Throw Back To China--1981

Here's a special TBT (倒退周四). In the summer of 1981, I contracted with the Chung Tai English Academy to teach conversational English over the summer - 10 weeks from early June to late August. It was a really important experience for me between my Sophomore and Junior years of college and helped me to solidify my life's vocation as a teacher. Here are some photos from then. The Academy had me teach 4 classes: two in the morning and two in the late afternoon. The morning classes were advanced conversational English. The afternoon were made up entirely of beginners--and very challenging.

The first class in the morning was made up of various local professionals and graduate students who were studying in the United States, but were home for the summer. One of my favorite students from that class was an older women who was the wife of a doctor, Connie. Early on she asked me what things I missed most from the United States. I told her peaches, brownies and dill pickles. It was an off-the-cuff response meant to be silly and playful. The next morning there was a perfectly ripe peach sitting on my desk when I arrived to teach class. A week later a tray of brownies! Unfortunately, chocolate is not common in China and so what it should taste like was equally a mystery to Connie... Image brownies with only 1/4 of the sugar. But I smiled and I ate one of those suckers, and no doubt she thought, "Americans are so strange". But it didn't stop her. Two weeks before the class ended, she presented me with a jar of dill pickled cucumbers that she also taught herself to make in my honor.

 The other morning class was a group of girls from the #1 honors English High School in the city. Boys and Girls were taught separately from elementary school to college, so there were only girls middle and high schools. These young ladies were truly exceptional. That is the picture of me with some of them. When they discovered that I was delighted by their singing. Our classes regularly began with a performance of a traditional folk song performed by them acapella. The first photo is me with some of them on a Saturday morning when they were taking me to a local university on a "field trip".

The other three photos are just random ones taken around the city. I can only imagine how much things there have changed.