Summer days in Indiana

As part of the daily lab exercises in the CLI program, we're having our students design blogs. They are required to type a few things in Chinese each day about what they've learned and encouraged to upload videos and pictures of cultural practices that they've learned/experienced, the goal being that they have something to mark their time in the program and a way to inform their family and friends of all that they're learning here (they can include English translations). I helped a few students create names for their blogs today and it got me thinking about my own.

It's not too often that I go back and re-read posts, but I do every now and then, and each time it brings me right back to life in Taiwan. I'm approaching the one-year mark of my departure from Taiwan, and it's one of those periods of time when I find myself daydreaming about my life there.

Noah's just left for an internship in the Philippines, an exciting opportunity that didn't seem real until the day he was actually leaving, and his return to Asia has sort of stirred my own longing to go back.

I'm required to use Chinese with the students as much as possible and while it's been getting a bit easier now that I'm speaking quite a bit every day, it has been challenging. I notice that I'm slower, that I don't seem to be as articulate, and although I'd like to think that my severe lack of sleep over the course of this program (we're only on day 8) is the main contributing factor, I'm starting to get that nagging feeling I have when I feel my skills starting to slip away.

I have been pretty honest about my confusion over the past year about what I really want as I started with research proposals, moved into the pedagogical aspect of my studies, and began teaching, and while I'm enjoying working with 22 high-schoolers who have traveled from around the country to attend a three-week intensive Chinese class, I still think that that happiest I've felt was teaching English while really being immersed in what I love. These students are hard-working and I'm happy to share what I know with them, but I really excel when I rely on my own language skills to communicate and complete tasks.

I've been pretty honest about the confusion I've felt over the past year as I began my first semester with research proposals, moved into pedagogy and my first formal teaching experiences in the U.S., and tried to figure out what comes next, but from where I stand now it seems that this was all part of the process. I've been able to narrow my search for the type of career I want, and I guess I'm realizing that knowing what you probably don't want is half the battle (although it's hard to see it that way when you've just discovered you need a new plan). Maybe I wasn't ever really that lost after all.