I was waiting for the bus on the outskirts of Shanghai when a teenager approached me an said, “I need your help. I need to know what people do in my situation in your country.” I then inquired as to what his ‘situation’ was. He explained to me that he was riding his bike and he accidentally ran into an old grandma and knocked her down. He went on to explain that this grandma demanded that he stay and ‘keep her company’ while she waited for her daughter to bring her to the hospital. Although the woman didn’t appear injured to me, I can understand her demand. Within Chinese culture, such disputes are often settled with the transfer of cash and admittance of responsibility, neither of which the boy was willing or able to do. he again pleaded for me to give him advice. He said he just wanted to go home and eat lunch. This boy was oblivious to taking responsibility for his actions, so I attempted to explain that he should wait for the daughter to arrive and apologize and make amends however possible. He again said he wanted to leave and I asked him what was stopping him. He could jump on his bike and haul his ass away. I may have done so myself. Maybe I was the wrong person for him to plead to, but thankfully my bus came and I was given a reprieve. To answer his question though, in my country, many would simply disappear.
My life in China is marked by the experiences I have, both with events and with individuals. I fully embrace these experiences and they all contribute to the person that I am today. I recently added another fantastic China experience to my repertoire—the Midi Rock Music Festival in Shanghai, China. This festival is billed as the one of the largest outdoor music festivals within China and this year was to be the first year to appear in Shanghai; the festival is based out of Beijing. I resolved that I would attend this festival, and for Saturday and Sunday, I did just that. The two days I spent taking in the music at Midi Festival were amazing and they afforded me the opportunity to realize how differently individuals can approach an experience. As I said, I live my life though a series of experiences, but I realized that not everyone fully embraces the experiences they encounter. I felt as if many people at the concert were living life though a series of ‘impromptu’ photo shoots. This isn’t the first event I’ve attended in China that left me with the idea that people were living lives though embellishing a physical identity, documenting that identity though photographs and experiencing an event though the photographs taken at that event. Does that make any sense?
Without fail, at every major event I go to in China, I notice many garishly outfitted individuals taking hundreds of photographs of themselves and the groups they are in and meticulously analyzing the photographs immediately. More time is spent analyzing photographs than actually appreciating the event they find themselves in; the event that brought them out so garishly in the first place. I hope no one misinterprets me here. I am all for documenting events with photographs. I love doing so. I don’t, however, do so to such an extent that I miss what I’m documenting. I’m not suggesting that anyone quit taking photographs of themselves at events. I’m not suggesting that people quit analyzing how they appear in the photographs they take immediately after they take them at events. I’m simply wondering what compels individuals, specifically in China, to create an exaggerated physical identity for an event and then experience that event though the photographs they take of themselves there. This merely added to my enjoyment. I was happy to solidify an interesting thought I’ve developed though a series of experiences within China.
The festival took place in a beautiful area named Century Park in the Pudong new area of Shanghai. My friend Wayne and I walked together towards the entrance and my excitement was building as I heard the bands playing from within. Meat on a stick, soft-drink, beer, and trinket vendors lined the path to the entrance. Men and women were frantically running around attempting to sell tickets to those waiting in line, supposedly to save us the ten minutes it would take to buy legitimate tickets. Ironically, Jazz Fest in New Orleans was simultaneously taking place, thus increasing my anticipation of attending this festival as consolation for missing Jazz Fest. We bought legitimate tickets and entered for a few hours of musical, gastronomical and experiential bliss. There was Xinjiang lamb and chicken BBQ on a stick, there were Chinese noodles of every type, there were soft drinks, there was beer, and there was Yägermeister. I indulged in all of the aforementioned. Fabulous.
