Teaching is Hell

While many people are complaining about having to transition their lives (job, education, shopping, etc.) to doing things online, I am one of the people who was already doing that. My job is completely online. I live in Vietnam, but I do not have a job here.

I work for a Chinese company and I teach children English online. Just like any other job, some days are great and some days are terrible. Last night I had an interesting lesson.

My student was an 8 year old girl who goes by the English name Maggie. She is one of my more difficult students. She often walks away from the computer in the middle of the lesson which leaves me to sit and look at an empty room until her parents peek in the door and place her back in front of the camera. When she can be bothered enough to acknowledge my presence, she likes to ignore the lesson and just show me all of her toys. However, every now and then, she is somewhat attentive. Last night was one of those times. Almost.

The lesson was about the various ways people work with animals. It discusses sheep herding, police dogs, rescue animals, and service animals.

Since my primary purpose is actually to teach English, I always encourage a lot of extra dialogue. I want my students to practice conversing in this new language. Instruction is great, but practice is necessary to get good at anything. So, to start off, I asked Maggie to look at the picture and tell me where they are.

As usual with Maggie, I got silence. So I used the trick that works with most children. I suggested a wrong answer.

"Are they at the library?"

She shook her head.

"Well, where are they?"

 

 

Once again, I got a blank stare. Now, this girl can speak English. It is quite limited, but she understands me and could answer if she chose to. So, I cranked up my classroom personality to "clown" which is just one setting lower than "dancing monkey" and tried harder to get her to engage.

"Would you like to go there? You could throw snowballs at your sister."

Maggie leaned toward the computer and activated her pen. She often draws or writes answers instead of talking to me. She is so much fun. 😒

"Maggie, where are they?"

 

Hell? Thank you, Maggie.

While that was not the correct answer, it was engagement and I wanted to reward that. Hopefully, we could build from here. I decided to run with it.

"They are in hell? I guess they could be in hell. I know that I hate cold weather and snow." 

She furrowed her brow and shook her head. She drew under her previously written word.

AH!
Not hell, but HILL.

I thought she was making a joke about how it would be terrible to have to be there, but she was just answering my question. In English, we would probably say mountain. But her English is not that good. She took the Mandarin word (山 - Shān) which can mean mountain or steep hill and simply misspelled it. She wasn't trying to make a joke.

That explained why she never smiled the entire time. Well, that and the fact that she really doesn't like me.

But to show me that she did know what she was talking about, she labelled the rest of the picture also.

I turned to the next page, but she never did smile.

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."

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.

N - Now (Red)

Next month, my wife and I will be celebrating our 5^th wedding anniversary. Our marriage has been a whirlwind of adventure. Let me just list some truths about our relationship story.

• I proposed to Red before I had met her or knew her name. I had never even seen a picture.
• I hacked a state database to learn where she worked so I could send her flowers.
• The time frame between us picking a wedding date and the day of the wedding was 8 days.
• One year later, we vacationed in Turkey the week before their military coup. Ankara got bombed days before we were there. A Syrian refugee searched our car one day for bombs before letting us leave his camp.
• We moved to China 17 months after getting married.
• We now live in Vietnam.
• In the short time we've been together, we have lived in three different countries and visited seven. We've seen both U.S. coasts and much of the country in between.

Life has been busy and it has been great, but months ago someone asked me a question that still rattles around in my head.

 "Weren't you concerned that moving to another country might be too much strain for a couple so recently married?"

It was a legitimate question. Moving twelve time zones away to a foreign land is immensely stressful and scary and technically we were still a new couple. But I don't remember being worried about that.

We were honest with ourselves and each other during the moving process. We knew there would be some huge challenges once we got there and we recognized that we didn't even know what those challenges were going to be. We also knew that one of our biggest strengths as a couple is our ability to communicate. We talk to each other.

I mean really talk.

I was concerned about the stress of the move and the adjustments that would be required, but I was not concerned about how it would affect our relationship. I think it goes back to how we started dating.

Red and I met online through each other's blogs. I'm not going to tell the whole story here, but innocent conversations online grew into more. This gave us a chance to get to know each other outside of looking for romance. When the possibility of a relationship began to grow, we threw some hard truths at each other. We even had a 'red flag' conversation. On that phone call, we each admitted things about ourselves that would make us look bad. (For me: I rarely hold a job more than a year, I had two ex-wives, etc)

We candidly stated our stances on social, political and religious issues. We explained how we felt about kids, finances, ethics, family traditions and much more. We just put it all on the line.

