A regular weekday morning for Emily Donroe ’13 begins with a 6:30 a.m. alarm, hopping in a taxi by 7:30 a.m. and placing a Starbucks order on the ride so it arrives at the private high school where she works. It sounds very much like a typical workday, but this St. Joseph’s University, New York (SJNY) alumna is doing all that in Wuhan, China.
After graduating with a B.A. in history and minor in political science from St. Joe’s Long Island Campus, Donroe worked as a legal assistant. But she found herself wanting something different.
Donroe decided to reach out to a contact in Wuhan that had been shared by a professor at SJNY. A month later, she was on a flight.
“I landed in China on September 1, 2013, at the young age of 22,” Donroe said.
It was bold and brave. Not only was Wuhan roughly 7,479 miles away from Patchogue, she did not know a soul and would soon have to start a new job as an oral English teacher at China University of Geosciences.
“First time flying over was intimidating… And a huge culture shock,” she said, recalling making her connection in the Beijing airport, being picked up in Wuhan by a program supervisor from the university, and arriving at her new apartment late in the night.
For Emily Donroe ’13, expats helped her settle into her new environment.
“A fellow expat teacher that was on their second or third year there, gave me some toiletries and let me use her wifi password. Then everyone left. And I was by myself, in an apartment in China. I remember I cried the whole night. I cried a lot,” she said.
Expats (short for expatriate, a person living outside of the country of their citizenship) provided Donroe with a sense of community and were instrumental to her settling into this new environment.
Over time, her tribe grew.
“In my 20s, the expat community made me stay. But in my 30s, my Chinese friends and neighbors have had the most influence on my contentment and well-being here,” she shared.
Donroe says in later years, her Chinese friends and neighbors have played a large role in her well-being and contentness.
Donroe remains in the education field in Wuhan. She serves as a humanities department supervisor, managing a team of eight teachers and English Literature and History curriculum. She also assists the principal and teachers in the the international department and is an English literature teacher.
Donroe’s introduction to international travel came while she was an undergraduate at St. Joe’s. She took advantage of study abroad programs, taking part in a short-term trip to Rome, Italy and parts of Greece.
At the Great Wall.
“It was my first time leaving the country, and doing something that big without my family,” she said about her trip overseas through the University.
While Donroe can’t imagine living anywhere else right now, she does miss her family back on Long Island—and good deli food, too.
“I dream of everything bagels with tuna fish,” she said.
Another typical New York experience that Donroe misses is driving and blasting music on the radio. The very idea of it brings back memories of her college days.
“I secretly loved commuting to St. Joes,” she said.
Over the years, Donroe has kept in touch with Charles Lundin, a history lecturer at SJNY.
“I took his Western Civilization course, and fittingly enough, Modern China. I remember that class to be interesting, and full of good people,” she said.
In fact, one could say Donroe’s experience in Wuhan has been a lot like that class.
