Former MCHS student travels to China to study and to teach English as a ...

“I can’t believe it, it’s here, I’m going to be gone for two and a half months and I leave in 10 days,” Brooks said last week. “And I still have finals to take care of.”

His journey will begin with a two-hour flight to New York and a seven-hour layover before boarding another plane for the 14-hour flight to Shanghai, and then another two hours on to Beijing.

“There were two different scholarships for studying abroad, so I just decided to sign up for both,” Brooks said. “I figured I might as well go ahead and do it while I can afford it. After all, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Brooks confesses that he doesn’t know a word of Chinese – yet.

“I hope to be able to say a few things when I come home,” he said. “It’s just that so much of that language is based on inflection.”

Brooks will return home on July 22, just in time for a few weeks’ break before classes begin again in mid-August. In addition to having this experience under his belt, Brooks will also begin his sophomore year at Gainesville as student government president.

“I’m very excited about that,” Brooks said.

Brooks graduated from Madison County High School in 2010 as an honor graduate who was very involved in 4-H. He is the son of George and Jane Brooks and has a younger brother, Matthew.