First, I’ll tell you about Music Club. My co-worker Lisa and I led a choir for college-age girls this past semester. We had fun getting to know them, teaching them how to sing in a group (“Blend!”), and helping them improve their English through games and discussions. At the end of the semester, we held a Christmas concert to which they invited their friends—another fun shared experience. I wish you could have heard their lovely rendition of “Silent Night.” (“Jingle Bells”—or “Bears”—was also charming.)
Besides the Music Club, I spent a good deal of my time last semester on lesson prep and paper grading. (I teach writing to sophomore English majors.) So, I was often in my office, which I share with three Chinese teachers of English.
And then, of course, I spent time with my students—in the classroom, in my office, sometimes at meals or on errands. Most of my students are girls. Many of them are already, at age 20, disappointed with themselves, since (in this culture that intensely values academic achievement) their scores weren’t good enough for entrance to a top university. Some faces stand out: A, who trembles from nervousness when she talks to me, though she valiantly talks anyway; M, who is quick and earnest; sympathetic J; L, who grins at me during class and gives me advice after class; O, who teared up when I talked about parents in class one day (she was reared by her grandparents); silently hurting G; poised and careful L. There are about 180 more. They watch us so closely! 
Before the winter break, a New Year’s Party was being held for all the foreign staff and I had been asked to play my cello. When the evening of the party came I didn’t want to go; it was cold outside, and I had so many papers to grade. (So heavy are the trials of English teachers.) But I had to go, so I picked up my cello and carried it down three flights of stairs and out into the winter night. I carried my cello uphill toward the dining hall, and I was wanting to quit. Not just quit teaching, but quit climbing upward altogether. “What’s the point?” I was wondering. “Why am I putting myself through this?”
I arrived at the dining hall and carried my cello upstairs (helped up the last several flights by an angel disguised as a student, perhaps?), and not long afterward was seated in a new world—a large, bright hall set up for a banquet, with my familiar American colleagues seated around me. Festive music was playing. Someone gave me a gift, the first of the evening. And sitting there it struck me that any discomfort from my walk to the party had been erased, that the privilege of playing my cello eclipsed the burden of carrying it. It was almost as if that dark walk hadn’t happened. The celebration was the reality.
After a long semester, we teachers enjoyed six weeks’ vacation. Several of us (including Ashley and Hailey) were based in Singapore. For our entire stay, six of us Americans shared a furnished apartment, rent-free. We shared a lot more—trips to different tourist spots on the island (we were given free passes by local family), meals, chats in the evening, and more.
Yet another privilege of the trip was experiencing, for the first time, the tropics. The National Botanical Gardens in Singapore have free admission, and I freely admitted myself. I brought my favorite book and strolled and enjoyed fragrant, living botanical sculptures—the warmth, the intelligence, the exuberance displayed in dozens of varieties of plants.
Ashley and I went on a rainforest tour at the Botanical Gardens, led by a well-informed volunteer. The volunteer was telling us (and I hope I’m getting this right) that certain trees’ sap has anti-bacterial properties; if the tree is punctured it can heal itself by secreting sap. The majority of our medicines, in fact, are made up of ingredients from rainforest plants.
Mary Beth
--contributed 1/2008