New house, new job, new visa, new meeting time

What else is new? Never a dull moment!

First, I moved last month. A sister who attended the latest School for Kingdom Evangelizers got an assignment as a special pioneer in an area about an hour south of here. She had to move in a hurry, so she asked me if I might want her rented house, which is only about 200 meters from my old house.

Well, I came and looked at it, and decided, yes! It is a little more expensive than my previous house ($120 vs. $95 a month) but well worth it. I now have nice tile floor, even tile on the walls in the bedroom as well as the bathroom. OK, the first few weeks I was here, the bathroom had serious problems. The shower leaked, the sink leaked, the shower floor had severe rust, and a brown liquid seeped in from the outside and covered the entire floor, even returning after being cleaned up. Once I paid two months' rent, however, the landlord (an elderly couple) sent workers to fix all these problems. It turned out that the building up against my house belonged to the community and due to a failure to seal properly between the buildings the brown liquid came in every time it rained. So some guy came over and was snapping photos of the problem. It was fixed almost immediately. The other leaks were repaired and now the shower floor is tile. I should say that the water is maybe a bit more frequent than it was at the old place, but the Internet is definitely worse. And I'm living about 50 meters behind an evangelical church that has raving preachers and blasts gospel music most nights and weekends. You can't have everything.

Because the sister who used to live here now has a smaller place at her new assignment, she left me her sofa, clothes wardrobe, fancy curtains, and shoe rack. She didn't want to sell, but just asked me to keep them for the time being. So now I'm really living in style!

You may notice from the photos that where the big table is, there is space for a bed, next to the clothes wardrobe. The curtains can be pulled around to conceal this area, so yes, I could have a roommate, which may happen in the very near future.

My visa expired in March, and so I submitted a renewal application for another two years. This time I had 10 signed contracts with students for private lessons (compared to three the previous time), and so I thought it should be a breeze to renew. Well, it wasn't. Not only had Immigration become more strict since I got the visa originally, they made an impossible request: they asked for a recommendation letter from the Ministry of Education. I made two trips to the Ministry of Education, talked to two different people, and was told that they issue such letters to institutions, such as schools, and not to individuals. The Ministry of Education develops curriculum for primary and secondary schools and universities. So how could I, who simply have a handful of private students in a self-employed capacity, hope to get any type of recommendation letter?

Of course, every time I went to Immigration, I got a different person at the counter, and after a half-hour, this person would return from the back room after examining my file and repeat that I had no choice but to get the letter they were requesting, blah, blah. So I decided to contact Edugate, a language school downtown that I had worked for briefly, to ask them if they would hire me and provide a work contract. Yes, they were more than willing, but only part-time, which is just what I wanted also. So I brought a copy of the work contract to Immigration, and they still insisted on the letter from the Ministry of Education! (It happens that the Ministry of Education does not recognize language schools such as Edugate.)

Even though my visa had expired for about a month by this time, the way it works is that as long as Immigration has possession of your passport, you're legal. You just can't leave the country, not exactly a comforting thought....

Well, after numerous attempts to convince Immigration that they should give me a work visa because, hey, I actually do have employment, they finally saw the light. But I got only one year, which is the same length as my work contract. It's better than nothing.

So now I'm an English teacher. The hours are always changing, because I'm either substituting or assigned part-time classes, but the job is definitely suitable for pioneering. The classrooms are very modern, and the equipment top-notch. Each room has a projector with a large touch screen. You can project the textbook page, blow it up to any size you want, and click on certain icons to get audio files and scripts for the material you are considering. It's really high-tech. One thing I wonder is if this school, which is Turkish owned, is actually making any money, because it seems most of the classes consist of only 3-6 students. In other words, they are not filling up the classrooms. But, hey, as long as I get paid....

And here is the latest Chinese news: the branch has approved an official language class! I and the two special pioneers will be the instructors. We are going to start this class the second week of July, just after the Regional Convention.

Also, because we noticed that few Chinese people have been attending our Sunday meeting, probably due to the time (8:30am), we proposed a switch to Saturday at 6:15pm. Most Chinese people here work six or seven days a week, and are not available until the evening. So it was logical to move the meeting to the evening. The elders have approved this, and we are now awaiting for the branch to approve also. Having our own meeting time separate from the English will have other advantages, one of which is that we can use the main auditorium with microphones, etc., instead of the back room, which is getting pretty crowded (with Chinese learners). Once our class starts, our meeting attendance may even double or triple. So we really need more space!