Things Are a Changing...

So I sort of gave up on the daily dairy entry thing a while ago for the holiday and will have to give you an action packed update of the last few weeks and the new moves on the horizon.

So I think my last entry ended somewhere close to us just finishing the trip with the Hong Kong guys. We then traveled 14 hours or so north up the east coast to Xiamen to visit friends of ours from Durban (Paul and Tori) who also teach English. During the week were there we stayed with them for about 4/5 nights and 3 nights we stayed on a small island just off Xiamen.

Xiamen is great but for some reason not really my vibe. I'm still deciding what "my vibe" is, but Xiamen wasn't really it. Tori also had her baby while we were there but we didn't get to see the little one since we left while she was still in hospital.

Then we returned to the South for a 10 day summer camp from the 13-22nd of July in Dongguan. We had an amazing time and tried to organize a fulltime position at the school but it didn't work out. They had one position but obviously we both need a job so it was a bummer (at the time). I taught 6-9 year olds and Janna had 9-12 year olds. We had around 2-3 classes/day and a double lesson from 19h00-20h30 to help them prepare for the final days performance. Was exhausting work BUT loads of fun and we realized how much we would prefer the little ones (I guess its easier said before you actually teach them every week - haha) than high school. Our high school kids either dont listen and irritate you, or they dont listen and sleep - there were some good classes, but out of the 24, most of them were a bit of a rash.

ANYWAYS - we were still clueless whether we should just go to Hong Kong and spend some time there waiting for our visa docs to get sorted out or wait in China and try look for other work for next semester (its a bit of a complicated one so wont bore you, but its been a bit of a rash with the current employers since we never got the legal documents to teach).

We were just about to go to Hong Kong to see what could happen when we got an email to meet for an interview in Foshan (around 90min's from where we were by bus) that weekend to see if we would be suitable for some openings over there. We were quite excited since the initial package was loads better than our current one but the big bonus was that we would be down south close to our mates for trips to China on weekends and to go to CCI with Rob Rufus and crew in Hong Kong on other weekends as well.

The next few days we had a few meetings with the recruiter (young guy from the UK - which was great to deal with a foreigner for a change), language school owner and some teachers at the kindergartens. It was a bit frustrating at times since the contract changed almost daily and even changed one more time about 20min's before we were to sign, so it was stretching BUT we confirmed and signed !!

So we will be closer to HongKong for weekend trips to CCI and should also be able to make the weekend trips into China as well. We get paid around 40% more each (but have to work 5 days/week now) and dont get the massive 2 month summer and winter holidays BUT the pro's far outweigh the cons so were very excited.

Janna starts Monday so we have just returned back to our apartment to fetch the rest of our things and fly back on Sunday. I officially start on September the 1st only but have some private lessons for 2 weeks or so before for some extra cash.

So thats about it for now...

We wont have internet at home (but will visit internet cafes from time to time) and most probably wont have access to Facebook, Twitter and Blogging until we visit Hong Kong on weekends, so this might be it for quite some time...

Big love from China,
Derik