China honsety

So I just talked to the center manager. I'm taking my medical leave as of November 15, and with flights that will put me stateside on the 16th. It's going to be a disaster coming back, because I have about 5 legs. I fly from HohHot to Beijing. Beijing to Shanghai. Shanghai to LA. LA to Chicago. Chicago to Dulles airport in DC. But it was the cheapest way that I could get in that matched with my parents times in availabilities to come home.

It's going to be the first time I'm home in nearly two years, which is a landmark in itself. While I'm excited to be able to be home for a holiday and spend time with family, at the same time I'm incredibly nervous. I've been away for two years. I'm a nervous wreck now, but certainly not the nervous wreck who first boarded the plane in February 2010.

There are things in China that I've seen that I certainly can't blog about, nor would my family actually understand what I've seen or what I've been through. Nobody needs to know what the hospitals are like here. It's driving my parents mad that I refuse to see their suggested doctor in Beijing. However, after spending 2 days in a Chinese Hospital, I've vowed never again. Especially the night I had to have Scott, and our security guard, Star stay with me. After that horrid 48 hour excursion, I vowed never again. Things that people would never actually understand unless they were here to witness it themselves. The level of grime in the bathrooms, how they made Scott sleep in the same bed as me as I was throwing up blood after kicking him out of another bed, not changing the sheets before they put another patient in the same room. There's no way in hell I'm going to get better here with those conditions, especially since they denied they fact I had a previous medical condition that was found and stated on my health forms even before I entered the country. This is crap you get as you live a third world country.

China's still very much third world. Africa isn't third world, I wouldn't even rank that on any scales, as much of the populations don't even live by the sub-standards as the people in China, Russia I'd also put into the same category as China. Things you have to see to actually understand. If you read Lost on Planet China, I'd say that book gives pretty much the most accurate portrayal of what China's actually like.

People wonder why I don't blog as frequently. It's not that I don't like China. Before I came to China, my parent's neighbor, Bill Rowe, a Chinese History professor at Hopkins, best described how one would feel about China: it's very much a love hate relationship; and he spent ten years living in various parts of China. It is very much a love hate relationship. While I have no real intentions of spending ten years here, mostly because I envision the country crashing and burning in about 7 and I want to be out well before then.

I certainly love my network here. Scott has become very much my brother away from home, I could never put into words what this man has done for me in the last 6 months. Crystal, the Chinese language teacher I had in Shenyang, has been much more of a language teacher. My painting teacher Master Ma, has had me flourish and hone my painting skills far beyond I would have expected in 5 months. Annette, who keeps me grounded and civilized. Peggy, who reminds me daily of things I need to continue to work on to become a respectable and decent adult. Tommy and Shauna, a young married couple, who regularly include me in a lot of their family events. They however, also remind me daily, why I'm thankful my parents have blessed me with American citizenship, something many of us take for granted on a daily basis. A network that's taken me over 18 months to build, but certainly is something I've done on my own, and certainly was something I wasn't accomplishing on my own living in my childhood bedroom, working minimal hours at my dream job, while cooking and cleaning for my parents, since I certainly didn't have enough money to break out on my own.

I take pride in the connections that I've made since I've been in China. China hasn't been an easy ride and there have been many nights I've cried myself to sleep, only wishing to go to the airport the next morning to board the next plane home. I've made many mistakes since I've been here, and at the end of the day, I'm forced to address these problems head on by myself. But I've spent nearly 28 years running from my problems. I still dart from a lot of the issues I've come across here, but in time, they sit there and mock me until I deal with them.

This time, I have to go home to deal with it though. I've denied since January that I should really have the Western world fix what the Eastern world can't. Don't get me wrong. I'm terrified. I've grown accustomed to many of the shocking items that compromise China, and to be honest, a lot of them aren't even shocking anymore. That tells me I need to come back for some perspective. I've built the nice network I mentioned above. I've grown comfortable in a world that is far from comforting. Re-entering civilization scares me enough that I don't know if that after I go home, if I'll revert to what I was before and have trouble getting back to where I should be. I'll be talking to Scott regularly while I'm home, which will hopefully keep things in perspective, and he claims that if things fall through where I am now for coming back to work, he'll hire me at his new school in a heartbeat.

