Click here to view old videos.Update: My Life
1. I am still jobless.
2. I am working on a very long post about a trip I had to a Chinese hospital.
3. During my spare time, which happens to be a lot, I’ve been taking out all of my frustration by killing people playing a game called Battlefield 2142. I’m actually not that bad.
4. I’m about to leave the house and go Dork for a few hours. For those of you who don’t know, Dork is my code word for playing DnD. And for those of you who don’t know what DnD means – well, you may be better off. My Mom tells me it has something to do with worshiping Satan or something like that.
5. I was actually offered a part time, $20 an hour job, but the contract they wanted me to sign was so wickety wack that I had to politely turn them down. They of course weren’t very happy. They said a lot of mean things to me in their nicest tone, and it was then that I realized I made a very good decision.
6. My kitty, Morgan Rose Ireland Yvette DeWitter, is giving me that look, so I better go feed her before she attempts to eat my soul or something again. Last time, I barely survived.
Hi Gabrielle,
I just saw your blog about WECL and Richard Guo. I also interviewed with Richard Guo in his Beijing school. I reallly want to stay in Beijing, so even though the pay sucks and he’s a dick like you said in your blog, I would still want to take the offer. But in the sample contract he gave me, it says if the teacher terminates the contract, he/she must pay for 10000-10,000 RMB. It makes me so worried, coz I probably cannot teach for the whole contract year.
Can you give me some advices real quick?
Thanks a lot!
December 10, 2007 @ 10:20 AM
Hey Angeline,
I’m sorry that I did not see your message until just now. I haven’t been getting the notifications in my email for some reason.
I would start by trying to get a half a semester contract first. This way if he screws you over, you don’t have to stay that long. I can speak from experience that everyone I’ve met who have had long term dealings with Richard, have been very unhappy. He sent us to and from many cities, made us pay for much more than we should have, caused us to be in China illegally, and refused to pay for our plane ticket back home as stated in our contract. Richard cannot, and I repeat cannot be trusted! Likely, he will send you to another school outside of Beijing. And in fact the school there is in a rather poor location and far from the inner rings of the city. We had an extended stay there. It was not a pleasurable one. Our shower water was red and smelled like sulfur. You can benefit from teaching with WECL, but only if you can avoid any dealings with Richard. Xiamen WECL with Belinda Wu is much better. Unfortunately, he does the hiring and you will see him quite a few times. I can give you countless examples of Richard breaking Chinese laws. And it’s others, not him, that pays for them. Be very careful in signing on with him. He is a liar and will take advantage of you. It’s a difficult task finding schools that don’t do things like Richard, but they are out there. There are countless schools that would be better to sign with in Beijing. My final advise to you is, if there’s something flaky in the contract, don’t sign it. Make a memorandum and try to get them to agree to it. If they won’t sign your memorandum, you’ll know they were just trying to take advantage of you.
December 17, 2007 @ 11:10 PM