There were only two of us women in the steam room at the Evanston Athletic Center. The other woman mentioned that she had just returned from a trip to California and I sensed she wanted to talk about it. I asked her if she had previously been to California. She said that 26 years ago she came to the United States for the first time and her first stop was San Francisco. She also toured Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. She remembered being very homesick. The people she saw appeared cold and unfriendly. She had been teaching English to Chinese university students for 17 years in China and yet she understood almost nothing of what she heard around her.
This 2019 trip was a revisit of her first trip. In 1993 she had a superficial view of the places she visited; this time she delved into their history, learning about the roles of Mexicans, Native Americans, Chinese and Americans there. She now understood the cultural references of the locals and tourists she met. In 1993, she had no way of knowing that she would stay in the United States.
She marveled how different her life was this time. She was now retired after teaching Chinese to high school students for more than 20 years in a suburban Chicago high school. In 1993, she had been the first and only Mandarin teacher at the school and now there were three full-time Mandarin teachers there. So much had changed globally in the past 26 years to increase interest in learning Mandarin among American students.
I mentioned to her that I had taught English as a Second Language, French and Spanish. “ESL,” she said, shaking her head yes. Foreign language teaching was a connection we had. If our paths cross in the future, I would love to learn more about the methods she used to teach in China vs. the US and also how her methodology evolved here over time.
Most of the time no one speaks in the steam room. Strangers especially do not chat there. It happened to be Mother’s Day and neither of us made mention of it. For me, it was a gift.