Contract‏

Hi,

This contract officially expires July 31 but I plan to be home before that. Last year I was finished by June 12. I will fly back to Ottawa for a week and then to Charlottetown; train, plane, who knows? I really don't know if I will come back again or not. If the school offers me another contract I will seriously consider it but, if not, I don't think I want to try another city. An American teacher that I met last year was on his 8th school in as many years and he is 2 years older than I am. But he never made friends with any students or other teachers. I make friends in each city and then it is always hard to leave. I don't think I have the desire to go to another school and learn my way around another city. It takes a lot of effort to learn your way around a new school and a new city. And then to try to make new friends. Here, I know this city well. You could blindfold me and drop me somewhere and I would find my way back. It might take me awhile because it is about the size of Halifax, but I would make it. If AHUT comes up with another contract then I may come back. It is easy work and a good lifestyle here. I have made friends and I meet new people every week it seems now. I am very happy that I chose this school. I could have gone to Tianjin, near Beijing, (at least they have heat there) but I wanted to be close to Changzhou and that helped me a lot during the past year; to be able to visit Lijun, Don & Angel, and the other teachers, Joseph in Shanghai and Amanda in Shengsi Island and Hangzhou.

When I was coming home on New Year's Day from visiting with Lijun, I met a Chinese teacher at the Nanjing bus station. He teaches English to non-English majors and his English is very good although with some words he has a strange accent. 'Usually' comes out sounding like 'uually' and 'very' like 'wary'. But he certainly has a large vocabulary. He said he recognized me from the campus. I suppose most students and teachers recognize me by now. I stick out for sure; foreigner, gray hair, tall! He has been teaching at AHUT for 10 years. He was very interested that I work for the School of Economics here at AHUT. I assumed that he was an English major but judging from his conversation and his knowledge of Economics' terms I suspect that that was his major. I didn't take many Economics courses but I took the course to be a stockbroker and my major was Bus Admin and I often follow the Business news so I could converse with him; even when he started talking about homogeneous economies! He was very interesting to talk to. He had some interesting views on how Chinese culture has affected the economy here. I haven't heard a Chinese person speak against some aspects of the culture here before. Usually, it is all about harmony! All for the country! We swapped phone numbers so we will get together after the final exam week next week for a lunch or a drink. He is unmarried. Quite an interesting guy.

So, after all this rambling, I don't know about next year. If I can come here, then I probably will but I don't feel that I have the energy to break in a new city. But, if I go home, what will I do?

Haha. Had another Chinese lesson today. Now he is trying to get me to read Chinese characters. That, I think, is a lost cause. There are more than 10,000 of them as far as I know. And some of them have so many lines that I can't tell the difference between them. Some of the simple ones I know; the ones with only a few strokes. Of course, I don't know what the word means sometimes even if I can pronounce it correctly. Other words I can pronounce but I don't know the characters! Such a difficult language. But I will keep trying. If we stop learning then our brains will dry up! We need to keep exercising it.

He told me that he saw me on TV! I was with little children. The training school is the only place that I teach children. I work there tomorrow. That is not a good thing. The university has rules, although most teachers do the same or tutor. But, officially, we need permission. If the Dean sees me in an ad for the training school, he may not be happy. It is technically against the law. My work permit is for AHUT, not the training school. If the University does not like it, I could be on the next plane home.

Oh well, worse things could happen! haha

Don