New Oriental School

I've been working with a group of people whose resumes make me impressed. Most of them have studied or lived abroad, like a guy who's got a master degree in Oxford, a guy who grew up in Canada and has a PHD on psychology… Many of them are professional English interprets, university English teachers, TOFEL/IELTS/GRE experts… Now all of us want to be New Oriental School (新东方学校) teachers. New Oriental School is probably the biggest English training institution in China, before it was only based in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Hangzhou school is pretty new, so now they're looking for teachers. Two weeks ago I applied for a position of Children's English teacher, after three runs of interview, I was told I could come to join their training course. I didn't know much about New Oriental, I thought it's just one of these private English schools, teaching there would be easy and the pay would be ok. But everything turned out to be more difficult than I thought. First I need to take a two-months training course and do lots of preparation for my class. If I'm doing well in these two months, I'll be given classes during winter vacation in January, if not, I'll be fired. And in these two months, there's no salary at all, but I have to go to school every evening, and work for them one or two days a week. And if I decide to leave after the training, I have to pay them 3000RMB training fee. Sounds crazy. Now while writing this, I'm still not sure-- am I falling into a trap or is this an opportunity for me? At first I just wanted to be a simple English teacher for kids, but now I'm in adults department, and my main job will be dealing with college entrance exam. The first time they called me, I was glad I passed the interview and I was expecting that I'd get a job soon so I could start to work and save money for my next trip. But they said it was just the first run of interview, I needed to give another practice lesson to their headmaster, if she likes it, I'd pass. And I made it. Last Sunday I went back there for the third time, and I started to join their training program. There's already 15 or so new teachers there, most of them came to the school a bit earlier than me. Our assignment was giving a 20 minutes practice lessons, since I was new, I was asked to give the lesson first. And it was kinda embarrassing. I didn't really know about this school's teaching style, what I did in that 20 minutes was talking about myself and my experience of learning English. I thought my English is fine, so I was speaking English most of the time. But after I listened to all the other teachers' lessons, I realized my English is not good at all, and I seemed so small. These teachers are not just fluent in English, they're real experts on languages, and they've all got impressing life experiences. I felt almost awkward speaking English in front of them, and I didn't understand why I was in the same room with these professionals. We're not at the same level, I should be their student instead of their colleague. The first few days I thought about giving up. But I knew simply having the opportunity working with this team is something, I'd probably never meet people like that in other areas. And I want to be a teacher, a good English teacher. Now I've got passion and enthusiasm, but I don't really know much about teaching. New Oriental School is famous for their excellent teachers, maybe this two months training course would be good to me. I want to get a full-time job, but what can I do? I don't really have any skills, I can probably find something ordinary and get paid 1000-1500RMB a month. 1500RMB used to be my ultimate goal, but now I realize it's not that much. I can have a pretty comfortable life in Hangzhou with this amount of money, but if I want to keep traveling or study abroad, earning 150$ a month won't get me anywhere.

So I stayed. Next two months won't be easy. I need to study and prepare a lot, and there'll be tough competitions. I'm not type of person who enjoys competitions or challenges, very often working under pressure makes me lose motivation and creativity. I'll see how it goes this time.

Lesson Plan Day

I’ve been home two days but I haven’t written anything yet. I want to update my blog, I want to email my friends, I want to write about all my travels… But it’s like my brain is running out of words, I don’t know how to put my thoughts into words anymore. When traveling in all those beautiful places, I’m often thinking, would it be great if I was a writer? I can travel anytime I want and write my books in a hill station in India, or an empty beach in Indonesia, or a remote village in Laos… And if my books sell well, I can take vacation again. And if my books are really good, I probably don’t need to work for the rest of my life. I mean, work as most people do-- taking a job 9 to 5, getting bored, waiting for promotions… Being a writer seems perfect, but I'm too far from it. My imagination is limited, my vocabulary is small. I'm ok with writing blog and emails, but there are all very simple writings, I can't write anything deep or beautiful.

It’s been one and half year since I graduated from the university, I’ve traveled a lot, worked a bit, now I can still not think of taking a serious job, signing a contract for a year or something. After I finished my summer job at the English camp, I stayed at home for a month or so. I read books, that’s the only thing I did that month. If you asked me what do you do, I’d title myself a reader. Then I went to travel again, in Indonesia and Malaysia. I was traveling with Chris, who I met in Cambodia and traveled with in Thailand in my last trip. Six month after, we teamed up again, and had another wonderful trip together. That was a happy time. But now I’m back home. Strange I just said goodbye to Chris two nights ago, but it feels so far away. Three nights ago I was still standing at Port Dickson beach watching the most amazing sunset I’d ever seen. Now I’m sitting in my room listening to the depressing rain. I need to go to sleep early tonight. Tomorrow morning there’ll be a job interview-- English teacher for kids. Last night I saw this job in a message board on the internet and I applied for it. This morning a call from the school woke me up. They asked me to go to the school tomorrow morning and gave a 20 minutes lesson. Actually I’m not sure if they said tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, I was not fully awake, I just remember I said yes yes yes thanks goodbye. I have no idea what to teach, my audiences will be professional teachers, I’m not that confident. They called me very early this morning as they wanted to give me enough time to think about my lesson plan. Now a day has gone, I’ve only prepared first three minutes. My mind goes blank, I can’t come up with any good idea. I searched on the Internet, all the lesson plans seem useless. I have to admit in the first place I don't really like classroom that much. I think I'll screw up tomorrow.

I need a job though, then I can save money and travel again. I wish I could find a better paid work this time but I don't have a good resume, every few months I go traveling, all the jobs I've done are short-term, who wants to hire me just for three months? This time I won't stay in Hangzhou too long either, I've got plans for next April, hopefully I can take off again then.

Pictures from Indonesia

Indonesia Photo Album

Sunset in Port Dickson