That day I watched a heavy medal Brazilian band, an experimental rock Shanghai band that fused classical Chinese music with modern rock beats, and a famous Beijing rock band. The crowd, composed of about 75% Chinese and the rest foreigners, along with the bands and the atmosphere, convinced me that a second day of the festival was in order. The next day, my friend Wayne and I once again set out for sunny Century Park for a rock-filled day. Immediately upon exiting the metro, vendors approached us selling tickets to the festival. They explained, in Chinese, that they needed to sell them before the festival ended. I looked at the ticket and I didn’t trust the authenticity because where there should have been perforations on the ticket to tear the stub off there was only the printing of perforations. We handed the tickets to the ticket scanner, and she politely replied in English, “I’m sorry. They’re fake.” The tickets weren’t very expensive, but I was pissed that this man deceived us into buying fake tickets. I walked back the metro station in the hopes of finding the man and forcing him to give me my money back to no avail. Oh well, humorous lesson learned.
There were two stages at the Shanghai MIDI Festival: one stage for electronic music served up by local DJ’s and one stage for the big rock bands. When we entered the park after the ticket debacle, it was sunny and the electronic music stage was the closest to the entrance to we made a pit stop to partake in the greenery and listen to the electronic beats in the sun. Drunken foreigners, along with a handful of Chinese men, were partaking in some sort of ritualistic dancing that was really just hopping around, becoming super sweaty and kicking up clouds of dust. It was quite entertaining. We walked the grounds of the park, surveyed the merchandise, drank the booze and ate the BBQ. My roommate Jessica came to meet us later in the day, and together we watched a few more rock bands. I learned that the theme of the festival was “Protect Moon Bears, Boycott Bear Bile.” I thought this was a bad translation, but it turns out that Chinese people revere the bile from moon bears and they cage these little bears to repeatedly take bile from them to serve to the masses. How fucking bizarre this country can be sometimes. I’ll skip ingesting the bile of a bear, thanks!
Attending the Shanghai Midi Festival made me feel alive. I felt as if I were truly experiencing life by being an active participant in all situations that I found myself in. One more experience to make my time in China all the better and I’m better person because of it.
Chinese cities are categorized using a tier system that uses population and perceived importance in the eyes of the government as tier criterion. There are three main tiers. The three 1st tier cities are Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Some well-known 2nd tier cities are Chengdu and Hangzhou, cities that the government plans to further develop and strengthen. 3rd tier cities, however, are not so well known but are very abundant. I recently visited one such city, Yangzhou, to run the Yangzhou International Half-Marathon. Although the experience was amazing and unforgettable, it was not without many frustrations brought by my very basic Chinese language skills.
If you have read my previous posts, you are aware that I belong to a gay running group in Shanghai, China called Horizon that is composed of mostly Chinese men, with the exception of me, who is an American man. 17 male members and one female member of Horizon decided to travel to Yangzhou by bus to take part in the half-marathon and I excitedly decided to go along. I boarded a charter bus at 7:30 AM on Saturday, April 23, 2011 with the members of my group and other random people who were also taking part in the race. When Chinese people travel in China, as my Chinese friends have recounted to me on multiple occasions, they prefer to travel in large groups, with one person leading the group. As soon as I boarded the bus, I knew I was in for a typical Chinese experience. Mind you, the typical experience took place almost entirely in Chinese, thus leaving me to fend for myself on multiple occasions during the trip. No worries; I brushed up on my Chinese skills.
I was hyper alert on the bus ride to Yangzhou because of my excitement at traveling through China while being able to view the landscape along the way. Yangzhou lies 300 km northwest of Shanghai and I was able to cross the Yangtze River along the way. I viewed typical Chinese villages, field after field of vegetables and multiple ghost towns along the way. AMAZING. We finally arrived in Yangzhou and checked in to our hotel. I shared a three-bed room with two other guys. Thankfully, they were one of the four people in the group who can speak limited English. We dropped our bags and headed out to eat lunch and view some of the 1,500-year-old architecture. Lunch, as many lunches in China can be, was filled with frog, duck, fungus, boned chicken, lotus root, boiled intestine soup, chicken feet, garlic cabbage and many many unidentifiable foods. Family style, continuously interesting, and conducted mainly in Chinese.
