Making some Guanxi

I have been pretty busy lately. I am not sure what I have been really doing though that makes me so busy. Mostly socializing, which could technically be classified as studying and working, since a lot of the socializing takes place in Chinese. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that the central part of my job is to create guanxi（关系）or make connections. This is not quite as devious as it sounds. Really, I spend my time making friends. Chatting. Sharing stories. Listening to the crazy things that people have done with their lives thus far, and taken part in communal musings about what we are all going to do in the future. Ofcourse, these conversations are usually accompanied by various and delicious food or drink. Lately, I have been indulging in fresh fruit juice:pineapple,watermelon, strawberry, orange, mango. As you can see my life is tough. Filled with adversity.
Besides (sometimes) going to class, my biggest project right now is finding homestay families that Dragons' students will live with for a week or two this summer. It was kind of a slow process starting out for a number of reasons. The person who did this job last year has been helping me out a bit, but she is really busy with her new job and so I have kind of been left to go at it alone. Although, not completely alone because I have a Chinese friend who is also going to be working with Dragons this summer helping me out. She is mostly helping with translating applications and finding new families.
In the week or so leading up to me going to visit a family by myself for the first time, a talked with a bunch of people, who when I told them what I was actually going to be doing, they were like, "oh! that sounds like it would be really hard for you." Not exactly words of encouragement. It is also intimidating that the person who did this job last year is not only Chinese (helpful for both language and culture), but she is also extremely chatty and bubbly, and she always knows exactly what to say to make people feel comfortable. I It is also one of those projects that the more you sit around thinking about it (and not actually getting started) the more scary and impossible it seems.
Fortunately, in this past week it has all started to come together. I have visited a few families on my own, and I feel pretty good about my ability to communicate and make a good impression. The first family I visited was really warm and welcoming. They helped me finish sentences when I could not think of the right word, and referred to me as "Teacher Lexi"(in Chinese). At the second family I visited, the mother kept complimenting my Chinese, saying how well I spoke. In response to which, the father said "she's okay. there still seem to be a bunch of words that she doesn't really know how to use." Fair point. I still have a long way to go. But the fact that I can pretty much always get my point across one way or another (sometimes after a series of mumbles, restarts, and hand gestures), means that my main objective (communication) is being accomplished.
Chinese kids are also really funny and honest. The little girl in the family I met last night was slightly appalled by the density of my arm hair. She told her mom, "Mama, you can see foreigner's arm hair, but you can't see ours." She also noticed that our noses were different and our hair different colors. Her mother asked me if it was true that in foreign countries families could have more than one kid. When I said yes, she said something like, "well, that's nice, isn't it."
So I have gotten a nice start on this daunting task. Hopefully as I get more and more comfortable with this process I will stop saying so many silly sounding and grammatically incorrect things and work on my comedic timing when telling cultural misunderstanding anecdotes. For example, there is a great one about a Chinese mom heating up a cup of milk for her foreign student (Chinese people like to drink warm milk) and then the student being puzzled, and putting the milk into the fridge to cool it off (as American custom dictates) and then the mother being confused and reheating the milk, and the American in turn putting it in the fridge again.
I will probably be visiting 3-4 families a week for the next 2 months. While it is much harder for me to do this job than it would be for a Chinese person, I also think that there are some positives for both sides. For the Chinese family, they get to have a foreigner come visit their home and get a little taste of what it will be like if they end up hosting a student this summer. They get to stare at me and ask me questions and have me explain why I do not have pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. For me, I get to practice speaking Chinese with people who really want to understand, who compliment my language skills, even when I may not deserve it, and I get to hang out with really interesting Chinese families in their homes. I might have a different perspective on this whole process after I have visited 20-30 families (instead of my current 3). Either way, it is crazy that this is my job. It is also crazy that I have been in this country for 8 months, that I only have about 3-ish months left, and that before I know it I will be back in the good 'ol US of A...