Eve

Last night I had my going-away party, with an awesome turnout. In retrospect, Hennessy, Irish Car Bombs, and Patron do not mix. Still, it was really fantastic to see everybody one last time before my departure... these people mean the world to me.

My plane leaves tomorrow. I've said all of my goodbyes, packed everything, withdrew money for my first month of living, and even lost my lunch. Twice. Nervous doesn't go well with hungover either.

I don't have anything informative here, just emotions taking the wheel. My mind is in a hundred places right now. One thing I added to my list to bring was Melatonin, which I'm using right now. It's an herbal sleep aid, and it's going to help me get adjusted to local time over the next few days, as my clock is going to get turned completely upside-down. China's 12 hours ahead of us, so I'm moving into the future, haha. Basically I'm losing 12 hours, which I'm told can be physically and mentally punishing if you're not ready for it. I'm nervous about it. I'm more nervous about spending 18 hours at Incheon Airport in Seoul on a layover. Or 16 hours in a plane seat.

So that's my post today. Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm going to try and post regularly from here out, if not daily. Pictures will be more interesting too, I hope. I'll probably update from Incheon when I arrive. For now, I have a bag of microwave popcorn and some Melatonin. Even with the herbal aid, I don't think I'm getting much sleep tonight.

Bon Voyage.

Urban Squalor!

A detailed response from my future roommate has answered many of the questions I've had about how to get ready to go. He says a visa and $300USD should take care of me for the first month.

The living conditions are different than I was told. Instead of the large house in Badaguan with 5 other teachers, living a sort of European suburban lifestyle, my apartment will be shared with Scott only, and it's in the middle of the city. This is exciting! I have lived in an urban setting for awhile and it's probably the best situation I could find myself in. I want to see Qingdao in its blossoming as a second-tier Chinese city, and I think I have a front-row view in the apartment Scott describes as "too nice for [his] tastes". I'm packing as I type this, and it's almost too much. Whatever worries I had last post have vanished, I've decided to plunge into this as enthusiastically as ever.

Scott also knows a great deal of Chinese, so practice will not be in short supply. I only hope I can rise to the occasion and learn a great deal in my year abroad. He speaks sarcastically of the other teachers living in the houses in Badaguan, as though they were spending all their time and money in Western bars trying to ignore the locals. The isolation of living in the city is desirable to me, I want more than anything to be a part of the city itself and not its rich suburb.

If I could get my hands on $300 I would be on cloud nine, haha.

Remember Me As A Time Of Day

Yesterday was my last day of work. The kitchen staff commemorated the event with a bag of flour, some pickle juice, lemons, and ketchup to my car. The bartender served me a couple long island iced teas to send me off. The subsequent rain washed my car clean.

It has to get me down to see my girl one more time before my plane leaves on Monday. I'm not worried, I've made the journey too many times already. I feel rushed, mostly. Today I have to get the rest of my teaching clothes and start the packing process, because after my visit it's two days in Atlanta of birthdays and going-away parties, and then I have Sunday to finish whatever I don't get done today. I have 5 days, but it feels like 2. Everybody seems a little hurt that I can't take a day off and visit or at least stop by and say hey, but that's how it's going to be for the next few days, a frenetic rush to the airport drawn out to the extreme.

I've said from the start that this will hit me when I get on the plane. Wow, I'm really going and all that. Today is significant because I know what I'm bringing. 15 changes of clothes, 2 wall hangings, my laptop, my cell phone (for which I have to buy a new SIM card when I get there), my camera, my passport, paperwork, and 4 SSAT/ISEE prep books that were sent to my house, which I am told will assist me teaching high school students. This is really shaping up to be quite an experiment. Of course I'm going to fit a few more things in the suitcase as I pack and decide I can't live without them. We'll see.

I also got an email from my roommate today. I've sent him back a series of questions for my own curiosity, about costs of living and things like that, so I can know how poor I'll be for my first unpaid month in China. His name is Scott and he's also American, I'm told. If there are any restrictions on blogging in China, he'll tell me what he knows hopefully in the next day or so.

Am I overpreparing because I'm bored? Or am I worrying?

In the Deep Sunny South

My hometown is located in one of the largest counties in Georgia, growing faster than any of the others. Still, it's a small place compared to Atlanta, where I've lived most of the last 4 years. Restaurants close considerably early, smoky bars remain small and uncrowded. Waiting tables here is a drag, there's no money at all. I call it my hometown just because it's where I've lived the longest, although most of my life has been spent in other states on both sides of the country. Still, I can say that I have become used to living here, despite its slow pace and maddening banality.

