Teaching in China - Relinquishing My Luggage (temporarily)

NOTE: The level of English at Beijing International Airport is embarrassingly sub-par for an international airport.

The plane had landed and I wandered off the plane in a daze along with all the other passengers.  The Beijing international airport is less than ordinary. It's boring and dull and not a clock in sight.

I finally reach the part of the airport where the customs officers stamp you in, and I add myself to the end of one of the queues (that all ultimately lead to the same place).

I see to main officers, a cranky man, and a pleasant looking young girl.  I pray to God I get the girl, and thankfully she calls me over while Mr. Cranky Pants is still having some trouble with some other folk.

She looks at my passport, seems pleased, stamps it and I move on.

I wait for my luggage ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait ... I go to another belt and wait.  I'm harassed by some young luggage worker asking for money to help me find my bags.  I just tell him I don't have any money and show him my empty wallet and he leaves.

I ask someone about my luggage, and eventually get pointed to lost and found, where they track the number on my luggage, and tells me while it's on the right flight (Hong Kong to Beijing) with the right airline, it's on the wrong plane - the one after the one I was one.

I leave my details and the address of the hotel I'd be staying at for the next week with them, and they say my luggage should be here in around three hours, and I could wait if I wished.  I decide not to, and go and meet the people from ImmerQi that are waiting for me at the airport StarBucks (along with a few other interns).

I explain my situation, and again am asked if I'd like to wait, or move on to the hotel when the time arrives, so I decide to move on to the hotel.  When there, I inform the ImmerQi staff of my situation and given them the details the airport's lost and found gave me and they say they'll take it over from there and inform me when my luggage arrives.

Around twenty-four hours later, I'm notified of my luggage's arrival, and am called to the hotel lobby to come and collect it.  You can't believe that amount of relief I felt at that time!

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 - 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.