“Crazy good weather,” I thought to myself as I sat down with my tray. It was true. Typically, Beijing’s summer climate was hot, humid, and polluted. Looking out the window was about as interesting as closely examining a grey concrete wall. Today, however, soft rays of sunlight streamed through the cafeteria windows blanketing the tables with light. I looked down at my food as I picked up my chopsticks. Gong Bao Ji Ding stared back at me; it had been amusingly labeled Kung Pow Chicken by the cafeteria catering service as if none of us could pronounce the real Chinese name even though pretty much the entire school was either enrolled in a Chinese class or already spoke it natively. “No peanuts,” I observed with chagrin. Any self-respecting Gong Bao Ji Ding ought to have peanuts in it. In fact, I often enjoyed picking them out with my chopsticks long after the chicken had already been --
“Sup man?” My thoughts scattered as my friend Lucas sat down across from me. Lucas and I had been pretty much best friends since the 7th grade. Initially, I had had an extremely low opinion of him due to his rather unruly behavior in my 6th grade choir class (he had been affectionately christened by one of the older guys as a member of the “four stooges” singing in the tenor one section). Somehow we had gotten past all that and had spent most of the rest of middle school narfing (to cause a substance to come out of one’s nose through voracious laughter or astonished surprise) our drinks at lunch and laughing at our own side splitting hilarity.
“Hey dude! How’s your first day of high school going?” I replied before shoving a bite-full of spicy rice and chicken into my mouth.
“Pretty good so far. My English class seems pretty sweet. There are a lot of cool people in it and Mr. Roberts seems really awesome. Yay! More Gong Bao. First day back and they’re already serving this crap again,” Lucas laughed.
“Yeah man. Could be worse though,” I conjectured. “So who is in your English class?”
“Well Julie’s in my class which is cool,” I felt a sudden pang of jealousy. I had liked Julie since 7th grade and Lucas was definitely vying for her attention under my very nose. “Along with Nick Watkins, Jeff Dunn, and a whole bunch of weird new kids.”
“Weird?” I laughed, trying to change the subject, “weird like how?”
“I dunno. Just like really quiet and stuff.” Lucas leaned back in his chair.
“Yeah it seems like that’s usually the case. Oh well. I’m sure someone will befriend them eventually.” My Gong Bao Ji Ding was half-finished, but lunch was an hour earlier than it had been in middle school and I just wasn’t hungry enough to eat the rest. I picked through it looking for peanuts.
Seven thousand miles and three hundred and sixty-five days away, rain drizzled against the window of my English class at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. I sat in the back corner and studied my pencil. It was yellow, with a distinctly pink eraser and somehow, staring at it seemed to help me control my almost insuppressible urge to cry.
I had known for about nine months now that I was going to have to move here but it really hadn’t made it any easier. Right when I stepped off the airplane into the run-down and weather-worn Dulles National Airport, I had known this was not going to be fun. Within three months I had lost my circle of friends, my familiar and comfortable school environment, and my brother, who had graduated and was now a thousand miles away in Utah attending BYU. I had stepped out of the familiar flat and tree-less Beijing landscape into the densely forested rolling hills of North Virginia. On top of that, it had hardly stopped raining since I had arrived with my parents five days before and the dark gloominess of the weather mirrored my own depression.
The bell clanged in my ear and I sprang out of my seat. The International School of Beijing didn’t have bells. I quickly gathered up my things and stuffed them into my ridiculously undersized backpack (our shipment hadn’t yet arrived and so I had to use our tiny travel backpack, making me feel even more conspicuously out of place than I already did), attempting to escape the classroom before having to make awkward conversation with some other student I didn’t know. Head down, I exited into the hallway, not entirely sure where the cafeteria was. I wandered the halls for about ten minutes before the general flow of traffic led me to it.
Bright fluorescent light revealed a number of large white tables while the sound of chairs grating, dishes clanking, and students chatting assaulted my senses. I slowly made my way to the lunch line, feeling as I did so that I was being watched by approximately seventeen thousand pairs of eyes. As I neared the available selections, the options did not look appetizing. Line one contained some strange brown mixture mystifyingly labeled “taco pie.” I gave it a wide berth as it bubbled ominously in Styrofoam dishes. How any sane person could be expected to actually ingest that stuff was really beyond my comprehension. Line two displayed some highly processed “Mexican” food that really did not interest me in the least so I finally settled on line three: a unexceptional hamburger in a paper envelope. The lunch lady eyed me suspiciously as I paid my three dollars and I looked for a place to sit down.
I spotted an empty table in the center of the cafeteria and headed for it. I sat down, pulling out my scanty meal. As I did so, I realized two things. One, my hamburger had absolutely nothing on it and I certainly had nothing to put on it and two, I wasn’t even hungry.
So I sat there. I'd like to say that I sat there oblivious to the rest of the world but I was all too aware of the people at the tables around me. Every bout of laughter seemed to taunt me. Every intimate couple reminded me of my own isolation.
A sudden wave of homsickness hit me making the room leap and dance like a troupe of Chinese acrobats. Tears welled up in my eyes as I stood to leave. To walk away somewhere, anywhere.
“Ian?” I looked up. A familiar set of eyes stared back at me through small, circular glasses. It was Roland, a guy I had met in church the day previous. I stared at him stupidly, afraid that if I tried to speak I might burst out in an embarrassing bout of tears.
“My friends and I are outside if you want to join us,” Roland offered.
“Oh yeah. Sure thing,” I mumbled back, slowly picking up my backpack.
“Alright let’s go then.”
Looks like I had somewhere to walk to after all.
I think this picture pretty adequately expresses my feelings towards doing homework over holidays. Even though I really didn't have that much, I still feel as if I should've been at least studying a little more chemistry for the upcoming test which I don't feel 100% secure on the material.
Yeah. It was really eerie. I honestly did not fully comprehend the extent to which everyone would just clear out after tuesday night. I was lucky enough to have my brother and sister still here because more or less all of my friends went off to stay with some far flung relative. The dorms were a spitting image of the ghost town pictured above. Kind of peaceful. But mostly boring.