Further, I have become used to my expressions in English, my particular way of wording things that comes through as I'm writing now. I've studied languages plenty, but this will be the first time I'm immersed and forced to use one. The main reason I made the decision to go abroad is to learn Mandarin Chinese, because I feel it is an important language to know as a traveler and businessman, and will become even more as the next couple of decades elapse. The one thing that is exciting me today is the thought that a year from now I might have enough Mandarin in my head to carry on a casual conversation with someone and feel fluent. Fluency is a hard thing to define when it comes to any dialect of Chinese, but I think a working definition would be comfort using the language in almost any normal situation. That's my goal.

Most of the jobs I looked through offered some sort of training in spoken Mandarin or another local dialect during the term of the contract. My job offers an hour a week, which is helpful, but I think most of my hands-on experience with the language will be using the little phrases I gain in these training classes on the average Qingdao citizen, and improvisation from there. I'm gonna feel like an idiot at first. I've been lazy and haven't brushed up on the small amount of Mandarin I've learned in class. Maybe the plane flight will give me some time to get a few refreshing lessons in.

One week to go. I'm beginning to feel rushed.

Snow and Lights

It snowed on me yesterday in the deep south. The picture shows about how drastic it got, though. It was snow, sleet and rain all at once, a definite wintry mix. The 43 degree weather soon turned it all to rain, which continued throughout the night.

I asked my employer yesterday about medical care while I'm in China. The answer I received was that most Chinese don't know how to acquire medical insurance and to just go to a good hospital if I feel really sick and they'll take care of it. I have a cold right now, and over-the-counter stuff takes pretty good care of it. I'm just not sure what the availability of Sudafed is, or if I come down with something more serious, how I can quickly get my hands on some penicillin or something. I jokingly replied that I would just avoid getting sick. It's 24 degrees in Qingdao right now, which has me sniffling and wondering if in a couple weeks I might be building a snowman, or drinking hot tea and trying to recover from the same damn cold.

This brings me to the medical exam. I did find some information online regarding the medical exam all foreigners entering with a Z visa looking for residency in China must pass. It's a basic physical with a couple weird twists, as far as I can tell. I'm eating the entire cost, which comes out to about $50USD. The list of things can be found here, as told by some guy who went through it all: http://journeyeast.org/News/MedicalExam.asp . There's a blood test, probably to check for diseases and more serious problems health-wise, but I wonder how invasive the test is. Then a series of other tests, strangest of which is a sonogram. They want to know if I'm pregnant I guess, but that shouldn't be an issue. Still, this is something I'm kind of concerned about, because I can't find any information on what they're primarily screening for, or what would cause them to deny an applicant the essential Residency Permit that is the purpose of the test. Spend $2k to fly halfway across the world and have them tell me I can't stay? No thanks.

Trois Pistoles

I think everyone about to undergo a drastic change of lifestyle will experience about the same process of emotion over time. As a kid I moved all over the US and got kind of used to it, making friends, picking up and moving across the country, making new ones. I think at first there is a denial, like in alcoholics, where you go on with your life normally as if nothing is going to happen and ever will. Usually it's because your change is farther out and you don't want to dwell on it so soon. Over time, the subject gets uncomfortable in conversation. Then panic sets in, more for some people and less for others. I know people who have some serious agoraphobia in this regard and second-guess themselves until someone shoves them on the plane. And of course everyone deals with it differently. Then, because you panicked and you told yourself you wouldn't, there's a feeling of isolation that follows, where you withdraw from friends and loved ones as the date gets closer and closer and try to position yourself so you can hit the ground running, gathering as much information about your new way of life as possible and spending little time on anything else. It crowds your thoughts. It's harder to concentrate on conversations. Finally when you're good and sick of staring at a computer screen for hours a day or you're just feeling ridiculous and lonely, there's an acceptance that sets in, and you tell yourself that you're as ready as you're gonna be and nothing's gonna stop you. I have finally reached this point today, I think.

I got the afternoon off work yesterday and then the next 2 days and I drove to my girl's little college town where I'm spending the morning currently. I think it has just set in that I'm leaving because she has the panicked look that characterizes what I was talking about earlier. It sucks that we're not at the same stage in this because there's definitely an excitement involved knowing I'm really going and maybe that excitement won't come for her since she's got to stay behind.

I drank a bottle of Trois Pistoles last night and made a mental list of things I should bring. Most of them were obvious but the one that stuck was microwave popcorn. I've thought about it before, but on second thought I really don't think they have Orville Redenbacher's in Qingdao and it's something I have a severe addiction to. It's not that I have to use it every day, but catching me in a bad mood is as simple as an empty pantry when I have the urge. Since I'd feel like an idiot stuffing a suitcase full of popcorn, maybe I'll try to take a couple bags with me and have a friend mail me the rest when I'm sure that's legal or possible or whatever.

This week will be interesting.

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.