Recognizing the Good Things

Over the course of my life, I have been accused of many things. I will not even begin to list them here, but I will tell you one of the things I have never been accused of:

Having a lack of confidence.

Now, to be honest, I have always been filled with self-doubt but I faked confidence because I've always believed it made people take me more seriously. Unfortunately, I often went overboard.

Not to sound arrogant, but I'm pretty confident that I'm the hottest man living in this house.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) July 22, 2019

As the years went on, I learned to dial it back a bit and come off as less of an arrogant jerk.

I used to think I was the smartest person in the world. Now…well, I still think that. I've just learned to not be so vocal about it.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) May 28, 2019

I think the youthful arrogance has gone by the wayside for the most part and now I just quietly live my life, but occasionally I feel my pride starting to swell. The past month has been good for my ego. Or bad - depending on how you look at it.

About a month ago, the mother of one of my online students asked me to quit my job and become her son's personal tutor. She offered me an ungodly amount of money for my wife and me to move to Beijing so I could work exclusively with her son for the remainder of his school career. (He just turned 6 two weeks ago.) She would cover all moving expenses and living expenses and then pay me a very impressive salary. It took some work to convince her that I would never move back to China, but the offer really made me take some pride in my work. I can honestly say that I am good at what I do.

Since then, my wife and I have been asked by a couple of different parents to come to visit them when Vietnam allows travel again. I have been invited to Harbin and Tokyo and Red has been invited to Hong Kong.

Last week, our landlords from our previous house contacted us begging us to come back. They even lowered the rent about 35% from what they were asking when we moved out a year ago. They really enjoyed us as tenants and are sad they created a situation (significant bump in rent) that caused us to leave. Good tenants are difficult to find. Plus, now with COVID, things are even more difficult. It is nice to be wanted.

Finally, just a few days ago, our current landlords commissioned me to be their grandson's ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher when he turns two. He is currently six months old. Once again, it is nice to be wanted. And it really feels good to be recognized for doing something well.

In the midst of all the misery and difficulties happening in the world right now, it is important to sometimes stop and consider the things that have been going right. We've had our setbacks like everyone else, but a quick consideration of the good things as well is good for everyone. We still have plenty to be thankful for.

Now, I just have to get past one of the things I have been accused of many times.

LAZINESS

Why do people keep wanting me to do stuff? It's like they don't even now me.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) May 29, 2019

End of Summer

All this week, my Facebook Memories have been reminding me that Red and I left the States three years ago this week. It has been fun seeing our adventures of navigating our new life in Beijing flashing across my screen each morning.

This was a big day for me.

In only five years of marriage, Red and I have changed jobs over a dozen times, visited nine different countries and lived in three of them. When we moved to Vietnam, we didn't even have jobs lined up. We just hopped on a plane confident that "we'll figure it out when we get there."

Even watching us from far, people should pretty easily be able to observe that neither Red nor I are scared of change. We definitely have things that concern us, but walking into the unknown is not one of them. And when you choose to live in another culture, that is a valuable quality to possess. An adventure into the unknown is thrown at us almost every time we step out of our house. It takes a long time to learn all the intricacies of another culture. We have learned that we must be extremely flexible and just go along with almost any mystery, confusion or change that is thrown at us.

I am experiencing a bit of change in my home right now. Summer has come to an end. As a teacher, this carries special significance. All the kids are headed back to school. However, this affects me in a different way than traditional teachers.

In this part of the world, kids go to school for much longer hours than in Western countries. And for most of these kids, even when they are not in school, they are still taking supplementary classes, extra lessons, tutoring appointments, advanced skills training, and many more things. 

When I was teaching in the classroom in Beijing, on Monday mornings I would often ask the students what they did over the weekend. I eventually stopped asking that question because the answer was always the same.

"On Saturday, I had an English class, a math class, and piano lesson. Then after lunch, I had another math class, a swimming class, and a calligraphy class. Then I did homework until I went to bed. On Sunday, I got up early to do homework until my school placement tutor came at ten. Then after lunch, I had my piano recital, Chinese class, and culture class."

These kids also have similar stories about what they do after school each day. It is almost always more classes and doing homework. I feel so sorry for them. The classes and stress never stop. It is work work work all the time.

Now, I am one of the teachers that many of these kids meet with after school and on weekends. I no longer work in the school system. I provide them with part of their supplemental English education. I spend months getting to know the kids and their learning patterns, how to get them to respond, how to draw them out and how to best teach them. Every lesson is individualized for that student. And a couple of times a year, it all changes.

Because I am an extra teacher in their already cramped schedule, things could change at any time. If a parent decides their kid needs to take another math class, they have to find a way to fit it into their schedule. So, occasionally, one of my students disappears. Although, I never know why. It could be a scheduling conflict or they feel like they have met the objective they were trying to achieve through classes with me. It could be because they don't like my style and sought out another teacher. Either way, I am never told. They just disappear one day. It's sometimes sad when a student I have really grown to enjoy falls off my schedule. There is never even an opportunity to say goodbye.

This month is one of the times when things really get shaken up. I may not be a school teacher, but the school schedule does affect me. I can only teach classes in the evenings and on the weekends because that is when the kids are free to take extra classes. And this month all the kids returned to school from their summer break. This means, their summer schedule has been disrupted and everything has to be redone to accommodate the new school year. New classes and teachers mean new challenges that must be met by their extra classes. This means every family re-assesses their educational needs. So, even though I do not work in a school, the lives of every one of my students are in transition. This means massive rescheduling happens. 

Almost overnight, half of my students are gone and replaced with new ones. I get new students all the time, but it is generally one here and there. In the fall, I get a bunch at once. And the ones I have grown to love over the last year are just gone with no notice. No one ever says, "This will be our last class together." They just disappear.

