After class, we had a small lunch together, celebrating the news that I would soon be living very close to them. 

I love spring. I love it because the weather gets warmer, all the flowers start to bloom, I get to throw my coat in the closet, and I am actually motivated to go outside to get my fifteen minutes of vitamin D. But those aren’t the only reasons why I love spring. I love it because all of those reasons I just mentioned mark the start of the most awesome season of all – the baseball season.

To put how awesome it is to me into perspective, maybe I should say it this way: Opening Day is my Christmas.

Well, not all Christmases are created equal. Sometimes you get the win you’ve been dreaming of, maybe, if your lucky, even a few spectacular plays, a homer that blasts out of that park, and a nail-biting, thriller of a finish. And then there is the Christmas that makes you ask, “Is Santa on strike?”

The first four games of the 2012 baseball season were very much the latter. The Atlanta Braves, I guess, thought that their complete craptacular collapse last season wasn’t so complete after all because they posted four more rather disappointing loses before finally notching a win. Now, I wasn’t too let down because I am well aware there are 162 games and that anything can happen between April and October, but as we learned last season, one win can make all the difference and each loss can potentially be the nail in the season’s coffin. Thankfully, the Braves have made some what of a comeback and are now a .500 team and only 2.5 games back.

During their win drought, I aired my displeasure to the retired group of students I teach over in Xujiahui. I wrote up the following on the board at the beginning of my class, so they could read and think about it, and prepare themselves to discuss it.

“The Atlanta Braves are off to a miserable start. They are 1-4. Zi Wei(that’s my Chinese name) is very sad because of this.”

Last semester, I talked to them about baseball and the Atlanta Braves, so I expected them to understand, but I suppose my expectations were a few rungs too high.

As the students came in, they sat down and read the message on the board. They read it again. They spoke to each other in Chinese and all of their faces were distorted in confusion. I couldn’t understand what the problem was.

When the clock struck 9:15, I read the sentence out loud. I asked them if they knew who the Atlanta Braves were. They all shook their heads and said no. I told them they did know because we had talked about it before. I asked if they could remember my favorite sport. They shook their heads again and said no. I wrote baseball up on the board one letter at a time until they knew what I was writing. I think I got to the E before someone recognized it.

“Oh, baseball,” one of the students said.

Several of the students on the front row started laughing. I asked what was so funny.

One of the students spoke for them all. “We thought that you were sad because of something we did. We love you. We don’t want to make you sad.”

This of course made me laugh right along with them.

“No, no, I said. I’m not sad because something you did. I am sad because the Atlanta Braves have only won one of five games.”

“We understand now.”

And then we all laughed together.

This moment sorta made me forget how sad I was that the Braves were stinking up the place.

Here’s to hoping that I won’t need this type of special moment to help me forget any more parts of the season. Go Braves!!

Today, I taught my business English students about baseball, which is no easy feat when you only have an hour and a half to cover everything from 1846 in Hoboken, New Jersey to the Atlanta Braves stumbling out of the gates like fools in 2012. I covered as much as I could, but I clearly could see they were a little confused when I asked if they had any questions when I was finished.

To me, baseball makes perfect sense, but I’m a second generation (Atlanta Braves) baseball fan, and the knowledge and know-how comes rather natural to me. Teaching a sport to a nation versed mainly in basketball(thank you, Yao Ming) and soccer(football – thank you FIFA) is kinda like teaching a young child how to tie his shoe. You understand the motions and the outcome and why it happened the way it did, but the description of how it all happens turns the pretty bow into a jumbled disaster of ugly knots . . . if you are even that lucky.

Hopefully, I taught them more than I confused them, but god only knows. Their brains are probably knotted spaghetti strings.

Next week, I am going to teach them “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, which is always fun. Maybe I will record them and post it for you guys to enjoy! Also, I downloaded the “Who’s on First” skit by Abbott and Costello. I hope that they will understand the humor. I’ve printed out the script to help them understand what is being said because let’s be honest, it can be confusing, especially to ESL learners. And finally, I have nine clips of “Field of Dreams” for them to watch. I love that movie!!

If they can describe in a nutshell what baseball is and tell me sorta how it is played by the end of next Wednesday, I’ll be a happy teacher.

