marieh wrote:
> Is this even an international school, or just a private Chinese school?
>
> If you're that miserable and it's not a legitimate international school,
> just walk away. You wouldn't be the first TEFL teacher to do so. No, they
> will not be able to sue you internationally. Obviously you won't be able to
> use them as a reference, but that's something that can be dealt with
> further down the line.


No, it's not an international school, just a private one. I don't really care about the reference because I have other good references from teaching. They seem to think they will be able to sue me unless I pay the maximum breach penalty, which is $8K, and which I don't want to pay. I'll pay the minimum, 800, but they will consider that illegal since they get to set the penalty, and want the maximum. Have any other teachers broken contract without paying the breach penalty, and gone home with no consequences?

I came to China to teach English with my boyfriend at a small private school in a small city. The job ad said the city was clean, and we didn't find anything online that suggested otherwise, but when we got here we realized the pollution is really bad, and that by "clean," they meant cleaner than Beijing.

Along with the pollution, I've had a lot of other problems while in China, both health-wise and mentally. I've been to the hospital 3 times for heart, lung, stomach/bowel, knee, throat, and neck problems. I've never had so many health issues in my life. Can they really all be stress-related? Knee pain from stress?

Anyway, I'm not sure what is causing what, but I've also developed frequent panic attacks, insomnia, and hypochondria (even though some of the health issues are definitely not in my head, which makes the hypochondria even worse...)
I feel like I'm losing my mind. I've never had these problems before. All of these things make my life really miserable here and I'm depressed every day. I wake up incredibly sad and nothing matters enough to me here to make me feel any better. The only time I feel good is when I'm sleeping or drunk, and when I took a vacation to Japan.

I've been here 6 months now and am not seeing any sign of these things subsiding. My contract doesn't end for another six months and being here is really just not worth the toll it's taking on my health. I don't want to screw over my school by leaving, but they don't really seem to care that I'm miserable and going insane. And I don't think they understand, but they also seem to be making efforts NOT to understand, because understanding would give them a reason to let me leave, which would make them lose money, which is the most important thing to them. When they asked me why I wanted to leave, I told them all the above reasons, and why I'm depressed and that I've never had insomnia or hypochondria or panic attacks before, let alone so many health issues. They interrupted my explanation of these things to tell me that if my lungs hurt, it's probably because my apartment is dirty (they came over unannounced after a . we had for other ex-pats and were still cleaning), so the bacteria in the air is what causes my lung problems, not the pollution. Yeah right. And they said I could be lying about never having had these problems before, so they can't take that as a valid reason. So basically they asked my why I wanted to leave, I gave them a bunch of reasons that weren't criticisms of them or their school, and they interrupted me and criticized me for being a slob and a liar. Okay.

I'm trying to weigh my options. If they don't find new teachers within the next month or two (which they say they're trying to do, but I struggle to believe anything they say considering how evasive and deceptive they are sometimes), I'm inclined to just book a flight and get to the US before they know what happened. The breach penalty for my contract is between $800 USD and $8000. It seems unreasonable to make me pay $8000, which is twice what I've even been able to save, to a school who cares so little about my health. What would happen if I paid nothing, or the minimum breach penalty, and just left?
Would they be able to sue me internationally? They seem to think that they would.

My health is more important than money, and I need to get out of here. What can I do without screwing myself over?
"Get over it and deal" comments are unnecessary and will be ignored :)

Thank you!