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Published: August 6th 2007
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So...we haven't been very good at keeping ya'll updated. This blog will attempt to give you a perspective of the day to day grind (If you can call 16 teacher hours per week a grind.)
So, the month of June. Another month has passed. We are basically half done with this shindig. Wow, has
time flown.
Work. Our big project for the next couple of weeks is training the Chinese staff at a foreign company, Kulicke and Soffa. We have moved from general English training more towards oral English. Many of our
Chinese counterparts have studied English for 10+ years. Their learning--unfortunately--doesn't involve
many speaking opportunities. They have studied grammar and sentence structure. Ekk. So many of them are completely fluent as far as reading and e-mail writing. But...the speaking really gives them trouble.
So thats where we come in 😊 We design speaking classes for them and try our best to speak as little
as possible. We choose a subject, like shopping, discrimination, honesty, life experiences. Then, we
type out some useful phrases and words for the lesson (so they can prepare beforehand). Then, we include
some discussion questions. Ely likes to do role-play with the beginners. For
the upper-level students, Aaron stages debates. Can't really say whether or not we are true English teachers, since all we do is try to facilitate speaking. I guess maybe we are more like referrees. We don't do much if they are doing well. Some lessons we leave the room thinking, "I am getting paid for this?" It doesn't feel too much like a job. I
guess that is an ok feeling. So, we have 2 beginner classes, 3 intermediate classes, and 1 advanced class. We will spend 40 hours with each class. The classes meet twice a week for 2 hours a session. Its nice when you are continually meeting with a group. They are more forgiving when you make mistakes or hold a bad class.
Lately we have been spending most of our working time at this company. Due to the fact that they are a
foreign company, they have foreign machines in the breakroom--most notably a Swiss made coffee maker.
Espressos every day for us ---hooray.
As some of you know, after 6 months of this work, both of us have come to the conclusion that teaching is not "our calling." Some people would teach for
free, citing the joy of helping others as compensation
enough. This definately isn't us. We view it as a means to an end. We can be in a new country, travel
around a bit, meet international friends, and have a couple checkmarks off our lifelist. The pay isn't bad
either. Though $200 weekly pay compares roughly to the McDonalds hashbrown flipper back home, it affords us, relatively speaking, "the good life." The idea of living abroad is becoming more and more
attractive. Some of our expat friends work for foreign companies. The foreign companies eventually transfer
them to China for some time, where they still earn a foreign salary. In China, if you are really thrifty, you can live on 1,000-2,000 RMB per month. If you are earning a modest salary in the US, it still adds up to 20-40k RMB per month here. You can just save crazy amounts.
English teachers in China probably earn between 2 and 4 times the national average salary. It doesn't eem
fair at times. We can come here with our college degree (in anything), a word of Chinese, ni hao (hello), and a smile on our faces--and can earn 3 times the
average salary of a young, graduated, qualified to teach English, Chinese person. Life just isn't fair 😞
Though the teaching isn't our calling, living abroad just might be. Aaron thinks if he could find a job in investment banking or finance, Asia might have a little bit bigger place in his heart. Living in China is so great. We can go to a table in a bar and meet someone from Brazil, the UK, Australia, and China. The
conversations we have are really interesting. We might not think like everyone else, but we do share the
"wander lust" genome that is hard to find back home.
Our Chinese friends. The expat community in Suzhou is quite large. We think somewhere around 20,000 people. This ranks about number 4 in China. It is possible to live in a microcosm of the western world. Expat friends, expat bars, western food. We have lived this life for sections of our hiatus. Luckily, we have also made some fun Chinese friends. Paul, our best Chinese friend, left last week. We had a party for him before he left. He has decided to pursue an import-export job in Australia. The product--Australian lobsters.
Apparently
they are quite large, and they go for around 500 RMB each. We hope to meet up with him in
the next couple of years. Paul also introduced us to his friends, and now they take care of us. They are
all very kind to us, and are great to have in a city full of so many unknowns.
We live in the Lian Hua (Lotus) community of a huge complex. It is made up of 1000+ different apartment
buildings. By our calculations, you could probably safely fit Kearney inside the area. The community isn't exactly racially diverse. It is basically us and the Chinese people. Whenever we are outside, someone
is always doing the double or triple take. The base of our apartment is the hang out area for the older folk.
They sit around all day just people watching, eating, taking care of the grandchildren. A pretty laid back
life. One day we wants to have a barbeque, where there is a cooler of ice cold beer (if ice is scare here,
coolers are double scarce), potato chips, and hamburgers. We can't wait to see the look on the 80 year old grandma's face when we hand
her a loaded up, pickles, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, quarter pound burger. Burgers just aren't making their way into the older generations' diet...So...just an idea I guess.
There is a huge cultural difference here. We were pretty confused this summer. During the day, if a woman is walking outside, her trusty umbrella is over her head. Why would she possibly do this, one might ask? Woman in Suzhou avoid sun like the plague. It feels like 200 years ago (not that we were around back
then). A women who has white skin is pure, more beautiful. Chinese women with dark (they say black)
skin is not as beautiful. We have told them countless times, in our culture, tan is in, pale is out. They laugh when Ely says Aaron looks much better with a tan. So the umbrellas, and the corn candies, and the pee pee boys. Mind boggling. Directly following the BBQ, with the ice cold beers and quarter pounders, we thought we might make a day of it, and sit outside in our swimsuits to get a tan. I am sure multiple people would stop by to take pictures of the crazy foreigners.
(Aaron) So I have
been picking up the running of late. I run around the lotus community. People usually smile at me, but some older folks look pretty confused. I imagine them saying, "why is he running if he doesn't have to, it's hot as hell out here." The Lotus community isn't bustling with wealth. Many of the
older people are street cleaners, public landscape artists, or manual laborers. I am sure the idea of intentionally sweating more than necessary is just...well...foreign. So I get more double takes there. We spend a lot of our day getting stared at. In Chinese culture (at least what we've read), staring isn't rude. If something is interesting, stare away. It is pretty awkward at times, but hey, we are in China. We aren't truly experiencing China if things are always comfortable. Actually, we are probably experiencing the most when things are mostly uncomfortable 😊
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