I start off each class with what I call “Gabe’s Random Thoughts of the Day”. These thoughts are truly random and can be spurred by the weather, a song, an expression, a sport, a random news article or even by one of the random thoughts I just wrote on the white board. I usually have no idea what my random thought of the day will be until I start writing it. Some of my thoughts are pretty awesome, and I really should have taken a picture of some of them, but oh well. I think my random thoughts engage the students and make them think and ask questions because usually my random thoughts are about stuff they have never heard of before.

Today’s random thought was titled, “My Baseball Bucket List” and this is how it went.

1. Attend a World Series game, more specifically an Atlanta Braves vs ??? World Series game, preferably with my father.
2. Own the Atlanta Braves(Highly unlikely, but hey, I can dream, right?)
3. Get remarried to Phil on home plate at Turner Field(Again with the dreaming)
4. Sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at a MLB game(Not as part of the crowd, but the person leading it)
5. Have a son who grows up to be the best baseball player EVER(first I need to have children)
6. Convince Phil to allow me to name a daughter Atlanta(Probably no amount of begging will make this happen)
7. Watch all 162 games(plus post season games) in person(I’ll need to win or inherit a lot of money first)
8. Own season tickets to the Atlanta Braves(probably the most likely of all to actually happen)
9. Catch a foul ball or home run(the batting practice homer that hit me in the head does not count)

I am sure there are more, but that is all I can think of right now.

Do you have a baseball bucket list?

Not long after we arrived and started teaching English in Fuyang, we got to experience the holiday known as Teacher’s Day.  This is a day when students thank their teachers for all of their hard work and sometimes present them with little gifts.  I knew of the holiday before coming to China, but I didn’t expect the students to give either Phil or I anything, for like I said, we had just started teaching.  I didn’t think it was possible for them to like us enough to by anything for us, given the amount of time they had known us.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I came home from work and found a carved watermelon wishing Phil a Happy Teacher’s Day sitting on the kitchen table.  I’m sure I imagined several gifts that the students might give us, but I don’t think that a carved watermelon was one of them.  I was quite impressed.  The student put a lot of work into it.

During our six months there, Phil got all sorts of gifts from his students – ranging from greeting cards to Final Fantasy posters to Hello Kitty stuffed toys.  Phil’s students were loads nicer than mine ever were.

And just in case you don’t know what a carved watermelon looks like – here you go!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRPim03J8cc[/youtube]

I remember faintly, while standing in the cold, dark corridor of Beijing WECL, Mandy, one of Yuli Guo’s(Richard Guo) lackeys, telling us how WECL had forged one of our coworker’s resume.  She said that it didn’t look very professional.   I thought at the time that maybe they had just added teaching experience or something like that and that it was rather hilarious that our school was lying to the Chinese government.  It made me wonder what they had done to my resume.

Well, a few days ago, I got a message from a guy who had contacted me about teaching at WECL.  He thought he would share some amusing information with me.

“Hey, I thought you would find this amusing.  I actually turned down the WECL job the other day but someone at the Qingdao office keeps bugging me for visa stuff.  Well they decided to “embellish” my resume and added an entire job as a behavorial therapist in Glendale, California back in 2007 while I was in college in Washington, DC.  I can’t believe they would just flat out lie to the Chinese government!  Talk about such a sketchy job!”

And now I know what probably ended up on my coworker’s resume.  Very interesting.

I was invited to my school to judge an English competition on my birthday. At the end several students and teachers sang songs. They asked me to sing, too. I don’t know any songs by heart, especially with out the music, so I sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Laugh if you will, I was just having some fun.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdTdQCchyIk[/youtube]

It has been a long time since I have been a teacher in YongXing Middle School in Fuyang, but every once in a while, I will get an email from one of my students. The one below is from Tiffany, a student I’ve mentioned before – here. Anyway, it made me smile, and I thought I would sure it with you all.

Dear Gabe ,

Do you remenber me? I’m your student in YongXing Middle School.I’m now a senior school student .do you know FUYANG MIDDLE SCHOOL?I’m now in this school .It’s been a long time.Now our foreign teacher is a black from the US.I think your class is better than hers.Her accent always remind me of you.I miss you…..