What I'm mostly afraid of is that in the time that I spend on my medical leave is that I'll forget the desires I have to continue to do what I think is important work. I love my students in HohHot. As much as I may be bitter about the process and the frustrations of dealing with Chinese management and parents, and in the end, how little power I have to do things, it is that little bit of power that I do have and the glimmer of hope that you give kids and the dreams you help instill in the kids to want to have them make something of themselves at a much larger scale than their country will offer them in the next seven to ten years.

If my bluntness of this post alarms you, I don't feel the need to apologize. There's the China that everybody sees, but China's very good at projecting a face that like a glass doll, quite elegant too look at, but full of cracks, and fragile to the human touch; after all, they bailed us out and prevented us from having another 1920's stock market crash, but that wealth is something that 99% of this country doesn't see. If you are interested in what the real China is, the Economist wrote a few articles recently that pretty much summarizes it to a T. The whole idea of Gendercide in China, an article that was published in the Economist in March 2010. Then there was one that was published back in August 2011 as well that discussed more of the economic status and development of the country.

There's a lot that people don't seem to understand of China. I'm not saying that I've become an expert of the country in the last 20 months that I've lived in China. If anything, these last 20 months have really altered my world view and understanding, something you can only get by actually experiencing a country first hand and long term. While much of the last months of my time in Shenyang became a distasteful view of China, the last 6 months have changed in the idea of while the situation in many cases may be crappy, but it's how willing one is to put up with gilded crap. It's all about appearances here, in hopes to give many other more countries an illusion of grandeur that may not actually be obtained for another 50-100 years. I wouldn't say that I'm bitter. I've had many up periods in China, but it certainly lives by that craptacular cliche of "not all that glitters is gold."

I'll certainly try to post more of my highlights while in China, but Readers, you also need to understand the frustrations of living in a third world country who can't seem how to properly manage itself beyond the image it wants to project.

ramndom

okay so it's been about a month since I've posted anything.

The news seems pretty boring. I'll just write.

The manager team of the school I moved to has chosen to leave. The Irish man, James, who was the man who originally hired me, was the director of studies at my point of hire. He hired me back in early March. I took the job in April, moved here in the beginning of May. At that point he switched his position to just being the senior teacher. He hired me mostly because he wanted help landing the Bank of Inner Mongolia. updated all of my banking lesson plans and pitched it and landed it. James decided he no longer wanted to be director of studies.

In the time between me being hired and coming to HohHot, Scott, a Canadian became the director of studies. He was the senior teacher, at the time I was hired, so it wasn't that he was a random addition, but it was the pair of these two that I moved to HohHot for. It's going to be awkward with out them since that was the primary reason I came here.

Classes are going relatively well. Still needing regular feedback from my teaching assistants as well as other staff. I am now teaching a lot of kindergarten aged kids, mostly because I have no shame in making an overall ass of myself.

I'm taking a painting class. Things with that are going well, as I had an art show about a month ago and James just paid me to do some paintings for holiday gifts.

My stomach has been giving me a lot of trouble since I've been in China. I've had a lot of issues mostly since January of last year. I'll be coming home to have this looked at. Don't really know how to feel about this. Will be home for Thanksgiving.

That's me in a nutshell.

update!

So The whole idea of consistently writing in a blog while in China has been an Epic fail endeavor, as now I've been in China for over a year and a half now and I have a total of 8 posts or some low number like that. However, I've been thinking, that I really do want to start this up more consistently now, as I'm on a far better routine.

I left Shenyang nearly 5 months ago, and moved to HohHot, Inner Mongolia, China. The city itself is pretty low end. The annual income is pretty minuscule for a lot of people who work here, however, also being the capital city of the province, there's a lot more going for it than a lot of the other cities in the province.

