Do you dream about moving abroad? YEAH THAT'S ME
I thought I was immune to culture shock. I studied abroad in China for seven months and I speak Chinese almost fluently. I’ve been jostled in China’s largest cities, and stranded in some of China’s smallest towns. I’ve traveled to Tibet and Xinjiang and I’ve eaten fried scorpions in Beijing. One time I accidentally signed […]
In my last post, I talked about my experience giving final exams and grades to almost 1,000 students. I also mentioned that I had to fail 2/900 of my students. This is the story of the student who earned a 14%. I have a student in Senior 2 who can’t speak English. He has been […]
At the end of November, I was informed that I would have to give all nine hundred of my students’ final grades. My immediate thought was: “How the heck am I going to do that?!! I only teach each class once every two weeks and I definitely don’t even have 1/5 of my students’ names […]
After my bout of Christmas food poisoning, I started to feel a little better on Monday, so I taught my afternoon classes. While my voice was still pretty much gone, I was at least able to show the first third of Elf, which the students really enjoyed! In the afternoon, I stopped by the office […]
Earlier this week I was teaching a typical high school Senior 1 class. We were learning how to give directions, and I gave them a map activity to do in pairs. While I wandered through the desks observing the students, I happened to notice that two girls weren’t doing the activity. I walked over to […]
Being a minor celebrity in my middle-of-nowhere high school has led to some interesting experiences and classroom culture shock; one of which is the adjectives my students use to describe me. Aside from the typical “HELLO TEACHER!”, “RICHELLE!!”, “AHHH MS. JIANG!”, I also get “SO BEAUTIFUL!!!” multiple times a day, every day. Talk about a […]
If the title didn’t give it away, this is my 100th blog post!!! I can’t believe it has been over a year and a half since I started this blog to document my study abroad experience. Who would have thought I’d be back in China now, teaching CRAZY high schoolers. Speaking of crazy, I wanted […]
Recently I came across an article, Chinese Cram School From Hell. This article does a great job describing the Chinese high school education system, and the immense pressure of the gaokao test. Since I work in one of these so-called “gaokao factories”, I thought I’d shed some insight on the high school education system in China. […]
读万卷书不如行万里路 “Reading ten thousand books is not as useful as traveling ten thousand miles.” -Chinese proverb It has been an interesting few days, but I have safely arrived in Ningbo… kind of. Not to skip the last month of traveling and orientation, but I figured it would be better to talk about my first impressions NOW […]
Hi I'm Richelle! I'm the founder of the Freedom Life and I've been living abroad since 2013. For the last eight years, I've been helping hundreds of adventurous people just like you move abroad, and I can't wait to help you get started on this incredible adventure!
