Settling in

I have been home for several days. I am enjoying wireless internet, my own bed, and looking at stars while sitting in the hot tub (this is one of the wonderful months of the year that we can see stars in LA). It has been more difficult than expected to settle back into the schedule. I have been waking up around 3 a.m. and feeling really tired in the late afternoon. Wednesday afternoon I had a consultation meeting led by the dean of my school. I feel asleep in the middle of it. Humbling.

Although I am tired, there is a deep place inside of me that has been set on fire by my experience in China. It is emerging gently from the tiredness. It is a mixture of gratitude, wonder, respect and thoughtfulness. My favorite things were my talks with Angela about the challenges of being a young, female professional (in China and the US), watching Elizabeth come alive in her home culture, leading a group of academics in the hokey pokey, and interacting with counseling students who were hungry to help the hurting people around them.

Business cards are important in China. I had some specially printed before I went. When someone gives you their card, you receive it in both hands, read it carefully, and put it in a safe place. The business card represents the person. When you give or receive a card, you give or receive a part of yourself. Perhaps it is not romantic, but the symbolism is important. I now have a stack of Chinese cards on my desk. I have no idea what I will do with them, but there they sit because I can't throw them away and I don't want to put them in a drawer. They represent the gift that I received from every person that I met in China. They are from the people who hosted me, told me their story, answered my questions, listened to me talk, or simply smiled because that was the best exchange possible. They proudly represented China to me and invited me to know and appreciate their culture. I attempted to reciprocate by giving them my card, rethinking my knowledge and training from their perspective, listening carefully to a language I did not understand, and trying to absorb all that I could from one of the deepest, most diverse, complex countries in the world. I clearly received much more than I gave.