There was a loud bang in the airplane.

There were some hilarious times in the classroom. At the beginning of each class we spent a few minutes getting the students relaxed and ready to work. One of the exercises was the ‘progressive story’.

On the board I wrote the first sentence of a story. The students sat in pairs across the room and about six rows deep. The first pair in each row wrote my sentence on a piece of paper. In turn they handed this paper to the pair behind them who added another sentence. I collected the finished stories from the pair sitting at the back of the row.

The beginning of this story that I wrote on the board was, ‘There was a loud bang in the airplane’. I thought this would give them scope to take a story in several directions, which it did.

Most of the groups wrote predictable stories where there was going to be a crash, but someone saved them at the last minute. I didn’t read each story through first, which turned out to be a mistake. I read three of the stories to the class, and started on the fourth one.

I read the first line, which was written on the board, and then I started reading the students’ sentences. I just cracked up. I was standing there, crying with laughter, unable to continue. By this time the whole class was giggling. Of course they didn’t know what was on the paper, but I must have been quite a sight, bent over my desk, completely helpless with laughter.

Eventually I asked one of the girls to finish reading it for me. (I hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of those situations where you have to be there for it to be funny). I think it was the unexpectedness of it that took me by surprise and once I started laughing, well that was that. Here is the story, it’s only very short. I hope you get a laugh. I will number the different parts written by each pair.

1.            There was a loud bang in the airplane. All the passengers were frightened. They all shouted, except an old man.
2.            He stood up and said, ‘Calm down, please. It was just a fart.’
3.            Someone shouted, ‘Don’t try to fool us at this critical situation!’ Another roared angrily, ‘How can a fart be so loud?’ The old man said, ‘Because there is a speaker under my buttocks!’
4.            But nobody believed him, there were still a lot of people rushing to the exit.
5.            The old man said ‘Please, please calm down, it’s really a fart.’
6.            The passengers shouted to the old man, ‘Why don’t you control it?’

I dare you to stand in front of 40 students, read that and keep a straight face.

You can read more of my experiences during my first year in China in my book, China or Bust, available through Amazon.com.

https://tsw.createspace.com/title/3862700

Or at this Kindle link:

http://www.amazon.com/rookies-living-surviving-teacher-ebook/dp/B00826BBV6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=13371185

Making the decisions.

Before I left New Zealand I worked full time in a large Government office and loved my work as Personal Assistant to a wonderful man. I had full control of the office, and it ran like clockwork. After many years there, I handed in my notice and moved to Australia. Again I worked in a Government Department. But this was different. This was a well-oiled machine, and I was the bottom cog. This position was exceeding stressful, constantly dealing with queues of customers. Everything was regimented. There was ten minutes for your break, not more and not less. Everyone basically timed it. The girls in the office were lovely, but I felt smothered. There was no room for putting your own stamp on the job; and I was used to being a bit of a leader and not a follower at the very rear.

So I changed jobs and went from the frying pan into the fire. When my new boss was not being totally bad tempered he was really quite nice. His wife, also a full time employee, was a total ditzy blonde who was often running around after her family, or at the beauticians. The rest of the time she fitted in doing the accounts, which she messed up on a daily basis and attended to the marketing. It’s not an easy thing for a boss to sack his wife, even if she is causing mayhem in the office, especially if she doesn’t want to go!

The wife found out I was looking for jobs in China, and made life rather difficult for me. Here was our chance. China was calling loud and clear. If going to China to teach English wasn’t different, then nothing was!

There was just one fly in the ointment. My mother.

Will we? Won't we?

We had a lot of things to consider when we were trying to decide if we could go to China or not. The first hurdle was attending an information evening to see if the courses advertised would be any good or not.

Peter and I were very excited driving home that Monday night. It would be a huge adventure. This would be something different. What a blast! What a change! We could go together, something just for ourselves. After all, the past forty years were spent bringing up our family and looking after everyone else.

We’d just attended a two hour information evening about TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language). The speaker, Lesley, was from one of the accredited organizations that would train us. Once we gained our TESOL qualifications, we could apply for vacancies. She sat there, giving us all this fantastic sounding information. Lesley was a very interesting woman, about 60 years old with a petite figure, red curly hair, and dressed in a snazzy denim pants suit with rhinestone patterns all over. She was a psychologist who’d worked in Asia and got into teaching English because of her non-English speaking staff. She gradually moved into the teaching area and was now in charge of training in Australia and New Zealand. She sat on the corner of the desk, legs swinging, her gravelly voice enthused about teaching English overseas.

‘It’s a piece of cake,’ she said. ‘If you can speak English you can teach it, or you’ll be able to once you’ve done our course. There are thousands of jobs available. You can make some money and have the experience of a lifetime.’