Where are you now?I’m looking forward to hear from you.^^

yours Tiffany

I’ve asked for the new teacher’s email. I would love to chat with her and find out what has been happening in the school since I left and how she has dealt with the students. I heard that the teachers that came right after us didn’t stay very long. I don’t know the reason, but I’m sure it had something to do with the students and their rotten behavior or something that the Director of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Zhou, did to make them mad has hell. Either one is very probable. I know that both of them happened to me.

Well, I’ll be putting up the picture of my office soon, as well

If you haven’t had the chance to read My Chinese Headache Part 1 and 2, please click here and here. I suppose it’s not completely necessary, but it may make the following emails more humorous if you do.

Phil wanted me to wait until we got home before I posted them just in case the wrong person happened to come across them. He didn’t want to make our lives any more difficult than they were at the time. And I didn’t want to post it until I had the time to explain our reasoning for why we left. Now that we are home, and I finally got around to telling that story, I can now post what is probably the funniest bunch of emails that I have ever received.

There were several more emails than just the three I’m going to let you read, but these were by far the funniest – particularly the two written by Richard Guo(Yuli Guo).   The other one is written by our recruiter, Lea.  Please know that a lot of what Richard says in his emails is hogwash.  The main reason why I’m posting it is because it makes me laugh until my sides hurt.

ENJOY!

From: Yuli Guo(Richard)
To: Phil, Lea, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007

more than 4 months’salary of Tim.  When the teachers she sold in China having difficulties she never gives real help but sending an email to fool both teachers and Jessica about the whole situation. Teachers were not told by Mrs. Walker that how much they were sold. Teachers were also never told that because she cheated the host school which makes the teachers she sent over in a difficult situation. On the surface it seems your contract has no connection with Mrs. Walker’s evil doing, but it closed connected with each other. Phillip and Gabe, don’t worry and no thanks, , we will help both of you go home but always remember that it is Mrs. Walker’s evil way of doing the business that put you guys in a such difficult situation. I do hope you can go to the authority concerned in China and disclose Mrs. Walker’s evil behavior.

Richard Guo

From: Lea
To: Richard, Phil, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Sent: Mon, 20 Aug 2007
Subject: Re: More problems, sorry to bother you.

Okay, I know that it has taken me a long time to get the rest of this story down, but I guess late is better than never.  I’m not going to go into as much detail as I did last time because then I’ll never get this done, but I’ll at least cover the basics.

To sum up the story, my school, or rather, the president of my school lied and tried to get away with it.  The president, Richard – Yuli Guo, thought that he could push Phil and I around and get us to pay our own way home.  He thought that we would not fight for what was our legal right.  Apparently, he has pushed a lot of people around since he became the president of WECL and has gotten what he wanted more times than not.  I think that he thought we were young and stupid, but he underestimated us.

This is what happened in a nut shell.

The school tried to feed us the cock and bull story that there weren’t any tickets left, but the truth of the matter was that Richard just didn’t want to pay what the tickets cost.  They had known well in advance that we were going home.  They just waited until the last minute like they usually do with all other important things.  Once we found this out, we pulled out our contracts and read what was clearly stated on our contract.  Our contracts read in plain English that the school was required to pay our one way international ticket home.  Richard played dumb at this point and asked to have us fax a copy to him.  The funny part is that he personally signed and sent a copy of the original to me and Phil when we decided to teach a semester for him.

We sent him a copy of the contract as he asked and about a day later he told us that he wasn’t responsible.  He said that we should read the contract more carefully before we continued to harass him about paying for our tickets.  Well, we didn’t stop harassing him and that didn’t make him happy at all.  We started doing research to figure out how to get him to pay what he was supposed to.  We also saw at the bottom of our contract a beautiful statement that said if either of the parties broke the contract that between 10,000 and 100,000 yuan was to paid to the other party.  Whether we were going to get that if he didn’t pay for our tickets we didn’t know, but we were going to use it as a backup plan if need be.

