By Maggie Gordon

GUILDERLAND — ZhouJi, an English teacher from Jiujiang, China, is scheduled to arrive in the region on Aug. 16, but has no place to stay.

He is coming to America for 10 months to teach in Guilderland, through American Field Service International, and will begin teaching in Pine Bush Elementary School.

Originally, Ji was placed in a home near the school, but his host family had to cancel their commitment, due to an illness.
Jean Michelle "Mickey" Nieman, an AFS volunteer, is currently on the hunt for a new host family for Ji.

Nieman has been involved with AFS for more than a decade. She was a mentor teacher at Guilderland High School for 12 of the 33 years she worked as an English teacher there. She also taught in China in 1998 through AFS, and in the Philippines in 1964 through a similar program.
AFS’s slogan is "Walk together, talk together, all ye people of the earth, then and only then shall we have peace."
The program was founded by ambulance drivers who "thought that, if students from different countries saw what it was like to live somewhere else, it could prevent war," Nieman said.
Ji describes himself as "a peace lover, and ready to devote my whole life to peace making career for our human beings.
He writes in a letter to his would-be host family, "I hope to join the program to learn more about other nations’ culture and spread our own culture across the world, after I come back home, I will continue to teach English and spread the culture."
He enjoys "living a quiet life," he says — taking pictures of his kindergarten daughter, creating frames for photographs, hiking, gardening, and listening to classical music. When he feels bad, he writes, he likes listening to Beethoven’s symphonies.
Ji is a middle-school English teacher, the head of the English department, and a head teacher — Nieman describes this position as a class advisor, but much more in depth. He has taken his students on nature walks and cookouts. "I told my students we should always keep the environment clean," he wrote in his application for the program.

Ji is a husband and father, and he will be leaving his family in China for his trip to America. Family is a large part of his life, and he plans on contributing to his host family’s needs.
"When I come to live with a host family, I will share the responsibility of a family just as I do in my own family in China. Of course I will do everything with full respect to my host family members. I won’t do things without considering my host family feelings. And I try my best to get very well with each member of my host family, which is most important to me. To share sorrow and happiness with other human beings or other beings is my dream."

Volunteering
"If a family would want to divide his stay into three sections and take him for part of his 10 months, that would also be possible," Nieman said. "It doesn’t have to be a commitment for the whole year."

Nieman said that those who wish to host Ji should know that he is a non-smoker, and has no dietary restrictions.
The experience not only benefits the teacher, such as Ji, Nieman said but it will also teach the host family a great deal about the rest of the world. "In spite of the things you find that are different, the people are the same," she said.
"I believe in the program. I know people have made lasting connections," Nieman added. She is one of the people who has made such a connection. Her family hosted a young woman from Latvia, and after the year was over, Nieman invited her "daughter" to visit her again.
"It’s amazing what you get out of this program. The tie you have with someone else — it makes even reading the news a different experience... It puts a face on the country," Nieman said. "I don’t think the family would ever regret it."

Nieman suggests that anyone interested in hosting Ji call her at 356-1691, or call Cathie Currin, the Eastern New York AFS representative, at 581-9199.