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Eight months, a huge amount of excitement, frustration and new experiences later, we are getting ready to leave our temporary home of Beijing. For the last few months we have been living in one of the dirtiest, most polluted yet interesting cities in the world. Our experiences teaching English here have certainly given us an insight to life here, to the huge cultural differences between China and the West, and also to the strange and very unique Chinese mentality. My students are all incredibly kind, respectful and keen to learn. It is a well accepted fact that adding English to your list of skills can open many doors and present you with new opportunities. Having English language skills allows you to work in an international company, communicating with foreigners on a daily basis. This kind of job here is highly sought after, the competition is fierce, so everyone must do something to make them stand out from the pack. Something to make them unique in this mass of over a billion people. For many, learning English is a way to make this step forward, to make a better life for themselves and their families, to change their destiny. Working in New Oriental school many of my students come from wealthy backgrounds, whereby their parents pay for everything and anything they need, including an English course at one of the most expensive and prestigious language schools in China. A few of my students, however, come from a very different background. One of my favourite students, Maria, came from a farming family; she told me how both of her parents worked in the fields and how no houses in her town were equipped with air conditioning or heating, meaning that the summer was unbearably hot and during the winter they have to keep their coats on inside, even when sleeping. While all of her classmates were getting married and having children she decided, along with the millions of migrant workers, to come to Beijing to search for a better life, something new and exciting. She and her sister found a job working in the housekeeping section of a big hotel. Maria worked hard and did well at her new job but felt she could achieve more. She was envious to see the receptionists at the front desk speaking to foreign guests and decided to make it her goal to learn English so one day she might move from housekeeping and be able to communicate with and assist the foreigners who stay in her hotel. That day she started saving, and finally managed to come to New Oriental to study. Unlike the wealthy, rather spoilt students, Maria had a thirst for knowledge and a real will to learn. She would work twice as hard as the other students and achieved at least twice as much. Her improvement was huge and seeing her pride when she told her classmates that she had been offered a job working as a receptionist was one of my most memorable, special moments in China.
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