What To Do To Prepare

One of the first steps I did to prepare was getting an app to learn Chinese. Most people speak Mandarin and an app I use is Chinese Skill. The hardest thing to learn about Chinese for me is that it is so numbered based. Days of the week are literally Monday="The Day of One," Tuesday="The day of Two," but Sunday is "Day of the Sky." Months are similar to this as well.

The next item I did was watch a documentary every week on China. The ones I have watched include Wild China, Forbidden City, Please Vote For Me, A Bite of China, and China From the Inside. A vlog I recommend is MonkeyAbroad.

When you teach abroad buy books on strategies to teach ESL students. The main thing you need to know about teaching is that you need to creatively repeat information over and over until students get it and have it forever.

Asian schools are different from US schools in that they are more intense. Chinese high school classes are basically general study courses in US colleges, it gets them prepared for future careers. There are high schools that are for kids interested in medicine, law, and engineering while in the US it is broad enough for any student. If you think about it, Chinese middle schools are trying to prepare students for the rigor of high school. So my elementary school kids are already expected to do well because it can change their lives forever. Not an attitude we have in the states. In my research I have read about Asian parents getting angry at teachers for not teaching more and faster. Elementary school kids in China can divide paragraphs and can even create a bibliography. Meanwhile in the states I had to convince my high school students that they would be writing bibliographies in college and I wasn't lying.

Next is your work visa. If they say you don't need to prepare IT IS A LIE. In China you will need...

1. Passport. This can take 2 months to get and costs around $100.
2. Passport Photo (this will be glued onto official forms)
3. Fingerprinted Background Check that is within six months of you going there. If you are going in August you will need to get a background check in March or April.
4. Resume
5. Teaching Certificate
6. Degree

The teaching certificate, degree, and background check will need to be notarized. To notarize you will need to go to your state capitol building and get a notary there. Then you will need to go to the US Department of State and get it notarized. Only after that can you go to the Chinese Consulate/Embassy to get a notary.

Personally, I live an hour away from the capitol building and it kind if stunk. I drove an hour there, it took 20 minutes to get the notary, and I drove an hour back. Then my Embassy was in Washington DC which stunk about a billion times more. If you recall I'm from Nebraska. (For some reason California has two embassies but Midwestern states have to go to DC?!) I hired VisaMailService to handle the other two steps. It can cost between $100-200 to get a notary per document. If it was cheaper to fly to DC, get a hotel, and wait for hours to drop it off, wait a few days, go back and pick it up, I would have.

BTW this takes longer than you think. There are expatiated services but that is up to the Consulate if you get that are not. VisaMailService wrote on their site it can take 8-10 days for papers to get back to you, but it can also be 10-12 days. It doesn't sound like much until you do the math.

(Make an appointment to get a state notary, mail that in and takes 10-12 days, get visa invite from school takes 2+ days, consulate approval can take 6-10 days. Congrats about a month went by.)

Horror story time, I was supposed to leave August 15th but my background check had expired in June. My school and myself didn't know about the six month rule. I had to reorder a background check and am currently waiting on the notary. It is the 7th of August. My school and I are working on flight plans and visa paperwork and we both know I won't be there the 15th.