During my first year in China, I had lots of adventures. Some of them were traumatic, some of them were fun, and most of them were crazy. But over the years, I’ve developed less patience for things that look like they are going to be crazy. I started saying no to activities that seemed like more stress than fun. But the thing is, those crazy adventures make the best stories, and they have lots of opportunities to learn and grow. This semester, I decided to say yes to one of those adventures. Actually, I said yes last semester when I had a bit more time, but that’s typically how adventures go.
Several years ago, some friends and I went to a village in Guizhou. Guizhou is one of my favorite provinces with the mountains and the rice paddies and the delightful people with interesting customs and dances in their traditional minority clothes. The first time we went, we stayed with a family in their home. They had converted it into a large house with several rooms for guests. The wooden structure still smelled new and fresh.
When I travel, I almost always take games, and this was no exception. The 8-year-old daughter of the family saw my friends and I playing Uno one evening, and when we noticed her watching, we invited her to join us. We chatted about her life and her school. She kind of hated her school, and as she stole my heart, a seed was planted. I wished I could go to a village and teach the village kids.
But thinking about the logistics behind that was overwhelming. I have changed jobs before, and going through the process of canceling my work permit, applying for a new work permit card, then a new visa, getting a stay visa in the process because it’s impossible to finish everything in the allotted time, and then moving is a nightmare. The process includes lots of frustration and lots of tears. And that’s just moving to another school in the same city. How much harder would it be to move to a different city in another province. The dream was still there, but I couldn’t see a way to do it. Until last semester.
One of my classes was canceled, so I didn’t have enough teaching hours. My department, the Faculty of English Language and Culture, has a partnership with two schools in another town several hours away. The town is called 乳源 (Ru Yuan) in a suburb of 韶关 (Shao Guan). Our school provides funding and some special activities and teachers. Last semester, they asked me to go once a month or two. I agreed and then waited and waited for them to plan the trip. The semester ended, and they still hadn’t planned anything, but they asked me to go the next semester every month. I wasn’t so sure about that since the school gave me two new classes. Also, I wasn’t sure about committing to something that I might not like.
After all the classes ended last semester, and right before I headed back to America for a visit, the school finally arranged for a visit to the school. I didn’t get to meet any kids, but I met the headmasters and head English teachers for the elementary school and for the middle school that we wanted to work with. We had lots of tea, some great local food, and chatted about what was going to happen in the coming semester. I came away from the trip feeling a bit overwhelmed and still confused about what was going on.
But I still had that desire to teach in the village, and this opportunity gave me that chance without having to give up my job or my life in Guangzhou, or my visa. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. I agreed to try it for a semester.
Last week, I had my first adventure to the village, and it was an adventure. About a week before I went, the middle school told me that they wanted me to teach a drama class for some students for an hour and a half each month. The drama needed to be 10 minutes long, and the students’ English was minimal. I spent several days searching for an appropriate drama, but I couldn’t find anything that had enough action to be interesting for kids and enough parts and within the time limit. Finally, I took a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and asked AI to adapt it to middle school level. I felt a bit guilty using AI, but I figured that I didn’t have enough time to write one myself. I liked the version AI gave me and I made some edits to fix errors and to simplify things even more.
When I arrived at the middle school, the vice-principal told me that the students could barely speak English. They were at a “Hello!” and “How are you?” level. Well, this hour and a half would be interesting. But thankfully this play had lots of action, and I was pretty sure I could communicate at least the main idea of the story by acting it out. The students had a lot of fun with that, and we went through it twice to familiarize them with the story.
Next we started looking at the script. We read it slowly, and I explained new words with lots of energy and lots of actions. Some of the students could understand more than others, and they managed to get most of it. After reading a section, we would return to the stage to act out that part with the words. Pyramus and Thisby looked through the whole made of Wall’s fingers and talked about their “love.” The kids had fun with that.
That evening, the vice-principal gave us her card to use at the cafeteria. I naively assumed that it would be a teachers cafeteria because that’s where the teachers ate at my middle school in Guangzhou. Nope, we walked in to long lines of students who smiled and waved when they saw me. I felt a bit like a celebrity, but I was also pretty tired. We chose a line and were soon surrounded by lots of girls who wanted to chat. Some of them used some English that they had learned, simple things like “Where are you from?” or “What’s your name?” but I was proud of them for trying to speak to a foreigner. But many of the students didn’t even try and just spoke in Chinese. I usually don’t speak in Chinese to people when I’m trying to teach them English, but I gave up. I decided that here I would encourage the relationships and hopefully that would help the students feel comfortable enough to try to use the English they had learned.
