Two nights ago I found myself people-watching in Times Square, waiting for some friends to arrive. It didn’t matter that it was late on a weeknight; Times Square was bustling with people from all over the world. Except, I would venture to guess, people from Jishou, China. Of course I could be wrong. But in any case, it struck me that the scene I was observing was about as far removed as possible from what I’d be seeing in about two weeks. Should be quite a comparison.

At this point we’ve thought about and planned for Jishou quite extensively; not much more to say before we get there. While so many aspects of what this experience will be like are currently unknown, there is one thing that is completely certain: this is one awesome group of people. While we’ve already had some great times in the planning phase, the best is certainly yet to come. I am so excited to be able to spend eight weeks working and chilling with these amazing Princeton students and know this will be a trip to remember. I’ve been able to contain my excitement only by cooking Chinese food at home.

Fully vaccinated and ready for the middle kingdom,

Reuben

It was reading period. Then all papers were turned in and it was finals. Then PiA orientation cut right into finals. Then finals were over and I spent 5 days hiking in the woods training to be an OA leader. And then reunions happened and all of a sudden there were 20,000 new faces on campus. And now I’m finally back home in Miami.

With nothing to do with my time except go to the gym, beach, pool, and read, Jishou crosses my mind about every 5 minutes. It seems so close yet so far away. But when I open my passport and see my Chinese visa, I am reminded that it’s real. And it is happening. And I will be there before I know it. I’ve heard Cam, Eliot, and past SOSers experiences in Jishou. I’ve googled Jishou multiple times and stalked pictures of it over and over again. I’ve even begun looking at our PiA China guide and attempting to learn some Chinese phrases. But despite all of this information, I still just don’t know what to expect.

But here’s what I do know. I know I am and have been looking forward to this summer more than anything else. I know that my flights to and from China are going to be the longest flights and most layovers I have ever had to take. I can confidently say it will probably be one of the hottest and stickiest summers I have ever spent. And as for myself, I know that I plan on living in the moment when I’m in China, trying new foods, learning as much as I can about Chinese culture, and getting to know an amazing group of SOSers and students over these next two months.

Hoping to be a few shades tanner when leaving Miami.

Miryam

I’m starting to think that the PiA office is going to start calling me the problem child of the summer.

That sounds like a bold claim, but I’m sure I’m already that kid. You know, the one who had to play phone tag with Tina until her flight iteranary got worked out. The one who couldn’t get a visa with the rest of the group because her passport was going to expire too early. The one that missed the deadline for the first blog post (oops).

I’m working through it all one step at a time. My flights have been booked, I’m writing a post now, my new passport came in the mail last Friday (valid until 2022!), and I’m heading into DC tomorrow to go to the Chinese embassy. I’m still a little worried (and sorry for making more trouble for Cameron and Eliot), but I’m confident everything will work out. It always does.

After my trip into DC tomorrow, the next thing on my to-do list is starting to pack…or, starting to plan to pack. Knowing me, I’ll leave most of the packing for the night of the 19th, and it will be a little stressful, but it will get done. (I can just sleep on the plane, right?) Cameron and Eliot gave us a packing list, which should make things somewhat easier, but I’m still a little concerned about the 40 pound limit. Or, maybe, more than that, I’m just worried I won’t have enough room, regardless of the weight limit. All of us have to bring along 12 pairs of sunglasses to Jishou, and I don’t want them to get broken, so packing them might be a little challenging. After that, my next order of business is to pack a deflated rugby ball. I had been toying with the idea for a little bit, but hadn’t really decided to bring it along until I spoke with Anastasia (who also played rugby at Princeton!!) during the orientation weekend. (If my parents are reading this, I bet they’re both groaning and thinking something along the lines of “our daughter was supposed to write a post about China, and she managed to start talking about rugby. Again.” In my defense, I heard that there is a sports club, and figured I could introduce something new!)

Anyway, as the 20th grows closer, I’m growing more impatient for all the adventures I know are coming my way. WildChina. Battling with bugs. Getting by without knowing any Chinese. Trying new food. And, most importantly, teaching!

Bring it on.

– Kelsey

I’ve always sucked at packing. I’m that one annoying person who always overpacks and needs her friends to help her with her bags. Used to being able to travel with a 50 lb bag for a week’s worth of time, I was very shocked- terrified in fact- to find out that all we could travel with to Jishou was a 40lb bag worth of clothes. Panick attack right then and there.

But then, our awesome leaders Cameron and Eliot produced a miracle: a packing list. By looking at it I realized how many unnecessary things I usually pack. Who needs 5 pairs of jeans, 8 pairs of shoes and 3 hats? Clearly not me. And just like the extra stuff I pack and can now get rid of, I want to get rid of the unecessary emotional baggage during this trip. I’m not talking about severing emotional ties and whatnot but to get rid of those attitudes which hinder our experiences. For example, being lazy? Not in Jishou- I want to wake up with the sun and go to bed with it. My usual 10-pushing-on-11 wake up time simply has no place here. What’s more, I don’t want this emotional baggage to be left behind because it’s mandatory but rather voluntarily, as some sort of cleansing process which in the end will hopefully- fingers crossed- make me a better person.

