I never anticipated that by the age of twenty two I would be teaching children and I especially didn't expect those children to be Chinese. My plan in life was to become a speech and language therapist and a trip to China to teach English has never been on the cards, so when the opportunity arose as you can imagine, I jumped at the chance.
I have always been a bit of a 'home girl', I prefer to be close to home so that I have my friends and family to fall back on should things go disastrously wrong for me, so travelling this far away on my own was quite daunting to think about. Not just for me but for my mum too.
When I arrived in China, I was overwhelmed by how different it was to back home, it felt like a different world and I was fascinated by every little detail, in particular the food, which was so different to the Chinese food you get in take always in the UK. Within the first few days I had tried a number of strange dishes that I never thought I would ever try, including fried locust and a ton of street food! As well as this I have already seen some really bizarre customs in China that you wouldn't get back at home, for example a child who is being potty trained in China is not likely to wear a nappy but will wear trousers with a hole in the back meaning that you can see their bums but allows them easy access when they need the toilet. Strange or what!
As with any country however you need to acclimatise to the weather and I did not for one second imagine that it would be as hot as it is. This led to me becoming sick and dehydrated and having to have an IV drip in my hand in the first week of my being here (I'm all better now and have water permanently attached to me now!).
As for the teaching side of things I am really enjoying it! To begin with we have three summer camps lasting three days each where each of the foreign teachers were paired with a Chinese teacher and were split into competing teams. The children in the camps are so lovely and hang on your every word because you are foreign which is a big change to at home where the children would misbehave and not listen to you at all. After the summer camps the foreign teachers get four days off and we are planning on going to explore Shanghai before beginning teaching in the WenJoy classrooms.
As I am writing this, we have a day off between the second and third summer camps and we are going to see the Mini Terracotta Army in Xuzhou. Everything is so exciting and interesting and so far I am loving every second.
0 comments:
Post a Comment