What I go to school for...

Yesterday was the first inset day for new staff. We were introduced to the management team at school and I can tell you that I already spotted the school’s perv! The finance guy introduced himself and told us that he really loved Chinese massages... Randooom... and you should have seen the sparkle in his eyes! All the new teachers are very friendly but I can already feel it’s going to be hard to find mates to hang out with this year: most teachers at the school are couples, or worse, they have kids! I must say I’m a bit disappointed, as my Cairo experience showed me that 98% of international school teachers are single... well that’s what I thought, but apparently not in Shanghai! That’s shit!

Today the school organised a “treasure hunt” across the city so that we could become more familiar with our whereabouts. Each new teacher was paired up with a Chinese member of staff and they both had to bring back a list of things from different areas in Shanghai – a menu from a particular restaurant, a business card from a particular company, etc. My gosh, the Chinese are so competitive! As soon as the race started, my teammate grabbed my arm and pushed me into a cab. She then said that we were going to win this race and did I know how? No, I replied. By cheating, she said! I was so taken aback. We basically did all the tasks which were on the list but instead of going miles away to get our stuff, we just went to the nearest branches... We left school, got the ten items from the list and came back to school in 32 minutes! The HR lady who organised the race was just like “WTF?!”... Anyway, we obviously won, as the second team only arrived 20 minutes later. What about the prize you’d ask? It was a lovely foot massage in one of the massage salons near the school... I definitely enjoyed our victory and I surely know who chose this prize... Dirty old perv!