I know regular school teachers get new students every year, but on the last day of school each year, they know their students are moving on. They can say goodbye and are mentally prepared for it. When I get a new student, I don't know if they will be a part of my life for the next three weeks or the next three years. And I won't know until they disappear. It sucks.

Some kids, I am happy to see fall off my schedule, but there a few I genuinely miss and want to be able to follow up and see where their lives take them. But I'm getting used to it. I love my job and would not want to do anything else.

Well, if I have to work.

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Today's post was inspired by the writing prompt, "It was the end of summer."

We Call Them Melons In America

A few days ago, I was practicing my typical morning routine of sitting on the toilet with my phone catching up on the news. In the middle of reading the latest on Black Ariel and the Blue Bell Ice Cream Licker, I got a message from my wife.

I immediately knew who she was talking about. We've been dealing with this guy for the last few days. Right next door to us, a construction crew has been putting up a new building and we share a gate with that property. So, we cross paths with the workers daily. Every now and then, one of them comes to us to use our electricity or inform us of excess noise that day or the shutting off of our water. It is always a difficult conversation since we do not speak the local language and have to do everything through inadequate translation apps.

However, this particular guy is especially "friendly." He frequently wanders over to make small talk when he sees me outside. This usually involves lots of hand gestures and pointing at the construction site with a big smile. I never know what he is trying to convey, but it seems like it is not pertinent information. Just friendly banter. Until he stepped up his game a few days ago.

He sat on our porch one day, so I grabbed a Pepsi and my phone and went to join him. I like to be friendly most of the time. Through our translation apps, we tried to talk to each other. After a couple of minutes, he asked to borrow my motorcycle. I made an excuse about how we were about to leave so it wouldn't be available. So, he asked to use it at lunch the next day. As I was telling him no, I started closing up the house so Red and I could leave. He then asked me how I secure my doors when I leave.

What kind of creepy question is that?

This made me nervous because he basically lives right next to us until the house is built. They always know when we are coming and going. And now he wants to know how well I lock my doors.

Due to my inability to effectively communicate all we can really do is try to be aware.

Not being able to communicate has been a common theme in my life. When I lived in Puerto Rico twenty years ago, I saw a sign on a counter that said CUIDADO: CALIENTE.

This sign made no sense to me. CITY: HOT
What?

I leaned closer to contemplate the meaning and it occurred to me as soon as my arms contacted the metal counter. Cuidado does not mean 'city.' It means 'CAUTION.'

The Spanish word for 'city' is ciudad. They may look similar, but the meaning is quite different.

As I rubbed the aloe on my forearms, I knew I would never forget those words again.

Living in Beijing, I almost did not get my work permit due to a communication error. I was asked to send off for my official Master's Degree for the paperwork that had to be filed. They told me that it must be sealed when we turn it into authorities. I did as they asked and it arrived two weeks later. I handed the envelope to my boss and she immediately ripped it open. I yelled, "NO! It has to still be sealed when we give it to them." She gave me a confused look as I sat and put my face in my hands. I had dropped a significant amount of money to get this and have it specially shipped. She had just ruined it.

She looked the degree over and asked, "Where is the seal?"

After a frustrating back-and-forth, I learned when they told me it must be sealed, what they meant was it must have the official State of Illinois International Authentication Seal. This seal is what proves to foreign governments that this is an official document.

She thought she had communicated clearly and I thought that I had understood. We were both wrong.

I have hundreds of stories like this, but let's come back to the present.

That 'creepy little dude' is now talking to my wife when I am not present and chooses to comment on her 'grapes.' If you have met my wife then you are probably aware that she is quite gifted in the area under her shirt. And in a culture that is known for not possessing those assets, it is even more apparent. But that does not mean he needs to be commenting on her grapes.

I head downstairs to confront this man and in my head I am running how I should play this. Should I be firm or gentle? Should I confront him in front of the other workers (to help keep him on their side of the wall) or take him to the side in private? I don't want to create too big of an incident. We do have to live among these people and we are the foreigners.

We may be the foreigners here but this cannot be allowed to happen?

I get downstairs to discover that is has escalated to the point that another worker is now involved and talking to my wife in the doorway. I start to step in to put an end to this harassment and I hear her telling the new man (who speaks a little English), he said: "Chau grapes are very big." Everyone (including my wife) laughed.

What is happening?

It turns out the 'creepy little dude' was wanting to plug into our electricity because the work site was having some work done and would be without power for a few hours. He wasn't being inappropriate at all. The Google Translate app just sucks when dealing with Vietnamese.

I even learned the reason he was asking about how I secured my doors a few days earlier was because our water pump was being replaced. When he discovered we were leaving for the evening, he was wondering how they were going to test the pressure once the new one was installed. There was no ill intent. We just don't have the ability to fully communicate. The extra speculation and guesswork about intent was misguided…again.

I have been putting off receiving official language instruction, but I believe it may be time to change my stance.

Chinese Kidnapping

Red and I have stated many times that we are much happier in Vietnam than we ever were in China. But we have been gone long enough that we often forget how awful some of it was.

This morning, I stumbled upon on old Twitter thread where I live-tweeted the time I thought I was being kidnapped. It all came back to me. One of the most confusing moments I had while living in Beijing.

I'm in a school van in Beijing going to a federal office to finalize my work visa and the van just stopped in the middle of a 3-lane road

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

The school where I worked had put me in a van to be taken to the Entry-Exit Bureau to get my papers completed. Halfway there, I found myself in the middle of a road rage situation. Remember, I did not speak Chinese and couldn't even communicate with my driver.

