Between when I was hired by this company and now, there was a policy change. Before, anyone with a collage degree and who was a native English speaker could get a work visa applicable to the work I do. Now, a person must be out of college and must have gotten that degree over two years ago in order to do the work that I do. While it is possible to obtain a work visa inside of my current circumstances, it is much more expensive, and not worth the price of keeping me to the company. If I had graduated collage 2 or more years ago, a work visa would cost about 400 yuan, and with my current circumstances, it would cost around 10,000 yuan, obviously a huge difference in price, and not worth it to the company. Of course, now that I am demanding my breach penalty, they may change their mind, though I hope that they will pay me to just to get me off their back and/or prevent me from sicking my lawyer on them.
Of course, they would never admit to this, but I hear rumors. Not all of these rumors are true. In fact, what I just said may not be true at all, but it seems to be the most plausible reality and reason for all the recent deportations, and it seems like a believable reason to fire me. And there have been many deportations for a huge variety of reasons. I honestly think there are going to be some massive changes in this country (and the world, for that matter) soon.
The other reason I think they may have fired me was that I just started at this school two weeks ago, and now I have asked for three sick days. They may not have realized exactly how sick I was from the time I got food poisoning from the century eggs, and from this Chinese flu that I have right now. (They may assume, that myself, like their last teacher, calls in sick all the time because I am hungover, which, as anyone who knows me could attest to, is not at all like me.) And these two incidents happening so close together was kind of just an accident, but when you live in a foreign country, getting sick from something is an inevitability. And when you teach little kids, getting sick is also an inevitability. My poor housemate, he happened to get food poisoning and the Chinese flu both at the same time. I honestly do not understand how he managed to survive that!
But from the schools perspective, I was a new teacher in a ritzy school, with no masters degrees and only two months of experience (compared with their other teacher who has two masters degrees and three years experience), so I guess I had a lot to prove to them if I wanted them to keep me. And during those days that I was a substitute, I worked my ass off to prove I was capable, and I continued to during these past two weeks, and I know the kids were learning from me, and they were learning well. But when the new teacher calls in sick three days out of those two weeks, and...now wait a minute...hold on just a minute here...I think somethings coming in...what's that?...what are the parents going to say to that...?
Ah, okay. I guess the parents may have actually complained. NEVER MIND! I guess the dude was probably telling the truth. I just wish he would have just told me the damn reason why. But then, why won't they find me another school? I honestly can't say. I think they assumed that because now I've been through two schools, that they will be unable to find me another, and they simply don't have the patience for that, and they think that, with the cost of a work visa now, and everything else going on, it's cheaper and easier just to get rid of me than to continue hearing complaints about me. Well, in that case, it's not my problem, it's theirs for not having the patience to work with me.
Now, I have not actually bought the ticket home yet, but if I choose to stay, I will have to pay 1,600 yuan to renew my visa, and that's not something I am willing to do, with my limited cash, in this smog filled, shit hole of a country. My visa expires Friday and it's Tuesday now. There is a lot that I am going to miss, especially my Hebrew school job, and more than anything, the kids, but oh well. I can't even begin to explain all that I have learned here. I will tell you more in future posts but what I can say is that what I have learned here in three months would have taken me over 1,000 years to learn if all I did was sit and read books about it. And so I'm very glad I came here and now I'm very glad I'm leaving.
No comments:
Post a Comment