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Voltaire

My China Experience Is Coming To A Close

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6 hours ago, Cloaca du jour said:

Good luck with todays unmotivated students in florida...at least you have Desantis.

Great point, also him having to use XE/QER pronouns because some kid requests it.  :D  

Seriously, best of luck, and we are here whenever you need solid advice to rant.  :thumbsup:

 

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52 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

Great point, also him having to use XE/QER pronouns because some kid requests it.  :D  

Seriously, best of luck, and we are here whenever you need solid advice to rant.  :thumbsup:

 

And HT will tell him how worthless he is.

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9 hours ago, Gladiators said:

Good luck Volty. I hope the transition goes as smooth as possible for you and the family!

 

8 hours ago, DonS said:

:shocking:   I think I need to re-read his post! 

 

8 hours ago, Gladiators said:

I probably wasn’t supposed to leak that. Sorry Volty

You know, Don has an office gig in Seattle with an uber-woke corporation. For him, putting on that dress, wig, and lipstick has really helped set his mind at ease with job security.

In my line of work this could potentially be a big career advantage too. How it ended up though, after we decided against California, it all became unnecessary.

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26 minutes ago, Voltaire said:

 

 

You know, Don has an office gig in Seattle with an uber-woke corporation. For him. putting on that dress, wig, and lipstick has really helped set his mind at ease with job security.

In my line of work also, this could potentially be a big career advantage too. How it ended up though, after we decided against California, it all became unnecessary.

:lol:

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45 minutes ago, Voltaire said:

 

 

You know, Don has an office gig in Seattle with an uber-woke corporation. For him, putting on that dress, wig, and lipstick has really helped set his mind at ease with job security.

In my line of work this could potentially be a big career advantage too. How it ended up though, after we decided against California, it all became unnecessary.

Fock yeah it did.  Even though I'm now WFH after getting fed up with CHAZ and watching homeless junkies shoot heroin, I still wear the ladies underwear.  :thumbsup:

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Now we can actually have a phone convo at a normal time for you.  Looking forward to it. :thumbsup:

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Welcome back and good luck! Try not to become Florida Man while you’re here. 

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Damn man. You’ve got some heavy lifting in the short term- should be well worth it in the long term. Props for recognizing the time to make the move.
 

My buddy just moved back to the states last year with his wife & kid after spending a decade in QingDao. Was a little culture shock for the wife and kid but I think they are settling in. 

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Welcome home Volty! You'll prolly realize that your son is an overachiever when you get back into US schools. 

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30 minutes ago, JustinCharge said:

Panda Express by me a big banner says "hiring managers $30/hour".  you might be good fit.

I would be a good fit and at $30/hour it probably pays better than public school teacher in Florida. 

The thing is that I didn't prioritize money in making the move. The top priority was cultural fit because I care deeply about living in a community that shares and reinforces my values and helps me pass them on to my kids. I want to raise my family in a very red community in a very red state where traditional family values and cultural norms remain intact. 

California was never in consideration.

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Welcome back and best wishes to you and family

Regarding your son, a formal education may not be required for him to find success in life 

IMO, the value proposition of a college education has changed significantly in the past 2 decades

He might find the freedom and abundant choices here quite liberating and inspiring  

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Welcome back to the real world.

Have you shown your kids the semblance between their former leader and one honey-loving bear?

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Agree with vuduchile!

Letting him indulge his interests, relatively speaking, (as long as there's an arguably constructive angle to exploit) will probably be great for him. 

Wishing you all the best with this giant move!!  It will be intense but a great adventure, too.

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4 hours ago, vuduchile said:

Welcome back and best wishes to you and family

Regarding your son, a formal education may not be required for him to find success in life 

IMO, the value proposition of a college education has changed significantly in the past 2 decades

He might find the freedom and abundant choices here quite liberating and inspiring  

I bet he has a natural affinity for laundry.

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First: We don't eat with pointy sticks here.

2. Your wife should stop calling you Round Eye Long Dong.

a. I'm sure your eyes are round.

b. The other part is relative to country.

3. You're being tracked by at least six agencies from at least four countries. 

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 I read an ancient Chinese proverb recently.

If a water ruck and a vinegar ruck collide and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? 
 