A car behind us understandably started blowing his horn for us to move off of this very busy road.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

As has been my experience in most of this part of the world, there is not much accommodation made for other drivers. People stop and sometimes even park right in the middle of busy roads. I didn't know why we had stopped but was very concerned that he had not pulled to the shoulder. We were fully blocking a lane of traffic.

The driver of my van jumped out and started screaming at the driver of the car behind us.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

Why? My driver was clearly in the wrong.

They are standing in the middle of the road (basically an interstate highway) screaming at each other as cars whip by at 80 MPH.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

I was debating whether I would be safer staying in the vehicle or getting out and standing on the shoulder. However, the lack of ability to communicate often made me give people the benefit of the doubt and just go along with whatever was happening.

I don't speak Chinese, so I have no idea what is going on, but now the driver is trying to get me out of the van to join them on the road.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

OK. I guess I am getting out.

Now the driver of the honking car is screaming at me to get into his vehicle and the van driver is encouraging this. Am I being kidnapped?

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

They were both ushering me to the second car. "What is happening? Oh, how I wish I could ask some questions!"

OK. So now I'm in a stranger's car going...somewhere? I don't know what's going on. I really need to learn Chinese.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

I probably should have been texting my wife in case she never saw me again or texting my school to ask questions, but all I could think about was "This has the potential to become disastrous. I better keep tweeting so there is a record of the events."

Alright. We're getting off the main road. The rest of today ought to be interesting

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

 I just resigned myself to the fact that I was along for the ride now. Come what may.

The shouty driver just dropped me off at the Entry-Exit Bureau. The place I was headed anyway. Angry Chinese drivers are very accommodating.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

Um…thank you. I guess.

So, this case of road rage escalated into him giving me a lift to my destination. Even though I still don't know why.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

I never did learn what that was all about.

At the very least, I have learned that I would be very easy to kidnap.

KIDNAPPER: Get in the car!
ME: Okay.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 2, 2017

Probably something could be learned here. But it's been over two years since this event and I haven't been kidnapped a second time. So, I think I'm good.

S - Salon (not affiliated w/ beauty)

For the two years I lived in Beijing, my main job was working in one of the government schools. However, I had half a dozen side jobs and one of them was the easiest money I ever made.

On Thursday nights, I took a bus to an adult language center in Shuangjing 双井 and got paid to sit and talk to people. This is called an English salon.

Now, if you know me, then you know talking is one of my favorite activities. I've had lots of practice. And I'm really good at it. In fact, I can talk for hours without even having anything to say. It's just second nature to me.

All I had to do was show up at 7 p.m. as their class was letting out and talk to the students. The students were all adults who were studying English. They could all speak English but were far from fluent. My presence was to give them an opportunity to converse with a native English speaker. The school supplied me with drinks and paid me to sit there for two hours and just talk about…whatever.

Since these were not guided lessons, the conversations could take any direction and since I was the obvious foreigner most of the time we discussed the differences in our countries. And there are a lot.

Once we got to know each other and got past the initial talk of food differences and what I did for a living, it got interesting. I went in every week knowing that we were going to talk a lot about politics, guns, and drugs. Other topics were covered as well, but these were the top three.

Now, when I say politics, I mean American politics. Political discourse does not happen in China. Not only is it a taboo topic, but it is very easy to get yourself into a lot of trouble for expressing the wrong opinion to the wrong person. It is safer to just keep your mouth shut. However, it is perfectly safe to talk about the politics of other countries and they always had questions about things they had seen in their heavily filtered news. After doing my best to explain the things they read (to the best of my understanding) and correct the mountains of misinformation they had about things, it sometimes moved to almost being an American civics class. I told them about federal law versus state, city, county, and municipal. We talked about how taxes work. I taught them about the election process. And they always had questions about why I could talk so freely about this stuff. They were fascinated by the idea that a person could insult a public official or even the president right to his face without penalty.

They asked me questions about the American "gun culture". In the year that I attended this class, I only met one student there who had ever even seen a gun in person. The idea that I grew up with guns in my house petrified them. I got the impression that they would be terrified to even be in the same room with one. Despite their fear, they had a lot of questions and sometimes it got technical. After I had done my best to explain the varying philosophies on gun ownership and control, it often moved into gun laws. This always got confusing because it was hard to get them to understand that each state has its own laws. This structure does not exist in China. One guy had heard about "concealed carry" and did not understand why a person who had this special license had to be careful about what part of the country he was in. What is legal in Indiana could get you in a lot of trouble in Illinois. He never stopped asking questions about how that could be.

They had just as many questions and lots of bad information about drugs in America. Drugs do exist in China, but they are locked down pretty tight. And the penalties for violating drug-related laws are severe. Of the people in that class, only two even knew a person who had done drugs. It is not something that is out in the open. However, because of American television, they all believe that in America drugs are everywhere. They are flowing freely at every party. High schoolers trade them in the hallways like baseball cards. Every businessman has a stash in his desk drawer and every public restroom is filled with people lined up to snort cocaine off the sink counter. Once again, I spent weeks just trying my best to explain reality.

These are three big examples, but there were many other topics covered and they were all complicated by the vast differences between our cultures, values, and way of thinking. We talked about parental responsibilities, employer expectations, property ownership, use of free time, educational philosophy, celebrity culture and many more. Every new topic showed me how little they actually knew about us. And also, how little I actually knew about them.

Spending time in a country can help you start figuring out the rules and see how things work. However, it takes a lot more time to start tapping into the reasons things are done the way they are. Everyone has heard of cultural practices from other countries:

• In Vietnam, do not point with one finger. Use your whole hand.
• In China, emptying your plate suggests that the host did not serve enough food. They will be offended.
• In Kenya, you should empty your plate. Leaving any food behind suggests that you did not enjoy the meal.
• In many Muslim countries, you should not use your left hand for eating. That hand is "unclean" since it is for taking care of bathroom hygiene.
• In India, always refuse your host's first offer for a snack or drink. You will be asked again.
• In South Korea, stay very quiet on public transportation. Noisiness is considered to be very rude.

