Appreciation Letter for Volunteer Ilaria D'adda from Mr. Guo

Mr. Guo, Volunteer SupervisorZhengZhou Middle School #42

"A Lovely Bilingual Language Teacher"

August 11, 2009

How time flies! The three months that Ilaria taught oral English lessons in our school went by quickly. From September 29th to December 18th, 2010 all of our students and English teachers spent a very happy time with Ilaria. In fact, Ilaria gave me so much happy time and surprise. I had never thought that she can speak Chinese so well. To my astonishment, I had never thought that she could read Chinese papers. The students she taught were from Grade seven, they did not have many English words. Ilaria speaks Chinese so well that she could communicate better with the students when they couldn’t express themselves well in English. So it became very easy for our students to talk to Ilaria, and more and more students dared to speak English in her class. And more and more students felt closer to her and loved her.

At the same time, she always got ready for her lessons much seriously. So many movies, songs, cartoons and pictures made her lessons very interesting. There were many games in her lessons, at least a game each lesson. Those games made our students like her lessons more and more, because there were not games like that in our English lessons

Ilaria with some of her students

which were taught by our English teacher. Our English teachers learnt much from Ilaria in teaching. The open classes, the active atmosphere in the classes, paying attention to her lessons, being friendly with her students, those gave our English many inspirations. I also felt surprised that she listened to other teachers’ lessons, for example, history, Chinese, math, and so on. She said that she just wanted to know more things about the Chinese school teaching.

She is quite outgoing, she likes to talk to our teachers. Her hobbies are many: rock climbing, travelling, so she was not lonely in Zhengzhou, and she had many Chinese friends. She also likes Chinese dishes, she usually had food in our cafeteria with our students. She said the food in the cafeteria was good. When she was going to leave our school she took pictures with the cooks in the restaurant.

Now, China is opening to the outside world, the minds of Chinese people are opening too. I think, Ilaria taught our students some things about the west culture in her lessons. But living with a foreigner so long and touching a foreigner so closely in our students’ childhood is more important than the knowledge. Maybe the time spent with Ilaria would affect our students’ whole lives. I only wanted to say thanks to Ilaria for our enjoyment with her, teaching our students, being friends with her. Wish her good luck and happiness every day! I think, a gift to Ilaria may express our thanks to her, it is a Chinese painting, in which there were some orchids, the orchids stand by the side of a big rock and three little birds stand on the rock, the rock is located in a village of mountains. There is a waterfall falling down from the top of a mountain. 怡兰，Ilaria’s Chinese name, is in front of the plant: orchid, and the plant of orchid is very special in Chinese culture, which means bravery, honesty, cordiality, and many gentleman look themselves as orchid in Chinese history.

At last, I’d like to speak thanks to Miss Jessie，the leader of the Xu Bo Art and Culture Exchange Company. It is her who built a bridge of friendship between Ilaria and us, we hope there will be more and more foreigners coming to our school. The opening Zhengzhou No.42 middle school welcomes you!