The New Guy

When Slav left Alaer it was originally with the under sanding that he would find someone to come and finish off the term for him. He did find a friend of his in England who wasn't doing much and wanted to come to China for a while, but for some reason the visa never worked out. So when Slav left there was a period where I was the only foreigner for maybe hundreds of miles. But one of the school administrates had been in New Zealand and had met a teacher there who had worked in Japan for a number of years. When the big earth quake struck there a number of the foreign students went home and some of the teachers were out of work. This administrator, also named Ma, but not the Ma I've written about, got the teacher he met in New Zealand to come over to China to finish out this semester and stay on for the next one.

The new teacher, Colin, is from New Zealand, while his parents were originally from Scotland. He taught for almost 10 years in Japan, some of that EFL and some he taught drama at a fancy school where everyone spoke English. His language skills seem similar to mine in that he lived in Japan for so long but doesn't speak much Japanese. I was actually surprised when I saw his passport and learned he was in his 50's since he looks easily a decade younger. He seems like a nice guy, and he doesn't drink which makes the banquets with him much more pleasant, and I've hung around with him a little bit so far. It's nice to have another teacher here and while he hasn't lived anywhere like this I bet he'll do fine here.