To prosper in one of these countries, just learning the rules will only get you so far. With time (and intentional effort), you will begin to understand the reasons behind these practices. That knowledge can lead to helping a person understand a lot more about what they see around them. Understanding the mindset of people takes time and it involves a lot. Hundreds or even thousands of years of practice, literature, history, weather, politics, entertainment, war, famine, prosperity, diet, and many other things helped to shape the culture and no practice has a "simple" explanation about the why.

I talked to these people every week for over a year and there were many things that I didn't understand even after they explained them. Many times. This is because it takes more than an explanation to understand some things. Our backgrounds and worldviews are so radically different that we are not connecting on the underlying thought process that goes hundreds of layers deep. 

This experience showed me just how different people are and how ongoing communication is essential to understanding each other. Really understanding takes time. Seeing it in such large-scale differences made me realize this is a common problem everywhere and not just inter-culturally. Problems of not understanding where someone is coming from happens at work and even within the same household.

I learned a lot from those people, but my biggest lesson was not about the things they told me. It was about the need to be more understanding of people. We need to spend more time listening. Anytime we are struggling to be understood, we need to be sure we are also struggling to try to understand.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

Expressive Elocution

I spent almost two years in Beijing working in a public school teaching English to third, fourth, and fifth graders. I have lots of stories from this experience, but my biggest challenge was trying to promote creative thinking.

I'm not going to get into a lot of detail here, but the Chinese educational philosophy is radically different than American philosophy. One of the areas this is most apparent is in creativity. Chinese schools typically teach their students to learn facts, memorize, and then state them. They will spend hours hammering words over and over again.

Many times upon entering class some excited student would want to perform for me a monologue he had delivered at some competition over the weekend. He would then launch into a speech or recite a poem in perfectly executed English. Afterward, I would ask him about the content of the words he just said and he typically had no opinion and didn't even know what he had said. He had memorized a bunch of sounds and regurgitated them for the judges.

I had no intention of producing English-sounding robots. I wanted to help my students effectively communicate in English.

The problem with communication in this type of environment is that it requires independent thought. This was a foreign concept to the students and it took months to break them free. In the beginning, if I asked the class a question, no one would answer unless there was already a pre-programmed response.

If I showed a picture of a boy walking a dog and asked them what they saw, a few might volunteer that they saw a dog or a boy. The more adventurous ones might even point out that it was a sunny day. However, if I asked where the boy and dog were going, silence fell over the room. I would try to elaborate. Tell me a story. A boy and his dog are out for a walk. Are they going to the park? Are they going to the beach? Is that actually his dog or is it someone else's? I would get nothing because there was not a 'correct' answer that had already been taught to them. They honestly had no idea what was expected of them.

To answer those questions would require some imagination. It would require using the words they already had in their heads and creating a unique sentence formulated on their own. That was not the way they had been taught to learn. They had only been taught to read the script and keep saying it until you pronounced it correctly.

I soon changed my strategy by presenting them with the words I wanted them to use. I used words they already knew but asked them to produce a few sentences using the words I provided.

I had this screen up in the classroom and asked for sentences. It was brutal. No one seemed to understand what I wanted. The few who timidly agreed to give it a shot would say things like, "I have many homework." or "My teacher is tall." or "We had cheese for dinner."

OK. We are getting closer. Can anyone use more than just one word? I have six words here? I called on one of my more outgoing students and prayed he might push this a little further. He stood and stared at the board for a long time. After what seemed like an eternity, he whispered: "I have math homework."

This may be a very simple sentence, but I had been at this for weeks. I exploded with excitement. I jumped and cheered so loud, I scared a couple of students in the front row. I ran over, picked the kid up and introduced him to the class as a genius. HE USED TWO OF THE WORDS IN ONE SENTENCE!

I put him down, told him how great he did and I saw the light bulb go off. He looked at me at said "Teacher, can I do THREE?"

Yes! Give it a try.

"I want to play, but I have math homework."

This time the class joined me in cheering for him. They understood what had just happened and a couple of hands shot up. "TEACHER TEACHER! I can do four."

Let me hear it.

"My Math teacher told me not to sleep. Do homework."

YES! You got it! Good job!

More and more hands flew up as kids decided they wanted to give it a shot. "I can do ALL words" was yelled from the back. I quieted the class and he marched to the front to stare at the screen. He didn't have his story yet, but he had decided he could do it.

He thought for a bit and started slowly. "My math teacher gave me homework so I could not play. After dinner, I went to sleep."

HE USED EVERY WORD!!! YAY!!!

I put him on my shoulders and we ran around to high five everyone in class. After the celebration, I flipped to a new slide with six new words and the students actually fought over who would get to make a new sentence first. It became their new favorite game to see who could come up with the silliest story. We were soon even able to switch back to the default pictures. Look at the picture and tell me a story. And once these kids creative sides were released, they went nuts with it. We were soon able to recycle the word slides and start making new sentences.

A month later I had turned my classes into improv groups. I would bring kids up and give them scenarios on slips of paper they had to improvise. They did a mock radio show, gave out awards for silly talents in class, pretended to work in restaurants and convenience stores, and made up silly songs. The purpose was not to be funny (although that happened a lot). It was to create their own independent thoughts rather than just read a script out of a book. Although, the class auditors (officials who observed my classes) never understood what I was doing.

This is where we got to eventually, but first, it was months of just staring at students who were waiting for me to tell them what to say. I was so happy to get past that stage.

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The words in blue print were the ten words created by a random word generator. I had to incorporate them all into this post. Just a little challenge I added for myself.

