Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Loneliness

Today is my birthday and unfortunately I've been spending it alone.

My students are all studying for tests and my few friends are busy or have left the city. Plus, I hate announcing to people that it's my birthday. Makes me feel like I'm forcing people to hang out with me.

I've never been terribly good at making friends. And so a thread of loneliness seems to run through my experiences in China. (For example: going to a video game arcade by yourself isn't quite as fun.)

"By staying in China, you are away from your friends and family," a friend in China said to me once. "It must be very difficult."

Indeed, it can be. I've been thinking what special things I can do for myself today, only to come up with nothing. Meanwhile my Facebook piles up with birthday wishes from far-away friends.

My Chinese teacher told me some weeks back that I was living in a bubble.

Not that I was being sheltered or anything, she elaborated. But that unless I make more friends and find a place in China as my own, my bubble will burst one day and I'll head back to America for good.

I'm sometimes asked if I want to settle down in China. I don't know. But at this point, I find the idea daunting. To spend so many years of your life here...

Still, I only have a week left in Xi'an. So already the thought of me saying goodbye to this place makes me all the more sad.

This is turning into a miserable birthday. Why do we celebrate the fact that we get older?