Chapter 401.


    <strong>Chapter 401. A Heart-Pounding Day Together with My Girlfriend: Eating Marshmallows while Telling a Campfire Story. (2/4)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">So anyway, she received her two years long teachers college degree in her country about fourteen years before I was born. After she received it she worked as a teacher for eight years. In her country, although the education was free, you had to at least work two years in her country as a teacher otherwise you’d have to pay back the government all the money you received for your education.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Was that to prevent teachers from immediately fleeing to other countries where they could receive better pay after receiving their education?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes, it was. Though she would have loved to, she didn’t immediately leave for another country back then because of this. She was working for next to nothing as an elementary school teacher. High school teachers in her country were paid three times more than elementary school teachers. However, universities in her county weren’t redited at that time so getting a degree in her country at the time wasn’t recognized in foreign countries. It was a major waste of money to get a degree that wasn’t recognized elsewhere.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, it would definitely suck spending all that time and money only to be told it amounted to nothing.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I nodded in full agreement before I continued recounting my mother’s bumpy life, “Whenever summer or winter breaks came around, she’d travel to another country using the money she painstakingly saved up working as an elementary school teacher. After converting her money into foreign currency she’d barely have anything because of how bad the exchange rate wasbined with hercking pay. She couldn’t go around spendingvishly with the tiny bit of money she made as an elementary school teacher, the most she could do was take in the sights.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wait, but after the two years she worked in her county, why didn’t she try moving to another country?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa stuck another roasted marshmallow into my mouth.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When I finished swallowing the marshmallow I exined, “Well, she’d gotten a car and she had two years left to pay off on it, she didn’t want to give it up.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What about the four years she continued teaching after that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Honestly… she probably could have. But I guess it was a sense of helplessness. She didn’t know anything about thews or the immigration process. It was only about three to four years before I was born that she decided to further her education and aim to be a high school teacher by applying to the university in the city her father had been living. As I mentioned before, her mother refused to pay for her to receive an education. However, her father was different. He offered to help her pay for her education. As such, she applied here as an international student and actually got epted.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh, her father sounds like a pretty great guy.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah… he was a good father to her.” When he died she was leftpletely on her own and had to fend for herself. I didn’t bother to mention a gloomy detail like that though.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“The degree my mother took was a four-year one, but she was able to get two years transferred over for the teacher’s college degree she received in her country. It wasn’t until she actually attended university here that she finally looked into and learned how the immigration process worked. Only when she finally knew how it worked did she see a bit of hope. If her father sponsored her it was possible for her to move to the country. She’d need to be screened and show that she would be an overall benefit to the country through the system they had in ce, but it was at least something possible.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… by the way, did she find someone in university?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She avoided bringing up the subject of my father directly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes, while she was attending university in this city she did meet someone and got married. But things went sour between them not long after they got married. In thest term before she was about to get her degree, the person she married tried to have her deported and sent back to her country. He filed for divorce a few months after I was conceived, but by that time my mother wasn’t in any condition to make sound judgment ording to my mother’s doctor andwyer. She was bedridden in the hospital. As she couldn’t sign the papers, the divorce proceedings were dyed until after I was born.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But get this, despite being the one who filed for the divorce, he had the gall to not even show his face in court. He even sent someone in his ce who recorded the proceedings in secret for whatever reason when doing so was not allowed.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why would he do that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Who knows? Maybe he’s an idiot.” I shrugged it off as Rosa fed me a third marshmallow.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Anyway, after they divorced, my mother was deported back to her home country a year after I was born.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You didn’t get to stay?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“They told her she could leave me for the government to raise since I was born here and a citizen, but she couldn’t stay. She refused and took me back to her country with her.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“As soon as she got back to her home country, she had to find a way to survive. She started up teaching again, but this time she was running things herself in a fashion that would be closer to what tutoring is.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“She bought six chairs and one long table. That was all she had to her name and what she started out with. The business model she came up with was to teach one to three subjects to a child. If taking one subject she charged them what would be equivalent to $35 per month in our currency after adjusting for intion. Two and three subjects would be $30 and $28 respectively per subject.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Within the first month, she saw massive sess with her one on one teaching method, what followed was an explosive boom of customers. Children who were taught by her saw immediate improvements in their grades and word traveled very quickly.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Only two months in, she rapidly expanded and hired three more teachers as she couldn’t keep up with the insane demand. She also bought up tables and chairs like crazy. She ended up with about six long tables and a hundred chairs. She was running this gig out of her mother’s poorly maintained backyard and basement she’d been cast aside to. She quickly racked up 239 students who’d dropped by all throughout the day.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“She effectively ran a school with a capacity of 239 students who showed up every day while providing personalized lessons which operated Monday through Thursday. One set of kids woulde in from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM, the next set would show up anywhere between 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM. She even had adultsing in for lessons from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wait, hold up,” Rosa stuck out a stick and shoved the marshmallow on it into my mouth. If she’d said ‘objection’ just now, I probably would have burst out intoughter. When I bit into the marshmallow, she pulled the stick back and continued, “so you’re saying four teachers were dealing with 239 students AND providing a one-on-one teaching experience? Even with those long working hours, how does that even work out?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, the kids would be around for an hour and a half for each subject. They didn’t show up all at once though. It wasn’t the same as a ssroom where everyone was being taught the same thing at the exact same time. The teachers would exin things to them one by one, provide them with problems to solve, and while they were doing so, the teachers would move on to help the next student in the meantime. Whenever one of the students got stuck on anything, the teacher woulde back to them and exin things in a simple, very easy-to-understand manner. The children actually enjoyed being taught when they realized they could actually understand the problems and they didn’t want to leave.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That sounds... really exhausting though. Just how much work and effort would that take?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A lot obviously. But my mother was earning quite a sum of money this way. She was quite generous with the sry she paid the three teachers she hired. Converting it to our currency and adjusting for intion it would work out to about $325 a month. But with how well it was doing, after six months she raised it to a bit over $400.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That’s considered a generous sry?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well yeah, keep in mind, for her third world country, this sry was quite good. The cost of living was also lower in the past. This sry was on par with what high school teachers were paid there. Three times more than an elementary school teacher.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I see. From the sound of it, she’d be making quite a bit of money for herself though with that many students.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“She did make a decent sum...”


    Was it really worth it in the end though...