Dear friends,
We have good friends of many years here, a man and his wife. The man, Doug, went to China last year to teach English. He took one of his sons with him. Doug
fell in love with China, Chinese people and everything about the whole experience. His wife not wanting to lose her husband to China, agreed that she would go
for one year and that they would rent their house here under a one year lease while she is away. She was able to get a one year leave of absence from her school post. She is a highly trained professional educator who loves to work with children and was extremely happy in her work and she didn't want to cut her ties with her home, friends and family and her good teaching position here. Only time
will tell how this will all work out!
Linda has now begun writing home to friends and relatives, and as I am one of them I receive her letters. I know she is a fair woman, and will tell things truthfully as she sees them. As soon as I read her first letter I thought how interesting it would be to many of you as a view from the other side, so I asked her
permission to share it here with you, and received it. So, here goes ---
Dear Loved Ones,
I arrived here safely but very stressed. I was tired from the huge amount of effort to get the house ready for tenants. And besides, I really didn't want to come. The flight was 12 hours to Shanghai and arrived too late for us to catch the bus to _____ that night. We took the local bus to the railway station and were 'accosted' by four men when we got off. They insisted that they would show us to a good hotel so we walked several blocks with them to it. It was on the dingy side. Doug went back to the railway station to buy our train tickets for the morning while I watched the bugs running around in the bathroom.
The next morning we took a taxi to the railway station because I had a lot of luggage. There were thousands of people traveling so it was very crowded. There
are so many people that if you don't keep close to the person in front of you when the line is moving, then someone will move into the space in front of you. It was a good thing that Doug had got the tickets !
the night before because there wouldn't have been any available this morning.
The train was a double layer train and we were on the lower layer on what is called 'hard seats'. They are reserved but as the name implies, not all that comfortable. We could have got cheaper fares if we stood for the trip. It took over4 hours to get to _______. The area we went through was very built up with some agriculture scattered along the way. It took several minutes to get off the train because there were so many people. We were again 'accosted' by a taxi driver. Doug said where we lived and that she had to use the metre. We thought that she agreed and that it would be about 13 rmb. He had paid 12 rmb to get to the train station when he went to pick me up. The taxi driver had another passenger in the front who gave her 15 rmb while we were driving and was obviously going further than we were. The driver did not turn the metre on and when we got out and got our luggage etc. Doug gave !
her 12 rmb. She shook her head and held up 3 fingers. Doug gave her another one. She started to yell at us in Chinese. A crowd started to gather. Someone who spoke a bit of English said she wanted 30 rmb. Doug said no in a forceful voice etc., put the 13 rmb on the trunk of the cab and we walked off while she yelled at us. Ugh.
Then we had to carry our luggage up six flights of stairs. Unless you live in a
very expensive building, there is no elevator unless you are going over 6 floors. The stairwells were dark, dingy and dirty. The apartment he has been living in is also very old with a decrepit bathroom and kitchen. It is rented by a Canadian from _____ in Canada, who teaches ESL. He was still in Canada. Of course, it didn't help that Doug and Ron, (Doug's 23 year old son) are not very neat
and there was considerable MESS.
We went and looked at the apartment that Doug had put a deposit on. It was in a
very convenient location and was being "renovated." It was supposed to be ready for Sept. 1. There is no way it is going to be ready for weeks and if they don't put thousands of dollars into the renovation there is NO Way I would live there. It was 3 small rooms with a large hallway, a tiny bathroom and a small kitchen. It was dark and dirty and very old. It is cement like most of the buildings and was very !
cold and dismal. Then we walked to the ____certified school where I met the principal. I had been touch with him several times during the spring by email but
never got any encoureagement that he had any employment for me. He took my number but I felt brushed off. I went to a Chinese run language school in the same
building but they also had no openings. The lady I talked to did say that they
had a branch on the outskirts of ________ and gave me the phone number. She thought that the pay was 3000 rmb which is very low. This whole China experience was not looking very good to me. It was a huge culture shock. We had no place of our own to live. I had no job. I WANTED TO GO HOME.
continued in Pt.2.