Peter came with me to make sure that this information evening wasn’t a scam. ‘Let’s face it, there are plenty of people out there ready to take any ready cash you’ve got, or any cash you haven’t got for that matter,’ he said to me. ‘Let’s just check it out. It sounds a bit suspicious to me.’

I didn’t mind. After all, if it turned out to be worthwhile, this would be something we could both do, so I wanted him to come along and see for himself.

However, it seemed legitimate and so exciting. For me, it would be an escape from the barrel. I would take the bull by the horns and bloody well go, come hell or high water.

If you are in your ‘middle age years’ you are probably like me. The first twenty years basically was a stable upbringing and teen years. The second twenty years were spent getting married, having five fabulous children, doing everything for them, and working part time. The third twenty years were spent in the barrel on varying levels, working part or full time, but often down in the muck and mire. By the time I was in my fifties the family was old enough for us to leave New Zealand and head to Australia to do something different. The thing is that they followed us. That wasn’t such a big problem, but we hadn’t really done anything ‘exciting and different’.

More to come....check out more at www.englishstoriesforfun.com

In the barrel

There comes a time in many people's lives when they feel a change is needed. In my case, all my children had left home, some were married, others working. We had moved from New Zealand to Australia and that was a good change, but somehow something completely new was needed. Like most women I had suffered from time to time with a bit of depression, and sort of felt that I just needed to do sometihng different. I'd made enquiries about TESOL teaching in China, and wow it sounded so good.  I felt like I was in a....well....a barrel.......

There have been so many conspiracy theories released into the world that no one knows what to believe any more. The earth is flat and if you are not careful you will fall off the edge. The world is round, supported on the back of an elephant standing on a giant turtle. Aliens landed in America in 1947 and the Americans kept them and dissected them, but never told anyone. Man has walked on the moon. No, the Americans have never been to the moon, it was all fabricated. And just what the man on the street is supposed to believe about religion or politics is like walking a minefield of beliefs, and no one knows the rules.

However, there is one underlying truth. The world is round, and it hangs on nothing. This is the solid, tangible, hard, put-your-hand-on-it-and-feel-it’s-there type of place. It’s covered in dirt or salt water. It’s slowly getting grubbier by the day due to man being a very messy creature, but it’s there, and so far still supporting human life.

There is however, a second intangible world. You cannot see it, but it exists just as the actual planet exists. Most people know about it, many people have been there, and millions are in it now. It’s a barrel filled with four varying amounts or levels of ‘stuff’.

At the top there is clear water, full of people currently bobbing around, keeping their heads above water, and getting by day to day. Some have life jackets on, but many spend a few minutes each day concentrating on staying afloat. Other than that, their lives are fine.

There are a few people who don’t know that the barrel exists. They are the ones with Alzheimer’s or are so well heeled that they are far above the level of barrels. Mind you, later on they are quite likely to end up there.

The level under the clear water consists of dirty water. There are millions here too. They bob up and down to get a breath of air, and life for them is more of a struggle. They have to put in quite a bit of effort to keep their heads above water. They have family problems, job problems, child problems, behaviour problems. All in all they get by, but it’s hard going.

The next level down is mud and this level is full of people. Getting up to the top for a breath of air happens less often. Pills and potents help. Vitamins, anti-depressants and large amounts of therapy are dispensed at this level. Everyone knows that everyone else is there, but they don’t have much energy to help others. The struggle is constant, and life is hard. It would be much easier to wake up dead the next morning rather than have to face another day in the mud, but that easy option isn’t usually available, so they keep swimming round and doing what they can.

The bottom level is mire. Not everyone gets into the mire. This is where you blindly scrape your way around the bottom of the barrel. You know there are lots of people there too, but just staying alive takes all your energy, and you know it’s the same for everyone else. There is very little bobbing up to the top for air, and generally, although the sun rises and sets each day, you don’t notice it. It’s either black with grey around the edges or grey with black around the edges. Either way, it’s not a nice place to be.

Millions are born into the mire in countries like China, India and Africa, and don’t know any different. A constant flow of people slowly sink from the clear water to the mire and back up again. Some climb out of the barrel, and do something different. Some manage to take control of their lives and turn from ‘blue’ people to ‘sunshine yellow’ people. It takes courage and effort, but it can be done.

I thought it was time to get out of the barrel. A trip to China would do that!

China or Bust...first copies in my hot little hand.

Well there is something very special about getting the very first copy of your very first book in your hand. All the hundreds of hours of work have turned up in concrete form. Its a very unusual feeling. Today the first copies of my book 'China or Bust' have arrived in the mail.I edited the thing til I was blue in the face, in fact until I was sick or the whole thing. I was on the verge of chucking the whole thing in several times. But I stuck with it. Writing a book is not easy, in reality it's flaming hard work!

