Is this what culture shock feels like? Or is it a culmination of something else?

I quit my school today. I can't take the child abuse and the way things are run there. It's really hard to witness. It's impossible to take. I gave it two months. Another second, and I would have lost my mind. Some people can take it. They say, "This is China. That's just the way things are run here. You just have to accept it." I am not like most people. There are things that one cannot accept. You just can't! I can't watch children being beaten on a daily basis. I can't stand to witness the injustices and violations of human rights. I feel sorry for the children. It hurts me to see them being hurt, and feeling like there is nothing I can do about it. I can't take the ridiculous rules, that make no sense. Meanwhile, I'm in a foreign country, working illegally for this illegal agency in this illegal school, stranded, and desperate, and helpless.

I'm still with my agency. They suck too, but I have a contract (however invalid and illegal it must be--and I know it is!). However my company is embedded into the system just so, that if I stay with them, I will probably be okay for now. Here in China, money means everything. It's a place of mobs and cronies, and of shady, gray-market ritual practices. Functionally speaking, there are no laws here. If you have money, and you can pay off the right people, anything can go down, and anyone can do anything and get away with it (Yes--on paper, this place is a commune. In practice, however, it is an anarchy...How psychotic is that!? All it takes is just a couple of red notes). I will try to stick it out another day, and take this shit one day at a time, but I don't know. I'm feeling pretty fucking scared right now.

My agency/company, expertise education, are going to try to find me a different job in a different school. I will see. All I know is that something here is amiss. Something here is not right. Something here is not working. I don't know if the problem lies with me, China, the school, or the agency, or all of the above, or something else. But maybe switching to a new school is the right thing to do. Maybe it can offer great improvements. If changing schools within the agency doesn't help me, I may have to leave the agency, and figure things out on my own or go back home. If I am still here after that, I can try another agency, or another job all together, or a different city in China. If the problems and the feelings that something is amiss still exist after exhausting every option, I will know that the problem lies with either China or myself. If it is with China, I can try another country and start from zero there, and If the problem lies with me, I will just have to accept that. I will just have to change, or find something that works well for me.

This is all I know: my dream is not to be an English teacher for the rest of my life. My dream is to be a rock star and a writer and an artist. That is what I love, and that is who I am. And if it took me coming to China to realize that, and witnessing and understanding reality in all it's glory and misery, than it was worth it just for that. But for now, all I have is right now. And I will have to work within right now as best as I possibly can...for now.