We talked in depth about all the things that a lot of couples don't get into for years. I believe we both knew this relationship had the potential to go somewhere and it just needed to all be out in the open. We didn't want to waste each other's time if there was something one of us would not be able to live with. Why wait years to learn something and then break up?

This also caused us to call each other out on some bad communication habits we had each picked up over the years. For myself, she quickly corrected how I respond to questions when I don't appreciate the direction of a conversation. With some honest self-reflection and looking back at how this practice had not been helpful in my last marriage, I was able to change it.

This is just one of the ways that being in this woman's presence has made me a better person.

All of this is also why I was not worried about how we as a couple would handle our big move to China. We had each other's backs and knew that.

I am so in love with my wife and look forward to where the next five years will take us.

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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.

Life is Good

Several years ago, I made the fateful decision to combine my gift for teaching with my love for foreign culture and entered into a graduate TESOL program. I started working on my Master's Degree to teach English to speakers of other languages. I had always been fascinated by people from other countries and thought this would be a great way to get to work with them on a regular basis.

This decision led me to move to a bigger city where there would be more opportunities to work with foreigners. Soon after updating my Facebook profile about my intentions (not only for a job, but for school requirements also), I got the attention of someone in China.

After completing my degree, I accepted that job and the adventure began.

Five years ago, the furthest I had ever traveled was Puerto Rico. I had never even needed a passport. In the time since I made the above Facebook post, I have been to Germany, China, Canada, Turkey, Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong. My wife and I have spent the last two and a half years living outside the United States. We currently live on the coast in central Vietnam.

My life is far from perfect, but I love it. This is the happiest I have been in my entire adult life. I love the house we live in. I love that we are in a small coastal town where it never gets cold. I am one of the lucky few in the world who actually loves his job. And I am married to a beautiful, intelligent woman whom I adore. Life is good.

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.

Fortune Cookie #13 - Making that Goat Money

This morning, I reached in my bag of collected fortune cookie fortunes to see what the day had in store for me and I got this.

You'll make foreign money in the year of Goat.

Now, a fortune telling you that you are going to make some money is always a good fortune. Who couldn't use a little more money?

However, my first thought about this took me right to my time spent teaching English in Beijing. Consistently, regardless of age, every student would get this question wrong.

What is this animal?

Every student I ever had would answer "sheep". ALWAYS. From grade one all the way through high school. They would tell me that was a sheep. 

I would correct them and show a picture of a sheep.

THIS completely different animal is a sheep.

The students never questioned me. They had the foresight to understand that the native English speaker in front of them is probably correct. However, the new knowledge rarely stuck with them. Inevitably, at some point, this would come around again and they would label a goat as a sheep.

Once, I heard a Chinese English teacher call a goat a sheep and I realized that the kids weren't mixing the animals up, this was what they had been taught. However, it was a pretty consistent mistake since I had encountered this phenomenon in several schools and even different cities. Why was this happening?

I eventually cracked it. The confusion can be tracked down to the way the Chinese language functions. Many of their words are two other words pushed together. In this instance:

See, the Chinese don't really have an original word for goat. They have the word (羊) Yáng for sheep. But for a goat, they take the already existing (羊) Yáng and add (山)Shān to the front. 山羊.

山  means mountain.

So, their language provides a word for sheep, but then the word for "goat" is literally "mountain sheep." This doesn't even account for all the little goats that are running around farms and have no association with mountains. I understand the confusion.

Due to all this confusion within the Chinese language, I turned to Google to investigate my fortune to ensure we were even talking about the correct animal.

It appears to me that even within Chinese culture,
they don't know what animal we are talking about.

 I also discovered that the Year of the Goat…Sheep…uh, Ram…whatever isn't coming around again until 2027. Eight years from now! What am I supposed to do until then?

I went back to look at the fortune.

Wait a minute!

Due to my international lifestyle, I already make foreign money. I spent the last two years in China and am now in Vietnam. My money comes from a few different countries. Given my current circumstances, the best the fortune is offering me is letting me know that I will still be employed in eight years.

Although, these fortunes were all collected by me when I still lived in the States. I just still have them. Had I read it at the time, it would have been letting me know that my income would not be US-based a decade down the road. This may be the first fortune cookie I've ever gotten that actually came true.

Vietnamese Banking

If you follow me on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). you are already well aware of the fact that I LOVE Vietnam.

I have lived in Vietnam for just over three months and I love it here. I love the food, the friendliness of the people, the weather, the cost of living, the clean air…absolutely everything. It is incredible here.

On a daily basis, I turn to my wife and say "This is SO much better than freakin' China!"