Goodbye, China

In my last post, I briefly mentioned that I now live in Vietnam, but didn't give any details about why I am here now. I'll try to catch you up, but be warned. I may get a little negative in this post. Something I typically try not to do, but we've had a rough couple of months. Not "stuck-in-a-hotel-room-with-Harvey-Weinstein" rough, but it has not been enjoyable.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, then you have read many of my adventures already. Here are a few of the highlights.

Click the links if you missed any of these or they sound interesting.

Token White Guy -Learning what my actual job was
I Have the Power -The perils of just paying our bills

My #2s Should Be Someone's #1 Priority -Taking a crap shouldn't be this difficult

Don't Rub Me the Wrong Way - First experience with Chinese massage
Star and Torch Competition - Being a celebrity judge on television
English Lessons - Working with children
The Chinese Language is All Greek to Me - Us trying to learn Chinese
Life is Rough - My incredibly light work schedule

China was great and we learned a lot about adjusting to life in another culture, but…at the same time, China was awful and we learned a lot about adjusting to life in another culture.

When things went really south, I never really mentioned it on my blog. I like my blog to be a happy place where you can let your children play with having to worry about men in trench coats circling around in their van with the windows blacked out. Today, I'm going to let the creeps drive around.

For example, the school that brought us to China wasn't exactly honest with us about how employment regulations work. Shortly after arriving, Red and I were both pulled out of our schools for fear that government inspectors might find us working there.

WAIT! WHAT?

We had government contracts and worked in government schools, but that same government didn't know we were in their schools. It's a complicated mess that I'm not going to explain here (to protect certain people), but our bosses hadn't told us everything.

By the time it was all fixed, we had been in China for seven months before I received my first full paycheck. Until then, we were running around trying to make money doing odd jobs (all illegally) to get enough money to pay our bills.

We lived in China for a total of 20 months and my wife never succeeded in getting her work visa. This means she was never legally allowed to work. The reason for this was due to the job she had (yes, she had a job despite not having the proper government permission). She was an online personality doing videos to teach very young children English. According to the Chinese government, she is a teacher, despite the fact that she never enters a classroom or works with children. They would force her to apply for a teaching visa instead of the standard work visa. However, she does not have the required certificates and experience to qualify for a teaching visa, so it would get rejected every time.

For myself, my contract ended in December and I really wanted to leave my primary school job and teach in a university. And I got job offers from five different universities while we were there. However, none of them wanted me in January. They were all hiring for the next school year, but when the next school year came around no one wanted to hire me because I was locked into a contract at my current school until the following December. These contracts mean everything in China. You can't just walk away from a job. This meant I was stuck where I was unless I was willing to be unemployed for 6 months to change jobs. Although, even if I was willing to try this, my visa would expire and I would have to leave the country. So, I stayed where I was.

Add to all this the air quality issues in Beijing
that are almost always in the HAZARDOUS level
and we decided we just needed to get out.

Getting a job in another country would free me from having to abide by China's contract rules. We did a little research and settled on Vietnam as our new home.

But we still had to get out of China first. It was not easy. I received dozens of phone calls from my school trying to understand, bribe, coerce, threaten, guilt, and beg me to stay. A government inspector even offered to make me the principal of a Beijing school.

After a reconnaissance trip to Danang Vietnam to check out our new future hometown, we settled back in Beijing for one month to wrap everything up (close bank accounts, shut off services, etc). It was awful. It seems that everything in China is designed to be purposefully difficult.

• I returned the router to the internet company on my last day of service. They required my passport to cancel my service. I had left it at home and didn't want to make the trip back, so I showed them the picture I had of my passport page I always kept on my phone. NOPE. They have to have the original. I didn't see the point. I was not purchasing anything or starting new service, I was ending service. I owed them no money. I eventually told them, I'm just leaving this here. Do what you want with it. The manager got involved and objected to me leaving. After a bit of arguing, I discovered they only needed to make a copy of my passport. "SERIOUSLY!?! If all you need is a copy, I have one." I sent them an email with the picture of my passport attached. It took 5 people standing around discussing this before they decided that that picture would be as good as a picture they took themselves. Uh, yeah. Why wouldn't it be?
• I had three separate bank accounts due to insane banking regulations and spent an entire day trying to close just two of them. And one of them insisted that I didn't have any money in the account after it was closed. I did, but there was nothing I could do about it.
• Due to my bank account being closed, our leasing agent couldn't give us our deposit back. Because, apparently, the ONLY possible way to give us our money is a direct deposit into my account.
• Foreigners pay into social security the same as locals. And when we leave the country, we are to go apply to get the money we have contributed. After all, it's our money. However, the laws and regulations involved all contradict each other in such a way that it is nearly impossible to get that money. I was not able to get it because I cannot legally stay in the country long enough to complete the process required.

Here is my Facebook rant from that day about Chinese social security regulations that further explains it.

Here is my Facebook rant about how our leasing company stole our money.

Moving is expensive. That is to be expected, but we didn't expect to lose an additional $6,000 due to government theft, corporate fraud, and bureaucratic inefficiency.

As of today, we have been in Vietnam for almost two weeks and it has been an entirely different experience from day one. I can honestly say that we already have more friends here than we had after a year in China. The people here are incredibly friendly. People always talk to us on the street and approach us to find out where we are from. Everyone wants to to help. Genuinely help. Not just try to get something from us. After being here only five days, we threw a party on our rooftop and a dozen people attended. It has been great.

There is still much we don't understand about Vietnam and are learning how paperwork and laws work here, but it has been a wonderful experience so far. I love this country already.

RANT OVER.

We'll return to our regularly scheduled happy posts now.

