Visa response and flying time

My 6 month visa to India came through! Yes yes yes… My passport arrived in the mail on Sunday, signed, sealed and delivered, with my visa attached… There’s no turning back now…

The relief I felt when I saw my ‘ticket to freedom’ was unreal. Once I’d taken a moment by myself to open up the envelope and see if it was actually approved, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I ran into the office, on overdrive. All the teachers were just sitting around, waiting for class to start. Suddenly I started jumping around like a mad woman, holding my passport and shouting that I’ll soon be out of here and that I’m on my way…!!! Oops… it probably wasn’t the thing I should’ve done in that moment, but I just had to let my excitement out… The response I got… hummm… there were a few colleagues who were happy for me and then a few who cursed the fact that I was leaving. The rain COULD’VE started to fall on my parade, but I refused to let it. It was my moment and nobody’s cursing was going to steal it! So I childishly cursed them back, and said that nobody was going to bring me down. I wasn't going to hide my happiness for the fact that I’m leaving…

At the moment, I’ve still got to teach until Sunday. 5 days left. I’m not too sure when exactly I’ll leave Jinzhou, either the 29th or the 30th. Counting down the days may seem as though I’m wishing my time here away. But I realized I’m not wishing it away, I’m just seeing how long I’ve still got left to tie up loose ends. I actually wouldn’t want it to be happening right now. Because I’m not ready! Haha… However, when Monday comes, I know I’ll be ready and then it’ll be time. For now, I know exactly what I still need to do, who I need to meet up with and what other small details I have to sort out – such a transferring funds, getting train and bus connections, packing things up, passing things on and sending things home. And this week of teaching, I have to approach with the mindset of: my job is already done, the pressure is off and there’s nothing more or less I can do now… Except enjoy my classes with the kids and perhaps be obliged to explain my unexpected leave to the parents. This is the most important thing at work, this week.

It’s strange, but the closer the move comes, the calmer I’m feeling. To others around me, this has proven to be something they can’t comprehend. “Niamh, EVERYTHING in your life is about to change… your home, your contacts, your job, your environment, your diet, your finances… EVERYTHING is going to change so quickly! How can you be so calm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????? When will you have time to process, when you’re moving and being distracted by the chaos in the world…”
These aren’t questions I’ve asked myself, but they’ve come from people around me… And my answer is simple: This is something I’ve done before, and I feel so strongly that it’s the right thing, so there’s no need to be nervous or stressed. It’s going to work. I NEED to change EVERYTHING, so the places I go to and the people I meet are in accordance with the visions my mind has been holding onto for months. It’s so simple.

In regards to ‘processing the process of change’, this is something I do as I literally travel. I consciously make the actual journey into a longer one by choosing flight connections that are drawn-out or train journeys that last for days… I don’t care if I’ve to wait for 12 hours at the airport… or sleep 2 nights on the train. It always gives me the chance to find a place and write about where I’ve just come from and where I’m heading. It means I’m totally experiencing the journey. And I actually love the waiting. Some of best moments of writing have been done in between flights, or on planes. On stop-overs, time flies. After one flight has physically landed and before the next one takes-off, time is nowhere, time zones are irrelevant and I loose myself so happily. When making a ‘drastic’ change, I make each journey into a memorable one, because of the writing I do, whilst being in transition. And that’s the ‘processing of the process of change’. It’s releasing the experiences, step by step and so, when the time comes to step-off the plane and into the new part of the world that will be my place for as long as it feels comfortable… then I’m totally recharged, fresh and ready for the experience.

This actually makes me feel totally fine to know that I’ll have 12 hours in Shanghai airport next Thursday, and 40 hours on a train, once I land in Mumbai next Friday morning while making my way down south to Kerala. Happy days await 

Kerala calling

In exactly 2 weeks I SHOULD be on a plane to India. Thursday the 1st of September. Can’t quite believe it… I’ve not received my passport yet, so I’m still waiting for that to be my ‘ticket to freedom’…

At times I‘m almost afraid to NOT focus on India, because I feel something might come along to disrupt my intentions and it won’t happen. I know it’s because nothing feels to have been secured in reality yet… like the visa. As well it’s because things have happened so fast and it’s all ‘last minute’… And I have to keep believing and being patient; if now is my time to return, then it’s going to happen.

