Blog Moving

If you've ever had to move you know that it is not only difficult but usually unpleasant. However, if you've ever had to move in a foreign country it is an extreme version of moving which is automatically extra difficult and unpleasant.

The saga begins with us students being notified officially after several rumor-like unofficial notifications that we would be moving two weeks ago. The rumors ranged from that we would be moving within the next couple of weeks to next month to in a few days. These all made us quit nervous because we never expected to have to move except when we left our rooms for good. Also included in the unofficial rumors (which by the way came in the form of hallway conversations between students. All very much like gossip.) were prospective locations of our new home. First we would be moving to new campus (15 min bus ride away) then we would only be moving next store because new campus had no kitchens or internet access. But in the end new campus won out and the issues concerning lack of kitchens and internet were left by the road side or in this case in an empty vacated room on old campus.

Cue official meeting. This was maybe the most thought out meeting we've ever had (on both sides). The students decided to meet and talk together about the move after being notified about the meeting which consisted of conversations like "I'm not going" to "they need to give us more time." And when we arrived to talk about our eminent move at the official meeting we were pleasantly met with a pre-meeting prepared list of topics and issues (never happened before. Usually the meeting consists of "Here is what is happening…now what are your questions"). With our list of issues we all patiently listened to the staff's prepared list item by item, running almost 10 items long.

1)They explained that our building was build back in 1998 (year I graduated high school by the way) and last year they needed to do renovations but didn't have funding. However, this year they do, so renovations really need to happen or they don't know when they would be able to do it again. Plus they are expecting up to 30 new students which means all the rooms have to be available/ livable (not currently the case).

2)Construction in the winter is illegal (not really sure I believe this) so if renovations are going to happen they need to happen this summer. This was probably in preempting our questioning concerning the timing of the renovations and why they couldn't have happen during winter break (which is two months plus some long).

3)Old campus has only two storage rooms available (as a housing option if we wanted to live in them but we can't because they are too small for 12 students) and new campus has two new buildings but have no kitchens, showers, or internet (all of which our old campus rooms had.) Plus we would now have to share rooms, something we also were not used to. However, new campus had pay showers in a separate building (about 75 cents US a pop) and the library offered (extra blocked/ censored) internet for 15 cents an hour from 10am-9pm everyday which was offered as some form of acceptable alternative to showers and internet in our rooms.

4)(This is where the other students began to get restless and I just started laughing, literally laughing out loud.) For food (reminding you there are no kitchens) there are two restaurants and one cafeteria on campus. Yes, that's it, two MSG pounding student packed restaurants and a cafeteria (with which in China my experiences have been bad, like vomit bad). All available because the other students aren't allowed to cook either (note: old campus has similar options but located close to many shopping and eating oportunties). However, in cancelation our common microwave, small fridge, and dysfunctional "washing machine" were coming along with us.

5)Traffic. We were informed and also we all recalled this from our time on new campus during the TU Olympics (see past blog) that no taxis go regularly from new campus to the city center and the city buses only run from 8am-9pm. At this point I was happy that I had my bike. (Oh and this is when I asked if there were windows in the rooms. This of course was not recognized as a real question or concern and forcefully left unanswered.) But the distance from downtown soon proved to be taxing and logistically difficult for all the things I had going on.

6)However, pleasantly we were informed that due to the new living situation our rent would be decreased from around 1500 yuan a month or 50 yuan per dayto just a 300 yuan flat rate a month. I was happy about this because it showed they realized how little we had in the new place. Plus if we left on a trip or for the summer the rent would be free. Seeing that we had few inexpensive options other than new campus (the only other option being staying in Lhasa hotels which is expensive) things started to look up. Because at least we wouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for subpar living accommodations anymore.

