New Baden native and Wesclin graduate Rachel Sterrett has been teaching English at a university in northwest China for two years for Amity International. Here are some of her observations.

I was recently asked a very interesting question by one of my students: "What is it like to be a foreigner in China?"

Of course, since she herself is Chinese, that question was prefaced with a barrage of others, including "Do you miss your family?", "Do you feel lonely here?", "Do you have a boyfriend?", and "Do you want a Chinese boyfriend?"

I had my pat answers, refined after so much use, ready for the others, but her question about being a foreigner gave me pause. In the end I gave her a fairly roundabout answer, something like, "Well, sometimes being a foreigner means that there are things you don't always understand, but that can also make your life more of an adventure."

Her question really caused me to think, however. It brought back memories, some poignant, some hilarious, some I'd rather forget completely. I realized that being a foreigner (or a "lao wai" as the Chinese call us) isn't really something that you can rightly explain in words. It can be frustrating, alienating, liberating, puzzling, even entertaining, but it's something that, especially for this Westerner in China, is defined by experiences, not words.

Being a foreigner in China means getting on a bus that's supposed to get you to your destination in five hours...but you're awakend after only two hours and told to switch to another bus, which will actually take you where you want to go.

Being a foreigner means that your students feel free to wake you up from a sound sleep just to return books you lent to them.

Being a foreigner means if you travel anywhere with a Chinese person, everyone else will speak only to your friend, even about you, despite the fact that you have already communicated that you speak Chinese well enough to carry on a conversation.

Being a foreigner means that if you DO travel anywhere by yourself, folks will ask you why you aren't traveling with a companion, and then proceed to give you high praise for being able to reply to their questions in Chinese.

Being a foreigner in China means that you are the only teacher on your campus to get hugs from your students, asked to eat meals with your students, and invited to visit your students in their dormitories.

Being a foreigner means your students sometimes come to you with the most heartwarming (or heartbreaking) stories, because they feel more comfortable being so open in English... and you are the only friend they have who can communicate in English well enough to understand what they are trying to say.

Being a foreigner in China means having to learn to eat a meal with chopsticks out of a plastic bag at age 24... on a moving bus... while everyone else seems to have mastered the skill before they could reach their mom's knees.

Being a foreigner means having combined classes of 80 students, because they all petitioned to have your class, and the school ran out of classroom space.

Being a foreigner means that signs about electricity blackouts, military training for freshman on the running track, exam schedules, or days when the water will be turned off for maintenance work on the pipes are all posted in Chinese (which you can't read) three to four days in advance, but you might be told what's going on a few hours beforehand... or when you call the office to ask why your toilet won't flush.

Being a foreigner in China means that anything you loan of your possessions or give of yourself is treated like a sacred relic. Your students make book covers out of wrapping paper so the books you've loaned them won't get dusty. Your colleague asks for the box for your DVD player so that it can be properly stored after she's done using it in her class. Your students come over to celebrate their classmate's birthday, cook dinner for everyone, form an assembly line to wash, dry, and arrange the dishes back in the cupboards...and then apologize for disturbing you. Any handouts you give in class are kept clipped together in chronological order, in a separate folder. Students clamor for you to sing songs for their classes, and give you a standing ovation for your fourth rendition of "Edelweiss" in as many days. If you go out to sing karaoke with students, they will not allow you to pay for anything, because your presence is enough of a gift in their eyes. You can make 10 students cry at a time by

chastising them for cheating on a test, and the highest honor you can bestow upon anyone is to visit them at their family home.

I've had experiences of being a foreigner in China that have brought tears to my eyes. The tears might have been because my heart was touched, or they might have been tears of furious frustration. I've experienced the aching isolation of being unable to communicate what I needed well enough, and tremendous thrill at being able to help others grow and expand their knowledge of English and the world. Being a foreigner in China is not something easily explained in words, but it is a matchless experience.

Most weeks, it's a struggle for me to squeeze out a few hundred more or less coherent words to fill this space. In a way, I think it might be more difficult to write a column for a community newspaper than it is to write a weekly column for a large daily paper or a syndicate.

The challenge for most syndicated writers is to find gold in topics that have already been heavily mined. In today's media world, it doesn't take 30 minutes for a breaking story to grow stale. In that time frame, cable news outlets can round up experts from every corner of the globe to dissect and analyze and opine about every facet of the story of the moment.

By the time the weekly columnist's moment rolls around, there aren't many bones left to pick over. So it's a challenge, no question, but the weekly writer has to take it one step further, in my opinion.

I've written my opinions about nationally-prominent stories before, but I don't feel comfortable doing so. I don't really feel as if I have any standing for commenting on them, because I only know what I read. So that's pretty limiting, in terms of subject matter.

I'm fascinated by politics, but increasingly disenchanted as well, and I find that when I try to articulate my distaste for the system, it is met with either blank looks or outright hostility and misunderstanding. I've decided I'm not really capable of articulating my opinions about politics very well.

In the past couple of days, I've had good conversations with people at both ends of the spectrum in terms of observing politics. Last week, I spent some time with a young woman from New Baden who plans to enter the world of public service at some point. She is passionate about the things she believes in, and youthfully eager about jumping into the fray, anxious to make a difference.

"I've always loved politics," she told me.

"I think that's great," I told her, "as long as you realize the whole system is diseased."

On Monday, I spent some time with a retired gentleman who continues to attack life with an intellectual curiosity that is inspiring. He has interests and strong opinions in a wide range of subjects. A lot of our conversation was spent trying to convince each other of the error of our respective positions. I'm not sure either of us changed the other's mind, but we had a good time debating things in a spirited but civil way.

We concluded that while he leans a bit to the conservative side of the political spectrum, and I hew more liberal, we could find agreement in our general frustration with the fact that, more often than not, the politics tail wags the policy dog.

So politics is really a vacant subject matter, an exercise in discourse, a test of rhetorical skills.

That leaves me a couple of choices. I can poke fun at life's absurdities, or I can poke fun at myself. I've discovered that self-deprecation is much more endearing than being an abject smartaleck. The people who read this (I could probably memorize all their names) invariably prefer columns that chronicle some pratfall or embarrassing moment of mine. I received more positive feedback for a column about scalding my genitals with hot coffee than for any other I've written in over seventeen years.

And that's cool. I mean, I really don't mind making fun of myself. Those columns practically write themselves. It's unfortunate that, even though I do stupid things fairly often, they don't always relate themselves to the written word. And let's face it, there are some things that are just too embarrassing for even me to tell.

Put it this way. I'm not willing to pour coffee on my crotch every week just for your amusement. I'm not Johnny Knoxville.

So even the columns that deal with my emasculation, personal injury, embarrassment, or other reader-friendly subject matter limit themselves in a way.

That leaves this, my last refuge, a column about the process of writing a column. With any luck, I'll suffer some debilitating injury before next week, as long as it's not so critical that it's not funny. Maybe I am Johnny Knoxville.