In a little less than an hour I’ll wander downstairs looking for my ride. Today will be my last trip to Yizhuang…. probably. I’m not so much looking forward to it as looking forward to no longer having to go there. It’s odd. For such a long time I was regularly passing the Third Ring Road’s turnoff to Yizhuang/BDA and seeing this mysterious place on a map and wondering what was out there. Then, suddenly, I find myself with not just the opportunity to find out, but regular trips to Yizhuang, and I quickly discovered it was nothing worth wondering about. So today should be the last trip. ‘Should be’ means there’s a chance the school has already arranged for another foreign teacher to go there, but forgotten to tell me of the change, but I’m probably not going to be so lucky. Still, this is China, and these things happen.
It’s an odd form of torture, these trips to Yizhuang. They’re not painful because of the pain inflicted on me; they’re painful because they’re so damn boring. There’s nothing out there. Nothing. And the students are so mediocre. They’re not bad students. Nor are they good students. They’re not even average students. They’re just so incredibly mediocre that I might as well spend the three hours conversing with the wall or staring out the window at the non-scenery. Spending three hours watching grey paint dry on a grey wall under a grey sky standing on grey pavement would be more interesting and far more productive.
I know I shouldn’t put stuff like this on a blog open to all comers, but by nine o’clock this evening my responsibilities to this school will be basically over and I will be entirely free until September 1. And in September I will be starting an infinitely better job at an infinitely better school working for an infinitely better boss with at least one infinitely better colleague.
And lzh and I have only five days left living in this dump. Five days and then will be living in the best part of downtown Beijing. The only downside to moving down to BeiGongDa is that we’ll be much further from Deshengmen and the 919 bus terminal, but that one disadvantage is so massively outweighed by all the myriad advantages that it doesn’t really matter at all.
