My Job

 You Have to be "American"

So I came to China through this organization that provided me with an internship to teach kids English. Upon applying for the job through email, I was required to send a picture and resume. I got it with no interview. I looked American enough and that is what they wanted. American is white. My other freind came here on an internship as well, after a couple of hours after his arrival, my boss comes into my room and asks, what nationality is Ricky? When I said American, she looked confused. What is ironic is that he is  technically more American than me. I was born and lived in Poland for 10 years, he lived in the US his whole life.

us Americans

Accommodation Takes on a Different Meaning

The private English school I work for provides me with housing. You know how some little kids imagine that teachers must live in the school, well in my case it is true. They converted one of the classrooms into my bedroom. I have a bed composed of two matresses on top of eachother and 6 TVs in my room where none of them really work. There is a bathroom and a showerhead, you shower next to the sink. The door to the bathroom does not really close.

Warning, he is not as cute as he looks. Very spoiled

My Kids

My work consists of teaching VIP students. What this means is that I do not get a class of kids but one or two kids anywhere from 7 to 18 and I teach them oral English. We mostly work on pronunciation. The parents pay about 25 dollars an hour per student for the kids to have a lesson with me. That is very expensive considering the prices for everything else. All the kids that I teach are filthy rich, have very big houses so they say and wear very expensive clothes.I will also have a summer class for then days with a class of students. Each day the class will last for 2 hours. To enroll a child in the class, the fee is 500 dollars, which is also my monthly salary. I work 6 days a week and get one free day, Monday. Weekends are usually our busiest times.

My Girls

There are three other teachers here with me. Two of them are married and two have a 1 year old baby. They are 24, 25 and the other 29. All of them are very nice. They have many more classes than me, I am pretty sure they get paid less than me, have less days free than me, have to adhere to a dress code I do not have to follow and have cleaning duty everyday for which I am not on the schedule.

Both of them invited me to their homes for lunch. Their husbands cooked :) The food was very good. Their home, very small and humble apartment. After visiting their homes and realizing the whole apartment is not much bigger than my classroom converted room, I stopped complaining about my living conditions.

Childhood in China

The kids that come to the private school have school on weekdays and english classes on the weekends as well as piano lessons, dance classes, singing classes or some other activites. They seem to either be in class, have to do hours of homework or rest, which is sleep, read a book or eat. During a holiday, which is rare, they can play computer games or watch movies. Of course this is not an adequate representation of all kids in China, just those that go to private schools. These kids I have described above are young. One of my students started learning English when he was 1 he claims and now is learning English, German and of course Chinese. Currently, he is seven years old.