Its quite a big book, I'm surprised at the thickness, just over 200 pages, so it is a substantial book. And actually, it looks pretty good, even if I do say so  myself.
Yeeehaaa!!

Preparations for going to China, ups and downs to deal with.

Making preparations to go to China as an ESL teacher was fraught with complications for us. Not only were we adventurers at heart, we were also filled with trepidation at what something so new would be like. We couldn't speak any Chinese and we had never been there before, it was all pie in the sky to start with, but even so, it was something we thought we would like to do.

It was really a chance conversation with a girl I worked with that started us on this idea. Her name was Davina. Like most people I have had my share of ups and downs. This poem sort of says it all.

Life’s a beach

Life’s a Bitch – or – Life’s a Beach it says so on Tee Shirts

But Bitch or Beach depends it seems on how much your heart hurts

For some life is a soaring bird in joyous freedom flies

For some it seems to be a pain they’d like to exorcise

For some I fear it’s very grim, barrel bottom scraping stuff

When many times a day they say of life “I’ve had enough”

And mostly it is struggle on and try to call their bluff

‘I’m fine,’ you smile, ‘and how are you,’ ‘I’m fine as well,’ they say

But their little hearts are trodden flat as they battle through their day

And then they go to bed at night another day got through

What can you do? You must keep on, they all depend on you.

  

Been there? Done that? Haven’t we all. Often there isn’t much you can do to make an immediate change, but sometimes we can take charge of our lives and do something different. We did this after we met… The Sunbeam.

The Sunbeam

I met The Sunbeam on September 29th, 2004. She was the receptionist/girl Friday for the company that shared our office.

She was in her thirties, married to a fabulous husband that loved her to bits, had two delightful children, and she would willingly die for any of them. She had Irish heritage with plenty of freckles, and red hair that was dyed black and gelled till it poked out all over the place like a dunny brush. When she smiled, her green eyes shone, and her radiant face lit up the whole place. She loved people, was hardworking and a diamond of a girl.

Sunbeams sort of glint around the place and spread light. My Sunbeam did that too...she had such a lovely nature and sense of humour. She just exuded confidence, brightness and happiness. I doubt that her boss had ever been in the barrel. He was a lovely man, swore like a trouper and was as honest as the day, but his wife bobbed around in varying levels of the barrel.

Even Sunbeams have to earn a living, so she worked in the same office as me, spreading her sunshine around. I don’t think she ever thought of herself as a sunbeam. In her job she had spare time, so every once in a while she would surf the internet.

‘Lookee here, TESOL!’ she’d exclaim.

So she did hours of research, checked up all the likely places to do TESOL training, and handed on the information to me. She continued to bounce around her little world spreading light as Peter and I went to the information evening. She kept spreading her light all over the place as I surfed the internet for jobs in China. Her light went out for a few minutes when I left my job, but she continued on, sun-beaming around as we made our plans and booked our flights. She has been a girl of inspiration, and I don’t think she had a clue about how her brightness affected other people. We email still, and she’s made her plans to do her TESOL course. And what do you know, the unbelievable happened. She spent some time in the barrel. Her father died, and it took her to the depths for a while. However, sunbeams keep going, and she’s back up again, beaming hither and yon. What a girl!

I called her Davina the Divine.

I have not done anything on this blog for some time. The reason is that I have now published a book on going to China to teach English. It contains many stories from my first year living there and also acts as a handbook for anyone wanting to visit or live in China.

My book covers such topics as getting your first job, visa information, accommodation on and off campus, how to use the buses and trains when you can't speak any Chinese, healthcare, doctors and hospitals, saving face, advice on shopping and money matters.

If you are considering going to China this book is for you, all the things you need to know in one easy to read book. Available in hard copy or e-book.  Go to my website for details.
http://www.englishstoriesforfun.com

Lana, staid, predictable, suffering from ‘empty nest syndrome’ needed a change. After spending most of her 40 years of marriage rearing her family and caring for elderly parents, she proposed a change of mammoth proportions!

After attending an information evening about teaching English in China, she and her husband went back to school, got TESOL qualifications; arranged a job in a small university, and headed off to the unknown, where they couldn’t speak one word of the language.

Their first 24 hours were a roller coaster experience of crazy taxi drivers; pick pockets; hotel staff that couldn’t speak English; being thumb-printed at the police station and trying to sleep on beds as hard as cricket bats. From there it just got worse.

Slowly but surely, they made friends and came to love their little corner of China, building a deep relationship with their students and fellow teachers. They relished their work teaching the Chinese students and were elated as their hard work bore fruit.

This book is a whirl-wind story of their highs and lows, adventures and challenges. Hold on to your hats!