Teaching in China - Learn Before You Land.

Part of what I was looking forward to when I went to China was weekly two hour lessons, provided by the school - lessons which the school was contractually obligated to provided, might I ad.

How awesome would it have been to order your favourite meal from KFC, or have a chat with a street vendor, or asking something of a store clerk in conversational Chinese?  Or be able to ask directions if you got lost.  You get the idea.

Anyway, I'm sad to say those lessons almost never came, and when they were offered it was nothing more than the school offering us students to teach us.  The few lessons that did come were from students whose English wasn't good enough to understand what we were asking.

So my suggestion to you, if you're ever either foolish enough or brave enough to take on such a venture as teaching English in China with few qualifications, and literally no practical teaching experience, I highly, highly recommend you learn as much of the language as you can before you leave.

I knew I was heading to China with more than enough to time to learn some of the language, but I was so stressed by the whole situation (and what other things were going on in my life at the time) that I wasn't thinking clearly enough to just learn something.  Anything.

Anyway, below are three titles you can check out for learning Chinese, if it's something you're interested in.

I'm personally a big fan of the Pimsleur method of language learning myself.

Enjoy.

- Ian.

              

Teaching in China - Don't Drink the Tap Water.

Excuse the inappropriateness of the following comment, but ...
Do you know what it's like to have diarrhoea almost every day of your life for three months, straight?

I do!  And all because of having lived in China.

In China, if you want to drink tap water you MUST boil it in a jug first (even if it's just for brushing your teeth), and I did, but believe me, going to the corner store and buying bottle water was by far the more sensible choice.

The particular area where I was sent in China is famous for its love of spicy foods - something that I personally hate (again, another reason to do your research and not put 'no preference' on your application form).

The school was ... school food, if you get my drift, and yes, it was provided for free, but ... ugh!  Chicken legs?  No thank you.  Spicy tofu and carrot shavings?  Well ... certainly not as bad as chicken legs, but still ~

So Daniel and I often frequented the nearby KFC, having little more than chips and a drink.

We did eventually find a family restaurant "BOB Bar and Restaurant" or something like that, which served small pizzas ... spicy pizzas. -.-;  Can you imagine a spicy Hawaiian Pizza?  Having experienced one first hand myself, I don't have to imagine it.  Although all in all, it was actually quite tasty.

On our last day there, the head English teacher shouted us to a goodbye lunch at the family restaurant, and I ordered a fruit pizza, thankfully not spicy - not that I remember, anyway - and I honestly couldn't believe how delicious it was.

Believe me, there are probably few who can appreciate just what it is to have a normal *ahem* movement ~

There was nothing better than coming home and having a locally made, juicy all-Australian hamburger, beetroot and all!

Whew.

- Ian.

P.S. Again, sorry about the inappropriateness of some of this post.

Did I Tell You About That One Time I Made a Video Game?

This is going back quite some time before I went to China, or even had a TEFL/TESOL certificate.

As someone who's been playing video games since I was three - yes, three - years old, making a game is something I've long since wanted to do.

It's something I've talked about both casually and seriously with my friends and family and my friends often wondering how long it would take before I actually got around to it, procrastinator that I am.

Anyway, I think it was sometime in 2014 when I made a game I initially called "Touch My Balls". You can imagine most people's reaction to that title.

After some fine-tuning and mostly cosmetic changes (which was no easy feat), I changed the name to what it is today "Ball Popper" and uploaded it at http://www.ballpopper.me/ where you can find it today.

I've tried and tried to compress it down to an app to release on the android store (I'd probably sell it for $0.99) and yet I would receive error after error, and eventually just gave up.

Making a game was something I enjoyed, but ugh, it was just such a tedious task, and it didn't help that I'm not the most mathematically minded person in the world.  I had to keep asking my friend who works in I.T a better way to go about the lines of some code and if not for him, I probably would've given up on the game long ago.

Like me, he doesn't seem particularly interested in pursing the refinement of this game, and it's likely it's going to be left like it is for quite a long time, if not forever.

Anyway, please do try it out and share it with your friends.  Even if you don't like it, please share it with your friends anyway.

Again, the address is: 

http://www.ballpopper.me/

- Ian.

Teaching in China - Getting Overpaid (although not by much).

Being interns we were paid at a rate of $500AUD (give or take, depending on conversion rate), and were told if we stayed on (which I didn't), we would be paid at a teacher rate, which I think worked out to about double, so $1,000AUD.

Daniel and I were paid half cash-in-hand, and half directly into our bank accounts.

