a home stay

It turns out that the vast majority of employment opportunities available to expats in Beijing are positions in which English is the primary—if not only—language of business and communication. While this was not something that I anticipated, I must admit that it makes a lot of sense. Surely any Chinese working in an office that recruits expats and has an international flavor must have at least a minimal level of fluency and functionality in English. Therefore, it would be a waste of time, energy and resources for many of the expats here who speak broken Chinese—much like I do—to use it in the office in lieu of English.
How, then, does this matter for me? For starters, it has helped to define what I want to do for the next several months. As the majority of expats jobs utilize English most of the time, it follows that, were I to get a “real” job in the near future, I’d severely limit my opportunity to improve my Chinese on a consistent basis. Therefore, I’ve decided to continue taking classes through January and to look into possible home stay opportunities. It’s not that I need to speak better Chinese, it’s that I want to. I’m in China, so I figure that I should try to branch out and learn about things that are not isolated to the fun, but small and insular, expat community.
Another advantage of the home stay is that it will give me an opportunity to really immerse myself in the culture, which is surprisingly difficult to do in a city like Beijing that has such a large and strong expat presence. In short, I guess you could say that I’ve decided to devote the time from now until the first of the year to the language and culture; after the Chinese New Year, I hope to transition into more substantive work-related undertakings.
Until January, I’m looking into volunteering with various organizations. My current list of criteria incluses: flexible hours, use of Chinese, and a good—think leftwing human rights/environmental/orphan—cause.