R - Roam

I grew up a country boy. I lived between two small towns in southern Illinois. Waltonville had a population of 400 and Scheller had less than 50 people. Waltonville had a funeral home/hardware store and the Scheller post office was also the tavern. Neither of these statements are meant to be jokes. This is true.

I knew every person within miles of my home and every nook and cranny of the woods, paths, backyards, creeks, roads, and railroad tracks around. That whole area was our playground and we used it well.

Now, I live in Beijing, a city of 28 MILLION.

There are more people who live in my apartment building than lived in those two towns combined. I will never get to know everyone even if I do master Chinese.

One of the great things about living in a city this big is knowing that I will never get to see all of it. My wife and I love to explore and there is plenty to see. There are always new restaurants, tourist attractions, museums, foods, parks, etc. We'll never experience all of it even after wandering the streets for years.

L - Loss

A couple of years ago, I had to have periodontal surgery. It's not fun. My front bottom teeth are compacted together. They are very very tight, which makes it very difficult to get them cleaned properly since dental floss doesn't even like to get in between some of them.

Throughout the rest of my mouth, everything is fine. but the bottom front has always been difficult. I have one tooth in particular that has been especially troublesome. And about two months ago, it became very very loose.

It's loose enough that sometimes if I bite into something wrong it puts pressure on the tooth and presses it in an uncomfortable direction. I eventually could noticably wiggle it with my tongue.

But this morning, I had enough and ventured out to see what Beijing has to offer in the world of dentistry.

After trying a few places that couldn't fit me in today, I met a guy on the subway who recommended a place at the next stop. It was on the second floor of a hotel, but he suggested I go since they were rarely busy.

It was great. I was in and out of there in under and hour and only paid about $165 for an X-ray, teeth cleaning and a tooth extraction. It's times like this that I love China.

I am Lazy on an International Level

This month marks 18 months since Red and I arrived in the Middle Kingdom. We've been here long enough that this is just where we live now. The adventure is gone. Having the adventure gone means that most of the stress that goes along with that adventure is gone also. Having the stress gone is a good thing, but I miss the adventure.

We have gotten settled to the point that we are shopping around for apartments. Something that is not fun to do in any culture and China is no exception. Now that we have this place a little better figured out, we know what we like. And, more importantly, we are very aware of what we don't like.

We've learned how to order food directly to our apartment instead of going out. That is really nice in the winter. However, when we do go out, we have the regular restaurants we enjoy visiting. Just like in the States, we try new places also, but you settle into your favorites.

I have received messages from so many people saying things like:

• "Wow! Your life is so exciting."
• "What's it like to live in Beijing?"
• "How do you know what you're eating is actually pork?"
• "Aren't you scared of all the pandas running around?"

When we first got here, it was adventure all the time. Confusion, cluelessness, abject terror when out of the apartment, but adventure. However, with time, it has just become the place that we live. Most of my life in the States, I would wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to work, come home and watch TV, eat dinner and hang around the house. Now I live in China and my typical daily routine is eat breakfast, go to work, come home and watch TV, eat dinner and hang around the house.

As you can see, it hasn't really changed much. The only real work I do here that I didn't do in the States is searching the internet for pirated TV shows to download since there is no Netflix in China.

If you know me at all, you are well aware that I am rather lazy. Now I do love to experience new things and enjoy being the center of attention, but I'm not too keen on either if it will require much effort. I am more than happy to do nothing. And I have quickly learned that I can do that literally anywhere in the world.

My new life goal is to take a nap on every continent.

 

Starting To Figure This Place Out

Last week, I returned from an English competition I participated in last year. It was four days of sitting under studio lights and listening to children showcase a talent they had prepared.

Some of the performances were great. Others were like listening to Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher having sex with each other.

Despite the long days, I love working on this show. It's an opportunity to do something different and meet a bunch of new people. I make a lot of new Chinese friends and also meet many foreigners who are there doing the same thing. However, this year had one major difference from last year.

Last year, I had only been in China for a couple of months and was still in the "Crap! What have we gotten ourselves into?" mode. Now, I've been here for almost a year and a half and China doesn't seem scary anymore.

I was especially reminded of this when I got home and was reflecting on the week I just had. Each group of judges had two "native" English speakers along with several Chinese judges of differing talents. The other English speaker I was paired with was a Brazilian guy who had only arrived in China the month before and has not had a good experience so far. In fact, the company that brought him here really screwed him over, but he has gotten away from them.

While he enjoys working with children, he is acutely aware of everything around him that "just isn't right." He had a host of complaints over the course of the weekend.

• He was disgusted that some children had memorized answers instead of interacting with the judges.
• He hated that the breakfast they gave us was not what 'normal people' would eat.
• He told us stories of the management style he had to suffer with at his new job.
• The apartment he lived in was sub-standard.
• He didn't agree with the educational system he was working in
• He was having trouble making Chinese friends.
• The language barrier was ridiculous.

 After one of his stories about something he was not happy with, he walked away and another guy in the room (in China for 6 years) said: "He's a whiny little bitch."

While I couldn't disagree with the sentiment, I tried to remind the people in the room that this man had just arrived in the country and is still in freak out mode. Everyone nodded. Those first few months are difficult. It's like being on another planet.

Since I was paired with this guy, we spent a lot of time together and I did my best to help him understand some things, tell him where to buy certain items that he couldn't find and how to do some necessary tasks that seemed insurmountable. One conversation stood out in particular. It happened over breakfast.

James: Don't these people realize that breakfast is supposed to be a different meal? Why are they serving the same stuff we ate at lunch and dinner?

Me: This isn't the same.

James: Well, maybe not. But why don't they at least serve breakfast food?

Me: This is breakfast food. It's Chinese breakfast food. You do understand that we are in China, right?

James: Why can't they serve the food that normal people eat?

