My resolution this year is to spend more time writing. The original goal was to update more than once a week, and to get increasingly in-depth on various subjects. While I certainly have a lot of opinions about what I've been experiencing, and have a seemingly endless well of events to report on, I fear that this blog has more-or-less become a simple summary of the things I do or see every week.
Sure, I somehow manage to regurgitate 5,000-10,000 words per week, but going back and reading some of my own post reveals a lack of that desired depth.
So: Resolutions for 2015:
1. Write more often! Once a week does not seem to be enough, even if my weekly posts are long enough to make up for the gaps between
2. Do more 'specialty' posts. Some ideas I have so far are doing a post summarizing all of the bizarre nonsense I have eaten in China, doing a post featuring a minute-by-minute replay of how I structure my classes, and doing some more practical posts.
3. In line with the last bit of number 2, I want to expand this blog's purpose to include actual practical advice for traveling around mainland China. Bus numbers, restaurant names and locations, etc.
4. More Chinese! I've found that the phrasebooks that I spent a pretty penny on before coming here have been largely useless. If someone finds this blog and reads it, I want them to be able to learn some actual phrases that they will use every single day.
So, in the spirit of the new year, and because I've all my missed my own self-established deadlines for posting this week, I am going to keep this one short and sweet! I'll even try to write another post in a few days.
This week was very quiet. We returned from Taiwan and had another very short week. With all of our oral classes cancelled, and most of our other classes rescheduled, the foreign teacher crew just sort of took it easy.
We all only had 1 or 2 lessons this week, and I personally didn't even get to see all of my students. With such a ramshackle schedule it seemed pointless to start anything new, but with Christmas over there were no more holiday lessons to give. The resulting classes were a mixture of review and just random time-wasting type stuff.
It's frustrating when you want to be a good teacher, and when you want to teach an entire language to these children, but then outside forces get in the way. Most damningly is when the outside forces come from the school itself. I know enough about children, and remember being a kid well enough, to know that if you have 5 days off of school, then two days of school, then five days off of school again that you are not going to remember very much about the lessons during those days sandwiched between long fun breaks. The time was better spent having fun and building rapport with the class, and reviewing a few older topics.
Our New Years Holiday was, as typical in China, sort of a misnomer. They "gave us" January 1-3 off, even though January 3 was a Saturday and we would have had it off anyway. Also, since they were "giving us so many days off" they scheduled us to come and work a full day on Sunday the 4th of January anyway. What a joke! I'm completely used to this by now, but it doesn't make it any easier.
New Years came and went with a similar lack of hoopla. I came down with one of the worst migraines of my life during the day (I blame the pollution) and went right to bed after work. I almost slept through midnight! Laura managed to rouse me from my slumber in time, though, and we watched the New Year's ceremony in Beijing up on the 7th floor with some of the other boys.
This was my first NY away from the US. While that knowledge caused a bit of a stir in my emotions, after surviving Christmas and Thanksgiving away from home, New Years did not cause nearly as much of an upset.
Our Saturday was spent working in Zhaoqing, where I had a lovely little breakdown. As wonky and goofy as Foshan is, Zhaoqing is even more ridiculous. No resources, smaller classrooms, children that have even less of an interest in behaving. It's just so much worse. After 4 weeks of driving all the way out there to work on one of my days off, I finally had it. Our "boss" has been trying to weedle her way out of paying the amount of money she agreed to pay us, even though we are doing her a huge favor and covering for a person who was deported because of a mistake that she made. Four weeks of BS and now they don't want to pay us? I announced that I was quitting on the spot. Right in the middle of the day.
It was a total lapse of professional judgement, and I am embarrassed to say that I really lost my cool. It was only with the sound judgement of Laura and our Greek friend/coworker Hercules that I was able to calm down and see reason. We negotiated with our boss and got her to officially agree to pay us, and I was able to reassure myself that we only have to do three more weekends there. I won't be happy about it, but I can do this. I am not a quitter (although I nearly was for just a second there).
January brings a lot of work and not much else. Thanks to our part-time situation in Zhaoqing and also our "You have to work on Sunday to make up for all the lost time that this holiday affords you" situation, Laura and I are working for 8 straight days through to January 10th. It's really just a big countdown to my birthday for me, which signals the beginning of the month long February holiday.
We are also choosing to forgo a lot of our usual expenditures this month in effort to save some money before the big drip. So not only are we working more than usual, with no reprieve in sight, we are also choosing not to go out or buy any snacks or go to any restaurants for 30 days.
Wake me up at the end of the month!
January 5th was my 4 year anniversary with Laura. We celebrated by taking a very brief break from our "don't spend any money" resolution and going out for dinner. It's hard to believe I've been with her for 4 years. I'm still sort of surprised she was willing to come to China with me for a year, for that matter. It was a big commitment, and I am thankful that I have had her full and total support as always. Living together in a foreign country for a year, with only one another for friends/family/company is a huge leap for any relationship. We are literally the only other people we know for several thousands of miles. We have each other out here and that's it. It has made us closer in a lot of ways, and not just because our whole first month was spent in a hotel room where the toilet was 2 feet from the bed.
If you can find a partner in life who is willing to travel around the world with you, sit on 14 hour plane rides with you, eat snake and stinky tofu with you, and be the only person who can deal with all of your idiosyncrasies, then I think you've found a keeper.
Here's to another four years!
Ps. Only one picture this week (told you it's been quiet).
This is China in a single picture. Every day from 12-2:30pm, the entire country has a siesta time. Everyone DROPS to the ground wherever they are standing like some sort of sci-fi movie. This dude couldn't even make it to the shaded bench area that was 5 feet away from him. At least he took his shoes off.
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