Listening to this song while reading this post will enhance the experience:
Considering the title of this song is “Gold in Gold out”, it really describes the way I am feeling about money right now.
I’m around halfway into my first week of work, and I have to say I have a lot of mixed feelings on the matter. In the most recent days, I have wondered many times, “What is the difference between the way I lived my life in California, and the way I am living it now? I work, I have time off, and I plan dinners and weekends, and I see friends or go to the movies sometimes. Everywhere you live you have to work, you have to save money, you have to survive, and I think it’s all some bullshit.” We’ll talk more about these differences after I do an obligatory commentary about the new job.
Money was slowly running out, and I must mention that my survival is due to a ton of generosity and support from others. I have a great support system in Taiwan, and outside of it. Huge shout out to Mom, and the honorary parents I have here. Now that I’m finally working, most of the anxiety has vanished.
Before this happened, one day I woke up and I looked at my bank account, and there was $Close to Nothing. For some reason, instead of the normal panic that ensued, I felt an amazing sense of liberation. The things I have now seem more valuable, and the act of making them last is more attractive to me than the secret desire to go out and buy some more shit to carry around.
I gotta admit, I’ve gone rogue on my student loan payments. I can’t afford to pay them, and the lenders aren’t working with me well enough to lower the payment, so, that’s that. Here is a conversation I had with my mom:
Me: “I decided to stop paying my student loan payments. I can’t afford it.”
Mom: “What happens if you don’t pay them?”
Me: “Well, they report it to credit institutions and it ruins your credit. If it’s federal, they will garnish wages. Interest goes up too, but it doesn’t really make a difference since it’s so much already.”
Mom: “Hmm, you don’t have an income in the U.S., and you already bought a car. It’s not like you want to buy a house anytime soon.”
Me: “I was thinking the same thing.”
Mom: “Oh okay. How’s the weather over there?”
So that’s the end of the conversation about student loans, but once I decided to stop, I FELT SO MUCH BETTER. Money comes and goes…it seems less and less important as time goes on. Now don’t get me wrong, I would love to be rich, and not having to work very hard mentally to detach myself from the fear of poverty is really attractive. The relevance of money I’m referring to is my internal attachment. This attachment should never vary based on how much money you have or how much you don’t have, but should be a permanent outlook on the idea of wealth for the rest of your life.
At some point, yes, I will pay them back. Ethically I feel this is the right thing to do, since I signed so many contracts and gave my word. But damn, son, I got nothing to give right now except my apologies and an I.O.U. Come back when I’m rich and famous, and I might write you a check.
Work is pretty cool. I work most of the week at an Institute only a thirty minute bus ride away. I tutor adults for one hour increments, and sometimes there are little kids, which is okay because there’s usually only one of them. Once a week, on Wednesdays, I head an hour south to teach at a private high school for six hours. This is not so bad, except it is REALLY exhausting. They are all teenagers, and just want to flirt and text on their cell phones, not speak English. Trying to figure out what they like or what they are willing to do is the fun part. By fun part, I mean it’s incredibly high-pressure to stand in front of a class of 22 16 yr olds for two hours and try to figure out how to entertain them or figure out how to make it look like they are learning something.
My first day with these young’uns was yesterday, and guys, holy shit. They are super funny and very playful if they like you, but keeping them occupied productively for two hours is no joke. I couldn’t come up with enough games or activities, and this was made more difficult by the fact that one of the classes didn’t have a text book yet. The days leading up to Wednesday were so stressful I had a small relapse of pemphigus, but it’s cleared up by now, and hopefully it won’t come back.
After six hours at the high school, I had a class with a business man who wants to learn English and get on a level of fluency in order to get promoted. He was really easy to talk to and work with, but after dinner and heading home, I’m pretty sure I died when I laid down to sleep. At least I managed to get around on the buses all on my own. Huzzah! 7 hours of work. At least if you count it in Taiwan Dollars is sounds like so much more than it is in USD. I made 3,300 dollars on Wednesday in 7 hours. Don’t do the conversion. Just enjoy that it was in the thousands.
This morning and the rest of today has been spent talking myself out of the anxiety for next Wednesday. I refuse to spend the rest of my time here stressed out weekly about entertaining a group of high school kids. I refuse to spend more than two hours preparing for class, and I refuse to spend any more energy and money than I already have to do an overachiever job. It is much easier than I made it out to be; and my energy spent being anxious or stressed was wasted. Not wasted. I’m wrong. It was good I felt that way, because now I can look back and think about how ridiculous it all was. If I tell myself teaching six two-hour classes is easy, then it will be.
