Tai Shan Sunrise
by Adam Gillan
Teach in China
When day began to break I knew it was all worth it. The last fourteen hours I had spent hiking, freezing, and not sleeping. The last two months I had spent completely readjusting my life. It was October 2nd; China had just celebrated its 60th anniversary as the People’s Republic of China on October 1st by reveling in their heritage and looking towards a bright future. October 2nd was my day, because as the sun came up I knew I was celebrating a new beginning.
I came to China through CIEE for many reasons. First and foremost I wanted to explore teaching, but I also wanted to explore new cultures, travel, and see what else the world had to offer outside of the U.S. Leaving was very hard. I left loved ones behind, I left my corporate job, and I left life as I knew it. Back home I was comfortable, I was secure, and work was mildly rewarding. However, those were not the adjectives I wanted to use to describe my life. I knew I wanted something more. In truth, as I write this it has been less than two months since I arrived in China and everything has been somewhat of a whirlwind. I do not speak the language and I am not very familiar with the culture. What I do have is a passion to learn, and thus far I think my teaching has been more of an effort to share that passion with my students rather than spoon feed them the English language.
Teaching is challenging. Teaching is especially challenging with an enormous language barrier. This experience thus far has taught me to face challenges head on. I know I will never understand my students completely, but I can make them understand me through teaching. At my school I only have a blackboard and chalk—none of the fancy A/V equipment you would find in an American school, but that has been more than enough to get them excited to learn English every time I walk in the classroom. The energy is contagious. There is no better moment in my day then those few seconds when I walk into a classroom and the children start cheering because they are excited to see me and excited to learn English.
I have many more English classes to teach, many more dishes to try, many more people, places, and things to experience and visit. When my alarm goes off now, there is no need for the snooze button, because I wake up every day excited for the new possibilities. For the first time since I graduated college I can wake up and say “I love my job.” I am still very young at twenty-seven, but it feels like it took an eternity for me to utter that sentence.
I could sense my coming moment of clarity a bit early on our hike up Mt. Tai; as we all huddled together in our rented army surplus jackets for warmth, I looked over to one of my fellow climbers and said “I will be telling my grandchildren about this night.” At the time I said it because we were so bitterly cold and so ridiculously uncomfortable. Years from now I will tell that story as the moment I knew my decision to come to China had been the right one. Thank you CIEE for providing the opportunity, I am so happy I took it!