Me: Stop and think about this. There are over seven and a half billion people on this planet and almost one and a half billion live in this country. China, the country you are in now, makes up close to 20% of the entire world. Statistically, whatever they eat here is closer to 'normal' than whatever either of us eats in our own countries. This is normal. Everything that happens here is more 'normal' than what happens anywhere else.

He understood my point and let it rest for a moment, but as I scooped up a spoonful of my congee, it struck me. "Did I just say that? Where did that come from?"

As much as I was annoyed at how little this guy was willing to open his mind and try to bend to his surroundings, it occurred to me that this was me a year ago.

I wasn't happy about anything. I didn't know how to pay my bills. Grocery shopping was a disaster. We didn't know how to cook. There were strange smells in our apartment. We came dangerously close to getting hopelessly lost every time we went outside. I couldn't talk to anyone. Even the few people who try to help don't realize how clueless I was. It was horrible.

BUT...

What a difference a year makes. There is still so so so much about China that I don't understand, but the fear and anxiety is gone. I got this. I'm ready to tackle another country now.

Life is Rough

Today is my first day of my six week vacation. SIX WEEKS! It's time to party.

I get these unplanned (but fortunately paid) breaks quite often due to the nature of my job. I am an English teacher in Beijing, but not the same kind of teacher as the local teachers. I am the "native English-speaking oral teacher" at my school. I have over 700 students spread out across 20 different classes in third through fifth grade. I meet with each class once a week for 40 minutes.

This means that I am not their actual English teacher. They have Chinese English teachers all week and I pop in once a week to play English-speaking games. I don't do typical English lessons. I just design my classes to get my students to talk. It gives them a chance to practice the language they have been learning without getting caught up in structure, grammar, and syntax. Those things are important, but it is not the purpose of my being there. Plus, they get exposure to a native English-speaker.

This makes my job different from the regular teachers in several ways:

• I don't give homework
• I don't grade papers
• I don't give tests
• I don't have progress reports
• I don't assign grades
• I am not responsible for any paperwork

Because of this, I also don't go to staff meetings, teacher's workshops, field trips, extra-curricular activities, after-school programs, etc. I don't even stay at school for the entire day. I show up in time to teach the first class I have for the day and leave as soon as I finish my last class. While the other teachers are there Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I put in just under five hours and I only work four days a week. Take all these "perks" and add in that as the "professional expert" in my field, I get paid more than them. So you can imagine how popular I am with the rest of the staff.

Me being off work right now is one of those perks. School is still in session, but my services are not needed. This week is the semi-yearly progress test for all Chinese students. Because all students are taking this test, there are no classes for me to teach. So I get to stay home.

All next week, the students are out of school, but the teachers have meetings and training all week. However, it is all in Chinese and most of it doesn't apply to what I do. So I don't have to go in for that either. After that is the start of the Chinese Spring Festival which kicks off Chinese New Year. It lasts four weeks and everyone does get off for that. I just got to leave two weeks early. It's a pretty sweet gig. If I could just find a way to not have to deal with children, it would be the perfect job.

Now that I've got all this time off, I need to figure out what to do.

One Year Down...Don't Know How Many To Go

According to my "On This Day" section of Facebook, Red and I landed in China one year ago today.

September 27, 2016

The first few months were really rough, but we survived. And now that we've been here a year, I can mark Item #166 off my Bucket List. Live overseas for one year.

Click here to see the full list.

The year has flown by at an incredible pace. It seems like we just left the States.

There is still much that we are getting used to and miscommunications still happen daily, but we have gotten pretty comfortable with our lives here. We know how to do the things we need and want to do. Difficulties come less and less often and when they do occur, we can usually figure out what we need to do. Plus, we now have a bigger network of friends we can call for help if the need arises.

Many people have asked us when we will be coming back and we have a pretty simple answer for that.

We have no idea.

Here's what we do know. When we got here a year ago, we signed a three year lease on our apartment. That means...

Let's see...3 minus 1

...we have two years left on our lease. My wife just signed a two year contract with her employer and I'll be signing a new contract at the end of this year. So, we are committed to two more years. After that, who knows? We may decide to stay longer or we may not. However, we are fairly certain that even if we do leave China, we will not be coming back to the States. It will be time to try out another country for a while. We have a few we've been checking out, but haven't gotten very serious about it yet since it's still at least two years off.

In the meantime, we're just enjoying where we are now.

Alcohol-Infused Education

In a few more days, I will have been in China for an entire year. A year. An entire freaking year! Wow. Time really flies. Now, you would think that in that year I would have gotten used to China and all the ways it is different from America, but you'd be wrong.

Kind of like that uncle who always bites down on his fork and then drags it through his teeth as he removes it and you can feel the metal screeching against his enamel and it's piercing every square inch of your spine. You've had the same reaction ever since the first time you noticed it at Thanksgiving dinner when you were six and now it is almost 40 years later and it is just as irritating as the first time it happened except now all the little diodes in your brain are extra sensitive from overuse caused by the Trump administration and the upcoming second season of Stranger Things, so his grating feels like those inflamed diodes are being scraped by one of those metal tooth hook tools used by the same dentist who tells you to keep metal away from your teeth. Just can't get used to it.

Last week, I was teaching in one of my 4^th grade classes and I mentioned that I was going to Qingdao for the upcoming mid-Autumn Festival. Several of the kids got excited and one jumped up and shouted, "Teacher, do you drink beer?"

I thought this was an odd question to come from a nine-year-old. Especially when directed to a teacher. I paused for a moment and said, "Sometimes." A murmur started through the entire class as they smiled and nodded. The child who was still standing proudly said, "You can drink beer in Qingdao."

Once again, that's an odd statement. You can drink beer pretty much anywhere. There are bars and liquor stores in Beijing just like there are in the States. He spoke up again, "Qingdao has some very famous beer."

