OVERDUE!

So I suppose it has been QUITE awhile since I’ve updated my blog. SO SORRY FAITHFUL READERS! Well this has BY FAR been the craziest, busiest, most stressful month of my Chinese life so far. I’ll take it back to the beginning. OK so, when I first started working for my boss, Jenny, I worked CRAZY over time hours for her. People thought I was crazy, but I wanted to help her out. So in exchange I asked her for my normal contract hours (22) for the month of August while my friend was up visiting.
My best friend, Ashlee came up to visit for three weeks. AMAZING, I know! It was so great of her to come here. We had such a wonderful time. There were some complications involved when she first came. The plan was for me to go to Beijing, pick her up and we spend the weekend together in Beijing. So I hopped an overnight bus to Beijing, so excited to see her AND to see Beijing. A few hours into the ride I get a phone call. It’s ashlee, nearly in tears because she missed her plane. “FRICK!” I thought.
Haha.. it’s funny now. But there was weeks of build up for this visit and it was truly disappointing. So I convinced myself that it just HAD to work out. I was going to Beijing, my hotel was already booked. It wasn’t going to be a waste of a trip. So she did eventually make it to china. A day late. So I had to spend the weekend in Beijing alone. And it was great! I had such a good time. I went to Tianamen Square, I went to the Summer palace, and I met so many people! I met some people at Tianamen and we went to a tea festival. It was so cool! And I had never spent the night in a hotel alone before so it was a cool experience. It was nice to have some time alone. I haven’t really been alone since I got to china. So anyway Jenny agreed to let me have my normal hours. Then when I came back from Beijing she had me working 7 hours overtime! So I brought the subject to her and asked her about it, asking her why I still had more hours than the other teachers when she had agreed to the contract hours. She denied it and said that I never asked her for the contract hours. It was a mess. So that didn’t end very well. But she did change the schedule back to only 2 hours overtime, which I was verbally grateful for. But since that day I went from being the on top favourite teacher to the black sheep. She made up nasty stories about me to the other teachers, and pitted them in competition against me. whenever she had an ounce of a problem with me she went to the other teachers and to my other friends. She blatantly undermined me in front of students and their parents. I DID NOT come all this way to china, and work this hard to be treated with such little respect. My reputation that I worked hard to build over the last 4 months was slashed to ribbons in a week. So I talked with jenny over dinner telling her that she needed to start acting like a mature professional or I’m leaving. She said she would. But things only got worse. She told the other teachers she didn’t believe I was really leaving and that it was an empty threat and that she “owned” me. So I promptly gave her my notice and started looking for another job. I’ll come back to this later. I’ll talk about Ashlee’s visit first J
We went to shanghai for a few days and had SO much fun! We went to all these illegal fake brand name stores. And we found this Ice bar. It was so cool! (pun possibly intended J) it was this bar made entirely of ice. The menu was ice, the cups were ice, the seats were ice. There were ice sculptures.. it was all ice. They give you these Eskimo coats and gloves when you go in. you’re aonly allowed to be in the bar for 45 minutes and then you have to go out for a while and warm up. I figured because we are from Canada we could handle it. NO WAY! We stayed in there long enough to have one drink and we were outta there! They weren’t lying about the cold. Then the next weekend we went to Beijing! It was great! We went to the forbidden city the first day. It was really interesting. I wish I knew more Chinese history. (I took a bunch of pictures for you Grandpa!) and the next day we went on a tour with 7 other people to the Ming Tombs and the GREAT WALL! It was raining all day, but it seemed to add something special. Something more mysterious. I really enjoyed the tombs. The things they told us were so interesting! But the great wall was fantastic! ( I took a bunch of pictures there too!) we had such a great time up there. We had to take this roller coaster trolley thing up the side of a mountain to bypass the busy part so we could actually get to the wall. It’s a very busy place. They had bears outside the wall in a habitat that you could throw cucumbers to. I was a little disappointed that they weren’t panda bears. I’ll see those before I leave, I promise! So that was Beijing. Beautiful and interesting.
When we got back to Weihai we visited the beach in the evening. I guess this summer was the summer for all the jellyfish to come out. There was a jellyfish MASSACRE! People were in the water pulling these HUGE, MONTROUS jellyfish out of the water and killing them, taking the parts that they needed for dinner and leaving the rest on the beach. The beach was COVERED with jellyfish bodies. It was neat. I geuss a couple foreigners died this summer on that beach from poisonous jellyfish stings. I avoided the water after that.
So that’s a summary of Ashlee’s visit. And this is the best part: A week after she got home she called me and said she had decided she loved china so much that she;s quitting her job, selling her car and MOVING HERE to live with me!!!!!! how great is that?! I’m so excited. So she’ll be here in approximately…17 days. Not even counting haha.
So as to the job thing. On Wednesday I moved to a city called Shenzhen. It’s VERY close to hong kong. In some areas you can see hong kong. It’s very hot and tropical here. They call it the California, or the Florida of china. It some places it still looks like china, but mostly like Florida filled with Chinese people. I’m in the care of a recruitment agency and they got me an interview with a kindergarten school on Monday. I REALLY don’t want to teach kindergarten but I guess the middle schools are full. And it’s only for 6 months. AND here’s something kinda interesting.. haha… I have an interview with a modeling agency. So silly! It would be fun though. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Well so here I am, in Shenzhen, sitting in a starbucks, I just finished eating my whole wheat carrot muffin and my espresso frappaccino. And sitting almost directly across from me is a guy with very pungent breath speaking fervently to a woman across from him with breath as equally bad smelling….. and looking at a view of tall buildings and palm trees. As I was falling asleep last night in my very cramped, very damp hotel room I felt like one of those people who move to LA to become famous. They are alone with no money, no job, no acquaintances. All they have is passion, and that seems to keep them going. I don’t plan on becoming famous here but I do fit the rest of that criteria.