why I love umbrellas...big ones

Boyfriends

The way people are about your individual wealth here does make me think that women who lie about how much money they make or where they live are not incredibly paranoid for all the wrong reasons, but for the right ones. Seems like the first time I hear about new boyfriends or potential husbands, I'm getting their resume and potential dollar value, not if they are good people.

Me: I hear you have a boyfriend, tell me all about him *general girliness and giggles*
Friend: Well, he has a good job.
Me: How did you meet?
Friend: He works for an online company.
Me: does me make you laugh? Does he read the same books you do? Does he like the same music or movies or take an interest in meeting your family or have the same friends as you or does unexpected and romantic things?
Friend: He still lives with his parents and treats his mom very well. He puts his laundry outside his room for her to wash and she leaves him dinner on the table.
Me: ...is he cute?
Friend: not really.

sure I'll raise your kid, but it'll cost ya

I get paid a lot. But not really, not in American dollars anyways. But I do make a buttload more per hour than most people here do. Esp the Taiwanese people I work with. I can't help it that my English speaking skills are that much in demand that companies will pay competitive wages to intice forgieners abroad but still overwork and screw them over.

I don't like talking about how much I make with them, although most of them are obsessed with money and have even lied to other coworkers about how much money they have and where they live. Not even joking, a coworker lied to someone about where she lived, said that it was an uncle's swanky new apartment. She told me later she lied to him so that he wouldn't know how rich she was. And that she didn't want people to find out or else guy will...try to date her for her money?

I don't know what she was smoking though, its not her money, its not her apartment. She's well into her 30's and still lives at home with mommy and daddy and curfew and everything. And there was a snowball's chance in hell of the male coworker being even remotely interested in her or her dad's money. Which might be impressive over here, but in Euros...doesn't count for much.


But I digress. A lot.

I get paid as much as I do because I work half as many hours as they do and don't get paid for grading homework, prepping classes or all the extra shit I do out of the goodness of my heart. Which isn't much.
That and I packed up as much as I could carry in two suitcases, left my home, my family and my country and moved my ass across an ocean to live and work quite illegally I might add over here.

Teachers here have another role that I wasn't trained for, child rearing. Teachers spend more time with children then their own parents do and because of their "revered" position in society they are given the task of teaching manners, study skills, hygiene and just about most every thing your mom and dad taught you.
Well here those things come from your teachers or not all.

Unfortunately I have the manners, and hygiene of an American. Which means I don't tell the kids when their BO offends my senses the way they tell me I'm fat.

I do call them out on their nosepicking though. Sticks and stones and all that shit but wiping your nasty city smog infested snot all over the desks and chairs where I teach isn't going to fly.

So my coworkers can moan and groan over how much I get paid by the hour, and I'll be too polite to say that it's no where near worth the crap I have to smell/hear/see/ and scrape off my chair at the end of the day.