{"id":418,"date":"2010-02-14T22:55:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T14:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=418"},"modified":"2010-02-14T22:55:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T14:55:45","slug":"new-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"New Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” –Marcel Proust<\/p>\n

This quote is appropriate in how I am currently feeling.\u00a0 The past few weeks have been a huge blessing to me.\u00a0 It is difficult to describe my experience to people and to express emotions that I feel.\u00a0 I’ll give it a shot but I still believe that some parts of it are indescribable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I left you last I was being a tourist in my own town.\u00a0 I haven’t done too much ‘touring’ but I have been doing a good deal of living. I even took some time to paint my bedroom so my walls are not dirty white anymore.\u00a0 One wall is dark purple and the other three are clean white! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0If you remember from a previous post, I had agreed to teach English for a winter camp at Nong Da. I wasn’t really looking forward to it but thought it would a good way to make some extra money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This particular group of students is studying there on a government scholarship.\u00a0 They are being trained to be future leaders in their country.\u00a0 Most of my students are from the far western Chinese province of Xinjiang.\u00a0 I also had a few that were from Beijing. The\u00a0students from Xinjiang\u00a0are minorities…Uygher and not of Han descent like the majority of the Chinese population. \u00a0They were chosen to attend high school in Beijing.\u00a0 The downside to this honor is that they only get to see their families 2-4 weeks out of the year in the summertime.\u00a0 They don’t even get to go home for the largest of all Chinese festivals, The Spring Festival.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 Even though they have many hardships in their lives, they have made the most of their individual situations.\u00a0 I have never taught a nicer group of students.\u00a0 They were very respectful, friendly and lots of fun!\u00a0 I also thought it was interesting and also ironic that the future communist leaders were being trained by democratic\/capitalist Americans! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the last day of the camp I was required to give them an oral exam.\u00a0 Basically, they had to visit with me for five or so minutes, one-on-one, so that I could evaluate their grammar, pronunciation, and fluency.\u00a0 I took it as an opportunity to learn more about their backgrounds, their families, their goals and their feelings about life.\u00a0 This was probably my favorite part of the class.\u00a0 I wish I could have done it on the first day.\u00a0 Although with a small class it was pretty easy to get to know them.\u00a0 I had them for three hours each day and we had some break time so that I could chat with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Teachers don’t have favorite students \ud83d\ude09 but if we did mine might be Tom. He\u00a0is from a family of five.\u00a0 He has two older siblings and one of them is married and has a child.\u00a0 All of them live in the same house and his parents are farmers.\u00a0 I asked him if he could\u00a0change one thing about his life what it would be.\u00a0 His response was that his family could have more food.\u00a0 They are happy that he is studying in Beijing, not only because it is a great opportunity for him to further his education, but also so that they don’t have to feed him. \ud83d\ude41\u00a0Or maybe it would be Sophia, one of the sweetest Chinese girls I’ve ever met.\u00a0 She is intelligent, kind, caring, and beautiful.\u00a0 She would be good at whatever career she wants in life.\u00a0 But I have a feeling she is already feeling the pressure of getting married and having children.\u00a0 She is only 17.\u00a0 I hope that she is able to reach some of her dreams in life.\u00a0 She really wants to work in finance.\u00a0It could also very well be Owen.\u00a0 (Actually, it would be pretty tough to have a favorite in this bunch.\u00a0 They were all really awesome!)\u00a0 Owen is the one who disagrees with education in his country.\u00a0 He would like to see changes in the way children are educated in the future.\u00a0 Maybe it is a good thing he will be some sort of leader in his country.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 I asked him what he disagreed with.\u00a0 His response was that he didn’t think Chinese students were allowed to develop their creativity enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m really glad that I agreed to do the camp.\u00a0 At first I was not super excited about it but it ended up being very worthwhile. I won’t forget these kids. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"The

The members of the class that were there the for the last day. A couple of the Beijing students had left already to travel with their families for the festival. This bunch was awesome!<\/p><\/div>\n

During my teaching at Nong Da, I was also able to meet quite a few foreigners who were also pretty awesome!\u00a0 Below is a picture of the foreign teachers.\u00a0 One of them is not foreign but her oral English was really good so Mr. Wang had her lie and say she was from the states.\u00a0 Two of the teachers were British, one was Canadian, one was Chinese, one was from Latvia, and the rest were American.<\/p>\n

\n
\"A

A group of some pretty awesome people! Our bus rides in the morning were never lacking entertainment. I'm happy that I met these people. One of them will be in Seoul at the same time as me and he and I are going to hang out one day! From L-R back row: Jasper (GB), Vincent, Gordon, Rebecca, Danielle (Chinese), George (GB), Deke, Landon, Sigmund, Mike, Graham, Benny. From L-R front row: Vivian (Mr. Wang's assistant--hilarious that Chinese people pick this name because Vs are really hard to say for them), Sebastian, Mary, Barrett, Laura 1, Laura 2, Amber, Ona (who is actually from Lativia but speaks perfect English and also really good Chinese!)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0After my teaching ended on Thursday last week, I headed to the city of Tianjin.\u00a0 My next post will be about my time in Tianjin. Enjoy!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” –Marcel Proust This quote is appropriate in how I am currently feeling.\u00a0 The past few weeks have been a huge blessing to me.\u00a0 It is difficult to describe my experience to people and to express emotions that I feel.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}