My husband and I was offered the position to teach Beginner Chinese Course at the Erindale College at every Wednesday evening from 7pm to 9pm. So this evening was our first class. We are both from a background of being trained as a teacher at the first place where we went to two different Normal Universities in China, and my husband, had 8 years of teaching experience in the past; While I, am always keen to be a teacher and had my lectures giving to different ages of group from pre-school kids, to young teenagers, and to adult students who pursued the further studies in the Uni. Being a teacher had never been an ideal occupation in my life, but funnily, I found every time when I was teaching something in a classroom setting, I felt extremely comfortable. I love standing there giving a speech or discussing things with others. Not that I need a lots of attention or the stage lights focusing on me makes me satisfied, I just love the atmosphere of full of curiosity and being a position that you can give others something you think quite useful and important for their interests.

I had really a good time in the class that I had ever been in the past, especially in the Uni, where I taught English and general topic of Mental Health to Adults. It was a great success as I heard of lots of positive feedback from the course coordinator who had been asked by my students to keep employing me as the teacher for their future lectures. I suppose that I was popular

And now, after so many years of out-of-practise of being a teacher, I was standing there again. There were another 16 students looking at me, hoping to learn something really practical that they might be able to use in the next 6 months. The faces changed, from Chinese faces to western people’s faces, but there were the same eyes of longing to something new, and the same expressions of showing the interests and curiosity. It was the air that I am so familiar with, and for a moment, I suddenly had a feeling as if I had gone back to my teaching time in China. The next minutes, the words just came out of my mouth, so naturally and spontaneously, and I was talking and talking, without a bit fear and nervous at all.

The only challenge of this class for me, is that I have to teach them in English. Most of them don’t know even one word of Chinese. So sometimes it can be quite hard. I have to find out the proper words to name what I say, like some terms specially coming from linguistic studies, like vowels, nasal consonants, syllable, phonetic system, Romanization, finals, initials, or tones. But it’s also full of fun. I finally have a chance to look at my native language from another perspective and from a more rational way. The deeper I look at it, the more I admire myself Chinese is really a hard language. I am so proud for my country, the culture I came from, the beauty of my mother tongue and what I have achieved so far. At the very least, I can speak and write Chinese so well. It is a treasure that I have been given and can benefit from it for a lifetime.