For several days, Phil talked to Richard on the phone and argued with him that it was his responsibility to get us home.  At one point he said OK that he’d take care of it, but after talking to our support staff we found he had told them a completely different story.  He had no intention in paying for our tickets.   Richard knew that our visa was going to expire soon and that we would have to leave before that happened.  I think that he was hoping that we would get scared and fly home on our on dime.  Thankfully, our support staff was trying to figure out how to get an extension for us or a possible L visa if it came to staying longer.  We weren’t going to leave until we found out someone else had forked over the cash for our plane tickets.

At another point he said he would pay the cost of what our tickets would have cost if we had left in September because that is when they are cheaper or he would give us 5,000 yuan each.  Either way it wouldn’t cover the cost of what the tickets cost now.  So, we told him no and that we were only going to accept the full amount. 

As all of this was going down, we decided to contact the person who had originally sent us to China and ask her for help.  She gave us the contact information for a woman at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing and told us good luck. We sent the lady at the Ministry an email and hoped for the best.  When we didn’t hear from her we contacted our agency again and asked if she could do anything else to help us out.  She then decided to send the lady at the Ministry an email herself.  The email she sent was also sent to Richard.  We weren’t expecting her to do that.  You can only imagine what her email caused. 

Bright and early the next morning our phone rang.  It was Richard and he wanted to talk to Phil.  For the next 30 minutes or so Richard let Phil have it for involving our agency and the Ministry in our problem.  I didn’t have to ask Phil what was going on because I could hear Richard perfectly.  The man was mad. Fuming mad.  Smoke was seeping from our cell phone.  He screamed at Phil that he was trying his best to find us our tickets and a whole bunch of bull crapity crap.  Although, it could be possible that as soon as he got that email he sent Joe, his lacky, out to find us tickets even if it meant he had to rip it out of some poor dead man’s hands.  I seriously doubt that though. 

For the next few days we called and harassed Richard trying to figure out when he was going to have our tickets, and eventually he stopped taking our calls.  Apparently, we were starting to annoy him.  We then had to direct all of our inquires to our support staff – which didn’t know a whole lot and couldn’t get real answers from him either.  I was starting to get nervous at this point in time because it was just a week or so until our visa expired.  I was just hoping that Richard would somehow come through and give us what we deserved. 

It wasn’t too long(a day or so) after this that we got a call from Joe telling us to go to the school.  He had faxed over our a copy of our e-tickets and wanted us to make sure that we were okay.  We ran to the school and ripped the piece of paper from the fax machine.  All of the information on it was alright so we called him back and gave him the okay to actually purchase them.  We saved the numbers and later confirmed them with United.  They were legit, thank God.  Richard bought us tickets that would fly us from Beijing to D.C and then on to Columbia.  I guess the Ministry possibly getting involved in our problem and the possibility of having to pay us 10,000 – 100,000 yuan – made him search a little harder for the supposedly non-existence plane tickets.

After we were done celebrating that we were going home, the thought of how we were going to get to Beijing crossed our mind.  Richard had mentioned that we would have to take a train from Xiamen and that the school would pay for it.  We thought it would be a good idea to go double check with the school and make sure.  For those of you who don’t know, Xiamen is 33 hours away from Beijing and 33 hours on a Chinese train is a long time, especially if you are in anything other than a soft seat.  Well, when we told the school they knew nothing about our train trip to Beijing.  Our support staff called Richard to find out what was going on and what they had to tell us wasn’t at all amusing.  Richard wanted us to take a 33 hour train ride with all of luggage to Beijing on a hard seat.  I think we hit the floor. 

The bad part was that there was no way we were going to be able to get him to upgrade us to a soft seat.  Richard was responsible for getting us to Beijing, but no where was there written down how he was supposed to get us there.  Thankfully, we were able to convince him to give us what he would pay for the train tickets toward whatever other transportation we chose. So, we each got a whopping 250 yuan credit each.

After some research, we found that the only way we could fly to Beijing from Xiamen with all of our luggage was by buying a first class ticket which would cost us 2350 yuan each.  The thought of dragging our luggage behind us all the way to Beijing didn’t seem fun at all.  We’d done that from Fuyang to Beijing and that freaking sucked more than you can think it did.  Desperate to get home as soon and as painlessly as we could, we decided to fork up the money for the first class ticket to Beijing.  What else were we going to spend that money on?  Even if we took it back to the states and had it converted, it wouldn’t be that much in American money.