So here’s to packing, smart packing, and to getting rid of all those unnecessary items that only add weight to our bag but not real value.

-Arianna

I’m ready for Jishou. I’m ready for the troublemaker in my class. I’m ready for navigating around pushy street vendors who want me to buy socks. I’m ready for heat and humidity. I’m ready for never feeling clean. I’m ready for bugs – even bugs I don’t want to believe exist. I’m ready for mosquitoes, squat toilets, foreign foods, and strange, personal conversations with old people. I’m ready to lose myself in service.

While I can’t expect or anticipate what’s going to happen to me in China, I can guess about how I will feel. This will be the first prolonged experience in my life where I will be dedicating myself to others and watching the “me” slip farther and farther from view. Many things will be more obviously out of my control, with basic communication and personal routines radically altered. I expect to feel overwhelmed, excited, alone, amazed, terrified, and really really happy – maybe not all at once – but definitely at some point throughout this trip.

Hopefully eight weeks from now I will be a better person. I hope to know what it feels like to invest oneself completely in helping others. I hope that I can be confident that life doesn’t have to be about consumption, production, and the pursuit of pleasure. I hope that I will be changed in ways I can’t anticipate. I hope to fall in love with China.

Filled with flash-forwards, tiger blood, and with delusional, unsupported confidence,

-Nick

I thought that I should start out by writing about my expectations, but I hesitate to overemphasize them. It’s sort of tricky to explain what I mean by this, but I should give it a shot. While I have been looking forward to this trip for what seems like ages, I somehow still haven’t thought so much about what I expect it to be. We were asked to imagine what the physical city of Jishou would look like, and I wrote something vague about the height and color of University buildings. But truthfully, I don’t want to have expectations. I want no mental image, no preconceptions, no imagined first steps out of the station in Jishou or interactions with our students – no expectations. It’s as though I’ve chosen the blindfold and will not peak, because I know that peaking will only given me an obscured version of the real deal. The true experience will speak for herself, I believe, and she will arrive in due time. So for the time being, I’m just savoring the last three (slightly hectic) weeks that I will have here in the Garden State for quite some time. This is definitely not to say that I’m not excited – quite the opposite! Rather, my excitement lies purely in the prospect of the unknown, the unexpected, the unanticipated.

Something that I do already know is that this is a priceless group. I think I’ve already shed a few tears laughing with them during our many group meeting. And since I really didn’t know anyone too well going in, I still have so much to learn about everyone in the bunch. So much bonding lies ahead! After all, two months navigating through a Chinese summer should do the trick…

So I suppose that although I don’t want them to color the actual experience, I do have expectations. And I have qualms, too. I have qualms about the moments or days or experiences or feelings that tend to get glazed over or forgotten when they exist in memory. But when they are happening in the present, nothing could be more real. The moments when you wonder why you decided to journey halfway across the world to a foreign land that you barely understand, rather than staying home where life is predictable and familiar. Or the moments where you feel like you made all the wrong decisions that day, said all the wrong things, or let everyone down. Talking to the various members of the plentiful SoS legacy, it seems that their experiences were overwhelmingly positive. But yet my wary self still fears those moments most, because the promise of a good story never seems to abate the disappointment felt while climbing into bed that night.

But enough of Debbie Downer (or should I say Jaded Jess?). I say bring the sun, bring the rain, and bring everything in between. Because what I most anticipate is learning the things that I had never expected to learn. In other words, I can’t wait to know what I didn’t know I was going to know. Or did I just get too meta? Either way, this summer is bound to teach so many lessons beyond our lesson plans. And they are just waiting to be discovered.

But in the meantime, there is still so much to be done! So, here I go, back to that to-do list…

Princeton:

It’s hot.

A sort of sticky stillness permeates everything, and it’s tough to move without breaking a sweat. A combination of the school year and the weather has left me exhausted, and we aren’t even in Jishou yet.

Somehow I can already picture the streets shimmering in the heat… motorbikes zigzag around old women picking through the trash heaps, shopowners hover over steaming woks of spicy tofu and bok choy. The classroom fans whir overhead, squealing pigs outside are drowned out by students’ laughter… Anyway:

Last weekend got my head spinning, as orientation reminded me of PiA’s long history: this will be Summer of Service’s seventh year, and (I hope) its best yet. Cameron and I have been working hard to prepare for our return to China, and we’re both extremely excited and thankful to be heading out soon with another- very enthusiastic- group.

Why go back?

I don’t think I need to answer this now, or here. Beyond affecting me on a personal level, SoS is an experience that has been shared by scores of teachers and students. During orientation I had the luck to spent some time talking with Rory Truex (founder of SoS, awesome) and an SoSer from 2008. For each person and each year the summer brings something unique, but there also are some reassuring consistencies we can count on. Our project assistant Tony, aka Mr. Five, is waiting for us in Jishou, along with the same old classrooms, the same spicy food, and the same sweltering weather.

