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Hi everyone, I¡¯m Rob and I come from Australia. My wife and I sold everything we had and moved to China three and a half years ago. We had a dream of travelling the world, teaching English as we went to help fund our travels. China was our first destination and we planned on staying for one year and then choosing another country to live and work in. What we didn¡¯t plan on was falling in love with China. China has now become our home. We have been to over 30 countries in the world, but none of them compare to this incredible country. I am lucky enough to be teaching English at Guangdong Ocean University. It is the most fulfilling job I have ever had in my life. To stand in front of my classes and see the captivated expressions on all the student¡¯s faces, all keen and eager to learn English is an amazing feeling. All of my students have touched my heart and at the end of every year, the tears flow, not only from the students, but from me as well as we say our goodbyes. I get this overwhelming feeling of having touched their lives and also the realization that they have touched mine and changed me forever. But, at the beginning of the next semester, there are new classes of students from nearly every province in the country, that sit bright eyed and smiling in my classroom, ready to share their lives with me in the classroom.Our Campus is situated in a small farming community on the outskirts of Zhanjiang. We are surrounded by small villages, whose families toil very hard everyday in the market gardens. These people don¡¯t have a lot of money, and won¡¯t get to go to Beijing to watch the Olympic Games. They will be like me, at home watching the spectacular event on their television sets. Those who don¡¯t have televisions will be huddled together on little plastic stools at the local eateries and restaurants, which dot the countryside. I would love to have the opportunity to be a torchbearer, not only for my own experience, but for my local community. To have their local ¡°foreigner¡± be a torchbearer would help bring them closer to, and really feel a part of this incredible journey this country is embarking on, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. I would love to do it for them. Thank you Rob.
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