Job Discussion Forums

[MELEE]

One of the greatest lessons living in the "developing" world has taught me: Babies (and children) don't need all that stuff people in the US think they do.

Being a newlywed in Mexico, I'm asked at least once a week when the baby's due. So it is something that I have to think about a lot. I would like to have a child, but the biggest challenge to our relationship and my sanity would be parenthood. I'm fluent in Spanish and my husband fairly competent in English (He's passed FCE) and I feel like we have few linguistic misunderstandings. We do however have cultural misunderstandings. A child would compound these (much more than having different first languages).

In terms of raising the child, my mother-in-law would be a much bigger player than she is in our lives now, we get along well now, (she and I) but when I see her with her current grandchildren, I get a shiver in my bones. Would we be able to understand each other? Or would we be constantly fighting? I would want her to be one of the caretakers because there is a great gift she would be able to give my child--a language. Her first language is not the same as my husband's, and I'd want our child to be trilingual, to know his or her heritage language, to help preserve a dying culture. But some of the treatments of newborns here, go beyond just being different, so are (in my belief system) detrimental. (Like keeping a smoking cigarette butt next to the cradle to ward off "mala aire") Would I be able to resist taking the credit card and the baby and getting on the first bus to the airport?

[Seth]

In China I taught mostly kindergarten and primary school. I didn't really want to teach those groups, per se, but I learned to love it after a while. I guess I echo Roger's thoughts, in that I learned that I kinda like kids and found myself wishing I had some. Especially Chinese kids as they're so cute, when they aren't punching you in the crotch or sticking their finger up your bum.

It was rather sad, though, as at Chinese private boarding school kids are basically abandoned for the year to a drab, strictly regimented life of 12 hour school days and teachers who won't give them any kind of punishment or guidance for fear of the parents. Then there are the parents, but we don't need to go into that. Kids were basically starved for affection and I found myself subject to a lot of hand-holding and hugs and I couldn't sit down in public without little students crawling on my lap. Sometimes they'd ask me if they could sleep with me in my room (asked in all innocense, of course). It was fun and sad at the same time.

Once on CCTV nine there was a documentary about an old Canadian woman who married an old Chinese man. Neither could speak the other's language at all. The woman was a crazy old bat, though, so I don't know if you could make a case study out of it!

[Roger]

there was that story in some recent newspaper about an Amrican woman in her 40's, divorced and filthy wealthy who craved a challenge, started a relationshhip with a Chinese in Sichuan via the Internet.
BOth had children from their earlier relationships.
SHe moved to China, hated the living conditions but loved the man and his child, and vice versa.
Now they are happily together (I do not know if they have married yet).
An interesting story from a number of points of view! Well, I guess the money the woman has helped her weather many a storm.

[denise]

[MELEE]

[Albulbul]

Well is it love or is it the lure of being married to a wealthy foreigner ?
Or is it a bit of both ? You can never be sure. But this is life. And remember "Kising don't last but cooking do." as our transatlantic cousins so rightly put it. Long after you have forgotten about love, sex and whatever, economics will still keep you together. Unless you choose to have a married ife like some of my colleagues and most Hollywood filmstars !