We got this letter this morning and we thought, you just have to read it.

It is from Jessy, the trainee from Taiwan, who came through International Kindergarten Project. She is talking about her experience at the Kindergarten and all I can say is that you’ll definitely experience different emotions while reading it. Enjoy!

Dear kindergarten managers and AIESECers from International Kindergarten project,

I am sitting at the table in a friend’s apartment and at the meanwhile you are in careresti, talking about the feed back of this project.  I apologize that I did not accept the invitation for my personal reason.  Still, I am more than willing to share with you my experience here, in Gradinita Penilla.

I still remember the first day I went to Penilla.  It was sunny.  Tina and I struggled all the way to the top of the hill.  I saw yellow Penilla shining under the sun and I fell immediately in love with it.  The director gave me a guide in the mazed-like Penilla.  We saw the kids and how they worked.  The next day I stayed beside Stefania’s classroom, watching Otilia teaching kids about the colors of balls.  I was so impressed by their interaction; I was so amazed by kids’ cleverness.  I started to imagine and plan my lessons.

I discussed with Otilia about the content and the theme for the following days and weeks.  We talked almost every day after the lunch in the first two weeks.  She showed me what she’d done with the kids in her term in Penilla.  We saw the paper works, the drawings, the DVDs, the photos and all that.  They were so nice.  But, the thing that really moved me was that she kept these histories all the time.  I saw Giovani on the wall of the classroom, and I thought,”hmm, that must be her favorite.”  We shared our backgrounds and things that happened.

In Penilla, there are four groups, the big ones, middle, little, and the handicapped ones.  In summer, they made them three, big, small, and handicapped.  Along my internship, especially before the seven-year-old kids left for holiday, we did a lot of things pretty intensely.  We did something about the food pyramid, we got to know the name of different food, we made milk tea and cooked salad.  We had a lot of fun.  After the seven-year-old kids and some teachers left for holiday, we had some chaotic time.  But still we did something like knowing the name of different musical instrument, hearing different sounds and got to know the musical types of different world areas.   Also there were handcraft weeks which we did origami, cultural weeks which we invited trainees from Puerto Rico, Russia, and Hong Kong,  Moreover, we went to see animals and do some costume role play in a tiny zoo near banlieu.  We also made some birthday parties to celebrate their new coming age.  After the meeting with Alexandra from the House of Fairies, I started to group kids into different learning types, like some need to hear things, some see things, and some do things.  That really helped me a lot on account of the combination of various teaching methods and materials.  There was a time, Alexandra said that Jacquline(a trainee from Brazil) was always with kids and now the kids turned more to Jacquline than to her.  Deep in my heart, I promised myself that I am gonna be like that.

It seemed like we did a lot of things.  Nonetheless, most of the time, we were in the playground.  There were two rather big playgrounds.  We can have a running race, play basketball, ride bicycles, do jump rope, climb trees to get the apple and some more.  Honestly speaking, that was one of my flaws, I did not state how much time I needed for the lesson.  So sometimes we just let the time go and spent whole morning in the playground.  I have to admit that I love the time in the playground and ball room (Penilla has a fantastic ball room for kids to play inside.) more than the time for teaching.

As the time went by, I stayed longer and longer.  But I no longer gave them formal lessons., for the fact that all ages mixed together and we had no enough teachers.  However, I did more when doing nothing.  Children taught me Romanian and their routines.  I played intellectual games with bigger kids; I fed the kids that yet grew up; I changed their pajamas , gave them apă.  I try to communicate with Alexandra and Razvan; i learned to say NO and WHY to kids.  I believe that there were always more to learn in life and nature than in the classroom.  There were times I stayed till all the kids went home with parents and school bus.  I met the parents in the morning and afternoon.  I got to know who was whose kid and got them to their parents when time came. Then, I found that the promise was fulfilled, by my learning of Romanian and their effort to communicate with me.  Kids here could speak so well in English.  Still, when they tried really really hard to speak easier Romanian and use their facial and body language, I was so moved.

We encountered some children new to kindergarten, like Rares, Cristi, and Adelina.  Most of the time they cried like hell.  But the situation got better few weeks later.  When we saw Cristi handing his hand and moving to get something, trying to speak, it was so cute.  At the last day, I was even crying when I held Rares to sleep.

For me, I did not consider myself as an English teacher.  I was a figure of culture, for them to study and to observe; I was a girl with different looking, for them to play with.  One pity was that I did not manage to present my country by power point as I did in Paradisul de Copiii.

Teachers, director, Mr. Nicu (sorry, all the time I couldn’t figure out your position.) and his family, and cooker, and Veronica all treated me extremely nice.  I appreciate you so much for that and the tasty food, coffee, chalks, tapes, mops, papers as well as my holidays.

Once I asked Otilia, “Do you think they will remember you when they grew up?”  She was so sure about that.  And I so much hope these young faces always have me in their mind.  I told this to Anca, the president of this project, and she said that it didn’t matter they remember you or not.  What matters is that you put something in them, and they take that all the way to their grownup time.

All the time, I was thinking, what if I was raised by this kindergarten, what if I was one of them, what if I met the same kind of teacher when I was little.  Everything would be different if so, for there were social development, knowledge instruction, moral teaching, laugh, and love.

Sincerely yours,

Jessy, Lin Yi Ting from Taiwan