So, what are my ‘plans’ for when I do finally get there? It’s to first go to an ashram for a month. I need to refuel, to chill-out and to do as much as possible that involves doing as little as possible… apart from yoga and writing…  I’ve nearly got my heart set on a particular place, just in contact with them at the moment and checking out availability and train tickets for when I get to Mumbai so I can travel down south.

Of course I’ve been thinking about whether or not to continue teaching once I’m feeling grounded again. And, I already know, that yes I do want to teach. For some reason I want to be with these kids. I don’t know who I’m referring to, when I say ‘these’… but that doesn’t matter… Kids are kids everywhere in the world and I want to be around them…

3 weeks ago when I first realized I needed to move onwards to India, there was one person who came to mind. I hadn’t thought about him for months. It was the chairman of the Art of Living association. This is the association I worked for, when I first started teaching in Kerala (the southern state in India) and he was the one who gave me the job. That particular teaching experience, which only lasted 5 short weeks, was the one I’ve wanted to go back to, ever since leaving. It’s the experience I’ve compared THIS current teaching job to, as well as the second teaching job I had in Kerala (which was the boarding school called Ebenezer). Even when I was back in Ireland writing my book, the chairman would ring my mams house in ARKLOW to see if I wanted to come back to India to teach for his schools again. This I always felt to be the strangest thing… Because my time in India felt, and still often feels, to have been a dream, but home, in Arklow, is…. reality… and for him to call from a place, that I never classed as being apart of the ‘normal’ world, was many many things that I can’t put into words in this blog. Anyhow, I was always tempted to go back. I actually knew I would teach for him again. But then the China opportunity came along, and I jumped at the chance of experiencing something different.

And so, the chairman stopped calling my mams house. He thought I’d not get in touch… Until 3 weeks ago; lying here on my couch in my ‘perfect’ little life, in China, in floods of tears wanting to break free, feeling that my heart was actually departing Jinzhou in that one particular breakdown… and wishing so badly to be free. And who pops into my mind; the chairman. After so long, he was the person I needed to connect with.

And I did. I emailed him within a few days. I set the ball rolling. He replied, delighted to hear from me, stating he had a few positions in Kerala that he needed to fill. And one of them was mine, if I wanted. That’s when the relief came and I couldn’t believe my luck… The world started to feel open again…

Right now, we’re still emailing back and forth, but nothing has been set. I’ve said that if I start work, it won’t be until mid or end of October. Because I need to properly distance myself from China and gear myself up for India, whilst being in the ashram. I figure, as the weeks pass, I’ll know if I’m meant to be teaching for his schools again. Either way, it’s an environment I’ve always wanted to experience again. And if it’s something I simply need to do, then it will happen at some point along the way. If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the past weeks… it’s that, no matter how down I feel in the office environment and how withdrawn and isolated I’ve become, once I step into the class… I’m me again… I’m open, I’m happy, I’m appreciating my job and I’m loving the kids. So it’s something that will travel with me and I know that the opportunities DO stretch beyond every boarder and that they are all only temporary, but all for the purpose of moving me forward… even this current experience is proving to have been for that same purpose…

Movement requires us to be static or stationary in a certain place for a certain length of time, until the time comes to take the actual step.

Communication is... where?

It’s Wednesday morning and the start of another week. I teach until Sunday the 28th. I can only hope that the next weeks will be easier than the ones gone by.

It’s really strange where I’m at right now. I can’t say that I feel happier at work, just for knowing I’m leaving. I can’t say that I walk around with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. It’s pretty much the opposite. I’m withdrawn, I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, I can’t bare the sight of my frown and I’m drained constantly. However, once I’ve totally distanced myself from the work place and I’m in my own space, then the bounce slowly returns and the smile starts to appear. My own space, by the way, is my apartment and the occasions when I’m having great conversations with the few people I can connect with here.

Needless to say, I’m in between 2 worlds; no longer really here in China and not yet in India. I feel India is so near though. Because whenever I close my eyes, it’s all I see… but then when I open my eyes, I’m still here in Jinzhou, China. I still have to face reality. I still have to be here and force myself to focus on the job. I still have to feel the pressure and stress that now just comes from being outside of my apartment in the streets that burden me in many different ways. In a tired state I still have to smile and still have to enjoy my last weeks in China… just to be appreciative and to be happy… I still have to take pictures and be the traveller… and still have to realize that savouring the moment will move me on to better things.

