Trapped

As mentioned before in my previous blog post, recently I've been considering going back to Australia. Yesterday I found out that I'll be taxed 18% until May, and with few hours and such little income I'm really beginning to doubt why I should be here at all. A few of my fellow trainees have also begun making their way back home after only three months.

But when I sat down and worked it all out, I discovered that I can't actually afford to go back. For one I borrowed money from my branch to pay the deposit on my apartment, which has to be payed back, and I will also be charged 20,000 NT for breaking my contract. (But I can make a run for it.) There's also the cost of plane tickets, and the lost deposit on my apartment. To top it all off I don't have any job to go back to in Australia, so if I decided to leave I'll be digging myself into a financial hole.

So to sum it all up, I'm trapped in Taiwan.

If I have any hope of getting out I'll most probably have to stay and work for another few months. As much as I dislike it I haven't got much of a choice. During training I was told that feelings such as wanting to leave could be attributed to culture shock. I thought this was quit hilarious. Don't worry if you job is crap, the pay is little, you don't like the country and you want to go home, this is just culture shock.

I guess the best thing to do is try to make the most of this situation by working hard at my job, picking up more hours, and practising more Chinese. There really isn't anything else that I can do at this stage.

Thoughts about Running Away

Recently president Obama has finally made the trip to Australia. This means that Australia is finally on the news and I can get up to speed on what's going on back home.
Apparently the Australian economy has been doing great recently, which leads me to question why the hell am I here? I work very little, my pay in crap, and so far I've saved nothing. If by chance I manage to save anything, it will be worthless back home, and will probably only be the equivalent of a plane ticket.

That's why I've been thinking run Cathryn, run far far away, back to Australia.

Of course there are a few advantages to staying. I can practice Chinese, hang out in a big city, nobody back home ever has to know about the things that I get up too. If I just ride it out for another three months I will have paid off my loan, and hopefully they'll finally give me a pay rise.

But I can't shake the feeling that I'm wasting my life away working for this company. By the time my contract finishes I'll be a year older. That's a whole year that I could have done something more meaningful with my life. In my current job the conditions are pretty crap. I don't have paid holidays, paid sick leave, or any paid time off at all. I also have training and meetings that I'm forced to attend in my free time, that I don't get anything for.  It's not just my job, these are pretty universal conditions throughout Taiwan. It's even worse for the average Taiwanese worker.

If I went back to Australia, the conditions would be great, the pay would be great. Everyone speaks English, which is also great. Sure the public transport is crap and everything is so much more expensive, but I would finally have more money.

But it's also embarrassing to return home after making a big deal about leaving. Everyone always talks behind your back and asks questions such as: why are they back, did something happen? Couldn't they take it? Did they get homesick?

Of course it's not really possible to go back now due to my lack of funds. But that doesn't stop me from job searching. Ha ha ha ha. Taiwan, I will escape you yet!

Guide on Escaping To Japan

Teaching English in Japan.

So Taiwan has finally broke you. You can't take the food, the people, the risk of death by scooter. The easy option would be to pack up and head home. But if you're running away from a dark and mysterious past, that might not always be an option. Maybe you want to continue your Asian adventure, just not in this country. So where else is there to go? Believe it or not Japan is quite close. You might be a fan of cool street fashion, or a closet Pokemon fan, so you're quite up for escaping to the land of the rising sun. I am also contemplating making a run for it, therefore I've made this guide out of all my investigations over the past few weeks.

The first thing you must consider is whether or not Japan is really for you. It is a cool place, so I recommend a visit, but staying for a year or more is a different story. Sure the streets are clean, everything is well organised, and the people are very polite, but you are heading into a culture which is completely different from your own. Taiwanese people are generally quite friendly who will try and invite you around for dinner. Japanese people are a bit more closed off, which makes breaking into a friendship group hard, especially if your a foreigner. You're eternally an outsider. The Japanese are very polite, but this can also come off a bit cold. If you live in a bit city navigating around in English isn't too hard, but if you're out in the countryside knowing some Japanese is essential.