It was now time to play tourist. Apparently Marco Polo established himself in Yangzhou, China during his famous travels; so much so that he became a municipal official in the city. At the entrance to the oldest street in Yangzhou lies the Marco Polo museum. It was a strange contract from a country so wholly homogenous that it prefers to elevate only those from within. The city was beautiful, but typical of what one would expect from an ancient Chinese city. People tell me that Yangzhou is famous for making scissors that perform three functions: they can cut hair, they can cut fingernails and toenails, and they can cut regular objects. They’re also known for foot cleaning and massaging. How bizarre!
As with the previous half-marathon I took part in, I didn’t register for the race by the cut-off date. Thankfully, as happened last time, I was able to get a race registration and number for free by taking the spot of someone who had registered but could no longer make the race. SCORE!!! I busted my ass and ran the half-marathon in 1:50. I hadn’t ran that distance for may months before and I was psyched about my time. The spectators along the route greatly contributed to my motivation. Every primary, middle, and high school student from Yangzhou was stationed along the route to cheer on the runners. They were all chanting, 加油（jia1 you2), which literally means ‘give power,’ but it is the equivalent of ‘go go’ in English. When they saw me, the foreigner coming, they began chanting, ‘Go go 外国人（wai4guo2ren2).’ Basically they were urging me, the foreigner, to work it out. I didn’t see any other foreigners in the city while I was there, with the exception of during the race, during which time I saw two white men and two black men. Foreigners were truly spectators in this city. I enjoyed my time in the city and I enjoyed the race and I enjoyed spending time with my running group, but the trip was mentally and physically exhausting. With each new day and with each new challenge, I’m learning more about myself and more about how to be a better me.
From as early as I can remember, I’ve been saying hello and goodbye to important and influential people in my life. My parents separated early in my life, thankfully, thus mandating that I be under the care of my mother mostly, and sometimes that of my father, randomly. My family also moved from house to house for a period of 5 or 6 years, also mandating that I say hello and goodbye to new friends and new neighborhoods. I decided to go to university in North Carolina, 1,000 miles away from my home state, once again forcing me to say hello and goodbye to my family and friends multiple times a year. After I graduated from university, I said goodbye to the USA and I spent four months traveling around South America. 4 months after saying hello to South American and my many new friends there, I said goodbye and set off for 2 years of stability in New Orleans, Louisiana. 6 shorts months ago, I said goodbye to my incredible family and to my close-knit group of friends to set off for a life in China. Now, as a 27 year-old living 7,000 miles away from my comfort zone, I still find myself living a life of hellos and goodbyes, which makes me reflect upon the positives of such a life. I’ve decided that hellos and goodbyes mimic the ebb and flow of life and they shouldn’t be thought of as negatives. There are those people who fight against the ebb and flow of life; those are the people who mandate that everyone in their family must stay in the same city; they mandate themselves to always stay in the same city and to never leave their comfort zones. I can understand this need of people to maintain their comfort zones, but I ultimately believe they are fighting against nature—the natural ebb and flow of life and of the people in our lives. I’m not one of these people. A life of hellos and goodbyes simply offers continuous affirmations of love.
6 months ago, I left New Orleans to live in Shanghai, China. It was quite difficult for me to say goodbye to my family and friends, but it was an adventure for which I had to set off with selfish motivations—I wanted to learn Chinese to benefit myself. My decision to leave the USA was met with skepticism by many within my family and friends, however, this skepticism demonstrated to me how many people love me and care about my well-being. Simply put, their skepticism, along with their goodbyes, were merely reaffirmations of love.