7)The trucks would be coming on Thursday afternoon at 2pm (this later changed twice unofficially and officially) and each room would have a truck to load their things on. Additionally, we would be aided by students from the university (who turned out to be junior PLA soldiers) so we need not worry about lifting furniture on our own. Oh and on the topic of furniture. While a group of us were visiting the new rooms a staff member off handedly and unofficially told me that they would be moving our furniture on Tuesday and not Thursday like previously stated. However, these furniture items he was talking about turned out to be not exactly our furniture but the furniture from other rooms (sometimes moldy/ very dirty) that would be replacing our own in the new rooms. Once people found out about this they were adamantly opposed, eventually leading to another meeting where both the furniture to be used in the new rooms and the time of the move changed officially.

8)Last but not least, we were informed that we had no classrooms on new campus. Yes you read right. On old campus we and our teachers all lived on campus. And we (students) lived and had all our classes in the same classrooms within the same building.But now they were a lack of classrooms to have classes in and we were informed that we would be having class in a combination of one student's bedroom and the common room. Of course, I asked my windows question again because it had gone past the point of ridiculous at this point. And now that the rent reduction glow had faded we were all astounded that we would not only have no showers, kitchen, or internet but no place to even hold class. We began to question what the point was if they didn't care to have classrooms fro us. Class being the number one reason for being where we were. Later there were soundings of resentment for lack of classroom space, like "since they don't care about having class why should we" and my favorite "let's just go on vacation for the last month of class or have a class trip." (ok this last quote was said by me but echoed by others).

Fast forward to the day of the move where everything went surprisingly smoothly, I think only one chair and one desk broke. And even though nothing was ever tied to the trucks nothing fell out of the truck and was neither nor destroyed nor lost on the way to new campus. My things took up almost an entire new truck on their own, dwarfing my new roommate, Glen's things. I stayed up until 3:30am packing and woke up at 7:30am to finish in order to be ready at 9am when the truck supposedly was due to arrive. (Something to know about timing here. Like Italy no one or nothing every starts exactly on time here.) The truck was suppose to show up at 9am and all the junior soldiers did show up at 9 am(thanks guys. And yes this will be the one and only time I give thanks) but the trucks didn't make it until around 9:45am. (yes there were two and they both were that 45 min late to move 12 rooms of things in just one day).

Intelligently, there were helper junior soldiers at both new and old campus to pack and unload the trucks. So things went very very fast. I had all my things from old campus to new in under and hour (unpacking not included, that journey continues). I was happy about this because I had three English classes to teach from 1-5:30pm later that day. I had the idea that things could go very wrong and I would still be packing and moving until the wee hours of the evening. But it all worked out well and I made it to my classes exhausted but on time.

By the time I arrived at my final English class of the day I thought the worst was behind me (oh how I was wrong). The class started out well, the topic being "Moving" of course because it had just been on my so much all week. But midway through my class another teacher came into the class and asked if he could talk to the students. He continued to talk to them very quickly in his native language and then from what I understood explained to them that they would be talking to me about it afterwards. They talked to me and it turned out to be pretty serious. The situation was thus, since the class is taught by me during the last period of the day, they do not help clean up the school like everyone other class and the school director no longer was going to allow this to happen. So basically, I could no longer volunteer teach English there anymore. Half shocked and half searching within my sphere of knowledge to find the real reason or rationalize this dismissal from my volunteer position, I continued with my newly realized final class. As it was my last class I made sure to inform the students of the other free English speaking opportunities in town and gave them some departing (hopefully motivational) advice. The two things I told them were, "there are no bad schools only bad students" which means that if they are given time to be a student that there are enough resources available to them for them to improve their English and second "you can never have a new beginnings but always have a new ending."I said this because things can get tough here but I wanted to let them now that if they keep working hard they can help determine their own life outcome.

After talking about being fired with friends and hearing other similar stories of dismissed foreign teachers, I realized that there probably was more to the rationale behind my dismissal than a cleaner school. Although a bit comforting, I was still a little sad and upset; one, because I lost the opportunity to teach these kids and two, because of the lame reason that I was given. I don't thing anyone likes to get fired from a volunteer job so I was rightfully rubbed a bit the wrong way after such a long long day.