I've overall enjoyed the change. I've begun to enjoy teaching properly and am begining to flourish with teaching the young kids, to the point where they divided up one of my teenager classes so I could teach more kindergarten age children. The trick about working with 5 year olds is that you really have to have no shame in acting like a complete and utter douche.

I've made a decent friend, but at times I often do question my judgement in the idea of maintaining it, because at times it doesn't seem to be a decent friendship, but then at times, it surprises me.

I'd be curious to know what people are hoping to read as a I develop the blog further.

First post in 8 months

So I'm posting for the first time in 8 1/2 months and certainly a lot has changed since I have first gotten to China, let alone, Shenyang, where I've been residing for nearly 7 months.

I don't really know where to begin, because I'm sure that most of you know most of the story.

I left Huaibei, mostly because the school ended up not being what they said it was. Nor was the contract. I found that the other teachers that I was going to be with were going to follow far more of their own agenda. Don't get me wrong, now thatI've been in China for nearly 9 months now, I certainly want to follow my own agenda. They were certainly nice, but in the grand scheme of things, I was never going to last at that school. I knew that on day one. When what had taken me several hours to plan, only took 20 minutes in class. The classroom also had a massive hole that I fell into, and I just figuratively never got out of it. I still talk to two people from the city, and surprisingly, they aren't the other two foreign teachers. I found that the foreign teachers, certainly were helpful and in the three weeks I spent in Huaibei, I certainly owe them a lot. However, at the same time, it's not often in my life that I can honestly say that I quit a job. I talk to a friend that I met, who was a local and lived on the college campus, as well as one of my former students. Both of whom were my saving grace in that city.

I left on a midnight train to Harbin, where I took a TESOL course, where I got some better foundations of better classroom planning that I have certainly still used to this day. I also layed a foundation for a reasonable support group that I now certainly consider some of my better friends in China.

I now teach at a private language school in, Dongbei (northeast) China, in one of the larger cities, Shenyang. The population here is 10 million. I teach at an English First branch, and in all honesty, it certainly hasn't been easy. I thought I was ready in college to study abroad. Ooooh Snap, that was a bad choice. In all honesty, it has been my boss and my tesol friends who are also in the same city that have kept my sanity. I've had my fair share of difficulties, and in time, over the next seven months, I'm sure that things are not get any better, but I have a support group that will see me through it until the end.

I have lived with the same girl for the past 6 months of my contract, however, as of this Friday, after 27 years of living with people, I'm branching out on my own, not really sure what to think of that.

I'm hoping to start to posting here more reguarly now, but won't make any promises

Update

So I found out that blogs are in fact blocked in China. Basically any site in China where I can express any matter of opinion is blocked. I can still use Google, in which case I would have regular acess to my email. I am also considering instating a letter writing penpal type program, which I would be happy to send people letters, assuming that you would be willing to write me too. I could send out a mass email too, but those are so impersonal, and I crucially want regular contact with all my friends and family. The neighbor boys are already depressed that I'm leaving, as are their parents because it's lots of crazy fun baby sitting they get for a dirt cheap price and I burn a lot of their energy. I told them I would send them lots of post cards already so the boys have pictures they can share at school. May get a little sketchy, though, since my familarity with freedom of speech won't be as exercised. Although, I try to always speak with a cautionary errr to the wind.

In the mean time, I can still use the blog as a way to let all of you know how things are shaping up before my departure. For all I know I may have a friend or something update this while I'm over there with the updates I send them.

As far as what's going on the USA side of the Pacific, I got another email from Byron, the current USA citizen (please note that citizens of Canada, Mexico, Central and South America are all condsidered to be Americans, and it is offensive to them if you are a USA Citizen to refer to this country as America). He suggested that I bring my laptop, in which case I may put together some powerpoints especially since they have the acess for me to do it. I could use computers over there, but the keyboards and program/instructions in Chinese.

