Good landed in China on Aug. 17, 2013, after 27 hours of travel. Her adventure was off to a rough start when, after her luggage was lost in Shanghai, her driver at the airport in Kunming was nowhere to be seen.

“I waited for about two hours; I was just this tall foreigner at the airport; I was exhausted and crying,” she said. “Finally my ride comes and takes me to the teacher department at my school and gets lost on the way. We didn’t arrive until the early morning.”

Kunming, Good’s new home, is the capital of Yunnan Province in southwest China and, with a population of almost 7 million, is the largest city in the area.

Finding herself immersed in a vastly different culture, Good spent the first eight months in China bouncing from personal disorientation to homesickness and acclimation , all while trying to grasp Mandarin, the country’s most common language.

“I taught in English, but we had to eventually integrate Chinese into the lessons,” Good said. “It took me six months to get basic Chinese down and communicate. It was a really hard adjustment, but then things kinda turned around and got better.”

Eventually, Good eased into the Chinese way of life and started making friends outside her school.