ignorance (of chinese) is bliss

so today . . . i decided i am glad i don't speak chinese after all!

i teach at a school that is affiliated with a chinese church. many, but not all, of our students are chinese. and all the children at the school, as well as elementary school students, have the option of learning chinese. when i first started working there five years ago, i thought that i might just go to chinese class after school with my students. i thought, if they can learn it and they are only five, i should certainly be able to do it.

i was wrong.

i knew it would be hard, but the sounds just don't make sense to me. i can't even count in chinese (although i think if i worked at it really hard i could at least go to 30--but how useful would that be?) the symbols of the written language are so interesting, but my brain just won't comprehend them. to be fair, i never actually went to the after school classes . . . i just observed what my students were learning in them and realized that my brain didn't have a chance.

but today i decided that isn't all bad. i realized that my lack of understanding chinese is probably why i get along so well with the staff at our school--i can't understand most of what is going on! there have been many times when i have gone into the kitchen area to get my lunch or punch my time card and have overheard conversations between other staff members . . . in chinese. since i can't understand them, i just do what i went in there to do, smile, and leave. i don't pick up any little bits of information to discuss or worry about or wonder about. even when they talk to me in english, i don't always get it. sometimes i find myself smiling and nodding, thinking, "i hope i'm not agreeing to a rebellion." (once, the result of smiling and nodding and not understanding was being presented with a bowl of chicken feet. to eat. with their claws on. i tried . . . )

it used to bother me that i couldn't understand these incidental conversations. my lack of language skills kept me from interacting with people that i thought i should be getting to know. it's hard to enter into a conversation or express an opinion if you can't speak the language. but now i realize that it's easier to get along because i don't know everything that is going on. i don't know why you think you are being picked on, or what you think about the newest memo from the director, or why you were late today (or why you really weren't late, because that time clock is four minutes off, and if people would just mind their own business and quit looking at other people's time cards and then tattling to the director . . . ok, sometimes i do understand their english) there is always so much drama! but if i don't know the details or the issues, then i can't weigh in with an opinion, and so i think everyone assumes i am on their side, which works for me!

i suppose as long as people work together in one place, there will be some form of "office politics" at work. but i am not going to play. i'm just going to continue to stay out of other people's business and try to focus on my own. and if not speaking chinese helps me to accomplish that, then i guess that is just one dream i will have to give up, for the good of the group.

i don't want to save the world--i just want to do my job.