Training: week 1

Greetings from Greeley, CO!

Training has been challenging yet rewarding, and there is still more to come in Beijing next week!

Here's the schedule:

July 20-28--Greeley, CO (see pictures below!)

July 28-August 26--Beijing, China

August 26-January 28--Chongqing, China

January 28-February 3--Annual Thailand Conference

February 3-June 30--Chongqing, China

As I re-pack my bags and embark on the next step into China, I am thankful for the reminder to keep our eyes looking forward, not behind.  Though I enter a country I have never been and leave the country I've spent two decades building as my home, I remember where my true home is: a place with no borders, visas, overweight baggage fees, or unique toilets, but a place with the Father in eternal glory--how beautiful is this home, and how boundless the invitation to enter!  Sometimes I'm tempted to think of what I've sacrificed to teach overseas, but I'm reminded that "Heaven to a manger was a much bigger step."  

One week complete and four more to go--catch everyone later across the Pacific!

 

Week 1 of training in Greeley, CO:

More bars in more places...

Picturesque campus of the University of Northern Colorado:

UNC dorms: don't they remind you of Hogwarts? =P

MUHOMU (Mac Users Helping Other Mac Users) party :)

Continental divide?

I read an interesting story the other day by CNN contributer Eliott C. McLaughlin, titled "Continental divide separates Africans, African-Americans."  The article (excerpt below) got me thinking to what degree Asians and Asian-Americans also experience social and ideological divides.  As a Chinese-American, would I be seen by my Chinese peers as an outsider? Or, as an Chinese-American, will I struggle with an inclination to interact with my Chinese peers the same way I would my Asian-American peers? 

I suppose I can come up with many questions before I experience the meeting of these two cultures myself in China, but that just seems counter-productive.  In his article, McLaughlin concludes that "the two cultures have much to teach each other...but they must accept they have something to learn," and that seems like the big take-away: greater than any apparent cultural differences should be the desire to learn from each other.  

I look forward to learning with all of you! :)

Trying to fit in

Chinedu Ezeamuzie, 21, of Athens, Georgia, arrived in 2003. He had spent the majority of his life in Jabriya, Kuwait, and came to the U.S. to pursue his education.

The recent Georgia Tech graduate said he considers himself Nigerian because his parents -- both from the village of Uga -- instilled in their four children strong Nigerian values of family, community, spirituality and self-betterment.

In Athens, Ezeamuzie found his ideals at odds with those who shared his skin color at Clarke Central High School, his first stint in a public school.

On his first day, he donned khakis, a button-down dress shirt and nice leather shoes. He caught the African-Americans' attention upon stepping into the cafeteria, he said.

"They give me the look," he said. "Why is this guy dressed like the white folks, like the preppy guys?"

Ezeamuzie didn't understand why so few black students were in his advanced-placement classes. He didn't understand the de facto lunchroom segregation or the accusing glances he got for eating with white classmates. One classmate called him a traitor and asked, "Do you not like black people?"

"My whole life I had reaped benefits from being in different circles and bridging them," so he wanted to fit in, he said.

He found clothes akin to what he saw many African-Americans wearing --- baggy pants and an oversized T-shirt. He relaxed his British-trained tongue and tried out for the basketball team, the 6-foot-5 Ezeamuzie said.

Ezeamuzie recalled finding himself more confused by his experience with some African-Americans: Why were they so cliquish? Why did they mock students for being intelligent? Why were they homophobic and bent on using the n-word? Why did every conversation seem to involve drugs, girls or materialism?

"They kind of accepted me. They saw me a little differently, but I was thinking this is a very narrow mindset," Ezeamuzie said.

Ezeamuzie and other Africans say they feel African-Americans too often dwell on slavery and the racism that has persisted for more than a century since the Emancipation Proclamation.

"We have all been tortured," said iReporter Vera Ezimora, 24, a Nigerian student living in Baltimore, Maryland. "Now that we are free, holding on to the sins of white men who have long died and gone to meet their maker is more torture than anything we have suffered."

