Barefoot teacher?
I am writing this on the train that’s taking me from Kunming to Nanning. I opted for the “soft sleeper” cabin with 4 beds. The trip will take 13 hours and will arrive at 8:30 in the morning. I have successfully completed my first year of teaching in China and am looking forward to my second year after my summer vacation and some travels. As has always been the case for me when moving to a new city, I am leaving Kunming with mixed emotions. I had many great experiences here and made some great friends. I can only hope Nanning will be equally rewarding. My last day of classes was a memorable one as the night before we had torrential rains and when I arrived near the classroom building I found there was flooding all around it. So I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pant legs and waded through about 8 inches of water to get into the building. I went to class barefoot and found that only 4 of the 40 some students had braved the water. Another student called me and said many of the students were waiting outside near the building so I went to meet them. I held a very short class in the lobby of a girls dormitory which consisted of returning their final exam papers to them and showing them their grades for the class. On the way back to my apartment I had to wade through knee deep water. I wrote some things in the past about my Sophomore writing class. They were the worst group of students I have ever seen….so lazy! I failed 20 of the 45 students in that class! The most I failed in any other class was 5. I am now technically homeless as I vacated my apartment in Kunming and cannot move into the apartment at the school in Nanning until August 25. I packed my belongings into 3 travel bags and 3 boxes. I am taking the 3 bags with me and leaving the 3 boxes with a friend to be shipped to me later in Nanning.
I decided last year to teach in Kunming because they told me I would be probably teaching some business classes but when I arrived they only gave me English classes. So I decided if I was going to teach English I might as well go to Nanning to a better school and get much better pay. In general, the school there seems much more professional. I have been working with them on getting my visa renewed and had some difficulty getting a clear answer from them about when and how I would get my visa. The government has made it very difficult to get visa’s here recently because of the Olympics and perhaps also because of the unrest that took place a few months ago. It may also have something to do with them keeping tabs on the foreigners here and with the influx of visitors for the Olympics they may be having capacity issues. The best answer I have received is that I will have to go to Nanning on August 4 to get a 30 day tourist visa since my current visa expires August 5, then the school will get my new resident visa by September 3. While in Nanning this week I will get the medical exam for my new visa and will leave one bag in Nanning. The school will pay for my hotel during my short visit this week then I will do some traveling.
I had originally planned to travel to Japan, South Korea and around northern China. I have changed my plans because of the visa issues and because of the protests that have been going on in Korea. If the Koreans don’t want our American beef then they’re not going to get my American dollars. I haven’t heard very many good things about the Korean people anyway. I will be flying to Singapore on July 10, then will slowly work my way north through Malaysia and perhaps southern Thailand before returning to China on or before August 4. Singapore is very near the equator and if there was land south of Singapore I think I could easily drive to the equator in a few hours. Oh well, I guess my first time south of the equator and my trip to Japan will have to wait.
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