The grand bazaar

This is Ma Jia Ping. This is the biggest market in Chenzhou. I've been quite a fan since I got here. You can find virtually anything inside from underwear and socks to water heaters and stove tops. There's a show department the size of wal Mart and everything is super cheap, though sometimes the quality matches. This is common in Chinese cities but this one is especially impressive to me.

Breakfast in McDonald's

It's all coming to a close. I'm getting ready to leave Chenzhou. I've left the apartment that I spent the last ten months in and now I'm staying in a hotel for a couple of days. The hotel is a lot closer to McDonald's and that results in a McDonald's breakfast at least this morning.

I'll check out of the hotel later today and move in with friends that live on the south side of town. They have a sweet three bedroom on the eleventh floor and one of those is empty so I'll have a place to stay while I wait for training to start for my next job.

The training will be in Beijing, so I'll get a week there when my friends Angelo will also be there, so that will be a lot of fun. Then it's back to this end of the country to Shenzhen, where I will at least the next year.

Shenzhen is in Guangdong province, the next province south of where I currently live. If you haven't read my previous posts about Shenzhen, here's a quick rundown: Shenzhen is the border town for Hong Kong. It didn't exist twenty five years ago when Deng Xiaoping declared the area a special economic zone (meaning it gets special rules that allow it to work more like a western economy). Since that time it has grown from literally nothing to a Chinese megacity. It's larger than Hong Kong and probably the least Chinese Chinese city in the country.

It's also extremely wealthy and tropical. There are beaches nearby and several other fantastic cities in the area. Guangzhou is only an hour away and has the area's main airport, with short flights to southeast Asia :-/ the Philippines, and anywhere else you can imagine.

On offer...

This week I want everyone to know that I have officially gotten an offer from one school and a soft offer from another. Being me, the most important thing about each is location. The firm contract is in Qingdao, a coastal city in the north. The city is unique because it was settled by the Germans over 100 years ago and have subsequently developed a famous brewery and a pub culture, which is rare in China. Qingdao is also famous for its beautiful beaches, which are right in the middle of the city. Beaches and pub culture may make the place seem like a dream, but it's so far north that the winters would get snow, and summer would be a lot shorter. On the plus side, it's so close to Korea and Japan that there are ferries that go to both.

The other offer is from Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, where I currently live. The food would be similar to here (unbelievably spicy), but the city is much larger and more cosmopolitan. Than here. Overall, though, Changsha is not a Chinese mega-city and can't compete with places like Shanghai or Guangzhou. Cost of living is low in Changsha, but so is desirability. I'm eager to live in a place where the things I want to do and see are actually in the city I live in rather than an hour or two hour train ride away.

I've interviewed for a couple of places in Shenzhen but haven't gotten an offer yet. I haven't been searching hard enough in Guangzhou, so I think I'll focus on that for the time being. I feel confident that I can get an offer there or somewhere in the Pearl River Delta. But who knows? I wanted to have a fall job in the works by the end of this week, so everyone keep fingers crossed!

A teacher's sacrifice

I just wanted to make a quick post about the sacrifices I make as a teacher. I love to spend time with my kids and make sure they learn as much as possible, but once a month they have school wide exams and I have to find something to occupy my time.

Difficult though it was, I managed to do just that on a long weekend, so here I sit on a tropical island in the gorgeous sun. It's almost enough to console me over the absence of my...students? Was it?

The Search Continues...

The activity that preoccupies most of my time right now is the job search. I've done interviews and am otherwise in contact with recruiters and schools in Taiwan and mainland China. The one in Taiwan is interesting because it wouldn't be in a big city, but in the mountains in the central part of the island. I would be living on a tropical island with both Japanese and Chinese influence. They speak Mandarin, but also use traditional characters in writing. The Chinese school possibilities are in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and (most interestingly) Qingdao. Qingdao is on the coast between Beijing and Shanghai. Its far enough north that the temperature dips just below freezing in the winter, so there's a possibility for snow. However, winters are dry, as is most of the rest of the year, except for a rainy summer. Qingdao is famous for beaches, breweries, and German architecture (having been occupied by the Germans for several years about a hundred years ago).

It's also worthy of note that one of my best friends from my time here, Rebecca Darling, is leaving this week to return to England. More worthy of note, however, is that we have decided to proceed to our next destination together, and so are looking for a school that can accommodate two teachers next year.Rebecca's original plan was to remain in Chenzhou for another year, but we both know we can make a lot more and have a lot of new experiences by moving on to a new place, so off we go.