Say Frustrated in Chinese
The school is hurting for foreign teachers right now and is always asking me if I’m going to continue to work part time in the fall. Um… why would I want to teach more English in my free time? What they don’t understand is that I didn’t come to China to make lots of money. If money was the object, I could be making 2-3 times as much back home. I tell them I will consider it, but, unless I find myself completely bored out of my mind on the weekends, I wouldn’t count on it.
In fact, they always bring this up at the worst possible times, like shortly after they dumped more free talks on me. Let’s think about this for a moment. You give me more of the classes that I hate doing above all others, and then you want me to stick around for another semester? You’ve got the concept of bait and switch all wrong.
I’m a whiner when it comes to doing free talks, because I end up spending my days off preparing for them. I really want to study and practice Chinese, but it’s hard to do so when I’m engulfed so deep in English. The last thing I want to do after working in English all day is dive into another language. I just found a new lessons website, too, but when I try to look at it between classes, students want to talk English with me.
I did go down to China Mobile, though, to put more money on my phone. While my conversation with the receptionist was brief, I was totally prepared to do this in Chinese and didn’t even realize she knew English. Let’s watch:
“Ni hao.”
“Hello.”
“Wo yao songgei qian… nei ge… nei ge… wode shouji.”
“Okay. Your number.”
“Shenme?”
“The number.”
“Oh. Oh! English. Uh… here.”
At this rate, learning Chinese looks grim. Fortunately, things will be much different when I move back to the Star school. In fact, I asked about the possibility of taking Chinese classes through Star. While lessons aren’t available to foreign teachers, I was told I could sit in on the first grade classes. I will fit right in.
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Responses to “Say Frustrated in Chinese”
Comments RSS Feed – All CommentsPollytorg — 27 July 2008 @ 5:41 am
I wonder if there are any Chinese teachers that come to America to teach us Chinese?
I also am wondering where J R is and why you chose to go to China alone?
Currently NPR has had many interesting features about China, probably because of the Beijing Olymics coming up soon.
Clark — 28 July 2008 @ 12:02 am
I was determined to go, with or without a friend.
sylvia — 31 July 2008 @ 7:21 am
It is a good way to sit in on the first grade class to learning chinese, keep going, something will be changed…….
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