Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Contact Info

Hey Y'all!

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on how to contact me when I move to China!  My main point of contact will be e-mail.  Most of y'all probably have my LSU e-mail, but I am trying to transition everything to my g-mail account, since I am now an alumni!  My g-mail address is morgan.camille@gmail.com.  I also have a Skype account, which is morgan.camille14Facebook is not a guarantee, it is blocked in China, but I am going to buy a proxy, so I will hopefully be able to use it as well. 

**Some important info for you to know if you email me or comment on my blog**
Please be careful with the language you use when contacting me.  I will be using some new "lingo" when writing and hope you will do the same, such as Father, Him, prying, Book, Xian, etc.  I think you get the picture.  Just be sensitive to religious or political topics.

Thanks for all of your love and support! 

Monday, August 15, 2011

Headed to China!?!?

I am officially moving to China at the beginning of September.  I can't believe it is really happening and is almost here!  One of the main questions I keep getting from friends and family is "How did you end up in China?".  Which is an understandable question since China was never in MY plans.  This question has somewhat of a long answer, but I will try to make it as short and sweet as possible.

Let's start at the very beginning...
Two years ago, I started my senior year of college where I began my journey in the Holmes Program at LSU.  Each day consisted of time spent with the same 35 girls, many of which became some of my closest and best friends!  One in particular, Lesley Bergeron, is hopping on board with this journey to China and will be my roommate!  Lesley had always wanted to travel/teach abroad after graduation, and I decided I liked that idea too!  We began joking a few weeks into the Fall semester of our senior year that while all of the other girls from our Holmes cohort would be married and teaching in Louisiana, we would be off traveling the world.  Little did I know, this joke would become reality.


Alright, fast forward a year...
Lesley and I seriously began looking into teaching abroad in Europe, specifically Germany because she had studied abroad there and loved it.  After researching, taking a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course, Europe didn't seem like a real possibility because all of the schools wanted two years of teaching experience, which we didn't have.  We started e-mailing different locations, yet again the doors just kept closing.  Every time we looked online, China kept coming up.  What CHINA???  Two of our friends are moving to China in January, so we began joking with them that maybe we would end up in China as well.  Again a JOKE, never thinking it would actually happen!


Again, let's skip ahead a bit...
Lesley and I both graduate from graduate school in May (Side note:  I refer to be called Master Morgan now ;).   At this point, Lesley has left for Prague with a group from The Refuge for 6 weeks and I am still freaking out because we do not have jobs! EEK!!! We applied to the Virgin Islands.  That door was slammed shut.  I started applying around the Baton Rouge area and every time I went to one of school board offices they had the same answer, "At this time, we are not hiring".  All I could think was "Oh no! I'm not going to have a job this Fall.  Father what should I do?". 

Drum roll please............

The Father hears our pryers!!!  The real journey to China began at my cousin's wedding shower.  A lady from my church/former Sunday school teacher was at the shower and I knew she had traveled to China before.  We began talking about China and how she thought it would be a great place for me to go.  She said I needed to talk to her good friend David McNabb, who owns a coffee shop Mr. Mai's in Wuhan, Hubei, China.  Later that month at my cousin's wedding, Mrs. Lisa came up to me and said you are never going to believe who is here, Mr. David and Mrs. Faith McNabb!  They just "happened" to be in Baton Rouge and just "happened" to be at my cousin's wedding.  I had a lovely time speaking with them and my parents got to ask the questions that had them freaked out about the possibility of me going to China.  Mr. David got my resume and Lesley's (since we are a package deal haha) and sent it off to some of his friends in China.  Leaving the wedding I had such a peace knowing that wherever Father wanted me that He would make it happen!  Within the next few weeks, Lesley and I were contacted by an international school about teaching in China.  We were excited and the company was great, but we still had a few concerns.


Concern # 1:  The school was nowhere near Wuhan, where Mr. David lives and we both knew we wanted to be in that region. 
Concern # 2:  We would be teaching 3rd and 4th graders in all subject areas! That was a major freak out moment!  Although my degree is in Elementary Education, being a first year teacher in another country was very scary!!!! Everyone says your first year is the hardest, which is understandable because everything is new to you. 
Concern # 3:  We weren't guaranteed placement at the same school or city.
Concern # 4: Two year commitment.  Let me repeat TWO YEARS!  We were both just warming up to the idea of China, which neither of us had been to and now we have to commit for that long.  It may not seem that bad to someone else, but we were freaked out.
Concern #5:  Lesley's sister is getting married on September 3 and the school was not sure they could accommodate us coming after that date, since the school year would already have started and they wanted us to arrive sometime in July.


I know you are probably wondering why I listed all of the reasons for our apprehension to teach at the international school, but it is to show how good our He is! :)  He is perfect and his plans are perfect too!  Moving along, we both turned down the jobs offered by this company.  Just when I thought I would be teaching at home in BR, Father provided something better than I could have ever imagined.  Zhong Relations contacted us about teaching in Huangshi, Hubei, China.  I'll just give you a brief overview of what this job entails:


Answered Concern # 1:  The school is only an hour bus ride from Wuhan, where the Mr. Mai's coffee shop!  We can easily visit on weekends.
Answered Concern # 2: We will be teaching high school students at Huangshi Experimental High School conversational English.  It reminds me more of a college set up, where we teach the same lesson to 10-15 classes a week, each class being 40 minutes long.  The students have a Chinese English teacher for grammar, vocabulary, etc. and our job is to help them with speaking and listening skills.  Did I mention we don't have to assign homework and we don't have any graded work! 
Answered Concern #3:  Lesley and I will be teaching at the same school and will be roomies!
Answered Concern #4:  It is a 10 month contract!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
Answered Concern #5:  The school was very cooperative with us coming after the wedding.  We leave September 5!


Do I really even need to say anything else?  Every single one of our concerns was answered perfectly.  This is not a close to perfect kind of thing, it is a Father perfect thing.  How faithful is He through it all.  After graduating, I really struggled with entering into a new chapter of my life.  I am good at the in between times, but beginnings and endings are always so hard.  This summer has been a challenging time for me, but He taught me so much about Himself.  I truly had to depend on Him and only Him for the which direction my life was headed.  There were many tears shed through the process and I am sure more to still come.  If you know me at all, this move to China is a huge leap of faith.  I tend to be more of a home body and have a very close-knit family.  I know that this next year will include times of joy, excitement, sadness, fear, loneliness, and happiness.  Through these things also comes growth and I truly feel this will be a year of immense growth for me.  This is where He wants me to go, so I will follow in obedience.  
***Sorry this post is so long!  I am hoping to continue to blog throughout my whole time in China, however this is my first attempt at blogging so we will see!