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Lhasa and Anxiety
Sunday, March 6, 2005-2:29 PM
The anxiety over not knowing what to do next year is only heightened by my approaching birthday. The school called last week and asked me if I planned to continue teaching here next year. That's the only thing I'm sure I'm not going to do.
As it stands now, I think my Chinese is inadequate for any expatriate job that requires a great deal of fluency. And, when I write my resume, I'm getting tired of trying to describe how well I speak with words like "intermediate", "conversational", "working knowledge", and so on.
To that end, the one proactive measure I've taken is to get ready to take the HSK Exam (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) in May at Jinan Universtiy here in Guangzhou. The HSK Exam is the standard exam for assessing student's Chinese for entrance into Chinese Universities.
But the real problem is I'm not too thrilled about the idea of working. My schedule now amounts to around 10 hours a week of actual teaching when school is in session.
That schedule leaves a lot of time for traveling. And I still have a lot of places I want to get to before I commit to any real, permanent job, including Tibet, Thaliand, and Vietnam.
After all, if you can't find time to go to Lhasa when you only work about nine months a year and live just a thousand miles away, when can you find time to go to Lhasa?
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