I was lucky enough to be able to buy a plane ticket back to New Orleans, Louisiana for one of my best friend’s weddings. I wanted to go home for my cousin’s wedding also, but alas my job would not permit me the time off because the wedding fell immediately after a one week Chinese holiday celebrating the Lunar New Year. Thankfully, my job was able to give me time off for my friend’s wedding, so once again, I began a cycle of hellos and goodbyes. I said goodbye to my newly formed friendships in Shanghai and I set out to say hello to my friends and family, at least those that I was fortunate enough to see in my very short trip home. My trip was brief and busy, filled with momentous occasions, but the hellos and goodbyes I experienced on this trip, possibly more so than those of any previous trip, really reinforced the immense love that exists in my life. I was able to officiate my friends wedding and share in their joyous occasion. That alone was an affirmation of love. I was able to see my mother and my brother and sister and many of my best friends, and not only did this reaffirm their love for me, it also allowed me to appreciate and treasure them more than ever. The old cliché “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is overused only for it’s aptness in describing lives such as mine, lives filled with hellos and goodbyes.
Once I came back China and settled into my Chinese life once again, I decided that circumstances should invoke action within the ebb and flow of life once again—I decided to quit my job with Disney English and say goodbye to the amazing people I worked with and the children I worked for. I am not a corporation type of person and my personality has never screamed Disney. After working for Disney English for 6 months and viewing the inconsistencies and the stifling bureaucracy, I knew the setting was not for me. Aside from the setting, I was working 20 hours on Saturday and Sunday, thus preventing me from enjoying the weekend life in this wondrous city of 20 million people. I came to China to enjoy the culture and to learn Chinese and my job was preventing me from doing so. After much thought, I decided to take my own self-righteous advice and not allow myself to be in a situation that goes again all of my core values. BAM! I quit. I said goodbye to my little Chinese babies, most of whom I would love to take home and raise as my own, and I said goodbye to my Chinese assistant teacher who I have grown to respect and admire. The reaffirmations of love came pouring in once again. Saying goodbye often forces people to reveal their true feelings, especially feelings of adoration, and this was no different. I gave and I received, and because of this, I have friends for life.
A life of constant hellos and goodbyes is never easy for anyone involved, but the lives involved must be viewed holistically and not only analyzed during the times of hellos and goodbyes. The sum of all the hellos and goodbyes is immense love. A life stagnated by location will certainly offer hellos and goodbyes and affirmations of love, but never on the scale of a life not stagnated by location. I’ve chosen a life of hellos and goodbyes mandated by my changing locations and I couldn’t be happier. As I continue to move around and as I continue to miss and be missed and as I continue to say hello and goodbye, my connection to those who I love and those who love me only grows stronger and my chosen path in life is reaffirmed.
Everyday, I craft thoughts into coherent blogs and essays in my head, but when it comes time for me to sit down and commit the coherence to the page, the words and the feelings I associate with them feel so fleeting that I cannot seem to put them down. Oh well…I’m going to commit to the page some of my experiences from the past two weeks nonetheless and hope that the coherence I craft in my head transcends my mind and hits the page.
