Bvdub - RA449 Mix

So this crossroads in your life in China that you mentioned?

Well yes, there's the whole "my life of 14 years" thing. I've been teaching for 16 years, with the last 14 being in China (with a couple years in the middle being back in the States, and coming back and forth). I have an admittedly very love-hate relationship with China (but who doesn't with any place, I guess), but the one thing I've always loved, and the only thing that's really kept me here, is my job as a university English professor. I rule my class with an iron fist and am undoubtedly the strictest, often cruelest, and most terrifying teacher in all of China, foreign or Chinese, but there is nothing I wouldn't do for my students, and they know it. I love them like my own family—even if only a fraction of them love me back in the same way. But that's the life of a teacher.
So to all of a sudden be told by the government that they weren't going to renew my visa anymore, and that it was "time for me to go home" was one of the most saddening, crushing, angering and frankly insulting things I could ever imagine—not to mention confusing, as last year I was awarded the title of the best foreign teacher in all of China by the same government that was now telling me my services would no longer be needed.

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