The foreign teachers had a meeting with the vice-president (who once again called me fat, I found this out afterwards because none of the teachers translating would translate his meanness) about our experiences here as well as our suggestions for improvements. Lots of notes were taken by the Chinese staff, but nothing's going to come of any of our input, so it was a big waste of time. Although it did get me out of having to go to the New Campus for English Corner, so that was a bonus.
Towards the end of the meeting Niels brought up safety concerns because of the Carrefour protests and if they could please let us know of places to avoid because of the ant-foreign sentiment that's going on. The Chinese teachers all laughed and said there was nothing to worry about. Needless to say we all got annoyed and Niels called them out, in a very polite way, and informed them that we as foreigners are nervous and they should take that seriously. But they brushed him off and said that the protests are over so there was nothing else to worry about. One of the other foreign teachers asked if someone could talk to the security guards and tell them they shouldn't tell people where we live because she's tired of having random people knock on her door. That got their attention, but will they act on it, doubt it, not unless something happens to one of us, then they'll still someone brush it off.
There are more protests scheduled for next week, I doubt we're going to be told about them.
On the upside of all of this, we did have a nice dinner with some friends last night and were able to have a really good discussion about the current mood in China and the difference between their reactions to that of our school's was like night and day.