We had some great experiences in China and we learned a lot, but it cannot be denied that things are so incredibly and unnecessarily difficult there. Anything you try to do is stifled by mountains of ridiculous and redundant paperwork that must be completed and filed at 27 different government offices scattered all around the country who do not communicate with each other to share your information.

To give you a glimpse at what I am talking about, I will tell you about a recent task I had to tackle in Vietnam. I dreaded this task so much, I put it off for almost three months. Last week, I opened a bank account.

I was able to put it off for so long because the cost of living in Vietnam is unbelievably low. We have lived the past three months off the cash we brought with us from China. My pay has been getting dumped into an international account, but I haven't had access to it because I did not have a local bank to funnel the money through. We just lived on (not only bought groceries but paid rent and all our bills) the cash we had on hand FOR THREE MONTHS!

Our cash was starting to run low, so I reluctantly succumbed to the pressure to finally take care of this. I really dreaded it because my only experiences with opening a bank account in another country have been in China and it was not pleasant.

Take your time to count all the smiles in the room.
I'll wait.

Visiting the bank in China is like going to visit someone in prison:

• You have to wait until your number is called
• You must carry proper identification 
• The person you are talking to is behind a thick pane of glass
• Guards with large batons are watching your every move
• The tiniest little (or imaginary) infraction can get you thrown out
• There's always someone screaming in a back room somewhere

And all of this had to be tolerated to visit the bank for anything. The first time I went was to open an account and it was SO much more complicated…and took four attempts to get it right. Seriously, I went back four times. It was not pleasant. Add to this the fact that China doesn't really let you choose your own bank and it gets worse. You have to bank where your employer tells you to because they will only pay through direct deposit and they will only do it at the bank where they do business. And then, in order for you to pay your company-supplied insurance, they will only deduct that amount from a particular bank (not the same bank, a different one because…well, you know…reasons. Shut up!). They don't deduct it from your pay, they will deduct it from your separate bank account.

This means you must open accounts at these two banks (one to receive your pay and one to pay your insurance) and each month you must transfer money from one to another to have the money in the proper place for the insurance.

And none of this was told to me until after I had already gone out and opened an account at the bank I had decided would offer the best customer service to a foreigner. So, after doing all the research to choose just the right bank for me, I wasn't able to use it. I spent the next two weeks sitting in bank lobbies getting all the proper accounts needed to be able to receive pay that never ended up going through any of those banks anyway.

China was fun!

So, you may understand my reluctance to start this process again.

So, back in Vietnam now, after doing a lot of research and talking to other expats about what banks they use, I finally decided on the bank I wanted. The bank I chose had an impressive English-language website (this is one of my requirements) that suggested I register myself with their bank before I go in to save time on the paperwork on site.

So, I started an account and plugged in all my info (passport #, name, address, etc.) and hit enter. I then received an email asking me to set an appointment to come in. I scheduled it to be as soon as possible and set out the door with all my legal documents under my arm.

Twenty minutes later, I walk into the "bank"

Does this look like a bank to you?

This was not what I was expecting. I had to go back outside to ensure I was at the right place. This was the bank. Except, they don't like to call it a bank. They call it a hangout.

As soon as I walked in, a young girl approached me. "You must be Mr. Minor. Have a seat. Would you like a drink?"

They had water, juices, several types of coffee, and even beer.

You conduct your banking business
at a coffee bar counter.

I sat in one of the large cushioned chairs by a low round table while she whipped me up an espresso. She returned with my coffee and the paperwork from my online registration. Over the course of the next ten minutes that I was there (yes, only 10 minutes), she got a copy of my passport, had me sign two papers, gave me a bank card with my name already printed on it and explained to me some of the features of the new account I now had.

DONE!

I stepped back outside unsure about what had just happened. That was way too easy. Even for America. A new bank account in minutes? I didn't need any of the paperwork I brought with me? And I could have drunk a beer if I had ordered one. Incredible!

Here is part of what saved time. The place is able to have the more personable setup because they don't handle any money on site. I could not have made a deposit if I wanted to. This bank is a purely digital bank. It is designed to all be done online. If you want to make a cash deposit, there are a few banks around town they are partnered with where you can do that for a small fee, but it's rare that people do that.

Because there is no money on site, there is no need for all the extra security, guards at the doors, thick glass walls, or cameras everywhere. This place facilitates paperwork and they are incredibly efficient at it. Since I had already filled out all the needed information online before I came in, they didn't need me to do that when I got there. In fact, the only reason I had to go to the office at all was was to physically sign the papers, let them scan my passport, and hand me my card. The only reason they don't just mail you your card and have you do the other two digitally (which would be easily possible) is due to banking regulations to prevent fraud. You must physically show up with your passport. Small price to pay for this kind of ease.