After the second payment Daniel brought it up with me that he thought we were being overpaid, and because the school was giving us the same amount in cash that the placement partner was giving us into our bank account, it ended up that we were being overpaid by around $100AUD/month, making a total of $600AUD/month.

We kept our mouths shut, and I partly wondered if it was intentional to make-up for not being at the school as long as other interns around the country, and that would bring us up to the same level of pay as them, but Daniel did the maths, and we still came off short.  I double checked with my own maths (not that maths was a strong point of either myself or Daniel), and yep, after all was said and done, we'd still come off short.

As part of the package, when you finish your teacher, you're paid a bonus pack (which I believe is equal to one months pay + a bit extra) and Daniel was utterly livid when he realised after our usual pay date for our last month, we hadn't been paid for it or received our bonus money.

He contacted our liaison for the company and filled him in on the situation, the confusion being that the company paid the school, expecting the school to pay us that lost lot of money entirely in cash, and the school not realising.

Anyway, after it was all sorted, we not only got our final months pay plus our bonus, but a little extra on top 'for our troubles' (of having to sort out the clerical error and who owed us what).

When the head teach came to pay us, he separated the pile of money in roughly the middle, and handed half to me and half to Daniel, insisting that we count it there and then.  He was pleasantly surprised with himself when he realised he'd split it exactly in the middle and given us both the exact correct amounts.

~*~*~*~

I've since spoken to at least one of the other interns, and he said be broke-even with the pay he got in regards to the cost of the TEFL course, the various administration fees he had to pay to do the internship and his flights.

While I did come home with some money to my name, I definitely didn't break even by any stretch of the imagination.

Be bold, brave, daring and adventurous.

That is all, thank you very much, good day.

- Ian.

Teaching in China - The "No Preference" Mistake.

When I applied for my job in China, three of the questions were:

Where would you like to teach?
What age group?
What English level?

which to all three I made the mistake of answering 'no preference'.

I left my fate in the hands of God/The Universe/Whatever you want to call it and if there was ever a mistake to be made, that was it.

I got sent to Xiangnan Experimental Middle School in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere; a low socio-economic region in the Hunan province in the south of China.

The children were poorly (and I mean poorly) behaved, some students had better English than some assistant teachers (and that's not saying much), and Daniel (the other foreigner with whom I was placed at the school) and I were never told anything about when tests/assemblies were held.

If you watch this video:

"From the School to the Bridge and Back Again"

You'll get a general idea of what the area is like (and hopefully, why not to go there).

If you've never been to China before, stay calm and just do some research - do a lot of research.
Do as much research as humanly possible. I didn't, and it was a mistake.

Research into where the best places to teach in China are, which work places will treat you with respect, where the best cities are, and so on.

In hindsight I would've probably made the following choices:
Shanghai.
Teenagers.
Upper Intermediate.

Although at the same time, after having taught at a middle school (ages 11 - 16, roughly), I actually don't mind teaching pre-teens so much.

The company that sent me there, ImmerQi, no longer send interns to that location (as is my understanding).

So in short, know yourself well enough to know in what type of a place you'd like to live while there, what age group you'd like to teach (I'd never taught before in my life, so I didn't really know) and what level of English you'd like your students to have.


Be bold.  Be brave.  Be adventurous.

That is all, thank you very much, good day.

- Ian.

One of my classes in China.

Teaching in China - What a Crazy Dream I Had.

Before I get to the dream, let me just firstly say that I've been at my placement school for a week now, and a a part of me had been regretting the decision to choose 'No Preference' for where I was placed in China, what age group I taught, and the English level of the learners I would teach.  I'd even contemplated being asked to be moved to a different school.  Facebook friends have all told me just to 'hang in there', which I'm trying my best to do, but after I laid on the couch in my room early this afternoon, I had a dream that made me realise...

Sometimes it takes the most vivid dreams in our deepest sleep to show us just how much it is that we need to 'wake up'....

I was looking at the piece of paper which had my placement on it and noticed that it had two, the first being a shorter stay than the second, so I went along with all the other TEFL interns who were leaving the day that my shorter placement had finished, and we all got onto to some weird crazy suspended bunk beds.  Where are we? I wondered to myself.  Are we on modified shipping containers to be shipped out around China? Then, a familiar type of shunting feeling - we were on a train.  We were at the very back, and looked out the large window as we watched the town disappear in the distance.

