Visitors (Marcus)

So I had been having an ongoing discussion with one of my students whose name is James. He approached me at the end of one class and wanted to know the names of some Australian universities. I gave him Monash and Melbourne, those two being the main ones.

It is always quite an effort for a student to come and speak to us like this as it’s crossing what is a really quite significant personal barrier. I find that I really respect the students who do it, as it shows their curiosity or rather, their personal interest has won the battle against their shyness and they have broken down what can be a large barrier between teacher and student – particularly in our situation where we’re basically like aliens to these kids – so utterly different.

So before the next class, I printed out some information I found on Monash’s website for James and took it in for him. I found a page that was actually in Chinese as Monash seems to have strong ties with certain countries – one of them being China. I gave this to James along with my email address and said he was welcome to email me if he had any further questions. I also offered to look anything up for him should he wish it, as I know they have extremely limited access to computers – around twice a week total.

So James emailed me, nothing special, and then in his second email he wanted to arrange a face to face meeting. I didn’t reply to this as it was the weekend. During the week he came down to me before one of my classes that was somewhat near his classroom and asked if I had gotten his email? I feigned ignorance – oh no, which email? He then mentioned he wanted to meet up and asked if I was available at 6pm that night? I said no, as I didn’t really want to bring any students actually home to our apartment without Courtney knowing – that’s not really fair on her. So I said, how about tomorrow? He was ok with that and said he would come to our apartment. He sounded quite urgent about this meeting. He said his mother was arranging things for him to possibly go and study in Australia next year – so I assumed that was the urgency, him wanting information or somesuch. In a previous email I had told him that he would want to possibly look at 1. Melbourne, 2. Sydney, 3. Brisbane as his options. Melbourne first due to my bias – it being a great city, and cheaper to live than Sydney. Then the other two are obvious.

So 6pm the next day rolls around and I see James and another student heading to our apartment. I greet them and let them in. They seat themselves on our most comfortable of couches and Courtney joins us. The other student turns out to be one of Courtney’s, so that was good.

What ensued was a general question and answer session on a range of topics. Firstly they had brought along a student booklet for Monash and wanted to know some questions about Melbourne, it’s population, weather, how close the campus was to the city etc etc – standard stuff.

We spoke about different things, about Monash, Melbourne Uni, about Sydney vs Melbourne and a bunch of other things – scholarships etc etc.

Then we branched into the meat of the conversation which was about Courtney and myself. This I found really, I don’t know, endearing possibly. These two guys..they must be around 16-17, maybe close to 18, are just so innocent to everything that is Courtney and I. The wanted to know if we could use chopsticks, if we ate Chinese food at the local restaurants, how much we paid for it, whether we liked the canteen food, what we did on our weekends, what we did when we weren’t teaching, what time we got up, what time we went to bed. Everything! All these basic personal questions that they had obviously been dying to know.

Part of their questions were lead up to them bringing over 6-7 dvds(pirate of course). They thought that we might get bored here, not being able to watch TV and not being much to do in the area – moreso seeing we weren’t Chinese, so brought us some entertainment. They proceeded to go through them and give some mini-reviews which were a pisser – again, so innocent.

They asked if we had eaten dinner(it being 6:30pm+) and we said we hadn’t. This is quite late for not having dinner over here, Chinese always eating around 5:30 or so. They politely then offered to go, but made it clear that if we were happy to not eat just yet, they would love to talk with us some more – so we did. Finally it was getting on (almost 7pm!!!) and they left – returning to class.

Courtney then got into cooking up some risotto – which was great, and we chilled for the rest of the night.

I really enjoyed this exchange with these two guys. The innocence of the Chinese students is somehow almost overwhelming. It is so refreshing..as I said, so endearing. It makes you want to just reach out and help them – moreso when you then think how hard these kids have to work – how long they are in class for. We were sitting watching TV last night after what was a really long day(having gotten 200% soaked in the rain), and at 9:15pm or so, when the students start all heading to their dorms, it’s just unbelievable to think how much time has passed in the day and all of which has involved them sitting in their classrooms doing school work.

I can’t really imagine what it’s like for a student such as James to move to a country like Australia. It must be extremely hard, suddenly dealing with a sort of freedom.

We went into the city tonight for dinner and as we were walking through the school to get to the bus stop, we encountered one of what I think was a gifted student (aka younger) though I am not sure. He said hi and tagged along with us for a while – commenting on things such as how beautiful the lake was, and how he liked to play table tennis and badminton but couldn’t right now as he didn’t have the equipment for it. When we first saw him he was just standing there looking out over the lake. He followed us then we left him in the centre of the school and he just sort of drifted away – aimlessly. It was before 6pm and he didn’t have to be back in class till 7pm – we think they get extra time off after dinner on Saturdays – how lucky for them…. Anyhow, it was like he had this extra time but literally didn’t know what to do with himself except wander around by himself.

It’s all so different to how I remember school and my fellow students.