 Grad you’re coming home ya doosh!!!👍

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7 hours ago, vuduchile said:

Welcome back and best wishes to you and family

Regarding your son, a formal education may not be required for him to find success in life 

IMO, the value proposition of a college education has changed significantly in the past 2 decades

He might find the freedom and abundant choices here quite liberating and inspiring  

He only ever does the math and science classes on his own. He also has some aptitude in computer programming at a basic level but he needs motivation to do it. It's English reading and writing and Social Studies classes that bring about the pain. There's good careers to be had in those fields if he weren't such an unmotivated lump.

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4 hours ago, Drizzay said:

Welcome back to the real world.

Have you shown your kids the semblance between their former leader and one honey-loving bear?

My wife knows but not my kids. I worry they'd show it to their friends who'd show it to their parents and we'd get a knock on the door.

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3 hours ago, wiffleball said:

I bet he has a natural affinity for laundry.

His hobbies include sleeping and watching people play video games online. He seldom plays the games himself. We have a PS4 but he's rarely allowed to play video games himself because that requires him to get his work done, which in turn requires regular insertions of TNT up his ass in half hour increments every day all week. In theory, he could be playing every day. I wouldn't mind. In reality, when he' supposed to be taking classes, the computer is instead logged in to watching these videos of other people playing and so he's barred from actually playing.

As soon as I finish typing this and hit enter, I'll go check on him. What'll happen is look up at me panicked, say "What?", he'll swing the laptop around so I can't see what he's doing. I'll watch him long into a class, he'll choose math or science, and I'll leave. Come Thurdsay or Friday, he'll have zero English and Social Studies done, I will sit with him and force him to complete English and Social Studies because he never ever ever ever ever does that without being watched and forced to do it and prevented from not fock off.

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45 minutes ago, Voltaire said:

My wife knows but not my kids. I worry they'd show it to their friends who'd show it to their parents and we'd get a knock on the door.

Tell them you're friends with Christopher Robin. 

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11 hours ago, vuduchile said:

Welcome back and best wishes to you and family

Regarding your son, a formal education may not be required for him to find success in life 

IMO, the value proposition of a college education has changed significantly in the past 2 decades

He might find the freedom and abundant choices here quite liberating and inspiring  

Get him a job installing roofs in the Florida summer, that'll help him figure it out.  :thumbsup: 

Volty would probably never go for it, but he could do a brief stint in the armed forces (would they take him as a Chinese national?).  Our friends' daughter did that and became a mechanic; she got married and just had a kid and is out now, but if she wanted she could easily work in HVAC or numerous related trades.  Or he could go to Cocoa Beach and find a hot genie. :banana: 

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27 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

Get him a job installing roofs in the Florida summer, that'll help him figure it out.  :thumbsup: 

Volty would probably never go for it, but he could do a brief stint in the armed forces (would they take him as a Chinese national?).  Our friends' daughter did that and became a mechanic; she got married and just had a kid and is out now, but if she wanted she could easily work in HVAC or numerous related trades.  Or he could go to Cocoa Beach and find a hot genie. :banana: 

I intend for all my kids to go into the active military or National Guard, like I did, if they want to go to college. Unlike cheap-ass Michigan, the Florida National Guard pays 100% tuition, I already looked.

They weren't getting any money from us even before life imploded, seeing as we don't have to give. That was the plan before they were even born.

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1 minute ago, Voltaire said:

I intend for all my kids to go into the active military or National Guard, like I did, if they want to go to college. Unlike cheap-ass Michigan, the Florida National Guard pays 100% tuition, I already looked.

They weren't getting any money from us even before life imploded, seeing as we don't have to give.

Isn't tuition in Florida already free, or dirt cheap?

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Just now, Hawkeye21 said:

Isn't tuition in Florida already free, or dirt cheap?

:dunno:

I don't think so but that would be nice.

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2 minutes ago, Voltaire said:

:dunno:

I don't think so but that would be nice.

https://www.floridashines.org/go-to-college/pay-for-college

Students who are residents of Florida pay significantly lower tuition at state colleges and universities than students from other states. The average annual in-state tuition for a public university in Florida is $6,071 for full-time students. Tuition at state colleges is about two-thirds the amount of tuition at state universities.

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Welcome back.  My folks retired to Northern Florida.  There are definitely some pretty nice, laid back areas up there, but for the most part, you are going to need to brush up on your red neck.   Good luck with all that.  Look forward to hearing the transition stories. 

And I just realized that you won't be a day ahead of us anymore with your wordles...so another plus for coming home.

