I still remember when I first came, I kept wondering why I was assigned to Whangarei. Now I’m about to leave this place, I no longer dwell on that, as I believe that everything happens for the best. Whangarei is a city situated in Northland to the North of Auckland, and people here often call themselves “the North”. In the TV drama “Game of Thrones”, one of the most famous lines is, “the North never forgets”, which I would like to use as the title of this article to express my ardent love for this particular place despite a bittersweet year spent here.

I only realized how unprepared I was before going abroad a few days ago when my successor drowned me in preparation questions. In retrospect, I found that, if this one year is compared to a game, then I had been playing it in “Hard Mode” all along the way. But it is going to end now. Looking back, my original wish for this trip is to see how I can cope with everything that may come at me in an alien environment. Over the past year, I had to find a solution to remote respondent sampling, manage intercultural relations with both students and colleagues, and deal with a host of issues caused by the transport difficulties. In this hectic year, in addition to completing my Master’s thesis and teaching the Chinese language at three schools, I also took the time to travel across most cities in the South Island and the North Island of New Zealand during school holidays, approaching study/work/life balance. I may not have grown wildly, but I achieved a great deal in the past 12 months.

I would like to dedicate this last blog of my internship here to some people I have met in the past year. It was them who made Whangarei my second home, a soft spot in my memory, a place I can go back whenever I want in the future because I have a home here.

The first bunch of people are, of course, the lovely local kids. In the week before my departure, everyone knew that I was about to leave and prepared a surprise for me. But some of the kids unwittingly let the secret out, so I had to pretend that I had not known it. In the class that has given me the strongest sense of instructional achievement were kids aged 5 or 6, two of whom particularly impressed me. One is a 5-year-old at a branch campus. Once, when everyone else had changed clothes and gone for a swim after my Chinese language class, he stayed there and said to me, “I know you’re about to go back to China, and you know what, I’m gonna go there too in the future, so that we could see each other again.” He then followed his classmates and went to the swimming pool. The same goes for another little boy at a similar age studying at the main campus. He kept following me after seeing me on campus last Friday. He finally stopped me when I was to enter my office, saying, “I don’t want you to go back to China. I don’t want you to go back. I want to learn Chinese with you.” And he kept standing in my way and didn’t leave for his own class until I promised him that there would be another Chinese language teacher coming here next year to teach him. I think this is probably the happiness of being a teacher, or I should say, the unique happiness of a Chinese language teacher. I can’t imagine these words were actually blurted out by a 5- or 6-year-old kid, and they warmed my heart.

Then, my gratitude goes to the nice colleagues that I met here. Most of them have been very supportive of my Chinese teaching and have been helping me improve classroom discipline during the class. 7 or 8 teachers at the main campus who were Kiwis all tried to teach Chinese themselves, which reduced my workload. I was especially fortunate this year that I had another Chinese as my colleague, with whom I would consult over almost anything ranging from study to work and to life. She would often throw a dinner party on weekends and provide me with free dining and accommodation at her home. To thank her, I gave her a fully-written postcard, which was a rare thing for me as I had never been good at expressing my feelings.

Last but not least, I have to mention the two retired seniors at my homestay: Rick and Trish. Rick is a British, who used to be a captain and sailed on the sea most of his time. Trish is a Kiwi born in Fiji. Their house was only built last year, and I was very fortunate to become the first lodger. They have lived a very agreeable life after retirement, reading books and newspapers at home most of the time, the yearly amount of which was far more than what I could afford to read as a postgraduate. But they could be busy as well, as they had to attend to their grandsons and granddaughters from time to time in addition to taking good care of their own flowers and vegetables in the gardens. They could cook a variety of delicious dishes. As they preferred rice and noodles, they would often cook Asian food, which took good care of my Chinese stomach. They would also take me to different beaches, as though they would like to showcase all the beautiful sceneries in Whangarei to me. One of their daughters happened to be a teacher at the branch campus of my school and she often invited me over to her home for dinner and playing with her children: climbing trees, jumping on a trampoline, walking the dog by the sea and feeding the sheep. The time that I spent with the kids seemed to have made up for what I had missed in my own childhood. If only I had the opportunity to grow in such a free and exhilarating environment when I was young! I would like to thank them for their care and companion in all those days that I have spent with them.

The North never forgets!

【About the Author】ZHANG Meng, master of Class 2016 in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics at SJTU and Chinese volunteer teacher to speakers of other languages at the University of Auckland Confucius Institute. She now teaches at the Onerahi Primary School, the Whangarei Heads School and the Raurimu Ave School.