Clueless About My Future (China)- Chapter 1- Still at Home

This is my story of my visit to China and where ever else in the world this journey will take me. I have decided to write this because of my short stay in Spain. I worked in a summer camp in Burgos in Spain in the summer of 2009 for 3 months. And after reading text on my phone long after I got back I realized how differently I felt towards the place and how my feelings changed. I was living in the school and at the start I disliked it but enjoyed it, I was working 20 hour days and the place was so unorganised and matters were made worse with another member of staff being accused of being a paedophile. I began to love the place, love the kids and loved Spain. And I met some great people which I still talk to now (6 months on). Although I do remember some of the awesome times I had out there I wish I remembered them in more detail, certain stories have been lost. So that brings me to now and this. I refuse to forget, I want everything that I encounter in this journey to be remembered.
This is my story……..

Chapter 1- Still at home

As I sit in my room feeling secluded, jobless, and lifeless and a drain on the British economy, waiting for the visa to drop through the letter box so I can book flight CA938, London Heathrow to Beijing, connect in airport to Nanchang, patiently waiting for Sunday to come around (American football). To say a few questions are going through my mind would be an understatement. Franticly searching for information and answers on Google one can only come across meaningless information, there are five universities in Nanchang as well as a Ford motors factory. As I search through forum after forum I read about how people stare at you while you walk down the street and wave at you as if they have never seen a tall white person before. This is the good part of the racism. Other people report having  “tā mā dewhie nán hái” (god knows what that means) shouted at them while they ponder around town. Few to none of the questions have an answer.

I want to know more about this ‘yellow fever’ and how easily you can get ‘it’ without being shot. The last thing I want is for my family to have to fork out the bill for a bullet that killed me, and I pray that they do not need to pay for two. As I’m thinking my cat, Parker comes in and jumps on my bed. He has been my closest companion for the last few weeks barely leaving my side. And I begin to think about him, The contract I’ve signed is a minimum of a year, I plan to live and travel around Asia working in different countries, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam ect for the next five years, Parkers already eighteen years old…. will I ever see him again? I quickly try to think of other thoughts and get my mind off them, maybe turn on some Family Guy or any other show that I have repeatedly watch over and over again with my spare time.

I think frenetically about the things and people I’m leaving behind, will I conquer the last conquest that I’ve wanted for the past 2 years. Who will keep in contact while I’m gone and where will everyone be upon my return? I know little about the place I’m moving to and even less about the school I’m going to work at, what’s the dress code? And what do I wear to make the first good impression, a suit on a nineteen hour flight is less than appealing and rocking up in baggy jeans and a hoody does sound like the best way to start a new career.

I am so excited and anxious to go out there and experience China and maybe even teach a couple of kids what voting is. I can’t wait for the experience of living in a completely different country, again, but Spain was only for a couple of months and nothing like what I’m stepping in to. The place excites me, the thought of being alone doesn’t. I am so scared at the first few days of being on my own in this new house, new country where I do not even know how to say hello, so it’s not like I can walk into a bar and get myself a refreshing beer and try to socialize with the locals, like I would have done in any other place in England even in Europe, no this is different.

Then there is the other side and no where near the last that I’ve been racking my head around, not being able to sleep over this one thought. I am going to be an English teacher, this self confessed dyslexic person is going to the other side of the world to teach. Doesn’t sound too scary yet, as I’ve done a course on teaching and while in Spain was quite happy in teaching the teenagers. But they were teenagers; they had been studying English since they were five. Some of them could speak as good as English as me. And they can describe things, ‘What’s the white things in the sky called?’ ‘A cloud’ ‘Arhh Thanks’. But I’m heading face first into a completely different challenge, I’m going to be a Kindergarten teacher. These people are only Five years old. How am I supposed to communicate with them, I don’t know mandarin! This is the scariest thing. I don’t mind ordering the wrong thing in a restaurant, so what if I get squid instead of chicken. But this is their life and this is my job.