We're Done

Done done done done done.

We sent an email to the school administration informing them that we will not be back to teach 2nd semester and if they would like us to leave now, we will do so immediately.

Today, Liz's out of hand, unteachable class went completely crazy. Over a cell phone. One particularly obnoxious disrespectful student who's cell phone has been taken away several times, the last of which we did not give it back, came up to Liz at the end of class and repeatedly demanded it back. When Liz said no, he began yelling and got in our faces. The rest of the class was getting rowdy so with 2 minutes left of class we decided we had better leave. We gathered our things and began to move towards the door. The student ran to the door and physically blocked it and began yelling hit me and making very aggressive gestures. Now, nothing in the world would have been more satisfying than knocking his brains to the floor, but I grabbed Liz's hand and headed for the other door. He pushed past us and ran to block that one as 3 or 4 of his henchmen stood up to come to his aid. They formed an aggressive, smelly Chinese highschool boy blockade which we outsmarted by turning around and leaving through the front door. As he tried to run past me again to block the door I found it necessary to physically hinder his ability to do so, fearing for my wife's safety. Fortunately (for his sake) he did not throw any punches and we walked around the school past several offices as the entire posse of boys followed wildly. We tried to find someone who spoke English to explain the situation and get them to stop following us and finally we were able to make someone understand that they tried to hit us and were completely out of hand. 

We are now hiding in our apartment and have alerted our fellow English teacher/translator that we will not be teaching our 2 classes tonight. Thankfully the students leave for break tomorrow (which is why he was so mad today), so we will have some relative safety, barring any objects thrown through windows.

We'll keep you updated.

In other news, we're escaping this forsaken place for the relative peace of West Lake in Hangzhou for 2 days. We were going to go somewhere cool that we haven't been to 3 times already, but we need to save our money in case we need to make some emergency travel plans...............sigh.