The Job Search Continues...

Come tomorrow, I'll be in Beijing for a full week. I'm still nowhere near finding a job and it's starting to worry me. A lot more than usual.

I cannot decide whether to like or not like Beijing. It's big. It's modern. It has its comforts. I had cereals for breakfast after craving for it for a year. Its malls would definitely rival the ones that are in Manila. We were in a really high-end mall last Sunday and I was just looking at the pricetags and saying, I won't even buy this even if they were in pesos! In a way I felt like this country girl who's been let loose in the big city and I was amazed by all the flashing lights and fancy cars. But I also keep thinking what are all these for? I did not realize until that very moment how Tieling has changed me so much.

And still I feel that I haven't given it that much of a chance to be liked yet. But another thing that despairs me is its sheer size! Yesterday, I thought I'd be more adventurous and take the subway by myself. Look around. Explore beyond the neighborhood. I had taken the subway with Troy at least a couple of times before and it wasn't as confusing as I feared. I made a plan. I would get off at wherever seemed interesting then just explore galore! Armed with my map and my dictionary, as well as all the other essentials, I set out for the subway station. Except I couldn't find it. I walked around. And around. And around. I gave up and walked back to the complex.

While I do not want to totally give up on Beijing yet, I'm beginning to think that things aren't exactly looking great. I've gotten in touch with my high school principal who sends people to China to teach and he's offering me a job in Fujian. I won't really be teaching there as much as training middle school English teachers to teach. I know how I've always said that I want to visit Fujian one day but I didn't think it was going to be this soon. But then maybe it's the universe's way of saying that it's time. Everything is still under negotiation. Nothing final yet but if things do push through, I'll be leaving Beijing by the end of the month and flying to the land of my ancestors.

I do not know exactly how to feel. There's a bit of anticipation, perhaps. No, not just a bit. I am now wondering how it would feel like to hear thousands of people talking in a language that I've always associated with my lost past. My first few months in China had me in a daze as certain parts of my braincells awaken to the sound of Putonghua. And I taste both the rawness and familiarity of it in my tongue as I struggle to form words and sentences in it. It was like being in a dream where I could understand what they were saying but I couldn't make myself be understood. I can just imagine how Minnanhua will shake the very core of me. I have always felt that languages define my reality, no matter how limiting they are. I had not heard Minnanhua for a really long time and I would suddenly be submerged into it again. Just like the time, I imagine, when I was in the womb.