My first blog in China
Having been in China for just over a month now, for those of you who are interested, I have finally started blog! It feels as though I have been here for much longer, and saying goodbye to my friends and family seems like a lifetime ago. However I hope this blog can keep everyone up to date and connected and maybe interest any one else who happens to stumble across it.
I suppose I didn’t admit to myself I was moving away for five months until a week before, when I started to see friends and family for the last time and we were saying see you in the summer. In the few days before my flight from Heathrow, there was a combination of excitement, doubt and anticipation in my mind. What could I expect? Will it be how I have imagined? And ultimately am I really up to the challenge?
Saying goodbye to my family at the airport was very surreal; it was something I couldn’t prepare for and hugging my sister goodbye at Security was challenge. I didn’t turn around until they were fully out of sight and it took me a few seconds to realise they weren’t coming with me. However, as soon as I turned around and walked through the gate with my good friend Francis, I knew I was ready to go. All my questions and worries disappeared as they suddenly seemed irrelevant and I learnt all the other volunteers shared the same anxieties as I did. I think this is something that made us close from the start; from then on we only really had each other and this was a new and alien experience for everyone.
After travelling and waiting in airports for hours, by the time we arrived in Kunming I felt as if I had known these new people for months. It is safe to say, you can make very close friends after an 11 hour flight and having seemingly endless time to kill. In some way I am grateful for the long journey as it gave us time to get to know each other and find enough things in common to talk about. It was then time to meet the other volunteers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. The bus journey to the hotel was filled with excited questions and funny stories of our hometown stereotypes (maybe some more than others!) It may sound cliched, but I would say even in those first two days we became a family.
Our nine days in Kunming revolved mainly around our teacher training at Robert’s school, where we learnt how to plan a lesson and what to include in order to engage a class of 60 students! However it also gave us time to form closer friendships, explore the city (day and night) try some interesting food and even after a few days it felt like home. Sometimes it surprises me how quickly we were able to become such close friends, but I also think we were very lucky in that everyone genuinely liked one another. As the week drew to a close, I had similar feels as to those when I said bye to my family in England. I would be sad to leave Kunming, but excited to get to my school an hour away… The Nationality Minorities School of Yuxi City.
As the car drove into the rural town of Eshan, it was a real “we’re not in Kansas any more” moment. Although only an hour away from the big city, the environment had drastically changed and as we drove up a somewhat bumpy drive, I saw the school tucked into the mountain. Initially, my thoughts were get be back to Kunming; it seemed so quiet and this was probably the first time I stopped to think: I live here now and this is my home.
That was four weeks ago, but it could have easily been four months. The friends we have made here already have made us feel so welcome and now we are familiar with our surroundings and the nearest city, it does feel like home. I enjoy spending time with the students and they make so much effort to spend time with us. Even our small pink apartment now feels like where I live, rather than a room that isn’t mine.
Even though there are challenges and I now understand the phrase ‘culture shock’ I have found you can be very happy anywhere in the world.
