Day One

And we’re back.

Current soundtrack: Garden State

Here are the two different emotions I felt as my plane from Hong Kong made its descent to Beijing, falling from blue skies into a distinct brown dust surrounding the plane, as clearly separated from the cleaner air as oil and water.

1) AHHHHHHHHHH TURN AROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) Mmmmm, mmmm Good. Warm blankets and Campbell soup.

When I was 17, after returning from living in Beijing for the better part of a year, I declared that I would one day become a citizen of the country. Perhaps it was partially for the shock value but there was a definite part of me that felt oddly at home in Beijing, a place where I rode my purple shiny (five times stolen) bike to school and felt guilty if I sipped on mocha frappicinos on the one coveted starbucks in jiangoumen, the main Laowai district, rather than dumplings with my host family. I relished flying kites in tian an men square, got used to and then learned to expect and sometimes even adore the constant stares following my every presence. I came back special, different, the girl who went to China. Although I had missed a year of high school I had also gained experiences which were given far more deference than those of my peers, merely by uttering the words “studied abroad in China”. In the very least, I had to espout love for the country which brought me so much uniqueness in the world.

Coming back my junior year of college was….to say the least, different. I spent a month of my time before my program in Yunnan began in Beijing, during the cold gray month of February. The butcher near my apartment, which I would bike by in disgust on my way to school, was replaced with a shiny supermarket, the hutongs were new apartment buildings, my host sister had a cellphone and I no longer had a go-to group of 40 american kids with which to relish the delights and pitfulls of being a foreigner in the middle kingdom. That month was one of the most difficult of my life, and I remember calling home to my parents, crying, sobbing, asking myself why had I come back? I later went on to spend an incredible three months in my program in Yunnan, followed by a less incredible three months doing an internship in Lijiang, yet the month spent at a rural school in namu village, has got to rank as one of life’s best.

But that was Namu, here I am in Beijing, again. In the hot sticky summer leading up to the Olympics, where political tensions are at an all century high and an earthquake has just ravaged the country. Foreigners are much more common, I saw half a dozen on the way to the supermarket after I arrived this morning, something that would have been unheard of when I lived here eight years ago. My cabbie was obviously unfazed by a white girl speaking Chinese though the salesladies as I picked up my very first Chinese cellphone and air conditioner complimented me in a manner not unlike that at the turn of the century.

So why am I back here again? I’ve thought about that question so little in the flurry that was benefits, fundraisers, classes, green cards, and graduations that have been my past semester that it surprises me when I think of it to myself. My work, clearly, is what brings me here though I am plagued by worried of what it can truly be. And the hard thing to admit after spending time working at The Door in the US is that great, important and necessary work can be achieved in America as well, something my international human rights frameworked mind hadn’t really considered until I entered law school. I had always assumed I would live abroad, be abroad, and that is where I could truly do the most important work. My experiences, however, have questioned that mindset and what is more, I LOVE my life in New York, particularly in the summers. Hugging Roma and Bea Goodbye, hearing them talk of swimming lessons and outdoor movies, receiving phone calls from my clients hours before I boarded the plane, made me think if I wasn’t just ignoring how good I had it.

In high school I clearly was running away, in college I needed to feel special again, and now? I am back in Beijing caught in the moments between jet lag and new-place-enthusiasm. I will be sharing a two bedroom apartment with an American girl who has been in China on and off for the last seven years. She just got a yet unnamed cat, the smallest 6 week old brown-black kitten I have ever seen, and who I call bug in my head as she paws over my computer and crawls up my neck as I type this. My clothes are unpacked and I have meetings scheduled for this week. I want to eat dumplings tonight. And yet, I am still confused about why I am here. Not because there isn’t work to be done, not because it isn’t incredibly important, not because I am not honored, excited, thrilled, blown away to be doing it, but because I no longer need convincing that it is. Regardless, the first thing I did in my jet lagged state was buy myself a grande mocha frappicino and smile at the cashier who complemented me on my Chinese.

(blog side note: I don’t love editing my writing in blogs, I have enough of that in law school, so apologies for unclear thoughts, unedited phrases, judge away ;)