Tag: EFL
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It’s been a while, Shanghai
Well now. Shanghai. Yo. I’m flying in to Pudong International sometime tomorrow afternoon, after nearly four years away from China. I don’t tend to return to cities or countries I’ve lived in: It’s been nearly ten years since Istanbul and seventeen since Cape Town. I feel a bit queasy when I think about returning.…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to Changing Everything All At Once (Again)
I should be studying right now. Four units into the first module of a master’s degree in applied linguistics, I’m painfully wrapping my head around the idea of a lexeme’s paradigm (not to be confused with a gangsta’s paradise, though I will admit that I now can’t get Coolio out of my head) and filling…
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Notes on Resuming my TEFLtastic Educatrix Career (with Toddler in Tow)
Earlier this week, I found out that this particular blog of mine had somehow made it onto the improbably mammoth and random Top 2300 Travel Blogs list, clocking in at number 18 on the Teaching English Abroad category. Aside from calling it by the wrong name (hello, Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai, y’all,…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to an Out of Body Weekend in Jǐnán
After a few months’ hiatus from my ongoing whirlwind Tour de Chine (the Academic Route), I’m back on the road, hopping trains like a nerdy hobo and wearing butt-shaped grooves into creaky university chairs all over this fine nation. This past weekend, I went to Jǐnán. Have you ever heard of Jǐnán? No? That’s…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to a Sudden Jaunt to Liuzhou, Guangxi
Over the past decade or two, I’ve become quite adept at rolling with the punches. Most of my jobs have called for finely tuned improvisational skills and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to hone them. The other night, I dreamed that I was told I had ten minutes to prepare a 4 hour intensive workshop…
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Strangled Gasps of Creativity (or Why I’ll Probably Never Be a Published Author)
When I was 10, I was already the proud author of approximately a dozen unpublished novels. By unpublished, I mean, read only by myself- or perhaps by anyone who managed to sneak into my bedroom, haul the stacks of notebooks out from their not so well-hidden hiding place, and decipher my drunken spiderlike scrawl.…
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Who Needs A Comfort Zone Anyway? Building Character Abroad: The Employment Edition
Back when I lived and worked in Canada, employers generally expected me to be qualified for my job. They wanted the certification from year-long+ accredited courses, plus, say five years of verifiable, solidly referenced on the job experience. This was difficult when I was 19, as I’d only been working a few years at utterly…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to an Emotionally Stunted Weekend in Hefei
The first time I went to Hefei, the glorious provincial capital of ayi-central Anhui, about 3 or 4 years ago, I stepped off the D-train after four squishy hours onto the platform and was carried along in the swarm (because really, in China, in the train stations, it is inevitably a swarm that carries you out) through clapboard…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to an Intellectually Dirty Weekend in Nanjing
I often (well, once every few months, which is technically often in geological terms) get emails from people asking me for advice on what to do in, say, Random Chinese City I Mentioned Once In a Post. Although I feel slightly honoured that someone actually thought I might have a clue, I usually have to…
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Notes on working in China (the bossing-teachers-around edition)
As you may have heard, I have changed jobs. By this, I mean I am no longer unemployed. Or at least, unemployed in the technical sense. I have a day job now, and it isn’t teaching. Nope, I’m back in the director’s chair again. The last time I did this gig was about…
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Saying Goodbye AGAIN: The annoying heartbreak of being a teacher that nobody warns you about*
*I was going to title this post Apostrophe to the End of Term (or, Isn’t it Byronic, don’t you think?) but decided it would be way too obscure and nerdy and not even all that clever. The cleverness factor would have been bumped up several notches, however, if only I had still been working at Shanghai Ocean…
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I May Have Just A Wee Bit Too Much on My Plate
It’s just after 7:30am on an inexplicably cool morning. Shanghai is invisible under the fog. It’s just as well as I’m still in bed, under several layers of duvet, strong, lightly milked coffee in hand. I may or may not be staring at the wall opposite . I’m freaking tired. I just spent four days…