The Suzhou Tourism and Finance Institute.

One of the schools I taught at in China was the Suzhou Tourism and Finance Institute.  As soon as I walked into this place I knew I wanted to work there.

I had originally gone to teach at another school. I had worked through a recuiting agent, who was a scammer of the highest order, so didn't take the job he offered me. But I found out about this job and went and visited them, knowing they needed a foreign teacher. It was only a small school, and as I walked in I was really impressed with the look of the place.

The Director of Studies was not Chinese, which is an advantage. He was from the Seychelles, black as your hat, a tall large man, and a fabulous organiser. The place ran like clockwork, which can't be said for many other Chinese schools. China is sort of, when in Rome, so you learn to just go with the flow, and not get het up about things not being as organised as we are used to. Its just part of the fun of living there. This place had a really authentic Chinese feel to it. For the time I taught there I lived in their hotel.

This is a little garden outside the hotel wing I lived in.

This was a school that taught Hotel Management. All the classes were in English, the whole lot, and they taught some pretty deep stuff, marketing, finance, management etc. They also had to learn to use the kitchens and cook and wait on tables.  They had a fully functioning restaurant as part of the school, where staff, that is me and other staff, could eat our lunches, usually a 3 course meal.

This school was only small but they had a larger campus about 20 minutes away by bus. I went there twice a week and took classes with younger students.  They were all very good, hard working, and once we all got to know one another, we had a great time in the classroom.

This campus had a huge building five floors high. The school took teachers to and from both campuses by bus each day. It did mean quite a bit of stair climbing though. I got pretty fit when I was living there.

The schooling system there is quite different to what we are used to in the West. One of the biggest differences is that they will have a university city. In fact, there were several of these in Suzhou. They had huge areas where they combined quite a few universities all in the same area. There were thousands of students here, and buses came and went, and they were mini cities of their own really.

This picture was taken from my office, but the buildings in the distance are all different schools and universities.

I am still in contact with some of these students and teachers. This was an international school, so I had students from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, and quite a few from the Phillipines and Malaysia. Some of the students came to Australia to finish their degrees. This school was involved in a joint venture with the  Blue Mountains Hotel School, so they would come for their final year or two and graduate from their school in Sydney, Australia. Some of them have stayed on, and others have gone back to China and are now in good jobs in the hotel industry.