I got a new job! Two more years in China!

Well; the title of this post says it all. I just signed a new contract and have begun work with a new job. China owns me for another two years.

Here is some history into that decision:

A few months ago there was a new girl that started coming to church with us. She had just moved from Singapore and is working here as an English teacher. I didn't think much of it at the time because I wasn't planning on staying in China anyhow, but as time progressed and as she talked more and more about her job, I realized that she had a great job that I would really enjoy. She works with a company from Singapore called Smart Learners and teaches English to first graders.

I have always thought I would enjoy teaching elementary school and Asian kids are totally the cutest, so I thought that this would be a fun job. After talking to her about the job, I decided that I would at least apply for it to see if I was interested and if I could even get the job.

The interview process was interesting enough. I was told when and where to meet. Google maps told me it would take two hours to get there, so I went a bit earlier than that just to be on the safe side. Turns out that the place only took about an hour to get to. I decided to just chill nearby and read a book for about an hour. When it came time for me to go in for the interview, I realized that none of the buildings were actually numbered and I really didn't know which building I was supposed to go into. So I called the guy who would be interviewing me only to find out that he gave me the wrong number. Yikes.

Luckily, I eventually did make it to the interview. I was really quite impressed with everything. The company seemed to have organization and structure that I have missed since being here in China. Up until now, I have been teaching at a university and have found that very little of what goes on seems to make sense; disorganization is something that you learn to deal with very quick.

The interview went well; I even did a part of it in Chinese, which really didn't go that well, but apparently was good enough. A few weeks after the interview, I was asked to go to the school to teach a trial lesson to the students. I was instructed that the students only knew very basic English and that I would be teaching a lesson on the words "go straight," "turn left," and "turn right." I must admit that I was quite nervous because I was given 20 minutes to teach just a few words. I figured they must not know how to say much, so I planned very basic things for my lesson.

When I walked into the classroom I was happy to see all the excited faces. I was nervous to teach, but was to observe the actual teacher for 20 minutes before it would be my turn. When the teacher taught, he didn't use a single word of Chinese. Nothing. Not a word. Not only that, but he put up paragraphs for the students to read and they were reading it without a problem. Most of the students could read better than some of my college students. I was blown away. Their English was great! Now the problem was that I had planned a lesson for a class with a much more basic level. The lesson went well enough and I had a great time! I had been so used to teaching university students that it became odd for me when the kids would raise their hands to answer a question, or offer to volunteer to help me (in fact, I usually got too many students to volunteer). The kids were incredibly cute and I was smiling the entire time. It was great to see how good their English is and how eager they were to participate.

Well; earlier this week, I signed the contract. This means that....

• I am going to be staying in China for two more years. The company does however offer to help fly me home twice a year. 
• I will be teaching less hours, but earning about four times as much. My salary will be a decent salary (possibly even comparable to the starting salary of elementary teachers in Utah, but I am not really sure how much they make). 
• I get to teach kids! I will be teaching the second grade. I found out that I will actually end up teaching the class I did the trial teaching for.
• The company I work for will provide me with free housing, phone costs and insurance. This means that the only thing I am really going to be paying for is food. Food is cheap. I will be able to save up or invest almost all of the money I make here.
• I will be having a roommate from Singapore. Hopefully that should help out my Chinese significantly. Just found out he is 54 years old. Interesting. It has been a long time since I was the younger roommate (long time as in I don't know if I have ever been the younger roommate). 

While I am very much missing home and family and mountains and not pollution, I am happy and excited to stay in China a bit longer. I have been having a wonderful time here and been meeting great people. China is full of great people and I am happy that I will now be able to work with kids. I have already started doing some projects with the kids and have really enjoyed it. 

I am excited for my new job.

An (un)amusement park in China

Usually I like to post on the different adventures I have in China. Today I would like to post about an unadventure I recently had with my friends here in Zhengzhou.

Near the bus stop, we saw a sign for an "amusement" park that opened three days previous. We were excited since we knew it would not be too crowded because it just opened and because school was just finishing up for finals so there would not be too many students going. The amusement park is the Fanta World amusement park just outside of the city of Zhengzhou.

We decided we would go on a Monday and avoid almost all possibilities of having a crowd there.  I should have know the curse of Monday would follow us everywhere we went that day.

The first thing that went wrong was meeting up with our Chinese friend Mark. We decided to meet him at one of the bus stops. We got on the bus first so we could meet up with him and just call him when we got to his stop. Unfortunately, the maker in the bus that told us what stop we were on was off by one, so we called him early and he got on a bus before we ever arrived. Once we figured out the problem, we called him again so that he could get off the bus; wait for us some more, then get back on again. Eventually we did catch up with Mark, and we successfully navigated with our first bus. We missed the second bus by seconds, which meant that we had to wait for another 20 minutes for the next bus to arrive.

