My Summer Vacation

You may remember from my other post planning the trip that COVID-19 was becoming a problem in Shenzhen and interfering quite a bit with my trip planning. Well, it got worse!

Right when I had decided to just throw caution to the wind and book the trip, 5 minutes before I sent the email to get the ball rolling, I was informed that the local government may ban all training centers from having summer classes. But we won’t know for sure until next week when the notice officially comes out.

So, instead of emailing the tour company and saying “I’m going”, I had to ask how long before I can’t book the trip anymore. As I’m going to Tibet, they will need to get me a special travel permit, which takes time. While my contact at the tour company didn’t give an exact deadline, he did say to book as early as possible as there will be a lot of other people traveling to the same places, buying up all the tickets and hotel rooms.

I’m beginning to think that I’m not going to have a fantastic summer trip, seeing most of my China travel wishlist.

And Then…

A few weeks later, the Covid outbreaks here were finally declared over and all restrictions were slowly lifted, over a couple days, making it easy to travel between provinces again, as long as you don’t try to go near Yunnan, since they’re having their own really bad outbreak.

I now no longer need to get a Covid test before leaving and coming back, within 48 hours prior to my flights. I don’t have to be worried that another province may decide that I need a test or quarantine because I came from somewhere with an outbreak. It’s (mostly) safe for me to travel, but I’m still not going to mention anything to my employer after they said the training center doesn’t want me going anywhere. What they don’t know can’t hurt me.

In addition, the government restrictions for training centers failed to materialize. So, for now, my training center is planning all the summer classes they were able to sell, which weren’t as many as they, or I, were hoping. I don’t have any classes until late August! 6 weeks of nothing!

Most of the other full-time foreign teachers have classes. But, mostly they’re not teaching as many classes as they could be. Summer is usually a time when the teachers make boatloads of overtime money to make up for the lack of money during vacations.

Because I don’t have any classes, and I really don’t want to be without a paycheck for 6 weeks, especially because I don’t have enough money, at least in my Chinese bank account, to go on vacation for that length of time, I have to find some other work to do. Luckily, there is a bunch of other work that needs to be done – reading a couple textbooks to use in their homework app, stealing online test questions for their own tests and finding the answers in the books, and writing up some of the lesson plans I made and used in my beginner classes.

Vacation Time…?

However, since they now know what the summer schedule is, and it has changed since they last told me, I need to figure out what the new schedule is for me this summer. Although I keep asking, they keep not telling me. All the other foreigners know their schedules. Why can’t I?

Eventually, I see several July schedules, but I don’t know how they affect me, since they mostly focus on teaching schedules, which I don’t have. No classes.

I did hear a rumor that the center would be closed for the first 2 weeks of August. I have no idea if that’s true or not because every time I try to ask about the summer schedule, my Chinese teacher doesn’t know, forgets to ask, or I ask someone else and get told to ask my Chinese teacher, and the cycle just repeats.

After asking 15 times in a couple weeks and getting basically nowhere, I decided to just say, “Fuck it”, and book my trip for what I hope is technically time off, but if it’s not, oh well. They can deal with it. It’s not like I’m going to be teaching anything anyway.

My Trip…

I contacted the nice man that made my original itinerary to see if I could still go on the wonderful vacation he had planned for me. I couldn’t. But only because Tibet didn’t open to foreigners. He suggested a couple other places in Northern China that I could add to my trip to fill up the two weeks in place of Tibet.

He got the new itinerary to me as I was walking to work, but I had to decide if I wanted the trip, mostly as is, because there was only one seat left on one of the flights I’d need. I agreed after a quick glace to make sure that everything was there and all the attractions sounded interesting, without having a chance to actually read the descriptions, and checking the final price while praying that it wouldn’t be too expensive.

It’s actually about 3,000 yuan cheaper than the original trip. I’m still going to Datong, Dunhuang, and Hohhot for the grasslands. But, now, I’m also going to Xining, Zhangye, Jiayuguan, and Ordos. There will be more time in the desert, painted mountains, a picturesque lake, some Tibetan-inspired temples, and a visit to the Great Wall!

The first week of my trip is supposed to be part of a group and then I’m on my own with just my guide/driver for the second half. While I’m looking forward to being around some new foreigners, I hope it’s not just one group of friends who want nothing to do with a random extra person.

I don’t think I’m staying in any hotel for more than a night, except for 2 nights in Datong and 1 night in Ordos, both at the end of my trip. Guess there’s no reason to ever unpack.

I’m going to be very busy on my trip, but it’s going to be the fun kind of busy, not the kind where I’m working too much, again.

If you have any questions about any of the terms I’ve used, look in the glossary.