Friday, September 16, 2011

Teacher! Teacher!!!

Teacher! Teacher!! Please come to my home!!!!

This weekend I'm going to start doing home-visits so I just asked the class who wanted me to come to their homes, and the response was overwhelming. There were a ton of students earnestly raising their hands and yelling for me to go visit them. It's just such a foreign experience from my middle school days. If one of my teachers had asked if anybody wanted to volunteer their home for a visit, everyone would have done their best to not make eye-contact and sink into their seats, but here it's considered an honor. 

And the surprising thing is is that it's not only because I'm white and foreign, although that might contribute to the excitement a little bit. All of the TFC fellows do home visits, and the Chinese fellows also get plenty of volunteers. Kids here want their teachers to come to their homes and visit their family. 

My next challenge--actually making it to the places where I'll be meeting these kids. Some of the kids come from villages about 30km away, so there's definitely going to be some traveling involved. And probably a lot of showing people a sheet of paper and then getting pointed in various direction. We'll see how it goes!

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