By Elizabeth Zhang
Last English classes!!!
Although I sometimes get frustrated when students don’t pay attention in class, I’m still going to miss seeing their smiling faces when we walk into their classroom. Just like Professor Ku said, it’s not about how many vocabulary words they remember, but about the relationships we build with the kids. When we told the kids that it was our last class, they immediately asked us when we were leaving Zhuhai, hoping we would get to hang out one last time. One of my students held onto my arm, not wanting me to leave, but I assured her that we would still be here the week after we come back from our trip. I think the most important thing I have learned from these kids is patience. It takes a lot of courage to speak in a foreign language to someone you barely know, but if you’re patient enough to listen, you might meet a new friend.
On Tuesday, Wes and I grabbed dinner with Lu Peng, one of the No. 9 middle school staff. I honestly don’t know what we would’ve done without him. He has helped us so much with our film class. From teaching us how to block all the computers so the kids wouldn’t be able to play games on it to helping us convert files, Lu Peng has always patiently helped us with our problems. Lu Peng is extremely knowledgeable and seems to know a bit of everything. It was nice getting to know more about him, and I definitely learned a lot from him. I think coming here, I thought majority of my friendships would be with the students at No. 9, but the teachers and staff are also amazing people and I wish I spent more time with talking with them.
This week my host sibling’s grandparents from both sides and my host mom’s brothers family came over to have dinner together. Seeing grandparents from both sides of the family at the dinner table was a strange and unfamiliar idea to me. When my host mom told me both grandparents lived in the same complex as them, I was even more shocked. As a child of immigrants, my grandparents were never in the same country at the same time. My mom’s parents live in China while my dad’s parents live in America with my aunt, so I never saw my grandparents from both sides at the same time. My host mom told me that back then it was uncommon for families to live extremely close to each other, but now it was getting more common for entire families to move closer to each other, even living in the same complex if families are finically capable. When I listen to the stories my host parents tell me, I often find myself surprised because it is not quite the same as what I have heard from my parents and relatives in China. It’s really interesting learning about the differences between my host parents’ generation and the generation my parents were born in. Because of how fast China was developing, just a decade has created extremely different childhoods for these 2 generations.
Last weekend with the host fam:
My host family is actually going to America the day we come back from our trip, and they’re coming back the day before I leave Zhuhai. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I feel like this week has been my favorite week with my host family. With classes ending, we had more time to spend together, and this weekend my host mom took me and my host siblings as well as our family friend, Jordon, to Chimelong Ocean Kingdom and spent the night at a nearby campground. Even with her busy work schedule, my host mom managed to take us all out for a mini vacation. Everything was so well planned. We spent the day looking at different exhibits, going on roller coaster rides, and watching a beluga whale show. Later that night we met up with my host mom’s brother’s family and Jordon’s family at a campground that had cabins for us to stay in with an amusement park right next to it. Out of all the fun places we went to, my favorite part of the day was honestly just sitting around the table talking, laughing, eating fruit and sunflower seeds, enjoying each other’s company. They truly made me feel like I was part of their big family, and I’m sad we have to say our goodbyes so early.
