EIL Intercultural Learning

I'm taking advantage of a rare quiet Sunday to sit down to write you the second 'installment' of my time here. Hope you enjoy it!

I cannot believe I have been here for five weeks. This Wednesday just gone marked my halfway point, my time here is flying by and I still have so much I want to do. There is so much to do here that our days are packed full..I'm up early every morning and in bed late every night I'm so busy. I love it though. And for any future volunteer coming here it's one of the best things to be so busy. You really do not get a chance over here to be homesick.

I've been teaching at Happy Kindergarten in the Min Hang district for four weeks now and I absolutely love it. I'm teaching four/five year olds and they are the most adorable kids. I have three classes that I teach three times a week. Originally I had four classes but with the arrival of more volunteers we've had to share our classes around. 

So far I've covered the basics with the kids- colours, animals, body parts, actions and so on. Everyday I leave the kindergarten with funny stories about the kids. They are at that perfect age where you're able to teach them and get through to them but they are still so young that they say and do the funniest things. There was one incident I will never forget. In one of my classes is a boy called Johnson. Johnson took it upon himself one day to answer all my questions with his T-shirt over his head. No matter how hard I tried he would not take the T-Shirt down. He provided great entertainment that day!

The teaching is great. My classes are 30 minutes long and there is always a Chinese teacher in the room to help you if you have any communication or discipline problems. The staff at the kindergarten are so lovely and accommodating and really do appreciate you being there. I try my hardest to make the classes as interesting a possible for the kids so I teach them through song and games. It's great that I'm teaching such young kids. I find it so rewarding and value the fact that I'm teaching them in such an interactive way and not just standing at the top of the class reading from a book!

However, it has to be said that not every day or every class goes perfectly here. The kids are only 4/5 and obviously can be hard to control, they can find it difficult to communicate or understand the lesson.  But that's one of the joys of being here. I love that no two days are the same and that I enjoy the challenges that are given to me!

Regarding what a typical day is like here my days usually run on a regular routine. Monday to Friday I get up at seven am. I have my breakfast and get ready for the day ahead. I leave the kindergarten, where I sleep, at eight to get the bus. The bus takes about 30 minutes so I have a chance to sit back and actually wake up before arriving at the school!  I get to the kindergarten at around 8:45. We play with the kids outside and do the morning exercises with them. My classes start at half nine and we work until eleven. We get our lunch at 11:15 and are allowed to leave the kindergarten at midday.

After classes in the morning we all usually meet up around one or two and go off sightseeing or exploring for the afternoon. We get back usually around six or seven and have dinner and then return to our accommodation for the night where we usually just relax after a long day and prepare our lessons for the next day. 

We have the weekends off here which is fantastic. It really does give you the opportunity to make the most of your time here. Last weekend all the volunteers went to Suzhou on Saturday. We got the train at nine in the morning and spent the day there. It's a really nice old Canal town about 45 minutes by bullet train from Shanghai. We spent the whole day walking around the city. We saw Pagodas, lovely gardens and walked through the old town. The highlight for me was when we stopped to have a break in a traditional tea house that overhangs one of the canals in the old town. It was a wonderful experience.

As I said in my last blog, Shanghai is definitely different from a lot of China. For this reason having the time off to explore on the weekends is definitely beneficial. It gives you the chance to properly see and get to know the country within which you are living. Next weekend we plan to leave Shanghai for the entire weekend and go to Nanjing. China's historic capital. I can't wait to go and spend the weekend there as there is so much to see.

I am very lucky because there is such a large group of volunteers here at the moment. I think our number is something just shy of 20- with more arriving next week! It has been difficult at times as people arrive and leave at different times and this week my two closest girl friends both left. But with the regular arrival of new volunteers you never feel lonely and there is always someone there to talk to that's going through the same experience you are. And that is a comfort in itself!

I've been living at the Creativity Kindergarten for four weeks now. There are six of us living here. It took a while to get used to the fact that we're all alone in a school at night time but it's nice to have the place to ourselves!  It's at times like this though that I am thankful for my genes and my height! The beds are quite small here but luckily it doesn't pose much of a problem for me! The Chinese are not very fond of mattresses though and so we're sleeping on small 3/4cm thick mattresses. It was difficult on the first two nights but now I don't even notice it anymore. The Chinese believe that sleeping on a hard bed is good for your back and your posture so I'm certainly hoping that eight weeks on my bed will help my bad posture.-" Every cloud has a silver lining!"

It's important while your here to always try and keep positive and look for the good/positive in what you find difficult.  There will be hard days. I know that I've had my fair share. Hearing stories from home and hearing that the weather is so good at home made me homesick. But I just had to think of why I've come here and the fact that I really do love it here and I was fine again!

I really am loving my time here. I love meeting new people and I have met some wonderful people in my time here from all over the world. I love the teaching and the kids are amazing.  I can't deny the fact that there have been hard times or difficult days but there is always someone here to talk to. The host organisation are fantastic and will try their hardest to make your time here as enjoyable and as smooth as possible. And having so many volunteers around is great!

I also hope to send in one more blog/account of my time here in the week before I leave.

Until then,
Kelly