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6 minutes ago, Voltaire said:

I intend for all my kids to go into the active military or National Guard, like I did, if they want to go to college. Unlike cheap-ass Michigan, the Florida National Guard pays 100% tuition, I already looked.

They weren't getting any money from us even before life imploded, seeing as we don't have to give. That was the plan before they were even born.

May I suggest some amount in a loan that our increasingly socialist federal government will eventually forgive.  :thumbsup: 

3 minutes ago, Hawkeye21 said:

https://www.floridashines.org/go-to-college/pay-for-college

Students who are residents of Florida pay significantly lower tuition at state colleges and universities than students from other states. The average annual in-state tuition for a public university in Florida is $6,071 for full-time students. Tuition at state colleges is about two-thirds the amount of tuition at state universities.

I think that is true in most states.  Florida does/did have a program where you got free in-state if you put some money in when the kids were younger, but it's too late for that I'd guess.

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On 11/11/2022 at 10:53 PM, Voltaire said:

 

It's coming on fast now, we've got plane tickets for December 13th and this time, although we still have an apartment here we're not going back except to visit. It'll be 21 years overseas, covering my entire time at FFToday, since I've lived in the US.

My wife and I have teaching jobs in small town Florida, her in kindergarten, me in High School social studies. Neither of us have teaching degrees, but Florida doesn't require one to start, which was one of the selling points on choosing that state. We'll be allowed to work/teach under a temporary license which is conditional upon us being enrolled in a program working towards teacher certification.  Kindergarten was the fallback option for my wife. She'd wanted to teach Chinese, but there were surprisingly few teaching positions open and we didn't find any in the sort of small town community setting that we want to raise our kids in. 

The plan is to stop in Detroit briefly, then go down there and get things set up, then return to Detroit for the holiday. This'll be the first time my kids have been there in winter time, let alone Christmas. My wife and kids hope to see snow, so maybe they'll get it. Even if it's an unseasonably mild December, with the snow having come and gone and missing our time there, they're still going to experience cold like they never have before, so might as well make it a blizzard for dramatic effect.

So a broad assortment of nightmare expenses are on tap. Start with those plane tickets for six. Gonna need to find a rental home until we find a place to buy, buy a car, whatever furniture and whatnot to put in the home, a lawyer to help with immigration issues. I'd feel a lot better about this transition if we sold out apartment here and had a cash cushion to work with but ...eh... China is still deep in zero-COVID mode and the economy is sputtering as a result, so it's not an ideal time. So we still have a fully furnished apartment full of our stuff that we're just going to leave here, and ... I don't know. That includes a piano which, a few years ago, set me back a full month's salary. For the cost of shipping, it may be easier to just leave things here and buy all new stuff. We may still retire here, as I've told you for years the weather is phenomenal, especially this time of year as things get colder. But Florida mitigates that need than if we'd have chosen Idaho, Wyoming, or South Dakota.

Overall China is really sucking lately. Xi Jinping is steering China in a very different direction than Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. For the vast majority of my time here, I've encouraged people who wanted/needed to start over in life to come here to see what's up. One bit, TBBOM, and it worked out just as well for him as it did for me. But that's not the case anymore, recommending teaching in China for people that hit a rut in the US isn't so appealing and its getting worse and worse. The plan all along had been to keep doing this until I retire. To uproot and start over again at 50 was the furthest thing from my mind. As you can imagine, it takes a great deal to upend everything like this. Sadly, the changes in education law for private schools has made our increasingly untenable. China doesn't want private schools. Meanwhile, the constant COVID policy harassment, even when COVID isn't present in the community, is the icing on the cake. I have a responsibility to look out for my family as best I can.

Speaking of which, my daughters should both thrive: academically, athletically, socially, responsibility, and looks-wise, they're both top-of-the-line girls who can excel in any circumstance. It won't all be all roses though.