I love this country more and more every day. Vietnam is awesome.

What Do You Want From Your Life?

Two years ago many people thought my wife and I were crazy when we went to Turkey for our vacation despite the recent bombings in Ankara (the city we went to) and all along the Syrian border. We went anyway and had the best vacation I've ever been on.

Two months after returning from that trip, we sold all our stuff and moved to Beijing, China so I could teach English to primary school children and start using my degree in TESOL. Something I was having great difficulty doing while living in the States.

After 20 months in Beijing, we packed up again and now live in Danang, Vietnam. Despite living in Vietnam, I still work for the Chinese. In China.

The last couple of years have been a whirlwind of new adventures, crazy stories (I'm all about collecting new stories), challenging stereotypes, personal growth, and stretching our perception of people, culture and the world. It has been absolutely amazing. I can honestly say that I love my life. It still has difficultes, but that cannot be escaped anywhere.

At least once a week, I hear from someone saying something to the effect of "I am so jealous." OR "I wish I could travel all the time." And my response is always the same.

"Then do it."

This doesn't just pertain to travel. I heard the same when I went back to college after I had started my family. "I wish I could go back to school."

I would suggest they go back to school. I would then get a long list of reasons why they couldn't do what I did.

• My kids are still in school
• My job is pretty demanding
• I don't have the money
• I've been out of school too long
• I don't have the time 
• My dog's about to have puppies

I completely understand the fear that comes with every one of these excuses (except the puppy one) because I had the same issues in my life. I had kids and barely made enough money to meet my rent. I was working several jobs to get that money. I was pressed for time and hadn't been to a school in years. However, I made a simple choice and it was the same choice that every person makes every day.

What are my priorities?

We ALL have responsibilities that take up our time and our thoughts and our effort, but somehow we manage. Many of us have limited incomes, but we still have to decide where we spend that income. Any time we have that is not dictated to us by our jobs, sleep or responsibilities is decided by us on how we spent it.

If you choose to use your money to buy a $100/month cable package, that is your business. Good for you. However, if you have that cable package and then claim that you can't put back $100 a month to save for a trip or a college class or whatever, it's just not true. You did have the money, but you made a choice about what your priorities were and it was cable TV.

I know a guy who always complained about how broke he was and he didn't appreciate me pointing out that he didn't have to drive a brand-new $800/month car all the time. There are much cheaper cars out there. This same guy took his wife out for VERY VERY nice dinners every Friday night, but then had trouble paying his power bill.

Whether we are talking about money, time, effort, energy, or anything else, we all only have a finite amount and how we choose to spend it is up to us. If you really want to do something, do it. Make it happen. Make your choice.

So many of the people who tell me they would love to travel more use lack of money as their excuse for why they don't. However, I cannot seem to convince them that they often make much more money than I do. And it's true whether they choose to believe it or not.

The main difference is…travel is a priority to me. Because of this, my financial decisions are made with future travel plans in mind. I recently turned down a job offer because the schedule would be too restrictive to allow me to travel freely. Travel is a priority, so I design my life around it. I personally know a girl who prioritizes travel, makes only $1,200 a month and travels all over the world. In the last year, she's been to a dozen U.S. cities and seen China, Bali, Indonesia, Malaysia, Scotland, Germany, Spain, and others. Don't tell me you can't afford to travel.

Whether you realize it or not, you are already doing the same thing. The places you choose to put your money/time/effort/emotions are the priorities you have chosen. You might not have put that much thought into it, but you have done it. The thing you need to consider is: are you being intentional about your priorities or are you just floating along letting life take you where it wants to.

If you have something you really want to do, then make it happen. Believe it or not, you probably do have the means to do so. Sit down. Make a plan and figure out you how may need to restructure your life to acheive your goal. Whatever that goal may be, it is probably not just going to fall into your lap. Go get it.

 Whatever it is

Go back to school ✯ Take your dream vacation ✯ Build that house you always wanted ✯ Write your book ✯ Get in shape ✯ Learn woodworking ✯ Volunteer at that animal shelter ✯ Take that cooking class ✯ Move to the seaside ✯ Go live your life

You have more control than you have given yourself credit for.

If you have something you want to do and you choose not to, that is fine. It is your life and I believe you should be able to live it however you choose. However, don't complain to me about the reasons you can't because I will challenge you to change your thinking.

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.