This is mental! (25/09/2010)

There's so much to tell about the August 2010 China Internship! Everything's been f**king crazy! The first week was brilliant. I was in Beijing. The first two days I was on my own then I met the other teachers from the i-to-i China Internship. There were 179 of us, I think. I hanged out with some of them. We had a great time. We went sightseeing in Beijing and organised a tour to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, visited a jade gallery and attended a tea ceremony. It was awesome! We attended a couple of workshops on Chinese calligraphy, Tai Chi and Mandarin Chinese, and a couple of conferences about living and working in China, and teaching in Chinese schools. Everything was fantastic, including the weather!

Then they told us where we were placed. My problems started then! Five other teachers and I were sent to Changchun, Jilin province, which is one of the coldest places in China, between the border with Russia, Inner Mongolia and North Korea. I was deeply disappointed and upset because I expected to be based in the South and enjoy a great warm winter!

When we arrived here, it was pissing down, the streets were muddy, the traffic was so bad, a really chaotic city! And we didn't like it at all! We wanted to go back to Beijing! But we didn't have the choice.

We left Beijing on Saturday 28th August at 5am and arrived here in the afternoon. We were sent to our apartments. There were only 2 bedrooms in that apartment. One was occupied by another teacher from another company. I was supposed to share the double bed with another teacher or sleep in the sofa till another bedroom would become available in another flat! So I chose to sleep in the sofa.

The flat was dirty and full of cockroaches. There was no running water in the apartment! The toilet was disgustingly smelly and full of other people's shit! We couldn't use the washing machine or have a shower! I was there in those conditions for two weeks! I hadn't brought many clothes with me and we had spent a week in Beijing already without doing any washing! So I had to wear dirty clothes! My jeans were literally black! My hair was so greasy! We ended up buying bottled water to have a shower!

Two weeks later, they finally moved me to another apartment, where I am now. I've got my own bedroom. Both the bedroom and the apartment are big and in quite good condition. We cleaned and tidied the apartment but we still have some issues to solve before we are able to cook, the TV doesn't work and the windows don't close properly.

I brought my laptop with me and I finally got internet in the apartment so now I can be in touch with people and follow the MotoGP, which makes my life easier! It was really frustrating when I had to deal with all the shit and I couldn't even talk to anyone because I didn't have access to internet!

Oh, but the problems didn't finish here. We arrived here on a Saturday as I said. Our contract says we would start teaching sometime between 1st and 15th September, depending on the school so we were supposed to have time to settle in and get to know the place. The very next day, Sunday 29th August, the people from the teaching agency in Changchun, picked us up at 8am and took us to a kindergarten to have a job interview and a teaching demo in order for us to get a job. They hadn't even told us we were going to do that! We all failed! Oh my God! They took us to the office and we had to start working, preparing lessons and doing demos in front of other experienced teachers, the admins from the office and all sort of things till 7pm that Sunday!

From that day and ever since, especially the following three weeks, were mental! We spent every day doing demos and having job interviews in different schools (nurseries, primary and secondary schools and universities) because apparently we didn't have a secured job! That wasn't supposed to be like that because i-to-i and the organisation in Beijing (IES Global / TTC) thought they already had a school for us and we had signed a contract as well to be working in those schools! It was so f**king stressful! Feeling tired after sleeping in a sofa, wearing dirty clothes and having greasy hair didn't obviously help me to feel confident at the job interviews and teaching demos!

We also covered teachers during entire days, including some Saturdays and Sundays, in different schools. I even had to teach at a university that was in another city situated 70 minutes away by train from my city. No-one was waiting for me at the train station and I can't speak Chinese. Situations like this have been the norm. I had to leave home at 5am and didn't get back till 7pm and it's been about the same every day. We had no time to prepare lessons, they just sent us to different schools all at the very last minute and so. I can't express in words how nerve-racking it's been!

I recently complained to the organisation in Beijing and told them the agency here is not following what the contract says and I'm having a bad time. Then they talked to the agency here and things have improved a lot. Now I've got a fixed schedule. I teach in one high school on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and in a vocational school on Fridays. I'm off on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. When they call me from the agency to work more hours, I tell them I can't (because I'm not obliged to, according to my contract). In any case, I still work so much. I leave home between 6 and 7am every morning and get back between 5 and 6pm. I have to teach 6 lessons every day, wait during breaks and commute between 3 and 4 hours every day, so the days are so long! When I get home, I just go to bed! That's mental! But it's still better than the first three crazy weeks!

In the contract it says they were supposed to provide us with Mandarin Chinese lessons and they hadn't done so yet. So I also complaint to the company in Beijing and we're starting the lessons today! Things are just getting right now! But I'm already so pissed off that I'm not sure if I'll stay till the end of the contract. If I want to leave I need to give them two weeks notice so I'll wait till I get paid on 15 October and then we'll see. I might hand my notice in and go. I'm not sure yet. I'll see how it goes and how cold it gets in the next few weeks.

The 1st October is bank holiday and I'm off to Inner Mongolia with some teachers from the i-to-i group. I'm the only one leaving from Changchun but once I get to Hohhot, I'll meet the rest of the group. Three of the cool girls I met in Beijing are also going so it'll be great! I'm so looking forward to it! The only problem is I couldn't get a sleeper or not even a seat on the train because it's a very busy time of the year apparently, so I've got a standing ticket only and it's a 24 hours journey! It'll be mental as everything else so far!

• problems
• issues
• August 2010 Internship
• China internship
• apartment
• teaching