Perhaps surprising to anyone who knew me as an adolescent, as an adult I’ve not been a particularly easy crier. It generally takes a breakup, a death, or a Hallmark Christmas movie to make me tear up. Number of times I cried during the 2+ years of Peace Corps? ZERO. Number of times I have cried in the 4+ months I’ve been studying Mandarin? Let’s just say, NOT ZERO.
That’s when I think about what might have been. When preparing my second tour bid list, I made a fateful decision. While I didn’t rank either particularly high, I put both Barbados and Guangzhou in my top ten, Barbados one slot ahead of Guangzhou. At the last minute I swapped their order. The rest is history. I got Guangzhou. Barbados went to a (charming) colleague who was behind me in the bidding queue.
And so, on a day like January 6th when I am at or beyond the point of tears in my struggle with Chinese grammar, trapped inside thanks to Covid and cold weather and homework, listening to distant sirens responding to armed insurgents pissing all over American democracy, my colleague’s social media kindly showcases pictures that force me to think hard about my life choices.
Why did I do it? Knowing that I’m not great with languages, knowing that Mandarin is super hard, knowing that it would mean months and months of stress?
There are logical reasons. I lobbied for a language designated post because I have vaguely understood that an additional language will be good for my career.
Less logical, could Catholicism be a factor? I can’t discount it. Plenty of OMSes enjoy fine careers without a second language but the idea that unpleasant things (fasting, going to church, taking nine months of intensive Mandarin) are good for us and pleasant things (sex, gender equality, drinking rum on a beach in Barbados, and now I guess single shot Covid vaccines?!?) are bad for us was definitely part of the Catholicism I grew up with and that continues to galumph through my life.
So here I am.
Normally “here” would mean physically at the Foreign Service Institute. I even chose my ho-partment because of its proximity to the FSI shuttle bus (and a Target and a decent burrito spot). But that was 疫情 以前 (before the pandemic). Instead I am on Zoom every day for about 5 hours, with other hours dedicated to “self-study.”
Classes are three to five students plus teachers who rotate every couple of months. On most days we have three 50-minute sessions in the morning, with ten-minute breaks in between. Then we get two hours for ̶n̶a̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶ lunch and self study, followed by another two sessions in the afternoon.
Every other week we take a one day break from language to learn about the history of China and the current on the ground situation. That still involves a fair amount of reading and video watching, albeit in English.
The Department of State uses a point scale to rate language ability. Professional working proficiency is “3/3” with reading and writing ranked separately. Different languages take different lengths of time to reach 3/3. Mandarin averages 88 weeks but as my job requirement is only 2/0, I’m in a 33 week program. Reading is but a minor part of my daily work load and I don’t need to learn to write at all, which is good because my handwriting is bad enough using the Roman alphabet.
Homework might involve reviewing grammar and vocabulary, doing workbook exercises, writing and reading a 3-5 minute speech, translating sentences or whole paragraphs, listening to recordings in Chinese and answering questions about what was said. The last is by far my least favorite activity. A three minute clip can take me an hour to figure out.
Per the teachers, the transition to Zoom means fewer in-class hours but a lot more homework. Rumors I hear are that there has always been a lot of homework at the language school. Whatever the case, it’s not unusual for me to finish class at 3:30, start on homework, and not finish until well past 7:00 or 8:00 pm. Then there’s entering vocabulary into my flashcard app which takes forever because I have to enter one set of flashcards for reading, where I look at the character and speak the answer in English, and another set where I look at the English and try to speak the Chinese. If this was a language with an alphabet, I would have one set of flashcards and just switch between studying them front to back vs back to front. But I have three things I am working with: the English meaning, the Chinese character, and the pīnyīn. Pīnyīn is the Roman alphabet version of Chinese, used to phonetically spell Chinese words and guide pronunciation.
I cannot promise that #yourtaxpayerdollarsatwork are achieving their best use by teaching me Mandarin. I can promise that they are not being used to fund a slacker lifestyle. I put in far more hours per week than when I was working my “real job” in Kazakhstan.
I don’t have enough hours in the day. How do non-single people do it? There’s simply no time to interact with another person. I do read and listen to audiobooks but that is literally my only hobby. I rarely watch TV, obviously don’t go out with friends, and haven’t touched my Nintendo Switch since arriving here.
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The coating of dust speaks for itself
Weekends never feel entirely my own because there’s so much homework. If I manage to finish homework on Friday night, I spend the remaining weekend feeling guilty (see Catholicism, above) because I’m not doing more flashcard review, more sentence construction practice, more watching youtube videos explaining 了 (“le”) usage. Covid-era prohibitions on socializing should theoretically give me more time to study but all it does is make the feeling of “I could be studying right now” oppressively loom over me during every waking moment. I’m feeling it right now!
I even feel guilty complaining given that I don’t have a significant other or a child needing my attention, but then I think “why is my time to myself less important than someone else’s time with their nuclear family unit?” Then I am mad at myself for feeling guilty.
While I haven’t cried lately (never mind, rough class about the 把 structure), lack of free time + pandemic + guilt has my stress level possibly at an all time high. I tried to take a stress-relieving long walk one weekend and, two blocks in, tripped and strained my Achilles tendon rather badly, leaving me even more housebound. Speaking of weekends, I am now staring down three months with no long weekend in sight. Of course I want Juneteenth and Election day to be designated as national holidays but can’t we also find something for March or April?
I hate being Debbie Downer.
I still feel lucky to have this job. I try to remember that I’m headed to a place with fascinating history and amazing food and am currently being paid to go to school full time (in Kazakhstan I was limited to a couple of Russian lessons a week while working). I think in the end it will be worth it? That may be the latent Catholicism talking.
I cannot promise I will be tears-free from now until July and I cannot even promise I will pass my final test at the required 2/0 level but I can promise you that it won’t be from lack of trying (or crying).
In Foreign Places 