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Kevin Schooling (central) comes to China with his family – his wife, two sons and a daughter in 2010. |
Kevin Schooling, from Kentucky, US, was assigned to Wuxi International School, Jiangsu province as principal in 2011. Previously he worked in Tianjin, a metropolis in coastal northeastern China, for one year.
Kevin committed himself to education after graduation from university, and had been a principal for seven years in the US.
In 2010, he came to China with his family – his wife, two sons and a daughter.
Now, his two sons are studying at Wuxi International School and the daughter was admitted to a university in the US last year.
Lisa, his wife, is both the chief librarian and art teacher of the school. She is also a painter.
She said that the whole family often visits the parks around Taihu Lake on weekends. She likes painting the natural scenery on canvas while appreciating the views and having her family around her while she paints.
One of her paintings – depicting a teapot and a fan – won a prize at an art exhibition in Wuxi.
In her opinion, Wuxi is endowed with breathtaking scenery, which should be recorded with brushes.
Sometimes, Lisa goes to Jiangnan University to learn Chinese. She can chat in Chinese now and is not too bad at calligraphy.
Their sons can read and write Chinese as well.
Kevin joked that they adopted a cat from a Chinese family, now it's a bilingual cat. "This is a kind of cultural exchange too."
He told reporters that he is satisfied with the life and work in Wuxi, especially in that his school has been growing for the past few years.
There are 206 students from 14 countries and regions and more than 40 international teachers at the school. Of them, 15 teachers brought their families to Wuxi.
To help these foreign teachers better integrate with the local society and culture, the school also hired two Chinese teachers.
Compared to other cities, like Hangzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai, Wuxi features a more natural, green and clean environment, the teachers said.
Most importantly, Wuxi enjoys convenient transportation links. The highways, railway lines and airlines form networks extending in all directions. Accordingly, people can travel freely.
"So Wuxi is a good place to live, and we will live here as long as possible," Kevin and his wife told reporters.
