Camping with 750 Taiwanese Eighth Graders

This past week, I went camping in Tainan (1.5 hours north of Kaohsiung, up in the mountains) with all 19 of my eighth grade classes. The camping trip is a type of rite of passage for the students, as every school here in Taiwan takes their second graders (they call 'eighth graders' 'second graders', because they start over counting when the student enters junior high) away for a three-day camping trip at some point during the fall term. In trying to describe this camping trip, think military boot camp meets cheerleader camp. It is impossible for me to give a full depiction of what this experience looked like, so I will attempt to give my scattered reflections backed-up with video. Camping was quite the experience for me because (a) I was with 750 thirteen and fourteen year-olds, (b) military boot camp for teenagers is just a crazy cultural experience period, and (c) they were 750 *Taiwanese* teenagers, and I was staying with all of the Taiwanese teachers, so the entire week was Chinese overload - picture a very confused Grace. But it was still so much fun! :)

Video 1: 左右 Chant

We left by bus early Wednesday morning. They needed 19 buses to take up all 19 classes, so we had quite a caravan going on along the highway. I rode up with Ellie and her homeroom class. Once we arrived at the retreat center, we turned the students over to the travel agency. Schools not only rent out a retreat center for the camping site, but they also hire a "travel agency" which is in charge of the kids for the three days. The "travel agents" (what the other teachers kept calling them, though I found it an odd translation for their job description) are basically like drill sergeants, in charge of yelling at the students and whipping them into shape. The teachers were very excited prior to the trip, for they claimed that the students would all be much better behaved when they returned to school the following week. While the students slept in purple tents and had to cook their own food at regimented times, the teachers were put up in a lovely hotel and fed every five minutes (Asians eat more often than any other culture I have been in; it is a mystery how they remain so slim and petite!). The teachers had a very relaxing week, free of any responsibilities towards their students. While the students were shuffled off to do team building exercises, the teachers were were given a tour of the retreat grounds which included a toy train ride, a boat ride and lots more of food. The retreat center was gorgeous. It included a large lake, a lotus pond, scenic mountains with meandering foot paths, lots of flowers and landscaping and even a monkey island. They took us out on a "hua fang," which is an ancient Chinese-style boat, but they also had many dragon boats and swan boats. My observation of these boats was that they were paddle boats, though the sign definitely labeled them as "bicycle boats." Love the Chinglish.


The majority of my time I spent with the other teachers. In the process, I came to the realization that they are quite terrified of me. At school, most of them will say "hi" and smile at me in the hallways, but once we arrived at the retreat center, I noticed that the majority of them were studiously avoiding me. Even the other English teachers seemed to be making efforts to not stand next to me or not to sit next to me. This concerned me the first day, and I was worried that I had somehow done something to make them all secretly hate me. Since I was mostly following around Ellie, my co-teacher, I then became worried that perhaps she felt like she had to babysit me and that I was a burden. As everything going on around me was in Chinese, I never really knew what was going on. Ellie would translate for me sometimes, but not always, so I felt quite lost the majority of the time (yes, my Chinese is improving here, but it is nowhere near the level needed to completely follow an average conversation). This did not concern me so much, though, as my fear that the other teachers did not want me around them.

However, it turns out that I just make them very nervous. All of them, including the English teachers, were terrified of having to speak English to me. Apparently, being excited to have me at their school is quite different from having to actually talk to me and have a conversation. Never before have I thought of myself as an "intimidating" person. Since they as teachers drill grammar rules into their students and are unforgiving of any mistakes, they were extremely afraid of talking to me and making English errors. By the end of the first day, however, a few of them began making efforts to overcome their fear and to approach me. The funniest thing to me was that the director of student affairs, whose cubicle desk is right next to mine in our office, suddenly began speaking to me in fluent English. For the past month, I have thought that he did not know any English. Whenever I would want to talk to him, I would try to use my broken Chinese or else have the guy across from me (Su - a biology teacher with a great sense of humor) translate. And here, all of a sudden, I discover Pei Xing speaks English - probably better English even than Su! Then he began dragging other teachers over to talk to me and became incredibly solicitous about trying to help me with things. Yube, one of the other English teachers, later told me that he was frantically questioning all of the English teachers and trying to learn more English words before every time he talked with me. Her explanation for his lack of English back at Minghua was that he knew that I could always communicate with several of the other directors in English, notably Tsuili. Tsuili and the others were not on the camping trip, so now he felt pressure to try to communicate himself. Seeing how nervous they are to use their practically fluent English makes me so embarassed by the state of my Chinese... Especially since I am living in their country, yet they are having to translate things back into English for me.