For the past two weeks, I’ve integrated myself into the fabric of society that makes up Shanghai in a multitude of ways. As I’ve said before, as an expat in Shanghai, a city with over a million westerners, it is quite easy to surround myself with only people who look, act and think like I do. That is abysmal and would contradict every reason that I came to Shanghai, so I choose to make a concerted effort everyday to interact with Chinese people and take part in the activities that they also take part in. With this in mind, I seized the Lunar New Year in China and I relished in my week vacation. I took the time to hang out with previously made friends that I hadn’t made time for recently. I took the time to frequent some gay bars in Shanghai and make new friends and to attempt to feel more connected to the Chinese gay community in Shanghai. I took the time to engage in the favorite pastime of the Chinese during the Lunar New Year—fireworks on a colossal scale. I took the time to visit a Buddhist temple at 4 AM and offer incense to Buddha in the hopes that the New Year would bring me fortune and good luck. I also took the time to buy a bicycle and partake in the environmentally sound preferred method of transportation of the Chinese. Allow me to expand…
When I first came to Shanghai, I met quite a few genuine people who were interested in forging friendships with me. As it turned out, I forged one very close friendship with my friend Daniel and I allocated most of my free time to him. This is certainly not something that I regret and it is something that I’ll continue to do, however, Chinese New Year brought to the me the realization that possibly I should allocate my time a little more evenly amongst the people I’ve become friends with and the activities that I love to engage in. I suppose life is always about finding balance and I believe I’m coming closer to achieving that. With one week off for the holiday, I proposed to old friends that we should reconnect and explore Shanghai. I met up with friends I made when I first arrived, and in turn I made new friends. I frequented a gay bar called Shanghai Studio and I was fortunate enough to meet many good people there, local Chinese and westerners alike. I met the owner of the bar who is a very nice Chinese man. I met a buff guy named Zeke who spoke Spanish and he was the first native Chinese person I met who spoke good Spanish. I spend much of one night speaking to him in Spanish and meeting various other people in the bar. I was easily able to discern that the people I was meeting were genuine because they didn’t proposition me upon meeting me, as others who I immediately dismissed did. I also met to guys from the Philippines who also spoke Spanish and I relished my drunken conversations with them. After going to Shanghai Studio over three times during the holiday, it became clear to me that this little gay bar that was previously a bomb shelter serves as a haven for the gay community of Shanghai. Just as most gay bars in the United States, people can go to these bars and feel at home and be themselves as they are surrounded by individuals who share the same sexuality. This allows individuals to drop all pretenses and act naturally. Inhibitions are dropped and socialization is encouraged. Pretentions were not abounding as is common in many gay bars and I certainly felt comfortable and at home. Going out, interacting with native Chinese gay men in the bar setting, made me feel so much more connected to Shanghai and the gay community that calls Shanghai home. People were open and embracing and accepting and genuinely interested in who I was and I in turn was interested in who they were and where they were coming from. I think my Chinese ability increased five-fold over a one week period because I was forced to dredge up the little Chinese that I know to introduce myself and answer inquiries from others. It was a great use of my time during the holiday, better even than going to Vietnam as I had hoped to do, because my experiences made me feel that much more connected to the city that I now call home.
On the night of the actual Chinese New Year, I cooked dinner with my old friend Xiao Chen and I lazily watched the Spring Festival, as the lunar New Year is called in China, television program that is most likely the most watched program in all of China. It was mundane and boring, but it was just another way for me to feel connected to the Chinese because hundreds of millions of Chinese were doing the same thing at the exact same time as I was. It was thrilling to think about that way. As midnight was approaching, I decided to go outside and join the throngs of people who were preparing to set off their fireworks. WOW. When we think fireworks in the USA, we think a show for 15 minutes and a few amateur fireworks that we pop off ourselves. This is not the case in China. China is serious about fireworks and I’ve never seen such a display of brilliance in my life. The noise and the brilliance was a crescendo until the apex of midnight arrived. All around me the city erupted in brilliant displays of light and sound. I bought some fireworks myself and I contributed to the brilliance and one again I felt extremely connected to the city and the people that reside in it. After finishing my fireworks and marveling at the non-stop displays taking place all around me, my friend and I headed to Shanghai Studio. After many hours of dancing and drinking, some friends and I decided to visit a Shanghai Buddhist temple called Long Hua Temple, or Dragon Temple. This is the oldest temple in Shanghai and one of the oldest and most well preserved temples in all of China. At 4 AM, there were hundreds of people at the temple reverently offering incense to Buddha and the statues of his many disciples in the hopes of bring fortune and good luck in the New Year. I joined the throngs and offered incense and it was a truly ethereal experience; an experience I will relish for the rest of my life. Again, I was one with the city and the customs and the people.