Okay. That makes a little more sense. This is a city that is actually known for its beer. I get it, but why do kids this young care about this? I changed the subject because it just felt wrong to discuss my alcohol habits with my students. Particularly at this age.

I told the kids to open their books, but a student in the back interjected, "Qingdao beer is very good. I love it." I cheerily called him out, "You don't drink beer."

Oh...okay (wink).

He shot me a look that clearly said, "What are you talking about?" I was playing with the kid, but I suddenly realized that I don't think I know what's going on here. Hands started going up around the room.

"I drink beer."

"I like beer."

"We have it every night at dinner"

Now, I am not appalled at the idea that a child has tasted beer. Here is a picture of me at 14 months old. I really didn't seem to mind.

I moved on from PABST before my teenage years.

Almost every kid I grew up with had a taste of their parents' drink at some point, but this was different. I could tell they weren't bragging that they had gotten to drink an adult beverage. They seemed genuinely confused that I would even question this.

When I got home, I looked up the drinking age in China and discovered that it is 18 as it is in most of the world. However, it only seems to apply to the purchase of alcohol, not consumption. And even the purchasing restriction is not a law, but a regulation. A regulation that isn't really enforced.

In the first month I was here, I was out with a friend who had his preschooler with him. When our drinks arrived, the boy reached for his dad's glass of wine. His dad held it so he could try it in order to help the child discover that he didn't like it and wouldn't want it any more. As he was doing this, my eyes were anxiously darting around the restaurant to make sure no one was seeing this. You don't do this in the States!

My friend saw me getting nervous and laughed it off. "No one cares here," he said.

I've learned that he was correct. Drinking is looked at differently in various parts of the world.

I'm not suggesting that the kids here are alcoholics.

Or even that they spend all their spare time chugging beer with their friends. They don't.

But there is a distinct difference in attitude. For example, here's a picture of my wife's pencil case that I have seen many students have.

ROUGH TRANSLATION:
I just want to get drunk.

This is a common phrase here that is used in the same way a white girl in America might say "I can't even".

It's these differences in thinking that are the most difficult to adjust to. The Chinese attitude toward almost everything is typically very different than the attitude in the West. This applies to marriage, money, time, manners, medicine, diet, hygiene, work expectations, friendship and basically anything you can think of.

I love my life here, but don't know that I'll ever reach the point that I don't feel like a foreigner.

Chinese Lessons - 中文课

Summer is almost over and I start teaching again on Monday. All my free time is about to evaporate. It will be nice to have something outside the apartment to do again. However, it really takes away from the task I have poured myself into all summer.

Red and I have been taking Chinese language lessons.

After living in China for almost a year and being essentially clueless about everything the entire time, we've decided to finally tackle the language.

I've made and memorized hundreds of flashcards.

I have notebooks filled with pages
of practiced Chinese characters

As I mentioned in a previous post about learning Chinese (click here), there are literally thousands of characters to learn. And so many of them seem to make the same sound when pronounced. The difference is very subtle. And for the many that actually do make the exact same sound, you just have to pull the correct meaning from context. From context. In a language I am already clueless about. This seems more and more like an insurmountable task, but I'm tackling it anyway.

Despite its difficulty, learning Chinese definitely has it moments. For example, last week I learned the character 太. This is a very simple character that pops up quite often. It is an adverb that basically means 'too'. If something is too much or too loud, you would use the character 太.

However, almost every character can be paired with another character to create an entirely different word. For example, the character 天 (day or sky) when paired with the character 气 (air) produces 天气 (weather). It makes sense.

Here are a few others:

女(female) + 人(person) = 女人(woman)
买(to buy) + 电(electricity) = 买电 (power bill)
长(long) + 大(big) = 长大 (grow up)

Pairing two characters together to make another word prevents having to create a separate character just for that one word. Since there are already thousands (have I mentioned there are thousands?) of characters to learn, I am less suicidal very grateful for that. Especially when you see some of the entertaining pairings. Earlier, I explained that 太 means 'too; overly; excessive', but what happens when you pair it with itself.  e.g. "overly excessive.

太 (too) + 太 (too) = 太太 (wife)

There is no explanation needed here.
The joke writes itself.
The married guys get it.

Since I can now recognize some (0.0000417%) of the characters, all the signs and ads around the city have words that jump out at me. This means that they are starting to make a little more sense.

This is one of the stops on a subway near my house.

Before taking Chinese lessons, I only saw this as Dawanglu, but I have since learned that 路 (Lu) is a word for street or road. So, it's Dawang Street. I've also learned that 大 (da) means 'big'. That means that this subway stop is for Big Wang Street and who isn't curious about a big wang? And whose wang was SOOOOO big they named a street after it?

Because I can only recognize some of the characters on a sign, I have to try to infer the meaning through context. For example, here is a sign that is outside a construction area near our apartment.

Now, I can't tell you exactly what it says, but knowing enough of the words paired with the context of the surroundings means I can deduce the general meaning.

In the middle of the day,
a person who is 21 must go out to get beer.

It is good to know that the construction company takes care of its workers, but does it in a legal way.

For weeks, I've seen this (↓↓↓) advertisement on the wall in the subway station and never had any idea what the product was for.

After this week's lesson, I now recognize the last two characters on the ad. I'm not positive about exactly what each word is, but I feel that I finally understand its purpose.

人 (person)

生(to be born)

This ad seems to be urging people to consider traveling to the mountains to have their babies on this beautiful waterfront. It's an excellent marketing campaign.

Until I can read and speak every word that I see, I must keep my nose in the books and practice with every Chinese person I meet. And there is no shortage of Chinese people in Beijing.

---

Here's how most lessons seem to go.