As the other teachers became marginally more relaxed around me throughout the week, I felt more comfortable hanging out with them. Another thing I found amusing was how the teachers would drag over other teachers to try to talk to me (my students do this all the time). The line is always, "Oh Grace/Teacher, so-and-so really wants to talk to you, but (s)he is so nervous," and then they push the poor individual forward. On one of the evenings, I was with a group of teachers who wanted to introduce me to one guy who enjoyed following politics and economics. They knew that had been my major in school, so had decided to try to discuss Taiwanese politics for my benefit. These types of conversations, 80% Chinese and 20% English, while incredibly amusing, will be so much more interesting once I begin understanding Chinese better. If nothing else, I am hoping that this week will have made them slightly less nervous to be around me in the future and will have shown them that they can have fun with me in either Chinese and English.

For meal times, I mentioned how the kids had to make their own food. This is a first for many of them, because in Taiwan, parents do not teach their kids to cook. In fact, my experience so far has been that most individuals under the age of 35 do not know how to cook. Eating out is very inexpensive here, so most people opt for take-out or else they are still living at home with their parents who cook for them. Taiwanese culture expects unmarried children (particularly girls, but sometimes even guys) to live at home with their family (I love my parents dearly, but I certainly cannot ever imagine still living with them when I am, say, 32!). At first, I thought that the younger generations did not know how to cook simply because they lived at home where their parents still took care of them. However, even my friends who live on their own do not know how to cook. This week, the other teachers explained to me that parents solely expect their children to study. In the US, students strive to be well-rounded in every area and to fill up their resumes with unique extracurriculars. This is not the case in Taiwan. Here the parents expect their children to dedicate all of their time to schoolwork, neglecting even to train them in how to cook and clean. Therefore, forcing the students to cook for themselves for three days straight is very momentous for the kids. During meal-times, we would walk down to observe the students cooking, and it was fairly amusing to see their efforts. Most of them complained that the food was too salty, and then would offer to let me taste it. I was too smart for that. :)

Probably the most interesting part of the week was Thursday evening when they had a large bonfire. All of the students had spent the last month practicing class dances and songs to perform on this evening. However, before their performances started, they brought out a Sedan chair and paraded the principal around the un-lit bonfire. Then the principal ceremonially lit the fire, and the initiated blaze was accompanied by a fireworks display. At this point, all of the students were screaming, jumping up and down and doing all of their chants. They pulled the teachers out to the middle of the circle, having us form a ring around the bonfire. We were expected to join in with the students' dance, with instructions being shouted at us from the loud speaker. I had no idea what was going on. My goal was just to spin, clap my hands and run around the circle without bumping into too many other people. The best part was when they suddenly froze the music and shouted out new instructions. Suddenly, I had people running at me from everyone tapping me on the head. Then the music started again and I had to dance again. The music stopped, new instructions, and now people were chucking me on the chin. Next we were foot-bumping, and then giving hugs. The last one cracked me up because they had us hip-bumping. I had students running up to me going "Teacher!" and then freezing, because they weren't sure if they should hip-bump me or not. Priceless. Actually, a great analogy of how I felt would be like the Caucus Race from "Alice in Wonderland" - everyone running in all directions simultaneously while singing and screaming at the top of their lungs, while I am trying to avoid being trampled and to not look too much like an idiot.

After this diverting experience, all of the performances began. I really do not know how to explain these, but luckily, I took lots of videos which will hopefully help. Over half of the classes incorporated Super Junior's "Sorry Sorry" song in some fashion (Super Junior is all the rage here in Taiwan - from first graders to adults, but especially my junior highers - think Backstreet Boys go Korean...). If you would like to see the original, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QA3m58DQw&feature=fvst.

Video 2: More Chanting

Video 3: "Sorry Sorry Sorry - Naked Naked Naked"

Video 4: Super Junior Meets Michael Jackson

Conversation I had with a student two weeks ago about Michael Jackson:
Student: Your President is Obama
(Me thinking: Clever child.)
Me speaking: Why yes, he is.
Student: He's black.
(Me thinking: Oh my goodness - why is that the first thing Taiwanese people always say?!)
Me speaking: Why yes, he is. Do you have any black friends? (me knowing perfectly well she does not, because no Taiwanese do)
Student: Michael Jackson is black too! Now he's dead.
(Me thinking: Yes child, yes, he is.)

