Chapter 1: The Uneven Path. (Origin Story)

Hey folks,

As I look for work and survive due to the JSA, I figured it would probably be grand to tell the world the life I currently live. In this blog I'll first explain how I ended up on the JSA as my story is not a common one. Most of my friends know about it but I doubt they understand nor know the terror we felt out there. I have made the spacing in this blog a bit bigger in between paragraphs for when I previewed it the whole "wall of text" just seemed a bit too much.
Anyway on with the story:

My girlfriend and I were working in China. Sadly we were not sent directly to a school as were the rest of the group members. Our employer held legal documents, was registered with the local bureaucrats as a school but for the last 3 years he had no students, staff or a fully functioning building that one would call a school. After being outsourced to six different schools spaced over a 30 mile area and teaching over 2000 students aged between 2 and 17 years old with only an hours notice that we would be teaching....Rachel and I endured six months of unending manipulation and misinformation.  

For the last six months we had held meetings with our boss in an attempt to re-negotiate the contract, we had met other employees that escaped his clutches and they filled our minds with horror stories. We witnessed these stories come true. 

We did have another job set up, we did have a placement in another province. Neither of us wanted to return to the U.K in a hurry because we know how bad things were here. We also wanted to have an ideal year together abroad...not a "placements from hell" year working for a psychopath. Unfortunately we were given no choice in the end. The boss sought to extort money from us upon our resignations. He requested a sum that was never mentioned in either contracts. The British Embassy is not allowed to enter disputes that relate to contracts. (This is mentioned on their website.) Our contacts in Beijing had proven to be useless too. We requested our mediator  to negotiate and persuade our boss to act in more professional manner. 

There were many evenings when we would be working on lesson plans for the school that the boss sent us to the most and then the phone would ring. It was the boss. He would tell us that tomorrow classes are cancelled and we are going to teach someone else. The lesson would be at 9am. The boss phoned us to tell us this at 9pm. The minute we argued about how unprofessional this was he would suddenly lose all English speaking abilities.

I struggled to get up most mornings because of this but Rachel has a "can do" approach which empowered at times to try my best as well. Whilst I would be stuck in a mental rut, Rachel sought to make the best of a bad situation. We both had a "dream" and hers was for a beautiful year abroad. We spent our time together visiting the local shopping malls, eating pumpkin soup and cuddling up watching Father Ted, Poirot and looking for solutions.  

We had a meeting where both parties agreed that more communication would be beneficial. The boss agreed to put the ages and location of our students on our time table. The next week the boss gave us no time table. Our time table was now delivered by text message. Our contacts in Beijing did not believe us, they assumed we were simply some middle class kids failing to understand some cultural differences: The school is registered with the local bureaucracy they would reply, the previous teacher did not complain. There was nothing we could do that would persuade them. Thankfully our contact in the U.K fought for us and he was a great pillar of support in what was truly a terrible time for the two of us.

There is nothing quite so terrifying than being over 5000 miles away from home working for a human being that humiliates you on a daily basis. He would suggest that we recruit students for his "school" from the ones he currently sent us to, his daughter suggested we teach lessons at McDonald's birthday parties and they wanted us to make videos to recruit more English-speakers their school! Apparently we would receive more money but how does one reconcile the thought that after receiving £50 another human being has been condemned to live in a flea infested apartment  working for a mad man that wants to hire them out as a McDonald's clown?

In our penultimate meeting in which he threatened us, his threats came with a lot of documentation that showed all of our communication with Beijing. He had this giant grin on his face,  our mediator had sent him everything. His intention was to make us feel powerless and his daughter ignored our demands, instead she spoke about the next week's lesson schedule. Rachel look into other stories and similar situations, unfortunately they ones closest to our own advised the people to get there a.s.a.p! The person we were working for was aware that my girlfriend was a trained singer and suddenly her lessons were to become singing lessons. 

In the final meeting we were calm, polite and I even acted upbeat (as Rachel persuaded me to control myself. I thought as we were hatching an escape plan that I should probably follow the lead actress on this one)

With heavy hearts we left China and returned to the relative safety of the U.K. Plane tickets cost a fortune and fortunes are something that graduates tend to lack. I was financially ruined from the venture and my girlfriend was pretty saddened by the entire ordeal as her dream year abroad was nothing but a nightmare. I ran back to home as I borrowed a lot of the banks money (overdraft) and she returned to her home with her family as we had divided our costs whilst working out there and so Rachel was in the same boat as I was. Ideally we would have spent more time together but I think we both felt quite shocked by our ordeal. We lacked the funds to go somewhere nice and our heads were rolling over everything we had just witnessed. I did not know what to say nor what to do, in retrospect there was little we could do except be thankful we made it back to the U.K. Broken both spiritually and financially it was a miracle that we made it back in one piece.

As I was severely out of pocket upon returning to Blighty I applied for the JSA. The first stage of the process was done online and the people in the Banbury branch were incredibly open minded as I doubt they receive many people who have fled from corrupt Chinese businessmen. My story shocked them and they were surprised we had even attempted to seek another employer while out there. Really the only thing I wanted to do was to see Rachel and hold her close as I needed someone to hold me close too and the last few years had been tough on her. Our stress in China helped neither of us and now we're back we're attempting to rebuild ourselves.

. For the first month I set up accounts, acquired a new phone/glasses thanks to Mum, received CV advice from one of my dearest friends (Merlyn) and tried to just come to terms with what had happened. My heart and mind feel fried from what's happened. Rachel and I speak quite often. She has plans for a masters :) Everyone talks to me and goes "China though, surely that was an experience". There were many good times but those happened outside a central nexus of terror, intimidation and manipulation that was run by our Mad Hatter employer.

If you experienced any notions of terror while reading this then I was successful in helping you understand why we had chosen to leave. I will probably try to re-learn Mandarin in the coming months as it is something I enjoy and learning such a language opens many doors. However we have reached the end of this blog as I have nothing else to write on this matter.

Except... that Rachel kept me sane whilst out there and I am glad that we made we back in one piece.

If it was not for Rachel I fear that I would still be out there. She is one of the toughest and most caring people I know.

Thank you for reading,

The next blog will be Chapter 2: My First Month.

It will be published on the 8/3/2013.