Cercando di la historia

Do you ever sit down to write and just find…nothing?  Not necessarily a lack of words but an inability to string those words and phrases into cohesive thought.  I’ve sat in front of a blank screen so many times, waiting for the words to come or for the right story to unfold.  Just waiting for genius to happen.  The longer I wait, the better the story needs to be to justify the gap in writing, and yet nothing comes.  More than once I’ve felt that spark of inspiration and rushed to put words down but when I stopped to read, the narrative rambled and digressed and I gave up and hit CTRL + A + Delete. 

In short, I’ve tried to write and it all came out crap.  Messy, unoriginal crap.  Well, I’ll be generous, it wasn’t all crap, but it never felt worthy of sending out into the world.  If I’m going to write and “publish,” it had better be good--or if not good--at least readable.  It should be my story with my voice, told from my unique, Jer-perspective.  I guess that’s why I indulge in this blog.

So here are some stories that didn’t make the cut:

•   The Last Minute Contract: A tale of adversity in which my friend/travel companion/partner-in-crime Kristen and I are interrupted in our quest to enjoy summer (I in Mallorca and Kristen in the States) to confront a questionable employer and a dodgy contract.  After several days conflict with the company, we, the heroines, retreat, fleeing our Beijing contract.  We next spent a week wending our way through the treacherous waters of job hunting and ended up signing a new contract and setting our sights on a new home: Pingdingshan.
•  The Misadventure of the Visa: In which I detail our quest for a Chinese visa.  First we languished, trapped in an ever-repeating cycle of “Your paperwork should arrive soon.”  Then we battled inane districting rules regarding the states and their corresponding Chinese consulates (a bit bitter on this point—WHY is Idaho represented by the District of Columbia and the Chinese embassy rather than ANY consulate closer to home?!)  But we conquered the obstacles, obtained visas, and booked our flights…nearly two months after we were supposed to arrive.
• The Story of Settling In: In which I list all the differences between the western world and my new home—coming face-to-face with my first “squattie pottie,” being noticeable foreigners in a place where foreigners are few and far between, being surrounded by characters rather than recognizable letters and words, etc.

Cheerful statue in a tea shop where I
had my first Chinese tea service

I thought about writing all these posts, but the thing is…they’re not new.  I’m not the first foreigner to encounter a shady contract from a school looking to hire native English speakers.  A quick Google search after we started having doubts about our contract revealed that countless teachers had had the exact same experience (several with our own company).  Nor am I the first person to attempt jumping through the multiple hoops in order to obtain a foreign visa.  In fact during my stay in China I helped two friends procure Chinese visas of their own, issuing my own letters of invitation to both (I felt quite official).  Again, during this process, a search on Bing (China and Google weren’t friends at the time) revealed several blog posts by people who had sought Chinese visas and had detailed their own trials and tribulations.  And finally, I am most definitely not the first person to immerse herself in a foreign culture and marvel at all the differences and wax prosaically about the culture shock. I mean come on, that’s why half of us have blogs. 

So one by one each post got the metaphorical axe.  The stories are entertaining, though, and they usually get a good laugh when I tell them over dinner or drinks (especially over drinks).  So perhaps after a while I’ll return, resurrect these tales and throw them out into the world.

Until then, and until I find the right words, I’m going to go back to the basics—a picture or two and a thought or an explanation as I start to tell a story—my story.  It starts in Pingdingshan, a city in He’nan Province, China, and ends (predictably?) in Warsaw, Poland.