In September 2014 I moved to Jiangmen in the Guangdong province of China. I came here to study chinese and I got a job along the way teaching english at a school.
The chinese learning was going well in Wuyi University in Jiangmen, but life in this city was pretty boring and monotonous. For this and a few other reasons, we decided to move (I say we because my younger brother is on this adventure with me).
I welcomed 2014 in Montpellier, France. I was there for one year finishing my studies,the time that I now call “the best year of my life”.
Most people have the idea that China is dead cheap, I did too but I was wrong. These days pretty much everything is made in China, and when buying these products in our countries it’s fairly cheap. But made in China products IN China can actually be expensive!
Since late November I have been working as an English teacher at a school here in Jiangmen.
When I decided to come to China, I knew that besides studying chinese I also wanted to find a job to make money for travelling. Teaching English is what most people come to do here, so I thought why not try. Even though I am not a teacher by profession, I did tutor kids back in Chile so I had a little bit of experience in the area. But teaching a classroom full of kids is a totally different thing.
I have been away from my blog for a while,and since I haven’t travelled around just yet, I thought I would just write about my life in China.
The foreigners community in Jiangmen,where I live, is very small. Most of them are english teachers or business people. Having just finished my year abroad in France, my expectations about what my university in China would be like were pretty high. I figured there would be more people my age from different countries that were looking for the same experience I was. Wrong. Our classes are pretty small, and even though we have really nice classmates mostly Korean and people of chinese origin , we were pretty bummed about not meeting a lot of new people.
I had been hearing about Macao for a few years now, like Hong Kong, it’s also a “special administrative region” of China. This means that it’s officially a part of China but maintains its own ruling systems.
It used to be a Portuguese colony, which is why the architecture is very European looking and Portuguese is the official language (as well as Cantonese).
But what Macau is famous for is its casinos, revenues are higher than in Vegas and the “Venetian Macao” is actually the largest Casino in the world.
So all in all , I was pretty pumped up to see this luxurious yet historically rich place. Unfortunately it turned out to be a pretty disastrous trip.
Jiangmen, is my new home in China. This city is located in the Guangdong province of Southern China, just a couple of hours from Hong Kong. I came here to take what it seemed to be an impossible challenge, learn chinese.
Learning mandarin or putonghua has been quite a feat, it’s a very complex language to say the least. It frustrates me that there are 4 different tones to each syllable, which if I mess up I could be saying something completely insulting. The tone difference between kiss and please in mandarin is one that I haven’t mastered yet, and it’s a pretty dangerous mistake I would say.
I came to China 2 months ago to learn chinese, and let’s just say it has been no walk in the park.
I love travelling, learning from new cultures and trying new things but in China, my trip didn’t start off all that well. Nothing bad happened, nor was I unhappy, it was just a major culture shock and it took a toll emotionally. I had been to China before, as a tourist but actually living here changes things.
Continuing with my China trip, during the time I spent there I took a 4 days river cruise on the Yangtze River which is the longest river in Asia (third longest in the world) and home to the largest hydro-electric power station; the “Three Gorges damn”.
Chongqing is an extremely large, modern and impressive city located in southwestern China.
It is what nowadays it’s being called a “mega city” with a population of about 32 million people, yet you may not have heard of it. So I’m going to show you why , if you plan a trip to China, should check it out ! 🙂
RESTLESS FOOTPRINTS 