More than a million. That’s how many bodies are moving every day in Beijing, China.

    The streets are crowded with laughing children and bodies rushing to work. The air smells of gasoline and carefully prepared food. The breeze carries the potent scent for miles as chefs prepare gourmet dishes.

    One of NHS’s own

teachers will soon see Beijing not from a screen in the palm of her hand but with her own blue eyes.

    This summer, English teacher Nicole May will travel 6,731 miles overseas to spend part of her summer in Beijing. May has already traveled Europe and she said she wanted to travel to a country she had never visited before. She will leave the third week of June and return in mid July.

    “I very much would like to go to a different part of the world,” May said, “It’s very fascinating and interesting.”

    Music teacher Bethany Robinson introduced May to a program that allows teachers from America to make the thrilling voyage to Beijing.

    “The University of Technology and Science [of China] is very interested in Western education style,” May said. “They’ve [combined] the University of Beijing with different American

universities,” May said.  

    “[Through this program] we can share our education to places thousands of miles away. Education boards can exchange ideas and new ways to better the students and communities,” May said.

    May said that while high schoolers in America are starting their summer vacations, many students in China will head to University camp to take English language classes. The ages of these studentsrange from teenagers clear down to  pre teens. May says this is because China has a different education system than America, not just in content but in the way students are gouped as well.    

    After  landing in China, May and other teachers from different schools around the U.S. will begin to teach their classes in a variety of subjects.

    “During the week, we teach young students English (literature) and then on the weekends the university will then take us instructors to the Great Wall or The Forbidden City so we can see tourist attractions as well,” May said.

    While the group’s teachers are educating their Chinese students, they also will have the opportunity to explore and visit sites that everyone wants to see when traveling to the remarkable country.

    May says the language differences are one of the biggest challenges she faces. Words in Chinese that look the same as their English counterparts are pronounced in a completely different way.

    “It’s a beautiful language.” May said. “ I can see myself studying it even though I might not ever get fluency.”   

    May says that learning any language is a liberating task, because it challenges a person’s usual way to speak.

    “You have to throw yourself  into a language and saturate yourself in it to truly learn it,” May, who has studied German, French and Spanish as well as Chinese, said.

    “My daughter who took Chinese at Purdue, and I have Chop Stick Wednesdays where we practice with our chopstick edicate and the basics of

Chinese and writing,” May said.

    Even just the basics of Chinese can be

extremely challenging and completely foreign to American beginners.

     May has studied German, French and Spanish. She said she plans to take the same approach to Chinese that she used to learn her other

languages.

     “You have to throw yourself into a language and saturate yourself in it to truly learn it,” May said.