Forres teenager's big break in China
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SOPHIE Matheson certainly didn't take the easy option during her gap year before going to university.
The 19-year-old former Forres Academy pupil has just returned from China where she was teaching English to classes consisting of 70 pupils.
Sophie arrived in the city of Yiyang last July after a 15-hour train journey from the capital Beijing.
She said: "My first impression was it looked quite a poor place, so it was a slight shock to think this was where I'd be living for the next 12 months.
"Considering the population of Yiyang was 300,000, there wasn't much there. For instance, it had a couple of large supermarkets but no malls or anything like that.
"But I was never homesick. I was actually more excited than anything else.
"Over the course of the previous year I'd had to raise £6200 of funds to pay for the trip, so to finally find myself at the school was an amazing experience."
The local high school had a roll of 4000 pupils aged between 15 and 18.
When she first began teaching, some of the pupils were older than Sophie.
And a typical class would see her standing alone in front of a class of 70.
Sophie said: "Thankfully, I only had to teach 12 classes 45-minute classes each week, but the pupils were at the school seven days a week.
"They didn't have lessons the whole time but they had to be inside the classroom from 6am to 11pm during weekdays, reading or doing homework.
"I would still be in bed when they started and fast asleep by the time they finished.
"On top of that, they also had school on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons.
"They were worked so hard you had to feel sorry for them."
Sophie added: "Some were very good at English, some could hardly speak it all. But they would all be in the same classroom together – there was no streaming.
"It made it difficult but I did my best to get round the problem by using pictures. In my first lesson I showed them a picture of the Scottish flag and asked if they knew which country it represented.
"I then spoke about Scotland and what our weather was like and which foods we ate."
One similarity with Scotland was that it rained a lot, although the rain in Yiyang tended to be of a far warmer variety.
The food, however, was very different. Chicken feet was just one of the local specialities which Sophie tasted.
She said: "They had a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Yiyang which people were very proud of. It was one of the few Western things in the city.
"If you were invited out for dinner it was usually to KFC.
"But it was noodles or rice every day for lunch which got a bit boring after a while.
"It got to the point where I used to dream about eating sandwiches."
Sophie also did a lot of travelling during her time in China along with Isobel, a girl from Ireland who was her partner with the Project Trust programme.
The pair travelled to no less than 30 different cities right across the country.
She said: "I was determined to make the most of the opportunity and see as much as possible.
"We got longer breaks from the school at Christmas and during the Chinese Spring Festival.
"But sometimes we'd just head off at weekends. We'd travel for hours by train, have a single day in a place and then come straight back again."
China doesn't allow its citizens proper access to the internet.
To get around the Great Firewall of China, as it's known, Sophie obtained a special VPN internet link before travelling.
But the connections were so poor that she hardly spent any time on social media.
Sophie said: "To be honest I didn't really miss it. Having said that, people were messaging me but I never saw their posts. So now I'm home again I have some catching up to do."
In September she will be going to Stirling University to study Biology and Psychology.
Sophie said: "I think I've learnt a lot these past 12 months. I'm certainly a lot more confident than I was.
"I'd like to thank everyone who helped fund my trip. I'd also like to thank my family. They were a little bit apprehensive when I first said that this was what I wanted to do.
"But as soon as I started fundrasing they were completely behind me one hundred percent."
