Going to China to teach English (TEFL)
It was early in 2015 when my partner and I decided to join the TEFL community. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language for those of you that haven't heard of it.
We enrolled with a company called i-to-i TEFL and completed a 150 hour course that included 20 hours of in-class training. This was the first money 'invested' in our new adventure and marked the first step to leaving our home country South Africa for a while.
It was an exciting day when we finally completed our courses and received our certificates. Now it was time to look for our first job as new English teachers. First a country to teach in... hmmm where do we start... Vietnam? the beautiful Thailand? Dubai? We initially wanted to go to Vietnam as I am in love with Ha Long Bay.
We applied for many jobs posted online and had numerous interviews.. We came across a good opportunity in China and then decided to apply for the job. All I really knew about China was that the capital is Beijing, they hosted the Olympics and of course the Great wall of China.
The city that we would be going to is Guiyang. Guiyang is a relatively small city compared to the rest of China with about 4,324,561 people in 2010 - not sure about the number right now.
After the final decision was made to go we quickly had to pack up our lives, sell cars and get our visas to go to China. 01/01/2016... a new year and a new adventure, we were on the airplane at O.R. Thambo intenational airport in SA.
Arriving in Beijing was an overwhelming experience and one I would never forget. No, to very little English at 5am in the morning after a flight that seemed to never end. Quarantine check. Immigration control. Check in for the final 3 hour flight to Guiyang. And there we go.
Half way through the decent we heard an announcement that broke my spirits - due to bad weather we needed to go to a different airport to wait until it was safer to land in Guiyang.
Bad weather I thought.... now at this point I should explain that I have a very hard time sleeping on anything that moves and it was new years the night before so I might have had 1 or 2 to quench my thirst. Anyway, we got to Guiyang eventually.
The person from our new company was going to pick us up from the airport and then show us to a hotel just to get over the jetlag. Because the plane was 4 hours late there was nobody to welcome us.
The struggle became real to find a person to help us with wifi as the airport wifi was down that day and no one spoke English. We had to try and get in touch with the person who needs to come pick us up to let them know we are there.
3 hours later we checked into our hotel.
We made it to Guiyang in maybe more than one piece, but we made it. New beginning. New language. New culture.
In the next blog I will speak about some things I wish I knew to be better prepared for entering China for the first time as a foreigner, stay tuned...