As far as the city itself, Huaibei doesn't have much musical events. Sometimes there are performences by students and locals, but nothing like ballet or opera. There is a museum that has some aparently has interesting things, perhaps some of the bronzes we saw described and my mother was salavating over. Also, there is a movie theater, but it mostly has Chinese movies and rarely has foreign ones. He claims that there are some beautiful parks and my apartment will be at the base of the mountain and apparently when I walk out my front door I'll be on a path that leads up the mountain. I think this means will have to bring my binoculars and get an Asian/China bird field guide, if I can find one.

As for banking, I can still access my account online from here, but its more difficult to get cash. It will probably be easier to set up an account with Bank of China, and I might be able to access your Bank of America account through there. Otherwise, he claims that Bank of China isn't too bad overall, just that he's learned its easy to get money into China, but difficult to get it out. The only way I've found to send money back to the States is using Western Union, which may be a problem when I decide I want to come home.

Electronics are easy to buy in Cina (go figure, since most of them are made there). I can find pretty much anything I need, but again this is probably since most electronics are made somewhere in China. However, I had asked him about buying a digtial SLR over there. I have a prototype I will be bringing over, and the one I own is getting old ( my point and shoot has a higher megapixle rating) but he said tobuy it before I come. I don't know though, he did claim that Chinese businesses do a terrible job, and most of the time don't understand the product they are selling and he claims that the Chinese still have yet to grasp the idea of product warranties. I would like some more options in case the protype isn't all that it's cracked up to be the past few weeks (and the lens I was given didn't seem to like the move from warm to cold, since the plastic rim around the lens screws melted/cracked off but still functions). I'm just looking for alternatives in case I decide I don't like it 3 months from this time frame. In the grand scheme of things, I'm thinking of possibly getting my kindle over there, but at the same time, I may want to see if I can figure it out before I get over there, since the intructions would be in Chinese, unless I ordered it from the British Amazon.

There isn't a strict dress code at the school, from his description, it seems like as long as I don't wear jeans, I think I'd be cool. It also looks like there is a taylor in town, who would know where I could get textiles. I think I'll look into updating some of my sweaters before I go over, and I'll bring some of my summer skirts, a few of my favorite t shirts for some casual wear and my usual buiness casual clothes (cordurys, blouses, sweaters, a few blazers...) I'll post soon on how my meeting with my friend who teaches ESOL.

email from Huaibei Normal

So I got an email from Byron, who is the other USA teacher at Huaibei Normal. I'm slowly sending him a few questions about teaching and living over there and planning on coming over. So Byron is a 26 year old from Salt Lake City. He has felt that Huaibei ias a very large city (but then again a small city in this province China is 10,000 people, which is certainly larger than a lot of US cities.) He also claims that the people are friendly, but foreigners are rare, so it's common for people to stare, follow you, and call you "Laowai", which means foreigner. He says, otherwise, the people are nice and they always want to talk with you, and help you if they can. UGGH At times, it seems much more appealing then my current situation where I'm not really connecting to people other than my parents and a few people who knew me before I could walk.

On the negative side, many of the social networking sites are blocked in China. Facebook is one of the sites I know of (also myspace, twitter and youtube, which I don't really use). I'm just hoping that Google isn't blocked or else I will have to find a new site to host a blog and email. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that I don't have to change anything on that one. MSN isn't blocked I do know that, since Byron uses hotmail...

As far as teaching and a teaching towards a syllubus, he claims that there isn't much of a syllabus. I would have an English book that I'm supposed to use for class, but he claims that most of the foreigners sit down and prepare out lessons together and are free to teach what they like, which is nice. I guess a this point, as long as I consider that the most important thing to do is to keep the students happy.

Apperently it is difficult to get books other than the classics in my city. I think I am going to bring a few over, but I think I may also invest in a kindle, assuming that Amazon is not blocked. I just find my ability to read Chinese in a year an extremly hopeful wish. With the quantity I read, it may be a sound investment, assuming I can get kindle books. This way I don't necessairly have to travel to Bejiing or Shenghai everytime I want to update my reading material. On the plus side, DVDs are cheap, so I think it would be a safe bet to leave my movie collection at home.

I'm trying to figure out if there is a taylor in town that I can have make clothes for me. Chinese fabrics are stunning, and instead of updating my wardrobe with things I may not even be allowed to wear once I get over there, may be incredibly stupid. I'm in between sizes, anyways, clothes are hard to find for me, they are either baggy or tight. I'd rather have clothes that fit me properly. My dad swears by the shirts he gets from his Hong Kong taylors.

I also went to the dentist today, and I've got to go back on Monday to repair some wear on my teeth and I've apparently started to grind my teeth at night. In the 18 months since I had been to the dentist, I had done a good amount of damage and enamel wear on my front teeth. I went to the eye doctor yesterday and updated my glasses, sunglasses, and contacts. I had some tests done to make sure that I didn't have glaucoma or tumors or anything, basically make sure that my eyes were healthy. I still have one last doctors appointment and series of blood work tests to do (which is more for our records before I go), the follow up dentist appointment (which also wasn't required for the visa, but we just thought would be smart) getting my hair re-styled, and picking up my glasses and I'm set with appointments...

I'm meeting with our family friend to review some of her text books and lesson plans tommorrow, so I can begin to think about taking what I have in mind a step further. I've been toying with using my photography for certain lesson plans. We'll see, because it depends how well I can use powerpoint over there too. The neighbor also teaches Chinese History at Hopkins. I'm trying to arrange meetings with him. We'll see.

contract, process

So the past few weeks have been quite busy with plans on getting to China. I've had my physical, as I was getting my records from the various doctors I've seen over the years I realized that some of my records were well over ten years (my eyes, certain blood work tests, etc) and then there were certain tests that I needed to get done, for instance I don't know what my exact corrected vision is, since I've had the same perscription since my sophomore year in college? Making appointments and squeezing things in over time has been busy, and the time frame has been short, since a lot of this is dependant on geting my work permit.

I have also been talking to Tony, the Foreign director of the school I'm going to a lot, just to clear the air on what specifically I will be teaching, the hours I would be teaching, the textbook I would be using and my abilities or desires to stray from the text if I so choose, alternative media and so forth. We needed to address my living situation, my payment (how frequently, how much, how much I would be able to transfer a month into my U.S. savings account) and vacations, how I would be compensated for those, and the ever so much of health care (how I was insured, what benefits I got over there, doctor visits, ability to see specalists if I need too [GYN, orthopedic for my semi annual check for range of motion] optical, dental, etc. We had a contract drawn up, had the school verify the conditions, had our family lawyer veryfiy the conditions, signed it, scanned it and sent it back off. I am officially employed, it's just a matter of finalizing my visa and work permit. The center I will be going through is going to be booking my airline tickets.

I'm also meeting with a family friend who teaches english as a second language to immigrants in the area. I have been touching base with her and browsing some of her books in a hope to get some lesson planning done before I get over there. It doesn't seem like I will serve as an assistant at all, but will have some basic training when I get there. I will also have a translator for when I am out of the classroom, but for the most part I will be on my own. I have the contact information from an USA citizen that is currently teaching there.

I'm also hoping to plan a summer excursion in my 50 day vacation, whether it be to the Forbidden City, Gobe Desert, maybe I'd visit Maria in Sweeden, or Jen in India, or quite possibly an ornithological research, assuming that Bruce Beehler is going somewhere or knows of a CI project in the area. I'm hoping to do some good while there, since I've been out of college, I've seem to rack up more in the negative side than postive. Let's just hope this trip is as epic and worthwile as I am hoping. On the plus side, my mom and dad were possibly going to visit in the summer, my sister over the thanksgiving holiday, and if my brother goes to Russia to study abroad, it may look like I will get a trip into Russia or possibly Belarus, depending on when Brendan gets over, and where he wants to go. I'd be happy with either one really.