100% Interesting

This blog will serve as a journal of my trip to Shijiazhuang (SJZ), Hebei, China.For those who have not heard, I will live in the city of 12 million for 4 months, teaching English to children around 11 years old at the Shijiazhuang Forging Language School.

Oddly enough, that one sentence is entirely full of things I have not done before; Leave my house for 4 months? Teach English? Live in a city? And I intend to start doing all these things in China, which is almost on the other side of the world. In light of this, everyone has started asking me how I feel about the trip, and after going through every response I thought they wanted to hear, I settled on, "I feel like it will be 100% interesting," to let them know I have almost no idea how to feel about this.

But this line is not just a response to the constant question, I really mean it. After long consideration, I have decided that once I get to China, almost no part of my lifestyle will be quite the same; obvious things like food, routine and language will be drastically different, but so will little things. I will need to switch service providers just to use my phone, or maybe even by a burner phone just for emergencies. Teachers in China regularly wear suits while teaching and I've always had  panache for t-shirts. And everyone in China inexplicably uses this app called WeChat instead of normal text messaging, so I'll be using it too. But though these omnipresent changes may be disorienting when I arrive, I plan to make sure they are not stressful. Not just by anticipating them, which helps immeasurably, but by adopting the mindset that they will be 100% interesting.

In my experience, and I am certainly not unique in this respect, perception is based on translation. Though I expect to suffer some shock upon my arrival, I will try to say "This is interesting," more than I'll say, "This is different," or "This is not right." Come to think of it, I should probably figure out the Chinese translation of this phrase, I initially thought it was "很有趣" [Very funny] but it may be "很有意思".[Very interesting(?)] .

But enough about my feelings and coping mechanisms; I have one more thought for this first post. This blog is called So Jo Chang, a legendary-level mis-pronunciation of Shijiazhuang from a very important person in my life. For the record, it's pronounced Ssii Gee-ah Jew-aang (ssiii is said like 'is' backwards, and pronounce 'Jew' like 'Draw') . Though it is not an easy set of sounds for a native English speaker to produce, I was so gobsmacked by the extraordinary botchery that I was moved to preserve it.

I will probably post again before I leave on the 21st of February 2016.