home coming and the dilemma of white skin

July 17, 2007

We've found a short term apartment in Qingdao. It took a lot of work. We arrived late Saturday night and the first night in an apartment I found on the web was horrible. We looked at a few more on Sunday and it was discouraging. Well, it's just normal local living - small bathroom with a water heater and a shower head above the toilet. When you shower, it splatters everywhere. Then we found one very nice studio and a pretty nice two-bedroom. Of course the 2BR is more expensive. It took us a lot of negotiation and relooking at the places to make a decision. We are going with the studio.

We went to Tianjin, my home town last Wednesday. I totally couldn't recognize the place. My college friends told me to stay in our university inn and it's pretty cheap and clean. When we got there at 11pm at night, they took a look at Brent and said they don't take foreigners! They said the rooms are not up to foreign standards. We were so shocked but there's nothing we could do. They told us to go to Expert Hotel (hotel for foreign teachers and professionals). We got there and there was no vacancy! The receptionist told us to try another hotel outside the university. He was so kind to call for us and found they have vacancy.

We met a real estate agent in Qingdao who also is a head hunter to arrange foreign teachers to teach English. I told him I'm interested in teaching. He said no parents would want me to teach because I look Chinese. It doesn't matter what people's skill levels are, the parents believe in white skin. He knows an Australian guy who was a pizza deliverer who's a high school grad, but when he gets to Qingdao he's so welcomed by parents and makes so much money and has different girlfriends every month that he doesn't want to leave. There were some Philipino teachers had a hard time finding a job because they look Asian. It took them a long time to prove how good they are.