I accepted a job!
I’m writing this while on a bus from Guilin to Guangzhou. No the bus does not have wireless internet: I will copy and paste it later onto the blog site. It’s about a 9 hour bus ride but it’s a sleeper bus so it’s pretty comfortable. The bus cost $20 vs. $100 for a flight so I opted for the bus. I don’t have an income now so I have to save my money when I can! However, I will have an income in a few months.
I accepted a job teaching business classes in English at Yunnan University of Finance and Economics (YUFE) in Kunming. I chose that one out of the 5 offers I had because I will teach business rather than English and the campus is very nice there. The weather in Kunming is very nice and not too hot. In fact, my apartment will not have heat or air conditioning. A space heater will do. YUFE will provide me a small apartment on campus and will pay me 3500 Yuan per month. That is roughly $460 per month; not a lot but enough to live on and have some traveling money. At the end of the school year they will give me a bonus of about 5000 yuan.. I will get about 14 weeks of vacation too – 1 week the first week of October, then 6 weeks for Chinese New Year/spring break, then 1 week the first week of May and 6 weeks in the summer from mid July until September 1. I’m thinking that my first trip back to the states will be during the Chinese new year break. If not, then definitely in the summer.
I had 3 offers in Nanning; a private school, a university, and a special university program to prepare kids for studying abroad. I also had an offer from a university in Guilin which is a very nice area as you can see from the pictures of the Lijiang river posted on shutterfly. The classrooms in Guilin are not air conditioned and it does get very hot there. I was a bit surprised that every school I visited made me an offer. The interview process at most of the universities was not very thorough as I felt I was interviewing them more than they were interviewing me. The salaries in Nanning are higher bye 2000 yuan per month but the weather there is so hot. I have some friends in Nanning so it was difficult to choose another city but hopefully I will quickly make friends in Kunming when I arrive there. The job starts early September.
Starting on Monday I will be in Zhuhai (near Macau) for 4 weeks taking the TESOL class. After that I’m not quite sure where I will go until the job starts. I want to spend some of that time working hard to improve my mandarin language skills.
Now for some odds and ends. In case you haven’t noticed, on the right hand side of the blog site you will see a section called my links. Under that I have a link to a website (shutterfly) where I have posted a bunch of pic’s for your enjoyment. Smoking – people smoke everywhere here, including elevators and there was even some guys smoking on the bus. Grady, if you want to have your own route here I’m sure you can. You could hire a helper but I’m not sure if he would fit on the bike! I saw a guy that had 8 cases of returnable soft drink bottles on a bicycle. They use bikes and motorbikes to deliver all kinds of things here. I got a nice shoeshine yesterday for $.28 and most of the taxi rides are $1 to $3. In fact, I’ve only had one over $5. Gas here is about $2 per gallon. Even though there is a lot of poverty here, many of the cities do a really nice job of landscaping as you can see in some of the pics. It provides jobs. People often just throw their trash on the sidewalks but that also provides jobs.
Well that’s it for now. Next post will be from my school in Zhuhai.
Postscript: The 9 hour bus ride turned out to be a 13 hour bus ride! I think the original bus I was supposed to be on was full so they put me on a second bus which stopped in every little town picking up people along the road. That’s life in China!
Tags: Travel
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