I've been home for a few weeks now and have been attending my parents ward. Each week I seem to be bombarded with more-or-less annoying questions from curious women, past leaders, and fellow ward members. "Did you graduate? What are you doing here? How long are you staying? You're going to China, what will that be like?" Though frustrated, I whip out a smile and answer: "No, I live here, until February, I don't know I have never been". But my answers never seem to satisfy them. Who knows why? It did make me realize though, that I may have been doing a bad job of explaining to everyone (not just my parents' friends) what I am going to be doing for the next 5 months. I guess I don't like answering questions for people who will forget what I say two minutes later, ask me the same questions the next week, or don't really care. BUT, for those of you that do care, I am going to explain what my upcoming adventure consists of, in hopes of enlightening you and maybe making my question-answering skills more refined.
Where am I going? To Hefei, China, the capital of the Anhui Province, in central, east China. It is a city of over 4 million people and is located about an hour west of Shanghai. If you're still confused about where this is here is a picture. Or you could pull up wikipedia or google earth.
When am I going? I leave on February 6th and return on June 18th. If you have a hard time with math, that's more than four months. Yes, I know that's a long time.
Who am I going with? The program I am going with is called ILP or International Language Programs. This program is based in Provo, UT and used to be affiliated with BYU, but is no longer. It is completely volunteer. (http://www.ilp.org) The other volunteers that are going to Hefei are all girls. I haven't met any of them, but typically, because ILP is based in Provo, they are LDS and about my age.
What will I be doing? Primarily, I will be teaching English to 4-6 year old children in the Hefei Guanghua School. (http://www.hfghxx.com/EngLish/wjjs.asp) I'll be teaching about 15 hours a week. That's 3 hours a day for 5 days. I'll be living in apartments with the other teachers and we'll be located right next to the school. I am also fortunate that I will be able to use this experience as my required internship for my TESOL minor. I get 3 credits to do something that I was going to be doing anyways.
Why?? I'm going to serve, to take a break from school, to get teaching experience, and to get school credit. But my main reason for going is the international experience. I've always wanted to be a traveler and decided that I'm the one that has to make that happen. My housing, food, and air fair are paid for, and I get to spend 5 months in CHINA. Why wouldn't I be going?
I hope this post didn't discourage those that had genuine questions but instead maybe answered a few of them. And now, conveniently, I have a post that is a great intro to what the next 5 months of blogging will be about. You guessed it: CHINA!
Where am I going? To Hefei, China, the capital of the Anhui Province, in central, east China. It is a city of over 4 million people and is located about an hour west of Shanghai. If you're still confused about where this is here is a picture. Or you could pull up wikipedia or google earth.When am I going? I leave on February 6th and return on June 18th. If you have a hard time with math, that's more than four months. Yes, I know that's a long time.Who am I going with? The program I am going with is called ILP or International Language Programs. This program is based in Provo, UT and used to be affiliated with BYU, but is no longer. It is completely volunteer. (http://www.ilp.org) The other volunteers that are going to Hefei are all girls. I haven't met any of them, but typically, because ILP is based in Provo, they are LDS and about my age.
What will I be doing? Primarily, I will be teaching English to 4-6 year old children in the Hefei Guanghua School. (http://www.hfghxx.com/EngLish/wjjs.asp) I'll be teaching about 15 hours a week. That's 3 hours a day for 5 days. I'll be living in apartments with the other teachers and we'll be located right next to the school. I am also fortunate that I will be able to use this experience as my required internship for my TESOL minor. I get 3 credits to do something that I was going to be doing anyways.
Why?? I'm going to serve, to take a break from school, to get teaching experience, and to get school credit. But my main reason for going is the international experience. I've always wanted to be a traveler and decided that I'm the one that has to make that happen. My housing, food, and air fair are paid for, and I get to spend 5 months in CHINA. Why wouldn't I be going?I hope this post didn't discourage those that had genuine questions but instead maybe answered a few of them. And now, conveniently, I have a post that is a great intro to what the next 5 months of blogging will be about. You guessed it: CHINA!
1 comment:
Cool. Have you talked to Hugh and Kristi at all about China? They lived there for six months, about a year ago.
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