David's Big Adventure in China

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.