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Showing posts with the label Working in China

The Training Centre

 YoYo was downstairs in the hotel waiting for me, and she kindly bought me breakfast, though I really wasn't sure what it was and whether I liked it, but she made me eat all of it. It included two tea eggs, that is, eggs marinated in soy sauce and bay leaves for around two days, again with another vegetable baozi, and soy milk, a very traditional Chinese breakfast. I was beginning to understand that Chinese cuisine didn't really have 'breakfast' in the same sense as the West where we generally have different types of food according to the type of day, for example, cereal or eggs on toast in the morning, while fish and chips, lasagne or pies would be served for dinner. From my limited experience in China, they would eat the same food for breakfast as what they would during the rest of the day.  She walked me over to a 'secret' passage in the shopping mall underground, and got the lift to floor 4F on the way to the centre. She introduced me to Andy, who was a rath...

A visit to the Chinese Embassy

In the interview I was asked where I would like to be based, and I had been looking up places and learning about Tier 1, 2, and 3 cities in China. While looking I saw Nanjing was a pretty vibrant place, filled with many expats, but wasn't really 'international' on the same level as 'Shanghai', with the prospect of having a more fully immersive experience in China of learning about the culture and the language. I was told that Nanjing was 'competitive' and was already full, and then the lady suggested Hangzhou because the Olympics in 2015 had meant that many expats had left due to the increase in security and police interference. I looked this up and did some research and saw that it had been nicknamed 'Heaven on Earth', with Westlake as the main attraction....on that I was pretty much sold.  The process had started, and I was getting my online free TEFL certificate as part of the visa requirement that I had to finish before flying to Shanghai. I don...