Video 5: More Dancing, just because

My Taiwanese Host Family

A week-ago Friday, we got to meet our host families. As part of the Fulbright program, each ETA is paired with a local Taiwanese family who "adopts" us and shows us around Taiwan. They are responsible for introducing us to Taiwanese culture (food, festivals etc) and for demonstrating for us what typical Taiwanese family life is like. The program was slightly competitive this year as over thirty families applied, so that means that each of our families are pretty much amazing. :)

Fulbright hosted a large dinner reception for us and all of our families at Shu-de Vocational High School, complete with entertainment provided by the high school students. This high school is one of the best in Kaohsiung, with special programs in music, dance, cooking, sports, science and technology etc. Their orchestra and dance team performed for us, and they also gave us food gifts from their culinary school.











The high school also has multiple sister schools around the world, allowing its students to engage in cultural exchange by both visiting these other countries and by hosting the foreign students here in Kaohsiung. Before our dinner reception, the school took the 12 of us on a tour of its German Village and Aboriginal Museum. The German Village has been decorated to look exactly like a German lodge, and is fully fuctional with bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen and dining/living room area for when the German students visit. The Aboriginal Museum was also interesting, and once again, we found ourselves the popular objects of photoshoots... They took pictures of us in the traditional headdresses, and one even got sent to the local newspaper for a story all about the "foreign teachers" and their new Taiwanese host families. You can check it out here, though it is all in Chinese: http://udn.com/NEWS/DOMESTIC/DOM6/5133453.shtm.




The night before the reception, Fonda came to our apartments to give us all information about our host families. Chris had decided that it would be a fun idea to turn the revealing of our host families into a game show (you may remember Chris had a similar brilliant idea for revealing the co-teacher pairings - he loves to turn everything into a game and make a much bigger deal of everything than necessary - we are still figuring out how we are going to get him back...). Instead of introducing us to our families before dinner so that we could sit with each other and get to know one another throughout the night, he had us sit at random tables and saved the revealings for after dinner. While all of us ETAs knew who our families were, we had to keep it a secret from our host families, who had been told nothing beforehand. And actually, I was sitting by my family all night, but Chris would not let me tell them who I was! Oh Chris... Then after dinner, each ETA went up in front of everyone and started to describe their family. When a family realized it was themselves, they had to shout out "We are family!" before rushing the stage for hugs and more pictures. This third picture is of Chris and Lucy (Sanmin co-teacher who helped Chris MC), so you can sort of know what he looks like. :)


My host family is amazing, and I love them so much! Sunnie, my host sister, applied for the program using her whole family, but I have a feeling she just wanted to do it with her fiance Vincent (they are getting married in January, and I really hope I can go!!), as I have yet to meet the rest of the family. Sunnie and Vincent are so cute, though! Sunnie is also a junior high English teacher (like me), so her English is very good. Vincent teaches high school math, and while he is very shy of speaking English, he understand basically everything I say. Sunnie was also trained as a Chinese teacher, so they can help me with my Chinese too!

To foster family unity, Chris came up with another game for us to play. Each family had to create their own chant/motto/cheer. I am not too good at these things... So don't mock the creativity here. But our idea was to call ourselves VAGSS Tang (湯). VAGSS is the first initials of all the "kids" in our family (Vincent, Grace, Sunnie and Sunnie's two siblings), and 湯 Tang is Sunnie's family name. 湯 "Tang" means "soup," and soup is a metaphor for all of us different individuals coming together to make one tasty soup - er, family... Our family cheer than consisted of us stirring soup and saying some rhyme about VAGSS Tang. Yes, this is why I was never a camp counselor, I know, but I tried... For what it's worth, everyone else's chants were equally cheesy. :)

English Village

Four hours a week, each ETA works at one of the four major English Villages in Kaohsiung. While many schools have their own small English Village (which may only have one or two stations), these main EVs have 4-8 large stations (you'll remember I showed you pictures of our visits to them all in an earlier entry). I work with Bekah at the Sanmin Elementary School EV on Monday and Friday mornings.


