I have been in China for just about 6 months and I am finally going to write about it. After 3 months here I actually wrote part of a blog post and then never finished it. I have no excuses except for procrastination and laziness.
Anyway I live in a city called Tianjin. It is the 6th largest city in China by population boasting just about 14 million residents. It's about 50 miles south of Beijing and has a nice skyline (when you can see it).
Tianjin at night. This view is about 10 minutes walking distance from my apartment.
I will go back and describe the beginning in the next post, as my job and life here have changed a bit since I first arrived. Currently, I am working in 3 kindergartens instead of the 2 public schools I was teaching at originally. I am not sure of the exact reasoning, but I have been told that due to some changes in the English portion of the University entrance exam here in China, many parents don't feel the need to pay extra money to have a foreign teacher come to their children's school. As a result, I no longer have the same gig and now I am kind of stuck teaching kindergarten until my contract expires on May 31st. It isn't all bad though. They are cute and always excited to see me walk in the room.
I only teach about 11 hours a week right now, so I have an ample amount of time to do other things. I am doing some private tutoring as well as casually studying Chinese and Korean during my free time. I am ashamed to say that I didn't make a real effort to learn Chinese until the past month. Prior to this month, I recorded some useful sayings and words on my IPhone, so I could say some basic things, but that was about it. Now I am studying adjectives and actually know about twenty with good pronunciation. In the past few months I have actually made about five Korean friends and even more Korea acquaintances. This is possible because there are many South Korean students studying Chinese at the universities here in Tianjin. There are also about 12,000 permanent Koreans living and working in Tianjin. It is very interesting to be friends with Koreans because we are foreigners here together. They also have shown me where to go to get good Korean food which has been delightful since I am in love with Korean food.
As for my current situation....
Right now I teach in 3 different kindergartens. I teach 20 different classes of students, 9 classes only once a week and the other 11 classes twice a week. The class lengths are 15 minutes for the 3 year olds, 20 minutes for the 4 year olds, 25 minutes for the 5 year olds and to 30 minutes for the 6 year olds. I really enjoy teaching these little kids because they are soo happy all of the time and excited about life. The only downside is the lack of working multimedia in one of the schools which has been an ongoing headache for me. I have resorted to bringing my laptop and plugging it into the speakers there so we can sing songs and have fun. I have found my grove teaching young kids and I think I am actually becoming quite good at it. My treasure trove of funny faces that I perfected as an obnoxious preteen have come in handy here and the students can't get enough of them.
Singing the "Hello Song" with my 3 year olds.
As far as social life here in Tianjin it has only been getting better and better each month. In the beginning, I really did not have many friends, but as my network has grown I have been making more friends all the time. I also discovered a nice expat bar owned by a Canadian guy and his Chinese girlfriend that has a nice vibe and attracts many of the other expat teachers and English speaking Chinese locals. In the past two months 4 of my friends in Tianjin (3 Chinese and 1 Englishmen) have either moved to another area of China or moved abroad, so I have been making even more new friends since. I thought it would be rough after they left, but to my surprise I actually have more friends now then I did when they lived here.
This couple moved to Canada! The amount of help I received from these two was simple amazing! I can not thank them enough,
From the second week of January until the final week of February I did not have work, so I applied to work at a winter camp in Beijing. The camp held classes from January 20th to the 28th and from February 6th to the 10th. I was looking to make some extra money, and stay busy and the Beijing camp actually paid me 170 percent of my full months normal salary in Tianjin for only 14 days of work. The camp was three 90 minute classes and a 90 minute English corner (An English corner is when Chinese students and teachers can sit around and talk to me in English about whatever they like). The one major frustrating thing about the camp was the horribly prepared power point presentations that were given to me for each topic in the class. They were literally useless and the huge ability, and sometimes, age gaps of the students in my classes made things even more difficult. The good thing was that I got to play and invent a ton of different games to try and make the class interesting for the students and fun for me as well.
Below the students had to describe a picture, in English, to the poor soul who had to attempt to draw it.
More games!
I also got to live in Beijing for a few weeks and see what the Big Big city is like. This was the only snow I saw this year. Not even half a inch!!
I was very pleased to have the opportunity to work at this camp, even if it brought me some headaches, because the extra infusion of cash gave me the security to take a 10 day trip back to South Korea and surprise my former school and all my old friends who still live there. Even after the flight and spending in Korea I still saved over $1,000 of my winter camp paycheck. Granted my trip to Korea was very inexpensive because the director from my old school allowed me to stay at his home and I had breakfast there each day. Not just that, but a lot of my old friends decided to pay for many of my meals. My primary reason for going there, aside from visiting friends and enjoying the food, was to help my old coteacher prepare our kindergarten class for the big end of the year presentation. I like to think that I made her job easier and the kids were very happy to see me. All in all I had a wonderful trip to South Korea and it gave me even greater perspective about my life there and my current situation in China.
In heaven!!!!
Another thing I have been enjoying is teaching private tutoring. Right now I am teaching two 4 year olds and a 7 year old on Tuesday night and Saturday morning. Not only is it good money (25-35 USD an hour), but it has allowed me to see Chinese families in their own home. They have been very welcoming to me and have fed me lunch and dinner and shown me great kindness.
I will post again soon!
I promise!!
Matt
