Will I go back to China?

I have been asked this several times lately and I'm not sure.  I could possibly go for the next semester, which will start some time in February 2011, but it depends on my family.  My mother is in a nursing home, and Dad is not well, so I am keeping my options open.  I suspect it will be my last time to go to China to teach, so I have mixed feelings about it all, but I don't have to make a decision yet.

Chinese dissident wins Nobel Peace Award but..............

The weekend newspapers in Australia reported that Liu Xiaobo, had won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Sadly he has been in prison since December. 

It is reported on the ABC's website that his wife, Liu Xia was going to visit him and tell him, but the reports are that she is now unable to be contacted.  There are reports too of extra ordinary security surrounding the prison in Jinzhou, in the north east province of Liaoning.

Of course, the fact that this Chinese dissident has won the Nobel Peace Prize is of great embarrassment to the Chinese government, and all reports of this award have been censored so that the ordinary Chinese will not know of this award to one of their own.

Here are some articles about the award here and here.

Watch the videos.

Lunch with a friend

I had lunch with another ESL teacher friend on Wednesday.  We both worked together here in Brisbane.  We talked about the changing scene in the ESL teaching industry.  It is hard not to get disillusioned with it.  

At the college we worked at we used to get paid for teaching hours - and none for all the documentation, planning etc.  It has a hard slog.  It was working almost full time but getting paid for only half of it.  The DOS was a difficult person too. 

To make things more difficult the government changed the rules and there are less students coming to Australia at the moment - and more schools too.

Anyway neither of us work there now.