This is what’s been happening: I no longer walk through the streets. Well, I do, but ONLY when I’m totally in a happy place in my head. Once upon a time, I’d walk along and feel amazing as I’d be inspired by what I’d see and I’d never mind for people to give me the exact same looks of amazement or shock for what they were seeing (which was, and still is…me). Now though, the stares are a burden. The way the people STILL look at me, after I’ve been walking the same route for so many months, is something I can no longer appreciate or feel comfortable with. I used to return a smile. But how can I now smile and feel happy for others to see me, when I don’t want to see myself in this city anymore? It’s impossible to give a smile to the stares that come from the thousands of strangers who see me walking to work, day in day out.

So, I’ve taken to hopping on the bus each day. I feel that’s less stressful, less of a burden… and my mind is clearer. And I then I sit… I stare out the dirty window and I’m gazing at the Chinese people doing their daily things… buying fruit, going to the bank, riding their bikes, shopping for clothes or just sitting and talking with each other to pass the time. And then there’s me… sitting on a bus, in Jinzhou. Feeling so distanced from society. And there’s no way I can ever break through… because of the language…

How nice would it be to buy some fruit from the market, and have an easy conversation with the stallholder about the… weather? the new produce? The…whatever…???!!!! Yes, it would be so great to communicate with these people. Because they ARE all good, they are all WARM people. But all I see and feel are the first initial stares that come from the thousands of eyes that may have never seen a foreigner before. And because I’m not happy, I can’t smile and break the ice. And because I can’t speak Chinese, I can’t even have the lightest of chit-chats that would brighten their day as well as mine. And, right now, I’m touching one of the main reasons for me to have been feeling alone, isolated and withdrawn: LACK OF COMMUNICATION… Wouw… how much we can take it for granted; the simple act of connecting with a stranger.

Months ago, when I decided not to study Chinese, I consciously chose not to make the effort to fully experience China. The language here is the culture… It’s the main thing, in Jinzhou especially (as it’s so ‘backward’ compared to most Chinese cities), that will shake foreigners about. Only if you’re planning to be in China for quite some time, then Chinese is the thing to study and the efforts will eventually start paying off… even though it can take years to master it fully. But I chose not to be apart of China in that sense. And by having made that choice, I was actually closing myself off from the culture and the people and most things I value in life as I travel: a flow of new people that would bring new opportunities into my life whilst being apart of a society that’s different from where I hold my roots. I wasn’t willing and chose to focus on writing instead.

Not all foreigners choose to learn Chinese. But they have… each other instead… and so they have the communication they need. They feel comfort in their own group of foreigners, who they can relate to. And that can be enough for them to feel happy in their job, happy in their Chinese lifestyle and open to embracing ‘travel’ whilst being ‘stationary’. For me, comfort never really came, in the foreign connections. Or maybe I’ve had moments of comfort, but they started to vanish, ever so slowly and so I started to sink deeper into my own world and started to create my dreams that are now becoming reality.

For the fact that what I was creating is now starting to appear, I don’t have any regrets whatsoever. Really I don’t. I’m totally at peace with the focus I put on writing and I don’t mind that I never broke through into the Chinese society. Those with a passion for China would embrace it fully. But I personally never had a passion for China. It’s never been a place I longed to visit. I’ve always had a ‘list’ of so many countries in the world I’d long to visit… but China was NEVER on it… So, it’s really no wonder why things have planned out the way they have done. And it’s only making my love for India and my passion to write, become all the more real. I know these 6 months have set me up in such a way, that I’ll appreciate India more than I would’ve done, had I not come to China first.

As for the communication ‘thing’, I hear you ask: doesn’t India also have different languages? Yes, it does. BUT it’s a heaven for travellers, in the sense that English is spoken everywhere. When I was there last year, many things shook me about, but the language was NEVER one of them… India can be a country that’s not convenient and many challenges can arise when doing the smallest of things… BUT it’s a luxury in terms of communication. Why is there so much English? The British were once upon a time the rulers… I’m not going to make this post into a history lecture. It’s way too long already… haha… So I leave it on a lighter and brighter note… Everything is moving forward as it should and I feel good. Maybe, just for 2 more weeks, I might show smiles to the strangers staring at me, when I’m feeling happy as a result of what’s appearing.