See below for an updated teacher roster for my school and their various drama...
We have three Filipino teachers at my school that I've recently given the rundown on. The two that are a couple have been a bit stressed lately about getting enough teaching hours. I don't understand that, because I don't get paid by the hour, but as I mentioned, their deal is a bit different than the other foreigners because they're not quite looked at the same way. They never really hung out with the rest of us much, but they've distanced themselves even more lately because (I'm assuming) they feel their livelihoods are threatened by us.
We have one other teacher that's been around forever as well, the French Canadian woman I've mentioned before. She's kind of a loner, as she has really good Chinese, has been here for many years and is a bit older. Something's been upsetting her about our school recently, but she won't talk about it, so who knows what that's about.
Aside from her, we have another Canadian. He's a university student and only here for the summer. He belongs to the non-partier group of foreigners and doesn't really come out too much unless there are sports involved. He falls into the visa drama category, as he was with my hypothetical friend in the group that went to Hong Kong and not a single one walked away with a visa.
The third member of that group was a British woman. She signed a year long contract with the school, but told the owner from the start she was probably only going to stay six months. She kind of screwed herself there, because if she'd only signed a six month contract she could have had flight money built into it, but to break a year long contract she'd be forfeiting her flight money. Not that it ultimately mattered.
The failed Hong Kong trip and associated faked medical form were the final straw for her. She was just done with the school, the last minute changing of classes, disregard for teacher's time, etc. She took all of her accumulated holidays in the beginning of June, got her May pay and just up and left, forfeiting her pay for any work she did in June. She didn't tell the school she was leaving until she was at the train station. It's kind of awesome that someone sent that message to the school, you treat us like crap and we won't take it. The school is kind of covering up her leaving, they didn't really tell anyone, they have just been saying she's sick.
Awkward = me trying to pretend I didn't know she was leaving ahead of time! All the foreigners in town knew, except for the Filipinos and the French Canadian. Most of us kind of view it as an "us vs them" relationship with our school(s) and it's hard to judge which side those four belong on.
Then we have two Americans, one is a big partier and the other is a non partier. Neither of them hang around too much. The partier has offended a lot of the other foreigners and has the personality of someone that did waaaaaay too many drugs at some point. He's a nice enough guy though. The non partier is naturally kind of a loner I think; there's also something slightly different about his personality. He's got a little bit of Chinese also, which usually make people more inclined to be loners.
And finally we have/had the three teachers that were from the agency in Changchun. There was an American Libyan crazy party guy had a lot of drama recently. He got fired by our owner, then the VP talked him into coming back, then he had some family drama so he left for a bit to clear his head, then he came back and then a week later he and the school owner mutually decided he was leaving us.
The second was an older Kiwi guy. He was really easy going, but was getting fed up for a while with bs to do with the school. His final straw was when the school caretaker was at a high school to pick up him and another foreign teacher, but just got the other teacher and didn't wait for him because the caretaker had to drive other teachers somewhere after that. The caretaker was literally at the high school the Kiwi was at and decided not to wait two minutes for him because he had to drive other people. So he quit. And then about two weeks later the VP talked him into coming back (she really is the buffer between us and the school owner!). He got back and then maybe two days later they fired him (reasons unknown, I don't understand why they asked him back in the first place).
The third from the agency was a young American guy that was just weird. Everyone thought so, Chinese and foreign alike. Our school owner never liked him, so I don't even know why he got hired in the first place. Before he even arrive the owner told the British girl that this guy was stupid and he told me once that he had a special talent of putting people to sleep.
So, between everything going on with the people above, and then my hypothetical friend's whole visa situation as well, there really has been a lot of drama!
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