The End is Nigh (Courtney)

So, we are down to our final days as teachers and Chinese residents. This time in two weeks we will have cleared customs in Melbourne and be..somewhere!

This week has been dubbed "Operation Avoidance", in an attempt to remain unseen by all leaders of the school. Why you ask? Well, there is this iddy bitty clause in our contract which has been causing us much stress over the last few weeks. It's the Breach of Contract Fee, which can range from $500 to $2000 USD, if either party breach the contract. In our initial talks with the school it was never mentioned, but then during drunken Teachers' Day celebrations it was mentioned...in a very underhanded type of way by a certain individual. This sent us into a spin, and we have been at a loss as to what to do ever since. Bring it up? Ignore it? Hope we get to the last day and there isn't security waiting for us?! It's been weighing on our minds greatly.

However, we figured if it was mentioned as a requirement to our leaving, we would play the card of "well, you agreed to release us and have only brought this up now", coupled with "actually, you don't have to reimburse our flights, you didn't pay for medical insurance...and actually here are all the things we were promised which never happened...so I think we are square". And if all of that failed, our last attempt would be to get mediation with the Education Department in Nanjing.

So we have tried our best to be scarce around the school and so far it had worked. We want to leave on good terms.

And then this morning the phone rang. Whilst we can run, we obviously can't hide. It was Mr Pan's office number and we stood over the phone as it rang, umming and aahing at to whether we should answer it. We figured he would just call again or come over so I picked up the phone.

"Courtney, I come to your home with termination contract."

Panic. We know by rights there has to be a termination contract but that didn't make us any more eager to see it. So Mr Pan comes over to show us the contract, which we will sign tomorrow with Mr Shen. He handed me the contract and I couldn't even read it, all I could do was frantically scan it for the fee. And then I see it, a sentence with the words "$500 - $2000 USD" included and my heart sank. Figured I had better read the whole thing properly and see what we were up for.

Well well my friends, the gods have shined, because the sentence read "Party B agrees to pay Party A a breaking fee of between $500 to $2000. However, Party A has forgiven Party B, so no penalty will apply."

OH YEAH!!!! Oh the weight that has been lifted from our shoulders. I can't tell you how many times we have spoken about this in the last few weeks, not once coming to a conclusion about what to do. So to read that was just the definition of relief and happiness. And it also proves to us yet again that Mr Shen, the principle, is a very decent man. We have great respect for him and have never felt like he would not do the right thing by us. Unfortunately a lot of people cannot say the same thing about the schools they work for.

So the end is nigh. Two more days of classes and we are done. It's an odd feeling, as so far this week it hasn't felt as though we are leaving - obviously Operation Avoidance had something to do with this. But now it feels real, we are actually leaving. We meet Marcus' mum on Saturday in Shanghai which is just going to be fantastic and before you know it we will be back in Melbourne. Next week is the National holiday however Mr Pan is still going to be here until Wednesday, so Jann can meet him and we can get to say a proper goodbye which is what we have wanted.

Tomorrow night we will have Matt and Abby over and enjoy a final supper together. And somewhere in between classes, dinner and Shanghai we have a heck of a lot of stuff to do! Nothing like moving country twice in one year to send you into organisational chaos. Speaking of which, I have things to do!