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On August 20th, I will embark on what sounds like a ludicrous idea: take a group of British teenagers barely out of their 13 years of school and put them in charge of English classes in countries in Asia, South America and Africa. It sounds like a recipe for disaster and yet Project Trust have achieved this for over 40 years.
My name is Callum Patterson, and I'm going to China. Oh, and I'm the one in the red shirt.
I guess I better explain why I chose to be in this position. It was about August last year that I considered the idea of going on a gap year in between school and university. Specifically with Project Trust because my sister, back in 2008, went on her gap year to Japan and benefited immensely from her year away. I also just wanted to a break from school and education and see the world before I truly decide what I want to do with my life (I know I'm going to be in a school for the next year still but shush, my point still stands).
To be a part of Project Trusts gap year, you have to take part in their selection week and honestly, I'll dedicate my blog post to this week before I go to China but not right now. Instead, I'll give a little info on what I'll be doing in China. There will be about 20 of us going on a plane from Heathrow, London to Hong Kong (Only for about 2 hours changing planes) and then we heard to Beijing and stay there for 9 days. In that time we'll get a short language course and support as we get used to our surroundings.
After that we'll be sent off to our various projects all across China, with two people being sent off to each location. Harrison and I will be sent off to Kuitun, in the Xinjiang province over in the north west. We'll be teaching English at two separate schools, with students in the age range between 11 to 15 for middle school and 15 to 18 in high school. We'll have our own flat to live in (We've seen pictures of the place and it's really cool). What I also love is that there are 4 other projects situated in Xinjiang and, if money and time were to permit us, we could all see each other over the weekend in one city.
I'm super excited about this and it goes back to what I said at the start: the idea of sending teenagers to live in a far away country is absurd, especially considering others our age are scared of leaving home for a university dorm in a different city. And yet I could not be more excited and I could not be more grateful for those who have supported me in the run-up to this journey and I am very pleased to say that all 20 of us going are very pleasant and very nice indeed. We're all going to get on great this next year.
I hope you'll enjoy this blog and I'll make sure to update with tales of my gap regularly. I'll also write some posts about the training and selection before I go away because once I'm there all my blogs will most likely consist of ''OMG THE GREAT WALL! OMG, THE SILK ROAD! OMG, MY FIRST CLASS'' and so on. Thank you for reading.
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