You Dim Sum You Lose Some: Week 33 and 34: I am Still Here

Now allow me to tell the tale of readjusting to life and work in China.

This will effectively bring us up to the present.

One caveat, however. This is not a nice update. This is not an update with gloss or glitz. I will try and be positive and humorous as I always do, but more than anything else this update is about the real China. The big reality of what it's like to be here and to have 4 months left to go. I want to talk about the things that I've been afraid to truly mention and reticent to share.

Let's begin:

After what was probably the worst flight of my entire life, we were back in Guangzhou. Gone was the quiet tranquility of a city abandoned. Everyone and their mother had come home, and south China was broiling at full capacity with the movement of a few hundred million people.

Our apartment, unsurprisingly, was completely untouched. No repairs had been done, and another two weeks worth of mold growth were there to greet us when we opened the door. I had had just about enough of this crap. Jason, our wonderful roommate, was still acting like nothing was wrong. He couldn't be made to understand why layers and layers of mold on every single piece of clothing, wall, and furniture was a bad thing. "It's okay!", he repeated like a broken record, "there is mold like this all over Guangdong province! The weather here is no good".

Angel, our wonderful boss, was just as unhelpful. She said that the workers would come whenever they were able and paint over the mold so we wouldn't have to look at it anymore. At this point, the last shred of sanity is gone. At this point, I'm done being nice.

I started making demands. It's bad enough that we have to live in the mold pile, but now there are going to be construction workers coming in? I asked if there was somewhere that we could stay in the meantime. Another apartment or a hotel or something. Angel said that even though the holiday is over with, construction workers in China are still on holiday for another few weeks. Why is this? Who knows. I asked if she was aware of any other construction workers in China. She said that she would try her best.

The next day we started work again. One silver lining to all of this is that we didn't have any class requirements on the first day. We got to acclimatize without having to have any lessons.

We were all looking forward to spending the day making lessons for the next week or so. Of course, the Internet wasn't working at all. I suppose this was a long time coming. For the last several months our Internet speeds have been tanking. By now the crawl had come to a full stoppage. Without Internet we are basically useless at work, because we don't have any other resources to plan lessons. The children are all so terrible at English that to even muddle through the simplest of lessons requires a whole gaggle of pictures and videos.

Since China loves to kick me while I'm down, Angel appeared out of nowhere and said "COME ON LET'S GO!". She apparently decided to get Laura and I a hotel to stay in while they do construction in the apartment. This was a nice gesture, I suppose, if I hadn't had to fight tooth and nail to get anything. Angel said that the reason we were being given a hotel at all was because they had to almost completely tear out the bathroom. They thought we'd enjoy having a working toilet for a few days.

Pulled away from the work I was unable to do anyway, and also missing lunch in the process, we piled into the school's car and went to the hotel. The hotel did not look too shabby from the outside, and I was actually surprised. Halfway through the check in process, however, Jason told the concierge that the room was for Laura and I.

Suddenly, the concierge started shaking his head and waving his hands. "NO FOREIGNER ALLOWED. THIS HOTEL NO FOREIGNER". We were barred entry from this hotel because we were foreigners. Angel was shocked; apparently she had never heard of this all-too-common practice in China. In reality, a lot of hotels are like this. Any guide book or travel site warns potential visitors to check ahead before entering the country

With no other places planned, we just milled around the parking lot for half an hour while Jason searched on his phone for other hotels in Foshan. He eventually found one that allows foreigners to darken their doorsteps.

The "Vienna Hotel" was located about halfway between our normal apartment and our school. It was actually a lot nicer than I thought it was going to be, and when they asked if this was acceptable I told them that it would be fine.

I had no idea how long we were supposed to be staying in this hotel, obviously, and neither Angel nor Jason could tell us how long it would take to repair our apartment. They bought us a week at the hotel, "just in case".

Jason informed me that he had used an online coupon to book the hotel, and as such there were some strange rules that we had to follow. Every single morning, before noon, we would have to check out of the hotel and then re-check into the hotel. This was so that we would always get the deal price on the hotel. It made me feel really special and valued to learn that they went to the absolute cheapest hotel possible, and then only agreed to let us stay there because they had a coupon.

We dropped off our few days-worth of clothes and went back to work just in time to be done for the day.

After finishing our first day of work, in which we were utterly prevented from doing any work, it was time to go back to the hotel. We spent all night making lesson plans for the next day of work.

The rest of the week was frustrating as well. They dropped a few bombs on us unexpectedly. For example, we have to do an "open lesson" at the end of March. Similar to the Zhaoqing school, the open lesson basically means that the parents are allowed to come and observe a lesson. Since nobody is ever genuine in anything they do here, it is all a big ruse. We were told that we would have to prepare a lesson ahead of time, the best and most fun lesson we've ever had, and rehearse the heck out of it with the kids.

Over these last two weeks there have been innumerable instructions regarding these enigmatic open lessons. There is always more and more requirements. We need to have every child in the class give a little bit of a speech, and we're also supposed to have them perform a song. They need to rehearse everything well enough to do it perfectly, but also the lessons are supposed to be a surprise. We were told that we should make the lesson Easter-themed, but now that everyone has prepared an Easter lesson they have been acting disappointed and angry that we are all doing the exact same thing.

I could attempt to outline each and every plan change that has been laid on us, but it would tiresome and tedious. Needless to say, it has been perhaps the worst two weeks of work so far.

Before the big "open lesson" day, we have to have an official practice lesson with our boss and the principal supervising. To make matters worse, there is another sports day of some kind, and another dance recital of some kind all coming up. We've all had several of our classes, including the official demo open lessons, cancelled and rescheduled. As it lays now, most of us now have extra classes to teach next week, on top of the 50-hours or so work of work we will already be doing.