Having a job is sexy. Having an income is sexy. You know what’s more sexy? All this damn free time. Right now, I have to say, all the damn free time is being spent looking for an apartment and trying not to go a little crazy.
On to the “craziness” I mentioned…
Let’s talk a little bit about this. <<< This is a link.
I’m not going to say that term in this post, because those words annoy me, and every time I hear them I think of negative ethnocentrism, and I don’t want to face the idea that I might be a jerk.
So that thing up there, let’s call it Erosion. It’s erosion because you’re trying to fit a square into a circle shaped hole, but it won’t fit until the square is eroded and softened down a bit. Erosion. I am a star shaped rock trying to fit through a straw. Whatever. You get the idea. I’ll give you a minute to get all the sexual innuendo and puns out of your system.
Done? Great.
Erosion happens when you move to a new country and start living there. I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to happen to me, because I’d been here a few times before and was more comfortable with the customs, food, and society. Also, this shows how little I knew about it in the first place.
I started noticing some things. During the day, I was sleepy, and had very little energy. I got lightheaded, I was never hungry but I constantly wanted to eat. I abused caffeine (well I’ve always done this and continue to do this) and my sleeping schedule was in shambles. I’d get in bed pretty early, around 10 or 11, then I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until 3 or 4am. Exhausted, but unable to sleep. Then I finally fall asleep, sleep late, get nothing done, and the day is over and it’s time to go to bed again. The other day we went to tea, and I thought we were having an earthquake because of the amount of vertigo I felt when just walking to the bathroom.
I feel weepy and weak. I’m happy but I’m sad, I feel depressed that I’m not making as much money as I thought I’d be, MY GOD IT’S ALMOST BEEN A MONTH SINCE I’VE BEEN HERE, and I STILL don’t have a place to live. What have I been doing? Why can’t I get it together? I need to exercise but I can’t wake up. It’s so hot, I sweat all the time. Why is that guy in 7-11 staring like he’s watching a movie? Even when I glance over he is shameless. I’m an alien here, everyone hates me, do I look so weird? Do I have something on my face, or on my butt? I have a perpetual stink. I have to shower and scrub as much as I can, but no matter how much I scrub I still feel dirty. Man I bumped into this old lady, does she hate all foreigners now? Did I offend those people at the movie theater because I laughed too loud? I hope it’s okay that I’ve been wearing mostly the same thing every day. Do they hate the way I dress?
Damn, girl, it’s not all about you. I’m pretty sure the Taiwanese have better things to think about than the weird gypsy foreigner.
At a certain point, I decided that enough was enough. I did it. I Googled it. It explained everything, and I had no idea it was even happening to me. If you must know, it looks like I’m just in between phase two and three. I feel ashamed but I don’t think I should be. I’m not sure why I didn’t do some more research on it in the first place, but I guess it would have psyched me out too much, and I just would have been waiting for it to happen instead of letting it sneak up on me.
To set the record straight, I’m really happy to be here. I just feel a little like this:
I’m doing much better after admitting that I have Erosion to myself. I’m able to sleep (this is partially due to the fact that I started working) and I’ve been making a better effort to be creative in my free time. I’m also aggressively hunting for apartments, and have decided that I have to pay a little more if I want a nice place to work and be happy. This is okay. I can afford this. The school is planning to give me more hours, so I’ll have a pretty good income by the end of the month, I hope.
Then the real work can begin-then, instead of complaining about Erosion I can share some new amazing art piece I did, or some story I just wrote. Then I can tell you about the day I finally unpack and move into the new apartment, and then I can invite you all to come stay with me and visit so I can show you all the wonderful parts of this place that made me come here at all.
With that, here’s some photos of my hosts and some delicious food. I should be honest with myself, the food is the best part of all of these posts.
I should address the differences that I mentioned earlier. I should probably clarify what’s different, and why I feel like I’m worried I didn’t change enough in my life. But I decided they don’t matter because I’m delusional. There are many differences, but many core things are the same, yet the specifics don’t matter. Why? Because this is a new place and a new life, and how can you compare it to the old one? It’s like comparing the movie adaptation of a novel to the original book. You can try, but at the end of the day they are still two different things, and always will be.
I have so much more to say but I will save that for another day. I think this post has been long enough.
Oh yeah, almost forgot: Solution Noodles.