The Japanese are also very organised, which is great because they'll have ever thing organised months in advance. Unlike Hess Taiwan, which wouldn't even tell me where I was going to work until a week after I got there. (God Damn you Hess!!!) But they can be more uptight compared to the Taiwanese. Especially about garbage. Make sure you sort your garbage correctly. The Japanese are also a lot more formal, and they might expect you to wear a suit to work at an English school.

Also despite Japan paying you more than Taiwan THE COST OF LIVING IS MORE EXPENSIVE!! Possibly 4x more. All those dirt cheap Subway trips around Taipei that you think nothing of, will dig a hole in your pocket in Japan.

For the sake of comparing different schools I made this niffy table here. I can't guarantee that all the information is correct, so it's best to check the website yourself. The best deal is JET, but they might place you in a rural area where you may become the village foreigner. Aeon and Amnity are probably the next best thing. But they both seem very corporate. Most companies like JET, Aeon, Amnity, and ECC, do most of their requiting overseas in your home country, so it can be quite difficult to land a job straight from Taiwan. Some school will do a Skype interview, and you can always try to attend an interview in Japan.

A comparison of different Schools in Japan.

School	Location	Job Type	Hours a week	Contract	Salary	Housing	Free airfare	Commute covered	Vacation
Aeon	All over	English Instructor	38	1 year	270000	You Pay 55,000 max	No	1.5k>	3x1 week 5 paid days
Aeon Amnity	All over	Kids English instructor	40	1 year	285,000	You Pay 42,000 max	No	1.5k>	3x1 week 5 paid days
Interac	All over	School ALT		1 year	200,000 - 260,000	No	No	Can provide Car	School Vacations 60% pay
Shane English	Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and Fukuoka	English Instructor	40	1 Year	250,000 -        270,000	No	No	reimbursed	Christmas New Year Golden Week Summer
ECC	Tokyo Nagoya Osaka	English Instructor	29.5	Work till March 31st	252,000	Doesn't say	No	reimbursed	7 weeks
JET	Mostly Rural Areas	School ALT	35	1 Year	300,000	Yes	no	Can provide a car.	10 days paid leave
Heart  English School	Tokyo and Nearby Areas	School ALT		1 Year	230,000	No	No		School Vacations
Winbe	All over	English Instructor	40	1 Year	250,000	No	No	Reimbursed	5 weeks
Atila  Central	Central Japan	School ALT	25 classes	1 Year	240,000 ~ 255,000	No	No	Can Provide  Car	Summer and Winter Vacation Paid

Another useful website is Gaijin Pot. I've had limited success with this one so far, and most of the jobs already require you to be in Japan with a working Visa. But it does have a lot of useful information about living in Japan. 

Another online newsletter which provides many job adverts is O-hayo Sensei. You can subscribe and they'll email you job adverts twice a month, but the website it pretty ancient looking.

There are also a lot over overseas recruiting websites which can also get you a job in Japan. Such as Footprints Recruiting and  Teach Away.

However you go about it, I hope that this small guide aids you in your escape to Japan.

The Children have Infected me!

It's probably worth warning you that if you're going to teach Kindergarten, you will inevitably get sick a lot. Currently I'm down with some strange illness that makes all my muscles  hurt and sucks away the will to move. Although these are the usual symptoms of spending too much time with children, I also have a cough, so I'm assuming it's the flu.

There is only one thing to blame..The children

This week about half my class was sick. It's given me something to talk about in sharing time when I'll ask, Ok who is sick to today? To which half my class will begin to make exaggerated coughing noises. Their parents need to work, so even if the child is coughing with a fever, they'll just stick a mask on them and send them off to Kindergarten. This inevitable leads to the rest of them getting sick, and then me.

I taught the kids to say sanitiser. I thought it was too hard to understand, but I added a chant and now they know it. Now I just yell it from the hallway on the way back from the bathroom, and the kid up the front will spray the rest. I thought that would save me from their childhood illnesses but apparently not.

