Wednesday 9th December, 2015                     1215

I am always apprehensive when a teaching assistant phones me, you never know whether it will be good, bad or indifferent.

It was bad.

I’m not even sure I was given all the correct information but what I was given was not music to my ears. Apparently the school has changed the curriculum so that instead of two years of oral English classes the students will now drop down to eighteen months. When I first started they had two years, a break of one term and then a final bout. Then it dropped to two years and now?

Which means my last lessons with my five classes are next week.

I was also told next term I would probably have four classes and when I asked where were the students coming from I was told I would take Richard’s classes. So I asked if Richard was leaving? No, he will have other classes. Where the hell they are coming from I can’t imagine but I just checked his schedule and in fact he also has five classes this semester so something doesn’t add up. I will need to clarify that with Anthony.

It has however made me downcast. Finally I have turned all my classes into reasonably active and enjoyable ones and I am to lose them. I feel miserable.

2330

Anthony could shed no light on what’s happening other than to reiterate I will have just the four classes after spring festival. After class this afternoon I had a rare sighting of the lesser spotted Richard (for someone who lives next door I never see him from one week to the next) and he has heard nothing so I am no wiser.

Joan however came for a shower tonight and imparted the information that next term they have public speaking classes. Maybe that’s it and a Chinese teacher will take them but that doesn’t explain where the extra students are going to come from half way through an academic year.

Now if foreign teachers had any form of job security beyond an annual contract my mind might disengage overdrive but given that in five months I hit the deadly (here) six-oh perhaps you may understand. Life has taught me to be suspicious anyway and this is amplified in a country such as China.

I will find out because I need to know. In the meantime I have texted Anthony to say that if it helps then I am willing to continue teaching my current students and take on another 80% workload. It would be gruelling considering for the past 18 months I have had it easy but 9 classes a week is still less than the eleven I did a couple of years ago. I have had no answer to my offer and if none is forthcoming then I shall start being proactive in finding out just what is what.

The Chinese teachers understandably haven’t a clue how at least this foreigner feels when there is a sudden and unexplained change, they have something we don’t, a sinecure that makes them extremely difficult to sack - they have to almost commit murder for that to happen. We on the other hand can be dispensed of at will and on a trumped up reason. Kevin and I were (and for now I still am!) the great survivors here. Others didn’t fare so well.

So what else?

I haven’t heard anything more about the kindergarten Santa gig but I am sure I will get a call from Helen nearer the time, I just hope it doesn’t clash with anything else. John’s school wants a Santa speaking judge on the Sunday before Christmas so for that I will ensure I am free. The Lingdian society want to throw a party for the foreigners on Christmas day but I told them I was busy so it may be Boxing day.

Christmas day itself is now, in the absence of having spoken to Andrei or Juliette, up in the air. I have heard nothing of late from the Foreign Affairs Bureau regarding the hospital visit since Sally told me they agreed to it so in typical fashion I will probably be left in the dark until the eleventh hour. As for Christmas dinner, I have no idea if there will be one. If there is there will be but four of us because Richard told me this afternoon he will go to Changsha, which leaves Andrei and Juliette but I know not if they have other plans now.

Having no children and ergo no grandchildren, I am not particularly bothered, any other term and I would probably be teaching anyway but this year I am off.

We shall see what transpires. For now I am more concerned about what happens afterwards.