My mum started talking to her sister (my auntie) and my (deceased) cousin, Stuart, about her placement - Wait.  What's Mum doing here? She always said she'd 'wring their little necks' if she ever became a teacher.  And yet there she was, quite calmly talking about where she was going to be placed and that she hadn't yet started.  She also mentioned that Joanne, my sister, had willingly missed the train, and she had some washing to hang out. What? I was then struck with an image of my sister hanging out some washing on a windy day.  How strange.

As I listened to my mum talk, I started to realise something - I'd read my placement sheet wrong and wasn't supposed to be on that train at all.  Is it a one-way trip, or will there be stops where I can get off and go back? The train made a few stops and I panicked more and more with each passing stop, desperately trying to talk myself into getting off the train and go back when I suddenly burst into tears.  "I miss those kids, I really miss them" I say in a panicked blubber.  "I don't actually like most of them, but there's a few really good kids there that I'm really going to miss.  I have to go back, I just have to!"

I woke up suddenly, slightly shocked and ultimately relieved that it was nothing more than a dream; a dream I contemplated the deeper meaning of after having awoken from it, as I do now typing this, coming to the conclusion that it is trying to tell me one thing above all else: "Wake up to yourself, Ian.  Wake up." (Or, you know, something along those lines, anyway). ;-)

What do you think?

- End.

Those Stairs We Climbed. (My morning at The Great Wall of China).

What words must I put?  What words must I say?  Is it not impossible to convey the truth of my experience using only these limited things we call 'words'?  And yet, I must try.

It begins - a tired morning in a mediocre hotel, slowly rushing to get ready to make it to breakfast to socialise with the others.  Who is it I have yet to meet?

I sit at one of the round tables, as I remember it, with my roommate and some others.  Two physics teachers - a couple - recommend me to the film "Interstellar", as do others at the table who've seen it, and I wonder to myself if it and I shall get along well.

Once breakfast has passed, we make our way, in the manner of a slow, un-urgent rush, to the hotel lobby.

Our attention received, we make our way to the boarding of one of two buses.  I, my roommate, some friends and acquaintances board bus 1, the others, bus 8.  With few seats left I sit next to Sam, whom I originally met at Starbucks in the Beijing International Airport on the day I landed.

We see the wall as the bus approaches, which I found initially unimpressive, but as the bus traveled further, the sheer and utter scope of the wall started to dawn on me.  An impressive architectural feat of humanity if ever there was one.

The group is organised, the climb begins.  So excited, so enthused to be climbing  The Great Wall of China! Climbing ... climbing ... ... climbing ... Dear God, what have I gotten myself into? O_O  I struggle to keep up with the group, as my legs start to ache and my heart starts to pound.  I push myself to continue, barely managing to keep my position in the group. I find a spot to rest and notice blood feels like crimson sandpaper flowing through every fiber of my being, especially in my chest.  It's my heart.  Is it palpitating?  I'm not sure, as I'm too overwhelmingly exhausted to tell.  Thinking I'd lagged so far behind that I was last in the group, I'm surprised when others I know start to pass me.  Those from Bus 8, no doubt.  I'm unquestionably the last in my own group.  More pass, and one stops to ask if I'm okay.  I explain my palpitations, and am told, as much as I desire it and tell myself I can, not to push myself.  "Do I look pale to you?  Paler than usual, I mean," I ask.  "You've got colour in your cheeks."  I think to myself It might be okay. I heed her advice and decide to pace myself.   From now on, I dawdle, taking slight rests at every opportunity, other people from the second group passing me every now and again.

Onward I continue, people now coming back down and I ask them which tower is the top, pointing to the which seems to be the highest from my perspective.  "Nah, not that one, man, the next one," he replies.

Eventually, I climb to the souvenir shop and buy myself a t-shirt, a jumper, and a brand new, long overdue, cap.  I carry onward, knowing that there's not much more to go, knowing that I'd regret it for the rest of my life were I to give up now ... or ever.

Nearing the highest tower, I hear a voice call out my name "Ian!!!".  I look up and see my friend leaning over from the top of the tower, smiling and waving, seemingly happy that I'd made it all the way.  I'm overcome with relief. That voice from on high giving me that last burst of encouragement I need to take those final few steps and make it to the top of the tower.

I'm done.  I've done it.  I'm here.  I'm here right now standing on top of the world.  I made it.

And then I went back down, stopping once again at the souvenir shop, buying myself a medal as proof that I'd achieved the impossible.

And on that day, the day of Our Lord, I had conquered not only the wall, but myself.

Yours,

Ian Hollis, English Language Teacher.