is normally spent with. I am also far away from most of the friends that I have met throughout the recent years of my life. Indeed, I hardly know anyone from my high school nowadays, and I believe that if it wasn't for Facebook most of them wouldn't even know that I still exist (and vice-versa, if I must be frank). Communication with friends from college has been minimal: I send out updates to some close friends every now and then, and maybe 15% of those get some kind of response. I try to keep in touch with those people, but lack of responses makes it seem like I am the only one that cares about keeping a relationship going, which is super demotivating. One way or another, I am most distant from those people than I perceive others my age to be. Of course, all the other foreigners in Beijing are in the same boat, so I can;t really justify my whining by that line of logic.

I haven't been a hermit in Beijing though! Between juggling club and improv I have met quite a community of fun energetic people. Some are just acquaintances that I see regularly, and some of them are friends whose company I enjoy immensely and want to grow closer to. Since I obviously am unable to spend Christmas with family, friends from high school, or friends from college, it is this group that I am looking at. Some of the people I enjoy spending time with the most (Dave, the Brit who plays in a pirate-themed rock band, and Fede, the Italian juggling master or Beijing) are out of town for the weekend. I would feel it most like a family setting if I could sit down for an evening of meal, conversation, and general merriment with one of those two and their social circle. Perhaps the fact that they are a bit older than me would make it feel more familial, more like a legitimate Christmas dinner.

That being out of the picture, I have begun searching for companions in the young fun crowd that I hang out with at music shows and other events. They are all students, though, and being students I suspect that they have on-campus connections that I lack. I think back to when I was a student here, and I certainly knew loads of people from my classes. So far it seems that those people have other plans for Christmas with other friends, and as a group I am not a part of I'm not sure how comfortable I would feel pushing myself into that. I certainly have co-workers, but none of them are very close friends. I don't think I would feel comfortable spending the holidays with co-workers, nor would I enjoy it. 

Actually, if I can't get together with any of my young and fun friends for the weekend, I think I will just spend my time reading, applying for the Spain program, eating pizza and watching movies. I have no less than seven books that I plan to read before June, and I have finished a total of one of them in the past five months. Not to mention the movies that I have had since mid-way through my Senior year of college. A dozen Spanish films, a dozen more English language movies, and a dozen more in other languages, some from India, some in Korean, and some a mish-mash of European languages.