Teaching in China, leading me onto the continuous path of self-growth

Teaching English abroad has given me the fortunate opportunity to see many parts of the world. An opportunity that still remains written at the top of my gratitude journal.

In August 2018, I packed the largest suitcase I had ever packed, including a mixture of both winter and summer clothes. With a heart overfilled with love, and an anxious mind of how the year would unfold, I travelled to Asia for the very first time in my life.

I remember the feeling of cluelessness that bubbled inside, sat on the plane as I was struck with the realisation that I hadn’t mastered the arts of using chopsticks yet (however, that I can confirm I’m a pro now.)

Why are you teaching English in China?
This was the question I was repeatedly asked by friends and family before departing, to which I didn’t even know the real answer to. All I could feel was something I couldn’t possibly fathom; put into words, but, with a huge fuel of determination and a great spark of intuition – that is what powered me to drive in such direction.

But it was the adrenaline rush I remember very clearly. The plane landed on a corner of the world that I had never travelled to. This expanded my mind in a way it had never done before. I was a small child swimming in the unknown waters for the first time. I had landed in Beijing first, to begin a wholesome two weeks of teaching 12–16 year-olds at a summer camp, and then onto Shanghai, to spend the rest of my year teaching at a primary school.

When I landed at Beijing airport, there are three things I remember that welcomed me, in a weird but wonderful way. I remember squatting on the toilet for the first time, being given a pink stuffed teddybear as a table number at the airport restaurant, and then, opening a can of Pepsi in a different manner to how I would have done in the UK (anyone who has been to China will know exactly what I’m talking about). This was China: a combination of incidences that foreshadowed how my year would slowly unravel. I had only been one hour at the airport and I had experienced something so unique. And it is exactly this uniqueness that made China so foreign to me, feeling like another world, an extraordinary experience.

Back then, it was unknown to me where one year in China would lead me. One thing it did bring me, however, was a broad range of connections; people that walked in and out of my…