My son, ugh, who knows. There's a cornucopia full of problems to deal with here and I've told you about him many times. The Chinese school system chewed him up and spit him out. His biggest problem there was that he couldn't write to grade level. So a year and a half ago, after finishing grade six at his elementary school, rather than send him to middle school, we pulled him out and enrolled him in an online US based internet school in Kansas City. He has a 4.0 GPA but getting his lazy ass to compete his assignments and meet his weekly checkpoints is an ongoing struggle requiring much screaming and harassing. Also, the 4.0 GPA masks a problem. He couldn't write at grade level in the Chinese school and he can't write to grade level in English either. He tested into Grade Four English not Grade Seven so I enrolled him in Grade Four English last year hoping he'd catch up. Wrong. The boy is in constant "Goof Off Mode." Any week where you can motivate, drag, and harangue his sorry ass to collapse smack on top of the finish line is already successful week. I'd not realized at the time but there is no "catch up" in him. The notion of this boy being capable of accomplishing one scintilla of work beyond what he's supposed to for a given week is utterly absurd and out of the question. Consequently,  he's in 8th grade but he's not taking "Grade Eight English", he's taking "Grade Five English" while at the same time, he's also taking Geometry which is 10th grade Math. In other words, he's way ahead of his grade level in math, while simultaneously being way behind it in English. He still needs a Chinese-English electronic dictionary to understand some of the vocabulary and look up words. Other issues to deal with is that he was already small-ish, underweight, and socially awkward before we started homeschooling him. My younger daughter is also small/thin like her mother, but girls can get away with that, I don't even know if it's an issue, boys have a harder time of dealing it.

So, eh, long story short ... look at me.

 

MMMMBeer is this you?

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China to Detroit to Florida.

 

Shiit, I don't even have a joke for that.😕

 

 

That's just f****** tragic.

 

Might as well start trying to get them reservations for study abroad in Somalia. 

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Best wishes on safe travels back to the States.

Also, where would you like your indoctrination kit sent since that is all we do as teachers here in the US. Just ask some guys around here- they will tell you. 

Seriously though- good luck. We may disagree on things but you and RLLD are truly the only two people here whose opinion I value despite being contrary to my opinion at times. 

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So my brothers third wife. Current one. Is full on chinese. Her and her sneaky little kids. I mean, her parents are still back in xusng zui or whatever. (Northern province)

 

Only reason my brother has a job or a career or a life at all is because he got top secret clearance in the Air Force 40 years ago. He's worked for defense contractors and contractors of defense contractors etc. And now he has a pretty significant security job for a very well known national computer security firm.

 

I have no doubt that she's an agent.  Every once in awhile, couple fellers with a clipboard show up and ask me questions about my brother.

 

I go all Sergeant Schultz on them. Well, I figure if they're bright enough to read this post. Well they should have figured out a long time ago.

 

( By the way, I'm not saying you are volty. but slant wives are great for narcissist husbands)

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Sean Mooney said:

Best wishes on safe travels back to the States.

Also, where would you like your indoctrination kit sent since that is all we do as teachers here in the US. Just ask some guys around here- they will tell you. 

Seriously though- good luck. We may disagree on things but you and RLLD are truly the only two people here whose opinion I value despite being contrary to my opinion at times. 

:( 

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21 hours ago, Mike Honcho said:

Welcome back.  My folks retired to Northern Florida.  There are definitely some pretty nice, laid back areas up there, but for the most part, you are going to need to brush up on your red neck.   Good luck with all that.  Look forward to hearing the transition stories. 

And I just realized that you won't be a day ahead of us anymore with your wordles...so another plus for coming home.

You've got that right. Every-single-person I've talk to on the phone there, 100% of them, sounds like Wes Walls (some are female versions of Wes Walls).

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7 hours ago, Sean Mooney said:

Best wishes on safe travels back to the States.

Also, where would you like your indoctrination kit sent since that is all we do as teachers here in the US. Just ask some guys around here- they will tell you. 

Seriously though- good luck. We may disagree on things but you and RLLD are truly the only two people here whose opinion I value despite being contrary to my opinion at times. 

I'm thinking it'll come included with the teacher certification courses.

During COVID lockdown, I took online courses for TOEFL/ESL/EFL certification. None of my employers in China ever cared that I'd not had had certification, but now that I was running my own school, the government required it of me. I didn't mind. Its not an unreasonable request expecting the boss of the school to be licensed in what he's teaching, (the unreasonableness came later).

Anyway, during the training videos I watched with nice lady instructor kind, the wokeness kind of oozed out of her pores. She was clearly knee deep into that stuff, but it was just a subtle undercurrent, in fact she was very knowledgeable/talented with plenty of good advice to incorporate and things I hadn't considered., I liked her despite the wokeness, so it kind of drove home the insidiousness of the whole thing.

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