Her Laughter Lit the Cafeteria

Several weeks ago my friend and former student, July, interviewed me for one of her classes. She just sent me the article that she wrote after the interview, so I thought I'd share it with you! At the end of the article is a picture of July standing in front of her house in Hangzhou...I had lunch with her family when I was there visiting over winter holiday!

A cafeteria. Dim light. Soft music. People’s quiet talk.

“Hello. Your Spaghetti.” A young waiter broke my conversation with my interviewee.

“We didn’t order that.” I responded in English immediately and then I saw a confused look wore on the waiter’s face.

“Ahaha……”before I realized the mistake I had made, my American interviewee Shannon Ingleby ——an English teacher in TJFSU.(Tianjin Foreign Studies University) ——had burst into laughter. “Ha-ha. So cute!……funny……because you’ve just been talking to me, you speak English unconsciously to that Chinese waiter!……Ha-ha!” The blonde beauty couldn’t help laughing, though she had bended her body until her head was almost close to the table trying to control the laughter. Her hearty laughter, obviously, was totally out of tune with that quietness, but it lighted the dusky cafeteria. People looked at her with smiles. And I laughed, too. It seems that Shannon Ingleby, the kind, helpful, spontaneous cutie who always looking for fun, has the magic power which can gain people happiness.

“She is so kind. Or maybe the kindest foreign teacher I’ve ever met.” Said ShenYang, a junior student majored in international media in TJFSU.

“I think she is more a friend than a teacher.” Dingyuan majored in British and American literature who had taken Shannon’s lesson in the second year of college said.

Shannon Ingleby, 27, went to Tianjin and became a writing teacher in TJFSU in 2007. She used to be manager of a children’s organization in America. When mentioned what kind of teacher she wanted to be, she said “helpful, can be trusted, and as a good friend of my students.”

That is not only empty talk. She does what she says.

Wang Yahong, another media major student said Shannon had helped her friend. Her friend’s boyfriend get a cancer, so her friend would leave for Beijing and be absent at Shannon’s class. Wang helped her to ask a day leave. “I told Shannon the truth. She cared about my friend. ‘if there is anything I can help, just tell me, like money, the place to live in Beijing, everything!’ that’s what Shannon said.”

“If there is anything I can help, just tell me.” That’s what Shannon always says to her friend. But if you are one of her friends, you will possibly hear these words very often——“have fun.”

Shannon Ingleby had an unforgettable childhood, during which she had a lot of fun.

She was born and grown up in Iowa. She has 3 sisters and 1 brother. (Including 1 stepsister and a stepbrother.) They used to go to Michigan every summer. “We have a lot of traveling and those trips were sticking in my mind, to rent a boat, swimming, boating, and spending all day at lake. We had so much fun.”

She also used “have fun” to explain the reason for selling insects to neighbors with a friend living in the same street.

“We went and searched for bugs, like worms, insects, and we walked door to door trying to sell insects to our neighbors. One girl, she bought. She gave us 4 pennies which was like 1 Fen. You know, it was so little!” Her pure laughter haunted in the cafeteria again when she talked about this funny experience. In the dim light, her eyes glowed with excitement. “And somewhere we lost 1 of the penny. So we only had 3 pennies, but there’re 2 of us, how can we share this? So we went back to that girl ask her for another penny.…… I thought we were just bored. I think I just wanted to have fun.”

When Shannon got older, the willing to look for fun was never changed. She sold lemonade made on her own. She wanted to be a Librarian only because she could have fun with the card machine in library. She joined the business club in high school so that she could travel to a lot of different cities. And finally, she came to china by an exchange project in her college (central college) in 2002.

Firstly, she went to the Ningxia Second minority university. And the next year, she came to Zhejiang University.

“The life was difficult when I first came to china, for everything is different. But after I left, I just missed the people the lifestyle and the food in china. So I came again.”

“In 2007, you came to Tianjin and became a teacher. You said you dreamed to be a teacher when you were a child. But have you ever planed to be a teacher in college?” I asked.

“No way! I had no desire to be a teacher in college.”

“But you are a teacher now.”

“Yes! You know, I’m a spontaneous person. If someone asks me to skip everything that we have tomorrow and Tuesday, Wednesday, and take a trip to Qingdao for 3 days, they could probably convince me.”

“How do you think about the relationship between dream and life?”

“It’s good to have dreams and it’s necessary. I will make plans, but just be flexible when plan changes. Don’t hold on too tightly to plans, otherwise you’ll be hurt at end.” She nodded. “Just be spontaneous.”

“Now that you didn’t want to be a teacher when in college, what was your dream that time?”

“I wanted to get married at 25, but now I’m already 27. You can understand why I say life is spontaneous.” She spoke a little louder but in a slower way with a naughty and innocent face expression as if she had just proved something.

Yes. With naughty and innocent face, Shannon Ingelby sometimes is like a cute child.

“That’s all? Oh, I talked so much!” Shannon seemed to blame herself.

Both of us hadn’t noticed the pass-by of the time, not to mention the 60 m’ tape might have stopped half an hour ago.

“The tape has finished 30 minutes ago? But it was a 60 m’ tape. I talked so much! ”

“Aha, I don’t think so. Maybe there is something wrong with the tape!”

“Yep. There is something wrong with the tape!” she nodded and repeated my words very seriously, which aroused her laughter the next second.

The same cafeteria. Dim light. Soft music. People’s quiet talk. Shannon Ingleby was laughing. Clearly, lovely, her laughter had lighted the cafeteria that night.