First Day of Classes

For a first day, it was a good one, but actually at first I didn’t feel so great about it. As all first days go I made some rookie mistakes and felt dumb for it. Its harder too if you don’t really know all the rules. But, I guess that’s how you learn them, first you trip over them and fall on your face. That way you never do the same thing again. For the first time today after class I didn't want to engage with Hong Kong or Hong Kong yun (people). I all the sudden felt tired of everybody around me and the city felt like a warm suffocating blanket. Like a mother hovering and fussing over you, all you want to do is escape somehow. I wanted to see the ocean, walk in a park, or at the least not be so freaking sticky and sweaty. It's normal to feel a bit of culture shock and I guess that is what I feel, a bit homesick for normal things. At the same time, I don't really want to be in America or back in my apartment with my friends although I miss them. I am just finding it difficult to engage with all this newness right now. When faced with a challenge I love to rise to it, when faced with criticism I get angry and want to disengage my heart. This is also the first day I had over five hours of sleep so my body feels much better but my spirits are a bit low.
It hasn’t gone my way at all today. I went to Wan Chai, one stop past mine on the MTR (subway) to have a look around and find some solace. But it was hot and everything felt pretty threatening and ugly. I went to a “park” but it was just people playing soccer on asphalt. There was a woman laying on the group looking sickly with a bowl in front of her. I couldn’t get out of my funk enough to give her money. I felt petty and self conscious like everyone was watching me thinking, “that foreigner, taking pictures and walking around looking lost.” When I got home flustered I tried to eat some cookies and couldn't get them out of the packaging without throwing them everywhere which I only didn’t do because its not my house. Eric (my cousin) ordered pizza so I was excited for something familiar…like cheese. Unfortunately Pizza Hut in Hong Kong doesn’t serve pizza the same is in the US. My search for familiarity was thwarted. I watched the world news and got depressed; I don’t think I need to elaborate on that. Eric showed me a picture and asked if I knew what happened, I said an earthquake. He said no, I five year old girl had fallen out of an 8 story window. The picture is of the medics attending the girl on the ground, the mother is kneeling, her face contorted in a wailing scream to the sky with a man holding her arm. Apparently the girl was looking for her mother who'd gone down stairs for five minutes and the girl fell. My heart ached and then I started to think maybe I needed to pray.
So I did. I realized I need help, and lots of it to carry me through this experience with an untainted and not hard heart. I am a bit hopeless about me ever speaking Cantonese, and maybe that's my problem, hope. And maybe that's why it’s hard to try. I'm so scared and self conscious...and there is this little girl named Jo Jo who does exactly what I do when I ask her questions in English as I do when people ask me in Cantonese. I want to tell her not to be afraid, its ok to be in the process of learning, but you just have to try your best. I should practice that myself.
In this state I searched for a place to connect and be still and not feel frumpy or pissed off. Searching my uncle's flat I found the terrace going out like a half moon from the living room. At first I hesitated because I didn't want to be found and thought strange for staring out into the city lights 25 floors up. But, I opened the latch with a click, still self-conscious and moved out into the breezy night. This was the first time I felt wind since I’ve arrived in Hong Kong, and the coldest I've felt the air outside. The wind howled, moving things around, moving things around in me. I realize in that moment, a short moment that I was searching into the night for something comforting and familiar. Something I didn’t have to try and understand or get others to understand. I stood looking out and down feeling the warm and cool wind and I heard it. Among the fervent piping of the cities clanks and hums, out of the night there was the chirping of crickets carried around on the warmish wind to my ears. Even here they find me, in this congested city the crickets still chirp. All the sudden I remembered the house I lived at in the country this last year, and that the crickets were so loud I couldn't sleep. I wanted to exterminate them. But, here these little crickets sent by God were my comfort, a message from on high that things were going to be ok if I'd just relax and trust Him. So I prayed and cried a little, asking for lots of help and receiving it all at once. I sleep well for the first time since I've arrived here, I slept through the night without waking and woke up at six o clock without an alarm even though I don't have to go to work till ten thirty. For me it was sleeping in because I've woken up at four every morning till now, and sometimes I went back to sleep. Thank you God, for two more hours of sleep. I still feel unsettled and nervous about teaching, and making lesson plans, but thankful. I sat down and read Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamontt today, and I finished it. I've been reading this book about traveling mercies and about faith all throughout my traveling here. Reading in Airports, buses, and subways. The last chapter is about her son Sam, at the end of which she writes to her son, “Thank you. Thank you”. I remembered the preface had a poem, a repetitive wave like poem about saying thank you and I read it again. The poem reminded me of Hong Kong, full of meaning and ordinariness, of heat and bustle, it reminded me of looking out over Hong Kong last night searching and finding and feeling thankful. It is by WS Merwin and it goes a little something like this:

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food looking at the sky
and saying thank you
we are standing by the water looking out in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the back so cars and elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
or lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

In so many ways this poem captures my experience here so far, not that I’ve been mugged, but the mix of brokenness and beauty. I realized too that in Cantonese the most common word I use and the only one I feel comfortable really saying is, "mm goi" which means thank you, and sometimes excuse me. I am always saying thank you to everyone all the time. Maybe that is encouraging because it is a start of saying something more and the hope of building on the one good thing you can say.