Saturday, January 17, 2009

My Coolest Work Day

There have been rumors going around about this so I'll write the official story here!

I was in my kindergarten class, coloring aligators, when a lady from the office came into my class, "Leah, you need to leave the classroom right now."
"Ummm... what? I'm still in class, I still have two blocks left(two 30 min class periods)"
"Leah, a government official is here, you need to get out of this classroom right now."
I was confused but I left and was escorted upstairs to where the other foriegn teachers were. I asked the foreign teachers “Why aren't we allowed in our classes?" Apparently, it's illegal for foreigners to teach kindergarten. WHAT!?!? HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!?!??!

So back to the story, we were told to pretend we were working so each of us took a classroom. I took any book I could find and "prepared" for my non-kindergarten classes. Then the head foreign teacher gathers all the foreign teachers and tells us, "The principal just called and told me we need to get on the roof right now to hide."
At that moment, all the teachers start running classroom to classroom, trying to find access to the roof. They keep yelling, "WE NEED TO GET ON THE ROOF! WE GOTTA GET ON THE ROOF!" We're running back and forth, trying to get on the roof. Finally, we find the door to the roof but it's locked! We called the office to ask to send someone to send us the key to the door to let us get on the roof. One of the teachers is yelling "WE NEED THE KEYS TO THE ROOF!" but no one in the office speaks English so they had no idea what we were saying. The teachers gave the phone to me, however, I didn't know the words "key" or "roof" in Chinese so I wasn't much help.
We decided to go back to pretending to do work. If the official came upstairs, it'd look really suspicious if we were running around yelling, "WE NEED TO GET ON THE ROOF!"

The principal came upstairs and gathered us around. She told us that the official wants to interview us. She repeated to us, "YOU DO NOT TEACH KINDERGARTEN! You only work 14 hours. YOU DO NOT TEACH KINDERGARTEN!" She basically gave us our new lies to tell in the interview.

All of us go downstairs for our individual interviews. As people are being interviewed, the principal glares at me and says to me, "I'm the most worried about you...LEAH! DO NOT BE HONEST! YOU DO NOT TEACH KINDERGARTEN!" How odd that being honest is a bad trait in a person!

It was ridiculous... in my interview, the official had my time sheet with everyone elses.
"How many hours do you teach?" she asks me.
"Oh, I only work from 4pm-6pm so about 14-15 hours a week," I replied.
As I say this, she looks at my funny with my time sheet. "If you work starting at 4pm, why do you come every morning from 9am?"
Seriously, how stupid does the school think the government official is? Anyway, I just had to lie and make up an excuse but it was just really the most bizarre work day I've ever had.

I work an illegal job, so illegal that teachers have jumped fences and made plans on how to escape being caught at the school! And seriously, how come I had no idea until it happened? I could have been deported and taken to court if I were caught!

But it really was the coolest work day ever!