Later in the week, I met someone I had previously spoken with but never hung out with named Hao. He is local Chinese from the city of Changsha. He had been living in NYC for the past seven years and he recently returned to live in China. I met him online and I could tell that he seemed genuine, and again, he didn’t proposition me as many others had so I didn’t dismiss him as a prospective friend. I’m thankful that I didn’t because I again was able to experience Shanghai in ways that I had yet to experience the city through him and his friends. One of Hao’s friends from Hong Kong, Victor, was also visiting Shanghai and they invited me to go and get a massage with them and then have a night out on the town. We set off for our massages and suffice it to say that the massage was high quality and extraordinary. It exceeded my expectations and surprised me in multiple ways. Massage aside, I had a lovely dinner in a little place called Tianzifang and started the night off right. I drank some mojitos and some fabulous Rose Champagne that tasted like Framboise. Next, I went with Hao and Victor to an amazing apartment and had some pregame drinks and then headed to Shanghai Studio. The rest of the night blurs, but apparently I talked lots of shit, mostly in Spanish to people who cannot understand a word of Spanish, and I had a great time. I won’t be seen that drunk again in the near future, but I wouldn’t take it back for anything. The next night followed the same routine but consisted of a Thai dinner. Good times were had for sure, and once again, I felt even more connected with the city that I call my home for now.
The Lunar New Year in China brought a brief spat of fabulous weather and it inspired me to buy a bicycle and to quit relying on the metro for all of my transportation needs. I set out with Hao and found a little state-owned bike shop and I bought a bike. It is a groovy bike replete with a bell and a basket and I’ve used it ever since. I ride 7 km to my Chinese class and then 1 km from my class to my work and then 5 km back to my house every day. My legs are still aching while acclimating to the extra exertion bicycling is brining but I’m loving the experience thus far, despite the terror I often experience while on the crowded and congested roads of Shanghai. Buying a bicycle and utilizing it the way millions of other Chinese do, more so than all of my living during the holiday, brought me so much closer to feeling part of the fabric that makes up the city. I feel so close to the city now. I feel that I am part of the community instead of an outsider looking in.
As if all of my partying and living over the break weren’t enough to satiate my desire for fun, Daniel arrived back in Shanghai from visiting his hometown of Changchun in Jilin province just in time for his birthday. To show my appreciation for him and his friendship, I brought him to eat at a fabulous eatery on the bund called Mr. & Mrs. Bund. It’s a French place that practices molecular gastronomy and I was wowed by all the dishes and drinks. We followed up the dinner by a lovely KTV session and a few hours at a very packed Shanghai Studio where we danced the night away. After this night, I had to return to work and I declared the beginning of detoxifying my body, but little did I know, that process would have to wait one more day.
My work organized a Korean BBQ dinner for my whole center the next day and I had to attend. It was a 4 hour dinner filled with continuous meat, cases of beer and bottles of Sojiu. I had a fabulous time and I was able to participate in something that once again brought me closer to Shanghai and closer to the people that I work with on a daily basis. I’m so grateful for all the people who have been part of my experience here in Shanghai thus far. I’m so happy to have added new friendships and to have experienced new things in Shanghai. The break refreshed me and renewed my genuine desire to seize every single day I am lucky enough to be in the great city. Although all of the revelry made me miss my friends and family back home terribly and yearn to be with them and share my experiences with them, I am now more connected to where I am and the people who surround me than ever. I’m part of this city and my learning is far from over.
We are rapidly approaching Chinese New Year, and thankfully I have 5 days off for this marvelous holiday. This will give me time to rejuvenate myself and reinvigorate myself so that I can return to work and approach each day with the zest that is characteristic of my teaching. It is soon to be the year of the rabbit and my center decided to partake in an event called “Secret Rabbit,” just like Secret Santa. Every Friday we have a whole center meeting, and considering today is Friday, we utilized the meeting to exchange gifts. It was an uplifting experience and it certainly put everyone in a jolly mood, much like what we experience during Christmas. I bought three large bottles of Japanese beer, a notebook adorned with communist propaganda from the Maoist period and a Chinese New Year lucky coin for my secret rabbit. I received a calligraphy brush and a notebook containing over 5,000 Chinese characters to practice. This was an incredibly thoughtful gift from my secret rabbit considering I am trying very hard to learn Chinese. I’ve also received 15 cute little character practice notebooks from my friend Daniel recently. Although we are not colleagues, it deserves mention here because his gifts and his unending knowledge have helped me greatly in my quest to learn Chinese, but that is another story. All in all, my arrival to work today was positive, that is until I had a discussion with my boss. This discussion temporarily put a damper on the day, but only temporarily; the conversation injected me with more motivation to take control of my future and my destiny.