Get ready, because this is just the start…

-Eliot

The moment I’ve been waiting for since October 2011. Am I being overly dramatic? Probably. But after reading two years’ worth of SoS blog entries, finally being able to create my own post is a momentous occasion. Funny thing is, after ruminating on the sort of things that I would write (witty? tear-jerking? inspirational? all of the above?), now that I have finally brought myself to type something up, I’m not quite sure what to say.

In fact, words cannot express how excited I am about this trip. For the past few months, I have found my thoughts wandering from “Quantitative Methods” (a.k.a. Psych Stats, i.e. the bane of my existence), Dean’s Date papers, and the hustle and bustle of a busy spring semester to blurred visions of a city on the other side of the world. Although I have seen photos that previous SoS-ers have taken on their trips (yes, I stalked those as well), and despite the fact that I have read numerous accounts of past experiences in China, I realize that nothing I have seen or read can prepare me for what I will encounter this summer. Sure, I know about the much-beloved bubble tea at 7Cup, and I have a pretty good idea of what the classrooms I’ll be teaching in look like. Ultimately, though, I am mentally preparing myself to just “go with it,” whatever “it” may be.

This hasn’t stopped me from looking forward to what might unfold over the next few months. I can’t wait to get to know each and every one of my students, and I hope that by the end of SoS’s stay in Jishou they will feel as if they have gleaned something from our lessons, and from our interactions with them. Similarly, I hope to learn something about Chinese culture from my students; time to put my Chinese textbook to the test…

Also, I can’t wait to bond with the wonderful group of SoS-ers venturing to China with me. Even before embarking on our most excellent adventure, I feel as if I have forged connections with each and every member of the group. Jessica and I clicked instantly; we had a wonderful time brainstorming for our textbook lessons, and I can’t wait to show her around Rome after China. I’m excited about practicing my warrior poses and chaturangas with Miryam, who takes yoga classes at the same yoga studio that I go to (hi Gemma!) Arianna is the only other international student in the group, so I’m looking forward to having a partner with whom to offer a non-American perspective to our students. Kelsey and I share an aversion to house centipedes (with which we’ve both had some close calls), and an interest in East Asian cultures. Christian and I are both Mathey-ites, and apparently complete each other (he is the car to my deer in the headlights…whatever that means). Reuben and I are both newbie members of the same eating club, and he once used me as a human croquet mallet, which definitely made for some good bonding. Nick and I were on Club Swimming together last year, and our high schools have the same name, despite the fact that one is in Rome while the other is in Texas. Alyssa and I bonded over whiteout and filling out visa application forms – slightly less interesting than using one another as human croquet mallets, but one must never underestimate the power of whiteout.

Last but not least, I can’t wait to get to know our trip leaders (a.k.a. Camelot). Cameron and I both share a love of Chinese (mad props to him for taking 文言文 next year), and our birthdays are fairly close together (yay Leos!) Eliot is more on the quiet side, and likes photography, which I am passionate about as well – I look forward to seeing some of the photos that he takes on this trip. Camelot seem to get along very well, despite their different personalities; I have the feeling that Cameron’s penchant for eloquent speech and Eliot’s reticence and wry sarcasm will “keep things real.”

I should probably end here, since Eliot said not to go too crazy with the blogging (oops). Having said pretty much everything that I would have liked to say in a first blog post, I will close with a phrase that I am rather fond of:

see you on the other side!

– Sofia

It’s funny the way things tend to work out.

Last summer, I went to Jishou with Summer of Service, raring to teach. I had never been to the Chinese mainland before, but I knew I was going to love it. Even with the spicy foods and squat toilets, what wasn’t there to love?

Fast-forward two months. I returned to America shocked and confused, totally unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. I remember skulking around the PiA offices in October, telling the staffers how uneasy I felt. “Good,” Tina told me. “That’s how you’re supposed to feel.”

That’s not to say that Jishou was a negative experience; it was an overwhelmingly positive one. But it was also very different from anything else that I had done with my life. And doing different things, it would seem, require you changing as a person. I won’t necessarily go into specific ways that I changed, as that can be hard to explicitly say, but I do know that I am different. Looking at my blog posts from last year has made that readily apparent.

There is an obvious question that begs itself: why go back?

My answer: why not?

I would say that what I got out of last summer was probably the most valuable life experience that I have had to date, so the notion of another shot at it is hard to say no to. Even more important, though, is that this time I get to do it along with nine Jishou newbies and my erstwhile Jishou roomie, now co-leader, Eliot. A new group, a new Jishou, a new story to unfold. Pretty exciting stuff, I’d say.

While I would usually take this space now to write what I am expecting up ahead, I am not sure that I have much to say. After last summer, I can only expect the unexpected. Giant spiders? Putrid rivers? Xi Yanyang cell phone charms hand-made by students? Asian Jack Black and the delicious pig grease? Yeah, I had no ideas those were coming for me last year, so I’ll play it on the safe side and say, “Come at me, Jishou!”

– Cameron