The line to get food took a long time because it’s hard to move forward in line when you’re surrounded by 10-20 students. But we finally made it and got our food. A few girls stuck with me and my assistant, Julia, the entire time, and I ended up sitting with them. I loved chatting with them and hearing about their lives in school.
By the time we left, I was completely exhausted, but I loved seeing all the kids with their smiling faces.
“I’m going to give you a gift tomorrow,” one girl promised.
“You don’t need to do that!” I tried to assure her, but she was determined.
Julia and I finally pulled away from the kids who had walked us all the way to the gate. We took a taxi back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and headed back out for a relaxing walk around the river. Our hotel was right on the river, and there was a delightful walking trail around it with bridges to the opposite side so we could walk around. I enjoyed chatting with Julia who was from a village in Sichuan, on these walks. The evening air was cool and fresh, and the lights from the buildings sparkled on the river.
We passed older people singing karaoke with loud speakers and a group of women dancing in sync while they played large drums. I’ve seen a lot of square dancing in China, but this was my first time to see women dancing in the square while playing drums!
The next morning, we were back at the middle school to teach classes. I taught 5 classes about hobbies, and the students were excellent. They responded to my questions when they knew them and learned quickly when they didn’t know them. We played charades with hobbies, and I had the students act out a hobby. Kids eagerly raised their hands to guess the answer. After 4 hours of teaching, I was exhausted, but I decided to go to the cafeteria anyway. The vice principal had gotten our food so we didn’t have to wait in the long line this time.
On my way to the cafeteria, a girl ran up to me and handed me a key chain with a fluffy toy.
“Here is the gift,” she said.
I thanked her for her kindness, and then she disappeared. Many of the same kids from the day before found us at lunch and sat with us again. The vice principal urged them to speak English, and many of them really tried. We took pictures together, smiled, and chatted more.
Even though talking to all of those kids was tiring, I was so thankful that I could meet them and hopefully share a bit of motivation for them to learn English.
“I can’t speak any English!” One girl moaned in Chinese.
“Well, how about you learn 3 questions in English to ask me next time I come?” I encouraged her.
I’m not sure if she will. To be honest, I’m not even sure which student I said that to, but I hope that she can find some motivation to study well. And if not, I hope that I can motivate her in other areas. Maybe her passion isn’t English. That’s ok. There are many wonderful things to do, and I hope I can encourage her to do well in whatever she chooses to do.
I also spent a morning at an elementary school. I received some information about that about a week ahead of time. I would be teaching 1000 students total in two classes. The younger kids would go first, and there would be about 500 learning how to count from 1-10. The head English teacher sent me a lesson plan, and I was really thankful because I have very little experience teaching kids a foreign language. The lesson was very well-prepared, and since all of the classroom teachers were helping to keep their class in order, it went pretty well. The kids had fun with the activities, and they were very eager to answer the questions. The head teacher helped by going around with another microphone to get the students at the back of the lecture hall.
Five hundred students in one class, especially little kids, was quite the adventure, but I was happy to see the students excited and eager to participate. I taught the older group of elementary students some animals. The activities were a bit less interactive, and I could see some of the students starting to lose interest by the end, but overall, they did very well.
After those two 40-minute classes, we went around taking pictures with each group of students. The headmaster didn’t want anyone to feel left out, so we took pictures with everyone. We had missed some of the younger kids, so we also went around to some of their classes to take more pictures. They were so cute and eager to participate.
As I was leaving on the last day, some of the kids thought I was going back to America. They were shocked that I live in Guangzhou.
“I’ll see you next month!” I said as I left. I wish I had lots of me to go around and have a meaningful conversation with each of those beautiful kids, but I’m thankful for the people that I did get to talk to. Even though it was tiring, I’m also looking forward to going back next month and seeing these kids who are precious to my Lord. He made in His image after all. He knows and loves each one of them, and I want to love them also.
Before we left, Julia and I had a little time to visit a temple that some of my students from the university had said was really beautiful. The temple was nestled in the mountains, and even though I don’t agree with the religion, I loved the peace and quiet of the buildings and the waterfalls and the little area with lots of butterflies.
