China Teacher (David’s big adventure)

I’m hard at work back in Nanning after my holiday trip. The weather has cooled off here in the past few days thanks to typhoon Parma which followed me back to China from the Philippines. I flew to Manila on October 1 and on the way in I could see some of the flooding that has impacted Manila. I then flew on to a city called Bacolod which is about half way from Manila to the far south of the Phils. This city was rated by a magazine as the best city to live in the Phils. I spent almost 5 days there and wasn’t sure why it was named the best city for living. They were having a big festival there so that made it a bit more interesting but otherwise it wasn’t a very interesting place. I then flew back to Manila and took a bus to Tagaytay which is about 35 miles south of Manila. It is a small city located on a ridge with a nice view of a lake and a volcanic island in the lake. The volcano blew its top not so long ago so it makes for a nice view except that I barely got to see it because of the bad weather. The weather there is generally cooler than Manila with a nice breeze and it was cool and rainy during my time there thanks to the return of typhoon Parma’s outer bands. Tagaytay was a pretty comfortable place to stay because of the weather and plenty of restaurants. It is a resort area frequented by people from Manila wanting to escape Manila for a few days. There are also many foreigners living there and I ran into a gathering of about 20 foreigners in the bar/café next to my hotel. I joined them for a beer and learned about their experiences living there.

Since I have lived in China I have come to appreciate how lucky I am to have been born in an English speaking country and the USA in particular. English has become the global language and through my teaching I have come to appreciate how big the U.S. economy is relative to the rest of the world. I think most of us who grew up in the states take these things for granted and have a U.S. focused view of the world because so much of the world’s media and entertainment are based in the states. Friday I went to the provincial Personnel Department building to interview doctors to test their English level (the Personnel Department contacted my school and asked for 3 foreign teachers to help conduct the interviews.) The doctors have applied for an exchange program to go study for a short period of time in Germany. When they are in Germany, they will use English to communicate with the doctors there. Nobody expects them to speak German. When I was working for Dreyer’s, I learned after we were acquired by Nestle that English is the common language for Nestle for their operations all over the world (they are based in Switzerland). I have since learned that other multinationals also use English as the common language. I have also learned in my travels that English signs are common in most countries and English is almost always the second language used.

China has been in the news recently for its economy having recovered quickly from the recession. They are expecting 8% growth in the economy this year but there is some skepticism about that number because there is other information that suggests otherwise. Power usage has been reported as being down vs. the previous year. Apparently government spending is what is driving the economic growth these days although car sales are a bright spot. Car sales are up 25 to 30% vs. last year and now china is #1 in the world for new car sales. The government provided some incentives to purchase new cars with engines smaller than 1.6 liters and many people took advantage of the opportunity. Most cars of this size are made in China so the incentives were targeted at cars made here.

After looking at my pictures, some of you may wonder if I only have one or two shirts since you see my orange shirt in many of the pictures. Actually, I have 2 of those oranges shirts and they are special travel shirts made to protect me from the sun and they dry very quickly after being washed. So when traveling I can hand wash one of those shirts in the evening and it will probably be dry the next morning if I want to wear it again; perfect for traveling light.

Classes started a week ago and I have an interesting schedule. I teach Tuesday morning and afternoon, Wednesday morning and afternoon, Thursday morning, and Sunday morning and afternoon. So my weekend begins at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday and ends on Sunday morning. I am teaching 3 sections of International Business, 3 sections of Finance and Accounting, and a class called English Interest Corner. The reason I have classes on Sunday is that is the only time that juniors and seniors are free to take that class. The juniors and seniors are former full time students of SCIC (Sino-Canadian International College, which is the school I work for) but are now studying something other than English at another college within the university. They want to have English as a second major so they come back to SCIC for that. SCIC is only full time for freshmen and sophomores. I guess you could think of it as a junior college with all of the students having English as their major. There are a total of about 1100 full time students and 29 foreign teachers at SCIC which is a money making enterprise. Except for my Sunday classes, all of my students are sophomores. There are two other colleges at this university that employ foreign teachers so in total there are over 50 foreign teachers here with all but a handful of them teaching English. The other languages taught as a major are Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese.

We will have a holiday from October 1 to 9 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of modern day China and also Mid Autumn festival. It’s amazing to me to think that China has only been a country in its modern form for 60 years considering its long history and culture. The government is really making a big deal of the celebration. Anyplace worth traveling to in China will be packed with people during the holiday so I’ve decided to get out of the country. I’ll be going to the Philippines. Until next time….

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Facebook has been blocked here so I haven't been able to log in for about 5 days. Some of you Facebook users in the states could post a comment letting others know that it's been blocked here.

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