Hi everyone,
interesting discussion:
Let me first say that I had not received notifications of the latest posts on this topic - probably the subject headline had changed - so up till 10 minutes ago the last email I was aware of was the one from Silverboy: and boy, would I like to thank you for that!!!
No Turnoi, I am far from a "newbie", I might be older than most of you (approaching 49) and I thought I had mentioned that I have worked in Vietnam and Asia - in the context of that I wouldn't be too easily fazed about a cold apartment or strange food on the street :-)
I have 6 years of teaching experience - but I have never been to China! I do not quite understand what you mean by doing my homework, Turnoi. Of course I have googled, searched, read, before posting here. The "official" websites told me all is easy peasy, so comments on sites, boards like this one seemed to be written by 20 year old boys complaining that China is not so clean or organised as the UK, or US. No offense meant. Furthermore I was specifically asking about EF AND the Normal uni - all the post I had read were about EF in general, teaching kids, etc., in a normal language school setting - which obviously is quite different to working in/for a uni.
I did not go into these details, but I find it increasingly difficult to find work (with a German passport) and what appealed to me was the 2 times 17 weeks uni-terms, allowing me plenty of time to return to Sydney in summer and winter. I also really don't like teaching kids. THOSE were the reasons why I even considered the job.
Again, Silverboy, thanks for taking the time - I am sure others, who are contemplating to go to work for EF, or the Normal Uni, now will find it much easier to do their homework. As for Turnoi: while I am a little lazy, I have learned that reading someones post thoroughly helps preventing misunderstandings a lot - you may also consider that you say you are far too busy to reply to my questions, yet you were obviously not too busy to reply to Silverboy's mail in quite some detail - please do NOT take this the wrong way! I do notice that you had even replied to my post before Silverboy did and that your position: NOT to reply in depth to my questions is certainly fair enough.
Being curious I had another look at my initial post, where I said: I have worked in India and Vietnam, and maybe those problems that other teachers have experienced as big problems would not faze me quite as much?

Again, I DO NOT want to be right here, I may never ever talk to you guys again. It is probably, most likely, just a sore spot of mine, when I see that people (TEACHERS!!!) don't even READ emails properly and then come up with explanations which are obviously not appropriate at all -

again, no offense and thanks to silverboys really detailed explanations!

Jurgen