My experience with Greenway China —— Jesko

    I came to China in early September 2011 with two other colleagues from Germany. Once we arrived we were picked up by Isabella, the boss of greenway China, the company that we were going to work for a year.

After a quick drive to Yangshuo, the then headquarter of Greenway, we immediately got to know a few other volunteers, who also worked for Greenway. After an hour long talk we dragged ourselves to bed. Jetlag sends its greetings.

But that also did Greenway take into account. We were not woken up until about 11 o’clock, which helped us a lot to deal with the jetlag.

The preparation was the best I’ve ever had in any program I’ve participated in. We had about 2 weeks of learning about the language, culture, food and everything else we needed to know for that time. The preparation was so good, that we actually didn’t have big problems in getting what we wanted once we were on our own. And that is huge, especially considering that Chinese is a really difficult language to start with for a westerner.

Another great advantage that Greenway has is that it has so many volunteers/participants in their programs from different countries. When you’re withGreenway, you can be sure that you’ll meet a lot of great people that you will get really close with by the end of your stay. It also ensures that it doesn’treally get boring, even in a tiny village that doesn’t have a lot of things to do.

Afterwards we were getting ready to get into our program, teaching in China for a year. Greenway also helped us a lot there and didn’t just bring us there, but also sent one of the coordinators that had been with us for the preparation to help us around. This was extremely useful and made all of us feel very secure.

The teaching was an amazing experience. The students were not only the cutest that I have ever seen, but also were incredibly thankful for what I did. When you are teaching in China you’ll get a lot of positive feedback on your work, which makes you feel very good. I also got many small pictures that students drew for me with “I love you” written on them. It’s just something small, but it makes you remember what you do, and that you do is good.

The schools that we were teaching at where not used to foreigners since we were the first foreigners to ever stay in Guanyang (the place where we stayed) for longer than a few months. That, of course, was making us very interesting to the locals. Not only were we constantly and spontaneously invited for lunch in a lot of different places, but we also constantly were the focus of attention. This was really useful in the classroom, too.

People care about you. That’s probably the best thing about China. Chinese people’s friendliness is unreached by any other country in the world that I’ve been to. If you want to go to a place you don’t know, someone will probably not only tell you the way, but also bring you there personally. If you wantsomething from a shop and they don’t have it at that particular shop, they will call some people and get it for you. Most times you don’t even have to buy your own lunch but rather get invited by a Chinese person that you met 5 minutes ago. Just experiencing that is making it worth to come to China.

There are also things that you need to adjust to in China. The most frustrating thing in China is that things never are certain. If you agree to do something with someone at a certain time, it does not at all mean that it also has to happen. If someone promises you to take care of a problem in 3 days it’s very likely to not get done within the next three days.

All in all I have to say that my year in China was the most amazing year I’ve had so far. I got many new friends that I will keep for a lifetime and got a good impression of a completely different culture. I will definitely come back and live here.

——Jesko Petersen

该文章由格林卫德国志愿者所著，他的中文名字叫龙龙。