A couple weeks ago, I emailed one of my former Two Plus Two students who is now living in Australia.  If you haven't heard me rant about the Two Plus Two Program before, here's a recap.  The 2+2 students are supposed to study here and then go abroad to study for two years.  Sounds great.  The problem - they're students whose college entrance exams scores probably weren't high enough for them to get into an four-year university here.  The second problem - they come from wealthy families.  The overall feeling is that these students are spoiled and lazy and that the school has no recourse to make them go to class or do anything because their parents are, in a sense, just buying their "education."  Now, I must say, there are some really good students that I've had who have been in the 2+2 program.  Some of the students are motivated, hard-working, and genuinely seem to appreciate the chance that they have to go abroad.  But as a whole, when I have to teach the 2+2ers, it's like pulling teeth to get them to speak or practice English at all!  They know they're going to be living in England or Australia in less than two years.  They know that their English level is not at all where it should be, yet they still do nothing or just never go to any of their classes!  It drives me crazy sometimes.  Anyways, going back to my student's email . . . I wrote and just said hi and asked how he was doing.  Here's his reply:

Dear Kim,
I’m so supervised to receive this mail from our beautiful teacher—miss Kim. Em, I didn’t go with my classmates to England because my parents want me to stay in abroad as long as possible. Now I don’t think its good idea to go to Australia alone. In Australia, I have to cooking by myself, washing by myself, that’s mean everything by myself, terrible isn’t it. And the worst thing is you must use English everywhere. 
 
I think the new student in your class is pretty good. So I don’t have many advices. Just one thing, study hard especially oral English.
 
Hope things are going better.
 
                                   
                  Yours lovely,
                  Leslie

Ok, overlooking the humor of "supervised" instead of "surprised" and the "yours lovely" at the end or that this student is obviously just figuring out what it means to actually be an adult, let's focus on the sentence "The worst thing is you must use English everywhere."  What in the world did you expect!!??   Did you think everyone in Australia would speak Chinese??  Did you think that all your teachers were just being dumb when they said that you should study harder because you're actually going to have to use this??  Did you think that Miss Kim just liked to hear herself talk when she said that you should take advantage of the fact that you have foreign teachers to talk to and practice with??  Wait, you probably didn't hear me say that because you weren't in class.  I laugh and just shake my head at this email.  The WORST THING is that you must use English everywhere . . .  good grief.  Plus, you're talking to someone who lives in a foreign country and has to try to speak a foreign language every day.  And, I also manage to do my own washing, cooking, and cleaning.  I'm not personally offended and I'm not really trying to laugh at this student or minimize how hard it is to live in a foreign country by youself:  I liked him and hope he does well in Austrlia.  It's just the irony of it all that I find funny especially hearing it in a student's own words. 

Oh, I am older now, having had my 26th birthday yesterday.  I would like to say a huge HUGE thank-you to my wonderful Yichang friends for going all out and throwing me a great party and giving me amazing presents.  I will defintiely be posting pictures and writing about how I got to celebrate my birthday.  Also, my students were amazingly sweet and thoughtful and funny about my birthday.  As soon I consolidate pictures and get some time to sit down and wait for the computer to download stuff, I'll post about it.