It was apparent upon entering the second bus that our experience would not be any better than the first. After a few of us got on the bus and paid our money, the bus driver got angry and grabbed one of us. Apparently this bus was three times as expensive and we needed to pay more money (not a problem; there is probably a better way to tell us this rather than grabbing and yelling at us though). The rest of the bus ride was spent listening to the bus driver yell at everyone to get in the back of the bus. The worst part of the trip was the end. The bus route ended at the amusement park. Since we had not been there before, we were not exactly sure when to get off but just figured that we would get off at the end of the route. There was a stop a couple blocks away from the amusement park entrance. A few people got off there, but most people on the bus waited to be dropped off in front of the entrance. The problem was that the bus didn't go to the entrance, instead it went to a bus station about a mile away. Why the bus driver told no one on the bus this information is beyond me. Everyone on the bus looked a bit bewildered as we were going toward the bus station (we were definitely not the only ones who didn't really know what was going on).

Now we had to walk just over a mile to get to the amusement park itself. Yay. Being the middle of summer didn't help in this regard either. Once we got to the park it was obvious that it had barely opened. For living in an overcrowded city in the middle of Zhengzhou, it was interesting to go to an amusement park and see very few people there.

This was on the way to the entrance. You probably can't tell from the photo, but everyone here is skipping with excitement to get to the amusement park. Not too many people. 

Once we got to the gate, we payed our fee. It was 200 RMB (just over $30 dollars). Not too bad for a good amusement park (this was not) but pretty expensive for China.

It seems that they tried to copy the style of Disneyland. They even had a nice pink castle. The streets were empty, as were the shops. The fountains were only trickling. The palm trees are fake. Yay for grand openings.

Loida's expression pretty much describes how most of us felt. This is after being in the park for the total of five minutes. It didn't really get any better.

This was the nice pink castle. Disneylandarific!

After we got in the park, we realized that we never got a map of the place. Looking around for just a couple minutes though we realized that we really didn't need a map. You can see the whole park. It is about the size of a few residential blocks in America. Not too big. We were saddened to not seeing anything too fantastic.

This was the second biggest roller coaster. Sadly, there were only two roller coasters. This is not much smaller than the biggest roller coaster. 

They had an upside building. It looked like an almost exact copy of the upside down building in Orlando Florida (though I don't think that one has a fake dinosaur sticking his head through the window.

This was the first ride we went on (and one of five non kid rides open). It did not succeed in thrilling us, but it did get most of us a bit sick. It was saddening going on this ride actually. This is when we fully understood how small the amusement park actually was.

After we went on our first ride, we went to go on another ride. I went with a couple of guys while we waited for the rest of our group to show up. We were happy to be the only people in line. The attendants let us right up and then we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. It was only after the rest of our group arrived that they told us they would not run the ride because it had just started sprinkling. I have been to Six Flags before and gone on rides in the middle of the rain, so I was a bit surprised that a little drizzle was enough to shut down an entire amusement park. I went on the total a four rides that day. Aside from rides, we were told that they had shows (didn't see any). They did have some 4D attractions. This is where you get in a little car and you see a movie with 3D glasses on. Woot. It is basically like watching a 90s computer game, only you have 3D glasses on. One ride actually let you shoot things. It had a little kid cannon gun and you could shoot beach balls.

This was waiting for a ride that turned out to be a big screen and we took a virtual tour through the world (FYI, the Statue of Liberty is apparently next to the Golden Gate Bridge)

These are the amusement park mascots. They are called Dubi.

After we went on a few rides and 4D shows, we had basically done everything. It was not yet noon. We went back to the main entrance to grab some lunch. We tried going to some of the restaurants and shops, but every time we saw something that looked good, they would always say that they did not have it yet. Not sure why it was listed or on the menu if they didn't have it. So went life at this amusement park. They were apparently also out of fun.

There were about as many people trying to get out of the park as there were trying to get in.

This was the last ride I went on.

Wooo. It gets you wet.

Waiting is fun (they didn't want to get wet)

I wore my poncho backward to avoid getting my face wet. I am basically a genius. 

Yay! We left the park.

With the fun rides closed (all two of them) we really could not handle much more of the park, so we decided to go home just after noon. The bus ride was much better on the way home (so we thought....).
Everything started out quite nicely. We were able to get on the bus without having to wait, and we even got to sit down (a rare treat in Chinese buses). Everything was going along smoothly until the guy behind me decided to pour out his tea in the middle of the bus, splattering some of it on my leg. It is pretty common to see people do that here; dump a drink or just litter in the middle of the bus. The problem was that it wasn't tea at all. What was actually happening was that apparently the guy sitting behind me had a little too many beers and the spinning rides were a bit much for him to handle. The beer (and other things) had to be released. I moved up to the front of the bus at this point. Sacrificing my seat for an area that smelled slightly better (and by slightly better I mean terrible). Eventually with the starting and stopping of the bus, vomit was everywhere on the back half of the bus. A few other people got up to get out of the vomit path and still others just rearranged their shoes as to avoid any contact.


What a day. Just goes to show; sometimes it pays to be cheap. I learned my lesson. If I think it is too much money, it probably is.  

Decals on a car. Pretty tricky eh?

The ride home.