I’m sorry to anyone who had his or her RSS feed filled with links to David’s blog. After over a month of being in China and using Caitlin’s blog to blog, I finally decided to move my own blog off of the WordPress server and onto David’s. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so, it made my blog and links be forwarded on to his, resulting in whatever happened in the last day or so.
Now, you might be wondering why on earth I would bother switching the blog over now, since I’m actually supposed to have been back in the States quite a while ago. When I came to China, my return date was open ended, with the final date being concretely as late as September 22. That came, but the loads weren’t as great as I wanted, so I was listed on a flight heading to San Francisco on September 26.
I had been tossing around the idea of fulfilling my plan — spending the year working somewhere and making a little money — in China instead of Santa Barbara, but it had thus far been on the status of “if something falls into my lap, I’ll take it. Wednesday night, I casually mentioned the idea, and two of our friends enthusiastically announced that they would be delighted to find me a job and that it would be really easy.
I mulled over this the next morning when Caitlin was at school, and 24 hours before my flight was supposed to take off, I decided I would give myself one week to find a job and get situated, otherwise I would head back home.
Friday, I sat in on a class taught by another friend, but strangely enough, it turns out that that class didn’t need any more teachers.
Saturday, we got a call from one of Caitlin’s dad’s friends, a well established connection that has done nothing but shower us with welcome and love despite us doing nothing but knowing her father. She is a teacher at the Experimental High School attached to Beijing Normal University, the premier high school in China. Mao’s daughters attended this school.
Anyway, we went in expecting to discuss the possibility of helping volunteer at the school to teach an English class a week or so. About a quarter of the way through the discussion, I picked up through the body language and occasional informing English sentence from Catilin that they were less concerned with the normal interview protocol and more with arranging a schedule and how to sort out my visa. They never outright said it, but I think we got the job. At least, they offered to let me live on campus.
I know I promised many of my friends that we would meet up when I got back, that I’d come visit Davis once I got the chance. I think that might be a little more difficult now that I’m living in China, so I’m sorry about that. I hope you understand.