Loving Life in Beijing

I am working now and loving it, it is seriously the awesomest job ever. It is so much fun and very fulfilling being an english teacher in China. I can see why other teachers that we have run into over the past month say that you become attached to and fall in love with your students. I am working at the same company as Mike. It is a good company, we feel very comfortable with them. The demo was totally surpassed, I don't think that anyone had time to do a demo so they just started me working. The company is fairly new and so the class sizes are small. 7 students is the largest class that I have taught and sometimes you only have one student. My first day I came with prepared lesson plans that included interactive exercises and grammar lessons. I surveyed the students in the last few minutes of each class to get their feedback. What they really seem to be interested in is an immersion experience. So that is the way I have been conducting the classes, with a focus on open discussion on a previously elected topic. The students average in their 20's and most already have fairly decent english so you can get some pretty good discussions going. It is so interesting hearing their thoughts and getting to know the culture a little better. From what I have observed mainland Chinese people in general are good natured, motivated, moral and happy people. I really believe that they are a chosen and prepared people.
They use the words full-time and part-time very differently here. Full-time means that you are paid salary, often with benefits, and you are working on a long-term contract. Part-time means that you are paid hourly ($15 American per hour is average for a foreign english teacher) and is generally given to people on short-term contracts. Generally there are no benefits. It has nothing to do with how many hours you work. You could have a full-time person working only 25 hours and a part-time person working 50 hours. Mike is full time and I am part-time. The students and all the staff really pamper me being pregnant so you don't have to worry about them trying to over work me. You feel so bad though when your chinese co-workers are being paid 1/3 of your wage and being worked longer hours. We went out to lunch with a co-worker and jokingly told him that he should go live in Canada just long enough to get a Canadian passport and then come back and apply for english teaching jobs.