Hello and Goodbye

So I'm doing the one thing I told myself I wouldn't fall into in today's technocrazy age of information: blogging. The word turns my stomach.

Let me start by saying I'm 21 years old, still in college at Georgia State University, and in 2 weeks I'm going to get on a plane and fly halfway across the world where I'll live for a year teaching English in private schools in Qingdao, China. I spent $200 online to take a course to certify myself to teach English as a foreign language, expedited a passport to my house, and spent the next 5 months putting my resume in every corner of the internet looking for a job in China. Again, what a crazy information-driven world we live in.

A couple people suggested I post my experiences somewhere while I'm there, so they could check up on what I'm doing and maybe the miles apart wouldn't seem like such a big deal. It doesn't to me. However, in the process of getting ready to leave in the last couple weeks, I've found almost no information online about how to prepare for a journey like this, except some scattered posts on job sites mostly from people either curious about resume appearance or people already in China posting rather ridiculous opinions about dating coworkers and other strange situations. Anyway, this confuses and worries me for a couple reasons. There are a lot of Americans in China teaching right now, and a lot more behind me who are going through the process of finding a job that doesn't suck. It seems like there should be a huge resource for people like us in an open internet forum or something. Maybe the restrictions on information in China extends to blogging and people simply can't do what I'm doing. If this is the case, this blog dies in 2 weeks. Or maybe one post I read hit a little closer to home, and a majority of people over there teaching are really just backpackers looking for a free vacation, and blogging is furthest from their minds as they roam around tellin' the Chinese what's up. I hope to keep posting, daily if possible, and I'm going to include pictures. Which brings me to my point in this first post before I've even hit the airport, my purpose I guess. I'm blogging to provide for the prospective teacher who has no idea how to even begin preparing for China or what to expect upon arrival. Also I hope my friends will read this, but who can really say. I don't read blogs.

Now let me lay out what I've gathered so far, and what I've signed up for in China. My job is in Qingdao as I've said, which is a European-influenced second-tier city on the East China Sea. My original information packet called my neighborhood the "Switzerland of Asia". Seriously, look it up on Google Earth, there's an old German castle on the beach, it looks very pretty. My living quarters will be a shared house with 5 other teachers, 2 guys on my floor and 3 girls on the other. I don't know top or bottom yet, haha. The teachers they employ are from English speaking countries so I can expect Canadians, Brits, Aussies, and other Americans. I had email contact with a Canadian girl who works there, she says it's nice.

Probably the hardest part up until now has been negotiating the contract. I have to pay my way there and back, but I can expect compensation when I complete my 12 month contract. The compensation is 5000RMB, or about $690 USD. My ticket was well over $1700. I don't think I'm breaching any employment terms listing the details of my contract, but mine seems to be middle-of-the-road as far as teaching jobs so anyone else looking for a good offer might use this as a reference. I live for free, except that the 6 of us in the house will split the cost of utilities, which I am told doesn't exceed 80RMB ($11.03) a month per person. They're paying me 5000RMB ($689.89) a month on top of that, in cash. City jobs pay more than rural ones, and I hear you don't want to spend a lot of time as an American in rural China. 5000-7000 RMB seems a good rate for first or second tier cities, but it requires a college degree to teach most places in the first tier cities. I told you I'm still working on mine, all I did was get TEFL certified online.

I should note, since I'm advising people negotiating contracts, that these are legally binding documents and that your time in China can be very miserable if you don't edit every detail. There are plenty of horror stories floating around about bad bosses and skeezy contracts, so I had more than one person take a look at mine and made sure it was in plain English. I knew enough Mandarin to have proofread my employment documents for my visa as well, but just in case my employer provided me with English translations of these documents. Another big point: I did not go through an agent to find the job. Post a resume just for the hell of it and see how many agents will fill your mailbox in the next week or so. They offer contracts ready to sign for ridiculous sums of money, and most of the time the employers they represent have no idea who you are or whether you're the kind of applicant they want for the job. I wasted a lot of time trying to squeeze information out of agents, and each time I asked the wrong question the job was "unfortunately unavailable" but if I wanted more useless information they'd be happy to shove it down my throat. I spoke on the phone with the director of my school, who has guided me through every step of the process and has provided reliable references upon request. This is super important.

China has changed their laws regarding visa acquisition just last year. Look it up if you're trying to get there in some kind of timeframe, because even my employer sent the wrong papers at first, which was an expensive error for both of us. A lot of the sketchier jobs offered me tourist visas to leave in a couple weeks, because you don't have to have many papers to get three-month visas as a tourist, and they cost less. I ate the cost for my visa but it was worth getting the Z working class visa that lasts an entire year. This means I can't get deported, and I don't have to fly to Hong Kong to get my visa status updated every three months. It's also illegal to have a job on a student or tourist visa, keep in mind. China is still communist and they are pretty serious about the visa thing. My visa cost about $200 and took 3 weeks to acquire, with the mistaken documents' shipping being another $150 or so.

I'm sorry if this is boring, I just want all of this information outta my head so I can start fresh when I leave and make it as illustrious and adventurous as possible. But then nobody explained the raw details to me and I feel like somebody might find value in what I've laid out. It is expensive, time consuming, and a little crazy, the whole thing, but I hope to make it worthwhile. I should note that I don't intend to be a teacher in the future, this is not a career for me, and I have funded each step of the process waiting tables at my neighborhood Applebee's and living at home with my parents squirreling money away when I can, which I won't comment on any further. I have 8 days left of work and it can't end soon enough.

My friends have got together and are throwing a going-away party for me on the 26th. I'm excited and nervous about seeing all of them again and then having to take off in a couple days. My girlfriend lives about 2 hours away, and my friends are in the city while I'm in the suburbs, so I have people grabbing for my time as the clock ticks away, and it doesn't seem like I'm giving anyone the time of day. That's really the hardest part right now, because I feel isolated already but it's just a short drive to say what's up to my buddies in Atlanta or spend a couple days in the deep sunny south with my girl. I used to hate the drive into the middle of nowhere to see her, but now I consider the experience rather bucolic and I think I'll miss the cowfields and rundown motels. My parents want to spend some time with me too, which I think they deserve because I've been living off them like a bum for months now and that's not what I'm used to at all. It's been stressful, and I think if I wasn't gone in 2 weeks they'd have kicked me out the door already. Now they balance the frustration of living with a 21 year old with the need to see me a little before I go away, because there won't be any return trips, it's 12 months of me in China. I have Skype, which is great because I can video chat for free while I'm there, that will help me keep in touch. And I bought a digital camera which records video, so my facebook and this blog will be full of pictures at every step.

Ok, I got a lot off my chest there, and probably put some fellow bloggers to sleep. Serves ya right.