For two years in AIESEC I watched people coming and going on traineeships and I decided that this summer it was my time to sign up for the adventure. After researching my options and thinking through the possibilities, I decided to apply to an educational traineeship in Shanghai -- I was going to teach English for two months. Or at least I thought so when I signed up...
But I soon came to discover that things in China may not always be what they seem to be and whoever is in charge of you won’t explain your exact tasks and commitments until maybe 5 minutes before you’re supposed to start. So, instead of starting teaching on July 1st, we started working on the 11th, and our job was not to teach English for TOEFL/IELTS, but to be camp counselors for 4 one week Expo camps. In the meanwhile, Dan, Jake, Tim, and I had 10 days to spend in Shanghai and to worry about how we would be able to deal with 150 Chinese kids that may or not speak English decently.
Once camps started we moved from our “villa” in the outskirts of Shanghai to a campus almost 2 hours away from downtown. The new place did not seem to offer much at the beginning and the main attraction was “Foxtown” – a brand name shopping area that looked abandoned more than anything else. Our new place was a 12 floor dorm in which we were given 3 rooms on the 10th floor. The students and our assistants were on the lower levels and did not enjoy the benefits of having their own showers or washing machines…
After unpacking and settling in the new home (which, unlike the villa, had internet access in my room and Jake’s!!!), we went off to our first meeting with the other members of the staff. Armed with enthusiasm, pens and paper, we sat through what was going to summarize best my camp experience: a two hour long meeting in Chinese, with Jake translating now and then, while the three of us were as confused or even more confused than before it had started. We soon learned that the schedule was very flexible, the English classes consisted of whatever we wanted to do and that coming up with “activities” to entertain the students requires a lot of resourcefulness. But we survived with the help of our great assistants (Sheila, Echo, Emily, Cindy, Crystal and Sweedy).
The most tiring part of all though was going to the 2010 World Expo, that this year was held in Shanghai. For 2 days in a row we took “our kids” to the site and made sure we came back with all of them. Waiting in lines was painful, especially through pouring rain or 43° Celsius, but we had to do what we had to do Luckily, after the first week, the organizers decided to give us the option to “take a rest” during Expo days, opportunity that we explored to travel – 2 days in Suzhou and 2 days in Hangzhou.
What we thought would be an interminable month turn out to go by very fast and we were soon at our villa, at the foreign language high school, where we were supposed to hold English speaking classes for students who were indeed taking language exams. Among the four of us, we managed to split the classes such that we got some time off to travel. This is how Jake and I ended up embarking on a 10 day journey that would also mark the end of my stay in China. We went all the way to Yunnan, a province in Southern China, next to Tibet.
My traineeship in China went by really fast, but it was definitely intense and adventurous. I loved every minute of it and was lucky enough to meet amazing people that helped me cope through difficult times. Thank you Dan, Jake and Tim for being so great!
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