Don Petersen | Special to The Roanoke Times

Sandra Carter plans to return to China, but now teaches English as a volunteer for the Literacy Volunteers of the Roanoke Valley.

Don Petersen | Special to The Roanoke Times

Volunteer Sandra Carter (right) repeats English words and sounds with Syrian couple Ibetesm Tayara (center) and Jrjs Wanis at a recent class at Fallon Park Elementary School in Roanoke.

When Sandra Carter got off the plane in Linyi, a midsized city in eastern China, three men in dark suits were there to meet her. They directed her to a waiting car. She got in.

"It was kind of nerve-racking because I thought: I don't know these men from anywhere," she recalled recently.

A couple of days earlier, on Feb. 25, she had boarded a plane at Roanoke Regional Airport on her way to Shanghai, where she spent a night in a hotel before going on to Linyi to teach conversational English for five months.

Carter, a former special education teacher at William Fleming High School in Roanoke, decided to leave her family behind and go to a far corner of the earth as a way to mourn her son, Steven, who was killed after an argument on Thanksgiving Day 2007.

It was something she felt she had to do, and her family and friends supported her decision.

Life at the Chinese university where she taught was unpredictable, she said, with class schedules constantly changing. The food didn't agree with her, and the bathrooms were less comfortable than she was used to. The pollution made her nose run constantly, and she saw grinding poverty everywhere.

But 7,000 miles from home, in a bustling, striving city of 10 million souls, she found a measure of peace.

"That first day, in Shanghai, I looked out the window and I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm in China.' And I was so happy," she said.

Two months after she left, Dion Algernon Payne pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Steven Carter's death. He is serving a 15-year prison sentence.

Today, Sandra Carter is back in Roanoke, working two evenings a week teaching English for the Literacy Volunteers of the Roanoke Valley. She leads her adult students in songs such as "London Bridge is Falling Down," and bakes them muffins, patiently explaining how they differ from cupcakes.

Carter and the three men drove to the university and to her apartment. She was hungry. A man who lived across the hall offered to make her a baked potato. His name was Timothy Moon, and he was another American teacher, who knew the ropes.

"Her biggest problem was the loss of her son. She just came and it was obvious she was hurting," Moon recalled, speaking by telephone from Oklahoma, where he lives now.

In Carter's pictures from China, Moon is a burly, jovial-looking man with a white beard. But on the phone, he speaks softly and has a habit of carefully enunciating every syllable, which gives his speech an unhurried, soothing lilt.

"I saw that she needed people to love her. I introduced her to some of the friends that I had made. I trusted her with them, and they did not let me down," he said.

Carter said that one of those friends, Ling Liu, became like a daughter to her. After spending months in China, "I think she was not so sad as before," Ling wrote in an e-mail.

Carter said her students were "thrilled" to have a teacher from the United States. They studied constantly and told her that a college education was their only way to get ahead in China's rapidly changing society. One student invited her to her home village. It was a drastic change from Linyi.

In the city, buildings are constantly being demolished and rebuilt. Piles of rubble line the street, and elderly people comb through the ruins looking for recyclables, which they carry away on their bicycles. In the country, the pace is slower, Carter said.

"The cows were so thin you actually could see their rib cage. Very sad," she said.

She worked only 16 hours a week at the university, so she got a couple of part-time teaching jobs. She also traveled some within China. Everywhere she went, she was amazed at how polite and respectful people were.

"I never saw an argument. I never saw anyone drunk. I never even heard a disagreement. It was different. It was better," she said.

"It was the most wonderful time of my life," she added, before catching herself: "Except for my son."

Moon and Carter talked often about her son's murder. And about forgiveness. Moon, a deeply religious man, gave her reading material and advice.

"When you've been badly hurt and you don't forgive, you are the one who ends up suffering," Moon said. "If somehow you can make it and turn loose some of the anger, it helps you much more than it helps the other person.

"Her pain was deep enough that she was willing to try anything. And she did it. And her attitude towards her son's killer changed," he added.

"I don't have the hate that I left with," Carter said one morning, sitting at a booth at a Denny's restaurant in Roanoke. "I'm much better in terms of hatred and anger. It's diminished."

Before she left, she had said she wanted to "disappear" for a while. She left her family pictures at home.

"I like to run away from things," she said. "It's easier. I'm sorry it's like that, but it is. I would not have come back had it not been for my daughter and husband."

When she came home, in June, she had trouble readjusting to Roanoke. It took weeks for her to clear her mind.

"I just didn't want to be back here, I didn't want to be in a society that's so materialistic. I mean, a man is trampled in Wal-Mart? Good grief," she said, referring to the Wal-Mart employee in New York who was crushed to death by post-Thanksgiving crowds last month.

She's planning to run away to China again. So is Moon. He has contacted a Chinese marriage broker. He wants to marry a Chinese woman and live in China for the rest of his life.

Carter plans to continue teaching English. Perhaps in Linyi, perhaps somewhere else. Once again, her husband and daughter support her decision. They want her to be happy, she said.