Volunteer teaching in China – Zengcheng (增城) Day1

I want to share one of the most impressive pieces of memory during my undergraduate life, that is, bringing seven westerners (who have zero knowledge about Chinese) from Hong Kong to China for a 2-day volunteer teaching trip. It was impressive because at first I thought it would be terrible but it turned out to be much more fun than I expected. The background is that they are all exchange students (from the US, UK, Netherland and Canada) to my university and the university assigns me as the student escort to “take care” of them. 

What make me super nervous about this trip was that I was the only guy in the team. In general, as a normal guy, I certainly prefer having more girls than guys in a team (you know, guys) However, when it comes to being the only guy in a team who is supposed to take care of them, it would become catastrophic (what I thought before departure). If you have more than one sisters and you are the only guy in the family, you know why I was thinking that way.

 As far as I remember, the school is located away from urban area as it takes a while for us to travel from the hotel to the campus. That’s why the campus is beautiful. Trees and flowers are everywhere.  

 

Then we start teaching and the subject is English Language. We split into four groups and my partner is the black girl in the photo. She is very funny and able interact with the kids.  

We decide to make the class more interesting by asking them to use what they have learnt to make a short drama. They seem very shy to do this at first but they find it is so much fun when they are actually doing it. See how cute they are. And they are doing more than we expected! Here is a short video showing how they practice their drama !

This is the first day of teaching! It was fun. Dealing with seven girls alone is easier than I thought as they seem nicer when being with a lot of cute kids. 

One little sad thing for me is that the size of their primary school is even bigger than the size of my secondary school, like 10 times bigger! Scarcity of land remains a tragic issue to most of the Hongkongers. 

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想和大家分享一段在大學時期很深刻的回憶，那就是帶七個外國人從香港到中國內地去進行為期兩天的義教，深刻的地方在於原本以為這次旅程會很麻煩但最後有很大的得著。他們都是從外地到我大學交換的交換生（有美國、英國、荷蘭和加拿大等），而我就是學校派去「照顧」他們的學生代表。

令我最有負擔的，是因為我是隊中唯一的男生，其實平時的話，作為一個正常男士，當然想左擁右抱（奸笑中），但現實是，當成為隊中唯一的男性，而且被定義為負責照顧他們的人時，這個並沒有我開心起來，反而很有負擔，如果你家中有兩個姊姊（女權至上）的話，你會明白這是個什麼情況。

印像中，學校離市區有點遠，因為從酒店過去都需點時間，但正正因為遠離繁囂，校園周圍都是花草樹木，好清新！

我們開始進入正題—教書，我們八人分為四組，而我的搭擋是下圖的黑人小妹（年紀看起比我大實際比我小），全靠她才能管理好一群好動的好朋友！

為了令他們更能享受課程，我們叫學生以剛剛所學的變成一套短劇，原本他們十分害羞，不太情願，但當他們開始構思整個劇本，變得有趣起來時，便樂在其中，十分可愛！

第一天的教學十分有趣，而且和七個外國女孩相處亦比我想像中容易，或者是因為與一群天真的小學生一起時，亦會自然變得開心起來。

看，他們的小學亦比我的中學還大，而且是大十倍有多!