Values at core of misunderstanding?

Martin Mohammed, president of the U.S. African Chamber of Commerce, estimates there are 3 million African immigrants in the U.S. -- about twice the U.S. Census Bureau estimate. He has heard from numerous immigrants struggling to find commonalities with Americans who share their skin color.

Mohammed emigrated from Somalia in 1998 and is now naturalized. He considers himself African-American, but "it does not mean that I have already assimilated into the culture."

Values and upbringings may lie at the center of the cultures' misunderstanding of each other, he said.

Many Africans come to the U.S. to escape dire conditions such as poverty or civil war. Their objectives are often advancing their education or finding good jobs, Mohammed said.

They also strive to reunite their families, or at least support them back home. Remittances from the U.S. to Africa total about $20 billion annually, according to the World Bank.

However, African immigrants find that education and good jobs elude their African-American brethren, and there is a perception that many African-American men aren't committed to supporting their families, Mohammed said.

The two cultures have much to teach each other -- especially politically and economically -- but they must accept they have something to learn.

"Honestly, what we need to do is realize both cultures are important," Mohammed said.

Book review: China Road by Rob Gifford

To teach is to learn--a paradoxal truth? :) In preparation for our courses to receive TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification in Beijing, ELIC teachers stew over a series of texts that introduce us to Asian culture, history, and communication, TEFL methodologies, and how we can best fuse them to effectively teach our students. One such text is China Road: A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford.

An NPR correspondent in China for 20-some years, Gifford chronicled his final 6-week journey across China along Route 312, from its start in Shanghai to its end on the border of Kazakhstan. Gifford's observations and encounters present a thoughtful portrayal of China's complexity, but what struck me the most--and what I am encouraged to share--is the commonality of hope. Below is the latter half of my thoughts on China Road:

"Regardless, for the Old Hundred Names, the ability to choose what one does—even a choice of exploitive labor in a factory—is considered progress; opportunities beyond the farm and western deserts are a blessing, a step up from 'kao tian sheng huo. Relying on heaven to survive' and a step towards pursuing the Chinese Dream (173-213).

Underlying this pursuit and the desires for greatness and change in China is an inherent and palpable hope. The Chinese people, through their country’s turmoil and transformations, maintain hope for the country they know and love in their own way: for a Communist soldier, it’s for his son to have many choices when he had few in his own youth; for a Shanghai radio host, it’s for a future less centered on money and refocused on Chinese identity and culture; for a Uighur mother, it’s for her Han-influenced teenager to recognize her roots and, in turn, empower their people; and for a salesman on business to Jiuquan, it’s as simple as respect—to be seen and treated as an equal (200-292). Spanning all backgrounds and corners of the country, the Chinese people long for restoration, prosperity, and happiness within a context they know, and they remain, for the most part, hopeful.

Even Gifford, who struggled with conflicting notions of China, couldn’t help but 'miss the hopefulness, the yearning for a better future' as he bade the country goodbye (294). The man who wasn’t supposed to care—who was just supposed to observe as a journalist—found that at the end of his emotional and troubling journey through China, he is still optimistic. For Gifford, China Road was a journey of hope: hope that China would meet its potential as a rising power—to save themselves as a culture and as a people—to rediscover themselves as a nation, but mostly hope that the country he has grown to love would change for the better—for the people—and live up to its slogan, 'Yi Ren Wei Ben. Put the People First' (96-293). It is this hope, embodied by an excerpt from Lu Xun’s 1921 short story, 'My Old Home,' that inspires Gifford—and me—to believe in China and its transformative future:

Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth has no roads to begin with…but when many people pass one way, a road is made."

While I don't necessarily agree with Lu Xun's quote above, I am greatly encouraged by the underlying hope Gifford uncovers in a country about which we are still learning. Can one be without hope? With continued petition through our Father, we can work together to ensure that hope--True Hope--may be known in this Rising Power.

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