As I’ve said before, the Disney Magic that everyone immediately thinks of upon hearing the word Disney so lacks within my company, Disney English, which is a branch of Disney Publishing. I was again reminded of this today after a small discussion with my boss. I don’t like my boss very much, but thankfully we were in agreement over my displeasure with the company today. Upon being hired for the company, I was informed that trainers are only given 5 days of paid leave for a one-year period. Despite this, as it was explained to me, trainers are able to take unpaid leave. I prepared mentally for this reality before my arrival in China and I sold my car so that I would have expendable money to travel and so that I would not take such a beating from lost wages upon taking unpaid leave from work. I also knew that I would be taking a trip home in March and I informed my boss of this as I arrived for my first day of work. Once I booked my ticket, I filled out the proper paperwork to take my paid time off. My boss informed me that I am required to take all of my paid time off before I can take unpaid time off. This was my first point of contention. I argue that trainers should be allowed to choose the number of paid days they opt to use at one time so they can balance their money. For example, I’m taking a total of 8 working days off. I asked to use only 3 of my paid days off so that I would have 2 paid left for future use. This enables me to soften the blow of lost wages in the future when I again decided to take a vacation. My argument proved fruitless, despite me talking to the most senior officials within the company. I can relent here, but it is what my boss told me next that truly pissed me off and caused me to tell her I would gladly quit the job today if I thought this was going to be a recurring problem for me. She said that the officials she and I both spoke with informed her that centers have the right to refuse trainers unpaid leave requests. She said that she was not going to refuse my request of course because I informed her well in advance and we are able to obtain coverage for my classes, but nonetheless, this doesn’t sit well with me. I am a devoted and effective employee that has only received positive reviews. If I decide to take a vacation, I need to know that my boss and my fellow co-workers are willing to support me in doing so, as I would them. I asked my boss straight up at that point if she was going to give me problems in the future. She explained that she takes issue with the policy herself and that she will always attempt to accommodate trainers in their vacations, provided that coverage is available. Her reassurance assuaged my discontent for the moment, but I began thinking about my future in China and whether or not I should stay with Disney for the entirety of my stay. I wish that I had more of a hustle mentality so that I could easily drum up some business in the form of tutoring and editing on my own, but that isn’t my style. I like the security of a full time job with a full time paycheck. There are, however, multiple part-time opportunities available teaching and editing and consulting and I think that I may begin to explore some of those options. I love the children I teach currently and I don’t like the thought of leaving them, so I most likely will not, but I am now committing myself to keeping my options open. I will continue to network, and when someone tells me of a job opportunity he or she knows about, as so often happens when out and about, I’m going to follow up on that opportunity. Despite all this, I’m thankful that I have a quality education to fall back on. No one can take this from me. My education and my resourcefulness gained me this job, and I’m thankful for the job I have and the people that surround me and that support me in the process. I will continue to remain positive about my situation and I know that it is a highly valued situation within China and within the world of teaching English in China. If I were working for a Chinese company, my contract, pay and working conditions could change without notice and without me being able to voice my concerns. I am not faced with a situation such as that and for that I’m thankful. My experiences are teaching me patience and humility and appreciation for my situation, but my experiences are also reiterating that one should always stand up for his or her beliefs and voice his or her opinions in the most intelligent and respectful way possible…that I will continue to do. And hey, I got my way. I’m going home! Peace!
