I found what I love by just doing it

People always throws out question like this, "What is your passion?", or "What do you love to do?"

For me, I struggled so hard to find the answer for the past 20 years. Or should I said, I struggled to have an answer for every question that the big environment tried to throw at me. It was only till summer 2018 I came across the answer by already doing it for weeks long, in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Every morning I went to the exact bus stop at Kamara, let the bust take me up alongside the slope at Sykies, and after that turn on the right I could hear the noise of children in distance -- that is the route for me to discover my passion, by volunteering as a teacher assistant at School KDAP FOVA.

"Kyría Alice (lady Alice), can you write my name in Chinese?"

On day 1, the teacher Maria gave my schedule of the day (in Greek): every day Maria gave me my class schedule and I was always assigned to at least 3 different classes, so I had chance to interact with more kids. I looked down at my first class on the schedule -- "class 11", while following Maria in the pathway. Had no idea what was waiting for me, but I was freakin terrified inside and I couldn't stop thinking as I approached to the classroom: 

Can I do this? Should I do this? I never had any experience with children before, so how do I know if they want to be friends with me?

It was too late to run away. I walked into the classroom, and I saw around 20 kids in their own group of 4, apparently doing different activities because they were all over the place. They all looked at me and started chatting quietly with their peers. Maria introduced me in greek, and I saw suddenly excitement shined in their eyes. They cheerfully yell out more greek to Maria, and kept looking between me and Maria. I turned to her for explanation, and Maria smiled to me saying, they are very excited to see you because you are the first person they know from China in real life. 

So in that afternoon I spent more than 1 hour trying to remember each one of their names, wrote their names (also their family members' names) in Chinese on every piece of paper they could possibly pulled out from whatever corner of their backpack. Their energy and smiles empowered me so much that I forgot about how hesitant and nervous I was at the beginning. When I walked out the school, my heart filled with warmth and happiness, making me look forward to my next day with them.

"Kyría Alice (lady Alice), let's play!"

I had to admit, after overcoming the first stage of self-doubt, my next big challenge was interacting with kids who are 5-9 years old, because they only speak Greek, and they usually don't approach to me easily:

How can I be a teacher in my second language while they probably only understand Greek?

The classes I assisted varies daily: most of the time I stayed inside the classroom, but I did have couple gym classes during the week, either inside the gym or outside on the playground. I remember when I had my first gym class with class 9, I was struggling how could I break the ice with the kids in class. I looked at those kids running around on the playground, feeling my presence was meaningless to them. As I was just about to give up, my wandering eyes came across another teacher's eye contact. Somehow, I felt like I should do something, and that idea pushed me to walk towards that teacher and asked her, I want to do something with the kids, what should I do?  The teacher gathered some kids up, and ask me if I know any games in China. It gave me a bit hard time on the spot because I am not very good at games, but I told myself, just try my best to figure out something. 

I asked the teacher to help me translating a game I always play when I was a kid, called Chicken Mom & The Eagle. Basically a kid will play the role of chicken mom, protecting all her chicken babes, while the eagle needs to catch chicken babes from chicken mom; all the chicken babes need to form in a line behind chicken mom. In the first round, I asked the teacher to be the chicken mom: it went surprisingly well, specially when I really pretended myself as an eagle to catch the kids, they all laughed and screamed trying to run away from me. Since my speed of running was definitely better than an 9-years-old kid, sometimes I missed the chance to catch them on purpose so they could keep playing in the game. At the end they asked me to play the eagle for 5 rounds in a roll -- my legs were freakin sore next day.

Since then, the kids from class 9 always came to me and asked me to join their games: they still didn't understand English, but we found a new way to communicate. They taught me some games they usually played, showing me their surprising level of patience and energy even though I didn't understand their Greek; every time I tried to guess and responded, and if I got it right, they would be so cheerful and be very proud of themselves. 

Every time I saw the smile on these children's face, hearing them saying "Kyría Alice" and receiving their hugs, I knew I totally love what I was doing, and that is what I called my passion. If you're looking for your answer like me, go check out aiesec.org to find your passion by just doing a volunteer exchange project.