我很年輕的時候曾經來中國教書。那時我 21 歲，大學剛畢業。我在大連理工學院(現在叫大連理工大學)教本科生，這些學生大多都比我大。我的學生都很擅長化學、物理和工程學，不少人也有將來出國留學的打算，但他們大多從來沒見過外國人，也沒和母語是英語的人講過話。我的工作就是讓學生們習慣於聽地道的英語，並教他們口語，這樣講英文的人也能聽懂他們。
那是 1980 年代中期，科技還沒那麼發達。但我們的確有又大又沉的錄音機可以放卡帶聽，每臺得有 5 公斤重，我們搬著它們去各個教室。同樣的課我們要重複講幾遍，又不想在黑板上一遍遍寫同樣的板書，於是我們發明了自己的“大字報”。我買了大張的紙、中國毛筆，還有一瓶墨水，用這些大字報做成了我自己的板書。我們每週有一堂“文化課”，各班的所有學生(好幾百人)都一起到一個大講堂來聽課—我們必須非常有創意，因為我們手頭並沒有很多材料可用，那時也沒有因特網。講到萬聖節的時候，我就刻一個綠色的大冬瓜，裡面放一根蠟燭;講到聖誕節，我們就找來一顆很小的樹，用紙剪成裝飾來裝點。
我很高興能夠認識我的中國學生，瞭解中國的生活。我的學生很多來自非常困難的家庭，能上大學是很了不起的事。他們教我們唱中國歌，邀我們去他們的舞會，還讓我們去看他們擁擠的宿舍。有一件事那時的中國學生還不太有經驗，那就是約會—那時候男生和女生都怕被人看見在一起，除非兩人已經訂婚，這讓男女彼此瞭解的過程變得有點兒難。在班上，男生和女生會互相觀察，來看自己可能會喜歡誰，而這時他們彼此甚至連一句話都還沒說過!
利用春節放假和暑假，我背了個小包遊覽中國各地。我去了很多地方：北京、上海、廣州、昆明、武漢、成都、重慶、西安、青島和曲阜。跟著學校組織的旅行我們還見識了東北—瀋陽、哈爾濱和丹東。即便是去了那麼多地方，我從沒覺得我已經看得足夠了，我的中文學得當然也不夠。所以，為了看到更多，同時繼續學中文，幾年後我又回到中國，開始在使館工作，而我現在仍然在使館工作。
時隔三十年，故地重遊大連理工大學。
(知乎日報注：以下英文部分與中文內容一致)
I came to China to teach when I was very young. I was 21 years old and had just graduated from college. I was teaching graduate students at the Dalian Institute of Technology (now the Dalian University of Technology) and most of them were older than me. My students were all very smart in chemistry, physics and engineering and many of them planned to study overseas in the future. But most of them had never met a foreigner and had never spoken with some who was a native speaker of English. My job was to get the students accustomed to hearing English as it’s really spoken and to have them learn how to speak so that an English-speaker could understand them.
Because this was the mid-1980s, we didn’t have a lot of technology available to us. We did have big heavy tape recorders with cassette tapes to listen to. Each one must have weighed 5 kilograms and we carried them to all our classes. Because we taught the same class in several sessions and didn’t want to write the same things on the board repeatedly, we created our own “Big Character Posters” (Dazibao) for teaching. I bought large pieces of paper, a Chninese maobi, and a bottle of ink and created my lessons on these large posters. Once a week, all the students from all the classes (several hundred) came to one very large lecture hall for that week’s “cultural lesson” – we had to be very creative as we hadn’t brought a lot of materials with us and we didn’t have the Internet. For Halloween, I carved a large green donggua and put a candle inside; for Christmas, we found a very small tree to decorate with ornaments we cut out of paper.
I had a good time getting to know my students and understanding life in China. Many of them had come from very difficult circumstances and making it to university was quite an achievement. They taught us Chinese songs, invited us to their dance parties, and let us come see their crowded dorm rooms. One area that Chinese students of that time didn’t have much experience with was dating – at that time, men and women were afraid to be seen together in public unless they were engaged, so it made getting to know each other very awkward. In classes, the men and women were watching each other to figure out who they might like before they even talked to each other!
At the ChunJie vacation and summer vacation, I took a small bag and traveled around the country. I visited a lot of places: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kunming, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xian, Qingdao and Qufu. On school trips we saw the sights of DongBei – Shenyang, Harbin and Dandong. Even with all that traveling, I never felt like I saw enough of China and I certainly didn’t learn enough of the language. So I returned a few years later when I started working at the Embassy in order to do both, and I’m still doing it today.