Thank you, No. 9 students! I wish we could’ve had more time together, but I’ve truly enjoyed my time with you all in class, around school, and outside.
I’d like to share some of my favorite moments from this week:
1. This week, we practiced making plans with others in English. After one of my morning classes, although they did have some trouble with the in-class activities, they immediately invited me after class to play badminton with them later in the week. In English! I was very proud of them.
2. I feel bad in each class when they ask me or when I tell them that this was the last week of English classes. At least a few students in each class seem sad that it’s over, and the nice things they say make me feel that I did do something meaningful here in the last few weeks.
I really enjoyed doing arts-and-crafts activities and playing games with the students at the special needs school, and I hope it was just as fun or more for the students as it was for me. The student I paired up with for arts-and-crafts taught me how to communicate a little bit in Chinese sign language, and he showed me both his and my names’ hand signals. Seeing him again the next day was fun because he has so much energy and runs around a lot!
The caring teachers at the school helped us communicate which made things more fun, and I admire them for what they do. On the first day, one of the teachers started telling me what we were going to do next, but as I often do when I’m around the other Duke students who can speak Chinese (all 5 are better than I am), I tried to defer to one of them. I immediately turned to Alexander for help, but he walked away, forcing me to have to listen and translate myself. Surprisingly, I think I did a decent job. Some of us spent a few minutes of our last oral English class at No. 9 encouraging our students to be more confident with English and all their endeavors, but like the students at No. 9, I could definitely use some more confidence in trying to practice speaking. Thanks Alexander!
We also visited an occupational school in Zhuhai, where the students and teachers were very welcoming and the student clubs’ performances were stellar. Alexander, Wesley, and I stayed long after everyone else left, giving us the opportunity to interact more with the students and to get to know more about their lives on campus. The day after, we stayed late again so that the students could take us around to see all the extracurricular clubs which I found fun and interesting! I thought it was nice seeing so many teachers staying behind to engage with the students, whether it was making sushi in the Japanese club or teachers playing badminton or basketball with students in the gym.
One thing that I really enjoy during our short time in China is that in most places, I can just be a person. Not a person that goes to Duke, but just a person. Looking almost Chinese also gets me less attention at the schools and on the streets than some of my less-Chinese-looking peers. I feel like I can walk outside anytime alone or with my host family without getting wide-eyed stares, so I can see Zhuhai life as it is naturally. That’s one thing I really enjoyed this week in the special needs school and after school at the occupational high school, that we could just interact with the students as people. Doing arts-and-crafts and playing games with the students at the special needs center, I felt just like a person doing fun things with new friends. After school at the occupational high school, I felt like we just people there too, just people who also play badminton and basketball, eat food, and joke around.
