Me. I do. I leave for China in one week starting today. I take a 1 and a half hour flight from Minneapolis to Chicago, then I sit around at the airport for 2 hours, then I take a 13 and a half hour flight to Beijing. After that I learn how to be a teacher for a month (lol right?) and take a train ride down to Shenzhen to teach kids how to be Americans. The distance between Beijing and Shenzhen is roughly equivalent of the distance between Minneapolis to Albuquerque.
FAQs:
Where will you be?
Shenzhen. It’s right here:
The city was suddenly created in 1980 by China to test different economic theories in an enclosed, safe environment. Also to act as a buffer to Hong Kong’s influence on the rest of mainland China. It used to be a little village, then it grew to a ridiculously huge metropolis of 10 million people.
1983 (photos by Leroy W Demery, shown to me by Colin):
Now, 26 years later, it looks like this:
A rather amazing transformation to say the least. If nothing else, communists really know how to get stuff done (albeit at the expense of many, many, many other things).
Who will you be teaching?
I don’t know. High school, junior high, or elementary school kids. There are 30 high schools, 40 junior high, and 50 elementary schools. Statistically that means I’m more likely to get the older kids, but not much. I won’t find out until near the end of training who I’ll be teaching. They sort of watch and test you while you’re training to see who will fit best where. Not only that but sometimes the school will request a change at the last minute because they wanted a woman teacher (the reserved housing for the teacher was in the girls dormitory) or they don’t want a black person (they’re openly racist in China and many other asian countries). I won’t have a problem though cause I’m white and they love us/want to take my money because I’m a wealthy American.
Where will you be staying/how much money will you make?
I get 5000 RMB a month, which is like $730 (which adds up to like $5.40 an hour), minus taxes. However, I get basic health care, my plane tickets reimbursed, classes in speaking Mandarin, and a free apartment. These benefits clearly add up to a sizeable chunk of change, so I’m not particularly displeased with the pay. Not only that, but things are cheaper in China so the money has a little more buying power than in the US.
The apartment is provided by the school I’ll be teaching at. I might have a roommate, I might not (doubt it, I’ll totally have a roommate) but no matter what I get my own bedroom. I’m provided with a television, air conditioning, a kitchen area, a washing machine, and a western toilet.
What I get:
What everyone else gets:
haha got you lol.
Just kidding, they don’t look like that, they look like this:
Do you know any Chinese?
Yes. I know how to say “Yes” “Thank you” and “I love you”. Clearly I will do well in the massage parlors.
Will you learn Chinese while you’re there?
I mean… well… yeah… I would certainly hope so. I’ll be taking classes in Mandarin and be surrounded by the language so after I’m done there I should come out like Humpty Dumpty (white on the outside yellow on the inside).
How long will you be there?
The contract lasts for 10 months, but my roundtrip plane ticket doesn’t require me to use it for 12 months. I plan on pushing it pretty close to a year. If I don’t like my stay there I guess it’s possible that I could come back around January or something, but I doubt that I’ll do that. I’m going to go through the usual culture shock for the first couple months, but I’m sure I can eventually just learn to deal with it and it’ll be fine.
Will you be working on animation while you’re over there?
I guess I could. I don’t know really. I mean I should, definitely, I just spent four years learning how to do it right, I should keep my skills up, but I dunno. I’m slowly slowly starting to feel like I might be into doing it again. I just need really long breaks in between when I do animations cause I’m lame and seem to burn out way harder than anyone else I know. I have quite a bit of respect for my friends who are able to just hop back into it again. Takes me a while though, it’s a really big drain. I might start doing it again once I gain a sense of normalcy over there and start getting into a daily routine. I have a number of ideas and styles I would like to try out, but no concrete stories yet (which is somewhat troubling, but I’ll come up with something eventually).
How often will you be able to update your website/blog?
I really don’t know. My contract states that I have access to the internet, but who knows what that means? Could be 56k for all I know. Not only that, but who’s to say it’s wireless, or even if it’s available in my room? It might be that I have to go to a different place on campus to gain access to the net.
Not only that, but I’m going to be in mainland China. That means I will have no facebook, no blogger (thus the creation of this wordpress blog), no flicker, no youtube, no twitter, no wikipedia, etc. Basically if it’s fun, free, and useful on the internet, I can’t have it. Sorry to say that I’m going to miss out on a lot of ePop culture because of this, but that’s life. I’ll certainly try to stay in the loop whenever someone sends me something, but in all likelihood I’ll be having to use proxies to get around both the school’s firewall and a national firewall. It’ll be tough.
How can we contact you?
You can IM me, call me, or email me. I’m happy to receive them all because I will be quite lonely there for a while I’m sure. Just be aware of the 13 to 14 hour time difference. When you’re awake, I’m asleep. When you’re drunk dialing me from your friend’s party, I’m teaching class. If I didn’t give you my new phone number then email me and I can shoot it out to you.
Also, when you call me from your phone, you’re actually calling Skype on my computer. To you it will sound like any number and you can leave messages and stuff, but it’s actually my computer and if I don’t have skype up and running, then I’m not going to get your phone call immediately. It does automatically email me ten minutes after someone leaves a message however, so if I’m around and on the internet I would hope I should be able to promptly return your call.
When do you leave?
August 2: The sequel to August 1. I catch the plane at like 8:15am. Sucks.
Anyway I’ll try to update as much as I can, but like I said, who knows what my internet will be like. I’m hoping I’ll be able to post pictures of all the pandas, dragons, and chop suey that I come across for you. You can also do an RSS feed cause I know you’ll be hanging on my every word. I don’t know how that stuff works though, so good luck figuring it out.
More updates coming soon!
