Breaking The Shackles

So yea, I almost passed out after they took the blood out... Don't know why, but that's what happened. So we've had to go to two different Police Stations, we got asked "personal" information for a residential permit, which mainly consisted of facial features and religious beliefs. Lots of going places to get different permits and things but I think we've done everything now. The people at the school have been very helpful in getting all that done.

On average I have about 1 or 2 classes per day on the weekdays (Mon/Tue off), and on the weekends I have 2 or 3 classes. Most of the classes I'm going on their 3rd class this week. One of my classes was taken away from me, because I accidentally got my times mixed up and let them go 15 mins early. The parents complained, and the DoS decided to sit in on my 2nd class with them. He gave me positive feedback, but in the end decided to hand the class over to a more experienced teacher, which I was fine with. Chinese parents can be very demanding sometimes. I've been observing other teachers, but for some reason I'm told that I've only send "bad" classes. Which can be a downer sometimes.

In my last post I made it sound negative about the job... And to be honest, I don't really like it yet. The reason is that it's not really a school, but more like a company. The school doesn't get any government funding, so for income they solely rely on the "tuition" of the parents paying for their kids and/or themselves. Because of this, we become more like entertainers first, rather than teachers. Students don't really want to be here, and are being forced to come in addition to their regular school, which I'm told is not that pleasant. So the kids are looking forward to playing games or something of that nature. I don't agree with this at all, and it upset me quite a bit. I'd rather teach, then play games... Sure you can teach THROUGH games, but that doesn't appear to be working very well, or I simply haven't gotten the skill down yet. Another thing, Chinese people cheat. Not like other nationalities don't, but the Chinese will tell you they cheat and give you the attitude like what are you going to do about it. They won't even hide it, they'll do it with you standing right there.

There are simply a lot of frustrating things that were mis-interpreted when reading the job-description. I was looking forward to a teaching environment, but instead I'm in more of a circus environment. I'm looking forward to the year being over it...

There is a Chinese national holiday the first week of October, so we (all the teachers) will be getting some time off... It's like 5 or 7 days, not sure which.

Life is pretty routine here: Wake up, maybe shower, go to work, pre-pare for classes, get on internet, teach classes, maybe go out with some of the teachers after class, go home, eat, watch a movie, go to sleep, wash, rinse, repeat...

I really hate my pillow - I only have one, I'm used to sleeping with 4... It's tiny too... I used one of those sleeping blindfolds tonight, and it worked out quite well. One thing about being here is that it's always pretty bright outside, either w/ sunlight, or the lights of the city... There are quite a few windows in the apartment too, so sometimes it can be difficult to sleep... There also appears to be fireworks on almost a nightly basis. I'll be sitting there and then I'll hear some boom sounds, I'll get up and look out the window to see fire works going off in the distance. That's pretty nice, but they aren't very special ones either. Maybe it's testing of the day's products produced? Hard to say...

More to come later