The last difficult decision we had to make was how to get to the airport.  The school wasn’t offering to take us, so we had to think of a way to cart all of our suitcases to the main road at 5:00 o’clock in the morning to catch two taxis.  The one thing I’ve learned from coming to a foreign country for a year is to bring as little as humanly possible.  If I had known that before I had flown to China, I wouldn’t have brought three suitcases and a backpack stuffed full of crap. 

The night before we left Xiamen, we got a call from one of the support staff.  She told us that the school had arranged for two taxis to come and take us to the airport.  This made me happy.  It meant I was only going to have to tug all of my suitcases halfway to the main road.  Come that morning though there were no taxis like we were promised and we had to drag our suitcases to the main road anyway.

Two hours later we flying out of Xiamen and we thought all of problems were behind us.  Oh, how I wish that were true.

After waiting 8 hours at our terminal at the Beijing airport, they finally called us to board the plane.  As we handed over our boarding passes we were asked to step aside. I thought we were getting the random search, but it didn’t turn to be that easy or cheap.  The woman before us informed that no matter what we were told by a United Airlines spoke person had said, we were allowed to take only one carry-on and that we would either have to A) throw one away or B) pay $142.00 each to have one of them checked.  We couldn’t quite throw away the stuff in either one of our bags, so after arguing with one another for 15 minutes I handed over my credit card.

16 hours later I was back in Columbia.

It’s going to be a good long while before I head back to China.  Man has yet to invent an Advil pill big enough.

I’ve only been home for about three weeks, and I am starting to remember why I left in the first place. The U S of A is wonderful and free, beautiful and clean, but the truth of the matter is that there just aren’t any jobs for English majors that pay what a person really needs to live. By live I mean being able to own a house, pay the bills, and save for what is supposed to be an enjoyable retirement.

So far, in my three weeks of searching, I have discovered that my job options include flipping burgers, working the 3rd shift at the gas station down the street where I possibly could get shot, answering computer questions as a customer service representative at one of the fifteen call centers, waiting hand and foot on a boss as an executive assistant(that’s a fancy term for secretary), and working as a movie extra.

Now before someone screams, “Why don’t you be a teacher?!” – let me tell you why that isn’t as easy as it seems. After talking to about a dozen people or so(11 of which were completely clueless), I was finally told that in order to teach in the backward state of South Carolina I either have to go back to school and get my Masters or start the PACE program that will take 3 years of my life to complete. Going back to school to get my Masters is out of the question. At this moment in my life, you couldn’t pay me to go back to school. In fact, if someone said I had a choice between continuing my education and certain death – I am 99% percent sure that I would choose death. That is how much I flipping hate school. The PACE program is a possibility, but I don’t fully understand it and what all the requirements are. The one thing that I do know is that I would have to take some graduate courses – and well, that requires school and probably several more tests than I even care to think about. Before I decide not to take that route, I will keep that window open, but it isn’t one that I want to crawl through if I can help it.

So far I’ve given my resume to a travel agent. They asked me the typical question of whether I had any travel agent experience and I had to tell them no, but that I had loads of travel experience. The woman that I was talking to gave me a fake smile and said that she would keep my resume on file and if they ever decided to train someone that they would give me a call. That of course translates into: As soon as you walk out of my store, I am going to incinerate your resume and erase your image off the back of my retina. I’ll go back in a few days and double check. I guess anything is possible.

I’ve also applied for 5 random state jobs. I am pretty sure I am qualified for them, but it really depends on who else has applied and if the person scanning through the resumes thinks I’m special or not. I just applied for them today, so I’m sure it will be a while before I hear back from them.

The sad part about all of this is that I have actually had the idea of going back to China to teach English cross my mind. I know that there are probably several legit programs over there that I would actually enjoy participating in, but without a teacher and ESL certificate, the money I would make over there wouldn’t equal an American salary or a enjoyable retirement.

Just what is a girl to do? *sigh*

Well, I guess I will just either A) hope to win the lottery which I don’t have the money to play because I don’t have a job or B) continue to search through the classifieds on Sunday until something screams at me. Until then . . . you’ll just have to listen to me complain. 🙂