I often consider not going to work, but I have my classes well trained to be a bit more student centric so it makes my life easier, and I don't need to move around as much. I also only have a 10 minute commute, so I don't have to walk very far,

I don't want this to be a rant about how sick I feel, but it's my experience.I don't want you to to go into a kindergarten job without knowing the risk of catching some strange Asian illness. It's moments like this that I think. Damn I didn't even sign up for kindergarten, they switched my contract with someone else at the last moment without even telling me.
Of course kindergarten makes it easier to get teaching hours, but not if I have to take so many sick days.

Learning Chinese on Youtube

Recently I was told about this guy Mike here who does lessons on YouTube. I've been watching them for a few days now, and I can personally say that they seem very good for improving you Mandarin skills.

Here is lesson one.





His entire playlist of Mandarin lessons can be found here


http://www.youtube.com/user/Glossika#grid/user/E908A5765B385B99

He doesn't do any Chinese characters, so it's only good for speaking and listening, but at the same time you can just play them in the background without having to watch. I was thinking that it might even be worth converting them to MP3, and playing them on your Ipod.

He also does work of minority languages such as Taiwanese and Hakka, so if you were thinking of learning some Taiwanese you can also check that lesson out.

After School Care, Anxin-ban

Back in Australia we used to have something known as after school care, where children can go after school and hang out while they wait for their parents to come pick them up from work. The Taiwanese also have a form of after school care, also known as Anxin-ban, which really just resembles more school.

My cram school has classrooms above where I teach, which are used as Anxin-ban before and after class. The Taiwanese work until pretty late, so some of these children don't go home until 9pm. The kids are given dinner, and someone will watch over them while they study (because 1st graders apparently need to study you see) I didn't know about this until recently, because whenever I walked past I always thought that they were just doing more class.

I feel like I've discovered the answer to all my problems in regards to homework.

To be honest I don't really care if the children don't do their homework. I can get the Chinese teacher to tell their parents, but after that if they don't do it, it's no issue of mine. If they don't know the grammar and they fail that's their problem.

Or so I thought.

I discovered after the first month of teaching that I have to write giant long progress reports about everyone of my students at the cram school, and part of this report is an average of all their homework scores. I thought OK, fair enough, I'll just average up what they have so far. But no, apparently I can't do that. In order to write the homework average I apparently have to add up every homework that they have been given, blank spaces on the green sheet are a no-no.

Which inevitably means that I have to make them do their homework, and if they don't, I have to follow up on them and make sure they do.
At first I made them stay back after class until they finished it. This was really tiring on my part because I was working for nothing, and it can be a real battle to try and make these children do work. I even had one student who repeatably refused to do his homework no matter how much I threatened or bribed him.

Then one of the teachers I work with advised that I take them up to Anxin-ban and tell the teachers there what they have to do.

I've discovered that this is actually really amazing. Whenever one of the kids don't do their homework I now accompany them upstairs and tell the teacher watching them what they have to do. I don't know how they do it, but the kids then hand in their completed homework the following lesson, and I can go home on time.

Maybe walking in with your English teacher looks bad. The supervisor will always look disappointed and  say "Oh no not again," to the kid. Yesterday I had to follow up on a kid and the supervisor really chewed into her in Chinese. "Why didn't you write this! why is it blank!" It's so awesome because it makes my job so much easier.

Talking about my class, classroom relations in my class of 1st graders has taken a turn for the worst recently. Being kids they occasionally have issues, and yesterday they were really ripping into each other. There was fighting. They were yelling things at each other such as "Go away! and you are boo!" Given how childish it is I think it's a bit funny, but I don't want my class to be a bad environment for the children. After class one kid was even yelling "I hate you!" in Chinese. It's sometimes hard to work out what's going on with these kids, because they do it while my back is turned. When they're really upset they won't talk to me in English.

Hopefully they'll have all forgotten about it by Friday.