Thanks for all your advice everyone. We called the director at Jinan yesterday to workout some of the contract terms. The final agreement is that we would pay for our own living cost during the training period. The only thing AES will cover is the transportation cost from Dalian to Jinan (pennies compared to the hotel cost for the 7 days). The only assistance they are able to provide us is an advance on our paycheck, in the form of 1000RMB/week. When we calcuate the cost of everything to us and compare it to what we'll be making, it's kind of sad since the first 2-3 months' pay will all go towards the initial cost of the plane ticket ($1000), passport ($100), visa fee ($200), training ($108), and hotel ($300). The only reason we're going to China is to get some teaching experience, making money wasn't part of our plans, but losing a tonne of money wasn't either. Oh well, hopefully this will be a very fulfilling experience, otherwise, it will all be for nothing.