China Connection

After retiring from corporate work in Davao in 2017, I moved back to my family home in Paranaque Metro Manila.

For the first time in many years, I found I had a lot of spare time for myself. I then began to explore my professional options with the hope of earning some extra income by possibly venturing into part time online work.  

I eventually found a job worth the time and effort I could give, I became an online English teacher to Chinese mainlanders and immigrants. 

The platform I joined was called 51Talk where they offered individual class schedules that took 25 minutes per lesson wherein the teacher conducts lessons on a one-on-one basis with a single student. Upon submission of my application and fortunately passing the interview, I was tasked to begin my classes based on time schedules provided by the company. After only a few weeks of lessons, I started accumulating regular students who eventually became good friends as well. The lessons then started becoming both amusing and entertaining since the students who took my class schedules ranged from young kids aged about 8 years young upwards to adults and professionals who were over 50 years old.

There were these 3 young 8-10 year old girls, R, S and A (I shall post only initials so as to safeguard the privacy of my students) who I became very fond of.

R was a very talkative 9 year old who loved showing off her pet Persian cat. Somehow during our classes, she would manage to divert our discussion about the lesson into conversations about her cat she endearingly called 'Meowy'. 

Then there's S, who I call the 'Disney Princess'. Each time I have my class with her, she is dressed up as one of the characters in Disney movies, be it Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. Each session with her was not just fulfilling, but so much fun as well. Little did I realize that aside from helping other people learn, teaching English lessons to can also be so wonderfully amusing!

The regular adult students I taught also ended up becoming good friends of mine. 

Take E, a middle aged married man who works as an IT manager. E needed to polish his English since he constantly needed to communicate with his foreign counterparts in the company. He would sometimes talk about his young family since he was married for just 6 years with a 4 year old daughter. Aside from having our lessons, we would talk about our movies since we had this common interest in interesting films and award-winning blockbusters.

Another adult student I made friends with was B, a boutique manager in her mid 20s. She worked at a store that sold high end fashion merchandise in Beijing International Airport. B was also a purchaser for the store she worked in and would travel to Europe every quarter.