41. 6 Months In

I’m writing this on the subway back from my two nights a week private. It’s been a fairly regular day, leaving the house at 7:30-8:00 am to later get back around 9:00-10:00pm. Days in Shanghai are long. This place is absorbing. But what you do here is really what you make of it and you can do literally anything here and end up not really paying an arm and a leg for it. I love it.

Private work has taken up a bit of my last three months. I now teach private students on 5 separate occasions each week. It does seem like quite a lot but as I’ve said above the standard Shanghai day is so long that you can fit it in without much bother.
Private work has its benefits. You get cash in hand, the standard rate of 200 Yuan (£20 an hour) is certainly acceptable, you work to your own schedule, you get to see a student’s development and the student or the student’s family gives you an interesting outlook of China.

It’s my 6-month anniversary in this city. A poignant landmark as it marks the halfway stage in my current contract. Shanghai is in a current state of unrest as a bird flu epidemic has claimed a fifth life in the past week. As of yet I haven’t had any irregular bouts of clucking.

The flat is in a good state. We’ve had a recent addition to the lounge in the form of an Xbox 360 thanks mainly to a charitable donation from a fellow teacher who found he was playing it too much. To buy a game out here it costs the equivalent of 50p. No wonder Game went out of business.

The last three months I’ve been lucky enough to travel some parts of China. Memorable excursions were had to Nanjing, Huangshan and recently Hong Kong. My sister, Jessica was also welcomed to these shores over the Chinese New Year. T Wessely arrives herein one month’s time, so good times ahead.

A fellow teacher, Tom, has started up a 7-a-side football team. We play every Monday night and follow this with a beer and burger. It’s a pretty competitive league we play in and the night is fast becoming my favourite part of the week. Beckham’s arrival has got a few locals talking and with the amount of football pitches in Shanghai I’m surprised China still has a low FIFA ranking.

My Chinese progress has halted a little as I was not able to continue with the lessons as I did not have the time to. I have invested in books and I’m taking an exam in two weeks so the plan may be to get a tutor once a week.

Teaching here has done me well so far, you become more and more accustomed each passing day. But it can become a bit of a slog continuously preparing lessons. I have a number of future plans after this year, a Masters in Asian Studies, apply for a different job in China, apply for an international school job starting August 2014 in Shanghai, the plan all along was to go to South America and be part of Brazil. I’m still not closer to a field that I would like to do long term so I came to a decision that I want to be doing something which has the best location and the best pay.

 One thing is for sure I aim to be home for Christmas.

Thanks for reading my personal thoughts. The question really is what I am doing about it. This I think will be the objective of the next three months.