By the middle of the week, we were out of clean clothes and had to go back to our apartment for some fresh stuff. Coming into the apartment in the middle of the work zone was a bad idea. The workers had completely DESTROYED the entire place. They splattered this brown paint stuff all over the apartment. There was paint on the walls, on the ceiling, and on the floor in every single room. It was even in rooms that there was no work going on in. There was chalky dust stuff everywhere, which is the majority of what the apartment walls are made of.

Jason informed me that the work was not going as scheduled, and that we would have to continue living in the hotel for the time being.

At this point, the hotel had lost a lot of its luster. Come to find out, the entire hotel was under construction. I guess this is why they got such a good deal. There was loud work going on all over the building, and a lot of stuff didn't work. There was also a different construction zone going on outside the hotel. Jackhammers started at 6am every single morning except for Saturday and Sunday, when it started at 7am. The drain in our shower was also completely clogged.

In the end we ended up staying there for 10 full days. The final product looks pretty decent, although I'm not sure how good the repair job is. There is still an insane amount of moisture in our apartment. Our clothes are all wet all of the time and we can't get them dried no matter what we do. Jason says that it's very normal in Foshan, so we shouldn't worry about wearing cold, wet, wrinkled things all the time.

Also they cut all the power in Laura's bedroom. It's been about 5 days now and they've still not fixed that.

On a related note, Jason has officially lived with us for 7 months now. He wasn't supposed to live with us at all, you may recall. They initially said he was going to stay with us for one weekend to help get us acquainted. Then we were told it was just for a few weeks. After that the story was that Jason's other accommodations don't have air conditioning and that he would move out when it wasn't hot anymore. Once winter hit, we were told that his accommodations were under construction until the end of February. We were promised that he would be gone be March 1st, but then he had to stay and oversee all the repairs.

Our first weekend back there was nothing going on, so we literally just sat in our hotel room and worked on lesson plans (since the Internet still doesn't work at all at work).

This weekend was Laura's birthday weekend, and so we tried to do some nice things. We were stymied at literally every single turn, though! All of our favorite restaurants and stores seem to have mysteriously gone out of business since January. The places that we ended up going made really bad food, and then I had one Chinese beer on Friday night and ended up puking for almost 14 hours straight!

It wasn't all bad, though. We had a few great evenings with our friends and coworkers. No matter how bad it gets here, having a few friends here always makes things better. They are pretty much the only reason why I haven't quit already. Not only would I miss them, but I'm pretty sure that they would just be given all my classes and made to work twice as hard for no extra thanks or pay.

This post is very difficult for me. I don't want to turn this blog into a complaining blog. That may seem ironic at this point. I feel like all of my stories are complaining stories. But that is not entirely a coincidence. Things have been steadily getting worse and worse, and I am getting much worse and looking past it all. One can only look for so many silver linings before they realize that they are absolutely drenched in a thunderstorm.

The truth is that I kind of hate it here. I haven't always hated it here, but I've definitely hated it here since Halloween. Overall I do not regret making the decision to come here, but I regret coming here almost every single day.

I also don't want to appear weak or less-than my best. I know that only a few people read this blog, but they are all people whose opinions I value and care about. I am worried that if I let my true feelings about China and my time here shine through, that everyone will think less of me.

March has not been the first time that I've considered just throwing in the towel and going home. Even on the best days, this experience has been very different from what we were promised. I feel as though every single thing that our recruiter told us, and everything in our contract has either been a deliberate lie or a purposeful exaggeration.

Speaking of the contract, I have read through it recently and it made me laugh. The school has broken almost every single promise that they have made to us. The contract indicates that we are not supposed to work on weekends, or after five. The contract also says that we would never have to work more than 40 hours in a week.

But still, I am afraid to give up. I don't want to be seen as a quitter. I don't want to disappoint my new friends, or make my friends and family at home feel ashamed of me. I know that I have it within me to finish this job, but I don't know what the benefits of sticking through to the end will be. I don't think there I will feel any kind of major accomplishment. There will be no reward for finishing, aside from the rest of our meager salary. I am not sure that I will ever be able to use this job as a reference, since Angel is very difficult to contact outside of mainland China. Even if someone did contact her, I honestly do not think she would have anything positive to say about me. Angel very clearly resents Laura and I, and how much money we have cost her.

This isn't like running the marathon, something that also very difficult for me. This is a different animal altogether.

I'm rambling now. This whole post probably won't make me look very good, but I really want to be honest. I think these feelings are a very important of my story here. It's very easy to simplify things for Internet consumption. Everyone loves to post the pictures and the good news, and filter out the rest. Or, some people like to be dramatic and only share the bad things. Real life is always a lot more complicated, and over here that still remains true. There have been some really great moments and I have tried to share all those, but there are a ton of really awful ones as well. There's also a lot of mind-numbingly dull moments too.

One of my major goals in coming here and being a teacher was to make a difference in someone's life. Unfortunately this school actively works against me being able to do that. We are always having classes cancelled, rescheduled, or overridden. When we do have our normal classes, we are always forced to add things like Chinese songs and dances, and basically to do things which undermine any potential knowledge gains. At this point, one of my major goals is to compile accurate documentation so that I can share what this job is actually like to any potential future employees.

It's not all bad all the time, and I think there is definitely a "kind of person" that would thrive here, but I don't think that I am that kind of person. I think that any future employees deserve a full disclosure of every single thing that will get thrown at you here. The bosses and our recruiter in Michigan are either incapable or unwilling to do that, and so I have nominated myself as the best person for the job.

This whole post is kind of a mess, but I think that accurately reflects my life right now, so I'm just going to go ahead and end it here. This is what China has done to me. Hopefully next week is better.

Here are some awesome pictures: