When I was
younger, I was essentially a B and T girl.
Bridge and tunnel. That term that
true New Yorkers use to refer to anyone who commutes to The City via the bridge
and tunnel system instead actually of living in Heaven or, as most people know
it, Manhattan. I spent every summer traveling via air conditioner-less
car across some bridge or another to my grandmother’s house on Long Island. It was a
tradition during the last four hours of the 24 hour trip when we were stuck
in traffic in Manhattan to pick out the famous landmarks
that make New York New York.
“There’s the Statue of Liberty!
And the Empire
State Building!” And as these were the days before the great
fear of terrorism and liquids on planes, we would watch the Twin Towers
loom over the island as we inched over the Verrazano.
When I lived in New Jersey (a brief five months of my life that I mention
much too often), I made the half hour trip to New York as often as possible. New Jersey Transit shuttled me through the Lincoln Tunnel into
the center of The City. But just before
I descended beneath the Hudson River, I had a wonderful preview of the city I was about to indulge in. The lights twinkled and the buildings seemed to throbb with energy all reminding me why I love The City.
Megan, the best
friend I made in New Jersey
and my companion on most of my Northeastern adventures, and I would marvel at
its mass and beauty. One day, exhausted
by The City and New Yorkers and much too preoccupied with too-expensive
haute-couture and too-skinny models in the latest Vogue, we missed the
view. Once we realized it, we struggled
to catch the lights through the trees that immediately consumed New Jersey. We vowed that we would never let that happen
again, and from that moment, our magazines and books and other distractions
were safely stowed until we were deep into Jersey.
When I moved to Baton Rouge to attend
LSU, it was approximately my fifth time in the city. Having grown up much closer to New Orleans and, figuratively speaking, New
York, I never needed to make Baton
Rouge a very big part of my life. But after living there for five years, I was
consistently learning new things about the city that made me more and more
enthralled with it. I loved exploring Baton Rouge. As much as it was home to me, I still don’t
feel that I’ve learned everything there is to know about good ole B. R.
The other day,
as I had lunch with Chris (New Zealand)
and Terry (Chicago), two other teachers, we discussed
a third teacher, Mick (Ireland).
“He’s new to Beijing, but he’s not new to China. He doesn’t have that ‘newbie’ look,” Chris
said.
“What? Like me?” I responded with raised eyebrows.
“Well, no
offense,” he said. “But you can tell because
the things that really piss you off or excite you just become normal after a
while.”
He meant it as
an insult, and I took it as one. Chris
is the kind of cynical that makes him see things only one way. It's wet or it's dry, it's Western or Eastern, it's good or it's bad. And to him, the number of people at the Great Wall, Chinese people who don't expect him to speak Chinese, and being labeled a newbie are all bad. He’s also married to a Chinese girl, fluent
in the language, been here for seven years, and incredibly helpful.
The conversation
moved quickly moved on. But I continued
to think about what he meant and how I felt about it. After much inward deliberation, I decided that I like being a newbie.
I like being amazed
every time I see the New York
skyline. I like watching the Mississippi push
tugboats from the roof of the Shaw center.
And I like getting pissed off when the recycling guy wakes me up at six
in the morning yelling for bottles in Chinese.
I like wandering idly through Tiananmen Square
thinking about that day in 1989. I like
getting excited about communicating successfully in Chinese. I like everything about this place that is so
different it’s unfathomable and so similar it's perplexing.
So I’m a
newbie. And whether I’m here for six months
or sixty years, I’m determined to remain a newbie.
