allow me to clarify.

It was brought to my attention by an anonymous comment on my previous post that my word choice was perhaps ignorant: Imagine that. Working in China and you're "forced" to listen to instructions in Chinese. I'd love to respond to this, because, frankly, it's exactly what I meant.

In writing about being forced to sit in a meeting conducted entirely in Chinese... where our boss told us, yes, this meeting will be in Chinese and, yes, she knows we won't understand a thing. Our "translators" spoke precisely three sentences to us during the half hour meeting. How foolish to have two of the native English speakers sit through a meeting in Chinese. Especially when the native English speakers at the venues were brought there specifically for their communication abilities.

We are working where we are working because (and this has been said to us by nearly everyone we work with) the Chinese students need help with their English skills and communicating to other English-speaking people (namely press) that will be at our venue. It's really not up to me that English has become such a worldwide language... it happened, and I'm thankful I am a native speaker of it. I've said a number of times in previous blog posts that I am motivated to learn Mandarin. But since I don't, and I'm working with people who are aware that they need help from native English speakers, I do find it fruitless to have two of us sit in on a training that is in only Chinese.

In addition, working at an Olympic venue, regardless of the city, is an international experience with all kinds of languages being spoken. It is understood that not everyone will be able to communicate in their native languages. But it is also understood that, when working on a team with others who do not speak the same language, all parties have to work together. Most days, our supervisors will not even address the group English (all of the Chinese students we work with do speak English, however they are not perfect).

It takes a great deal of patience to work with the communication barriers I work with, and yes, it is difficult to justify wasting my time sitting through a meeting I can not understand when I could be working productively somewhere else in the venue.

Thanks for pointing this out. I realize it must be hard to understand exactly what our work environment is like, and I am happy to clarify.