Two different classes can visit the EV at the same time, so we have somewhere between 60-70 students in a morning. The children cycle through stations in groups of around eight students. They are supposed to run through the dialogues with us for eight minutes before moving on to the next station.

Each fifth grade class in Kaohsiung visits one of the EVs once a semester. Therefore, EV is more like a fun field-trip for them rather than useful English instruction. For me, it feels like English summer camp all over again, twice a week. The students are not really learning that much English while visiting the EV; instead it is helping them to use whatever English they have in a fun, interactive setting, giving them the chance to speak English to foreigners (Bekah and I) in a semi-real-life environment. The biggest problem which I have noticed so far is that most of the students who come do not have the base level English skills necessary to do the role-playing. Either I was doing most of the talking for them, or I would have to have them read off their lines from a posterboard. In the latter case, the kids were not understanding what they were saying and were merely repeating after me. After talking to some of the other ETAs about their EV experiences, I think that I was trying to do too much. The other ETAs said they had entirely scrapped the role-playing, and were instead teaching the children vocabulary (ie: colors and clothing items in the department store) and then playing games to help the children memorize the words.


At the end of EV, Bekah and I "reviewed" with the students, something fairly difficult to do when they had not really understood what they were doing the first time around. Then we counted up the points for each group (we stamp the kids' "passports" and give out points to each group based on their behavior and effort as they go through each station). The winning group received super-awesome "Sanmin English Village" pins, which Bekah and I had the great honor of pinning onto each student, while the rest of the kids hummed a congratulations song.

Scootering Makes My Life

It is absolutely necessary that I include a posting about my scooter. My scooter is one of my favorite things. If I were Maria, singing about "a few of my favorite things," scootering would top the charts and help me to forget all my sorrows of dogs barking and bees stinging. As soon as Professor Lee mentioned Taiwanese scooters to me last spring, I knew that some scooter awaited me in my not too distant future. Scooters = fantabulous.

These first two pictures are from the day I bought my scooter, about three weeks ago now. I bought my scooter second-hand for about 500 US dollars. Look how black and shiny it is! I can store things under my seat or in a locked compartment under my handle bars. The seller also gave me a free helmet and attached hooks and a front basket for me. Hooks are commonly used here to hang one's bubble tea or juice, so I feel very Taiwanese with them. :) Fonda is also in this picture, helping me with my helmet. Fonda has been instrumental in my scooter-obtaining process. She helped us visit different shops, test-ride scooters, bargain with salesmen, pass our health examination (we had to visit a hospital to get a physical done, because obviously the hundreds of dollars and hours of time we spent on multiple physicals in the States over the course of the entire summer were not adequate proof of our physical well-being; oh, and yes I did pass my eye examination in Chinese - you know, the one where you have to say which direction the little "E" is facing - hurrah rudimentary Chinese skills!) and visit the DMV.

This is me after getting my license. As you can tell, I was super excited. My scooter is a 125cc, so I had to pass both a written and driving test. The written examination here is actually fairly difficult. For obvious reasons, I thought I would have better odds passing if I took the English version. However, the English version is a poorly translated replica of the Chinese version, making comprehension of the actual question being asked fairly tricky. The first couple of ETAs from our group who took the exam failed the first time (and of the Yilan ETAs, 12 of the 16 failed the first time around), so I decided to wait a little longer before trying my luck. Indeed, luck is more involved in this test than skill. I found some of the questions so amusing that I had to include a few of my favorites below for you:

"True or False: Emergency braking requires a braking distance and the best driving skill, under normal circumstances, the braking distance is longer."
"True or False: When you approach an intersection, you must slow down and perpare to stop, put your foot on the brake to avoid drunk and pedestrians crossing in red."
"Multiple Choice: If a motorcyclist wants to show national pride, enhance social safety and family happiness, he/she must: (1) drive ethically and obey the laws (2) have great driving skills (3) stop smoking and drinking"
"Multiple Choice: When you hit and injury a pedestrian, you must: (1) be responsible and save the injured person (3) accelerate and run away (3) say something nice and leave"
"Multiple Choice: The tip for the motorcyclist to solve complex and critical events is: (1) calm and safe (2) to be an adventurer (3) optimistic and let it be"


This is me in the driving part of the test. You had to drive around on this track staying within the yellow lines. There are sensors along the track which automatically fail you if you cross over them. The hardest part of the driving test was actually the part right before this, where you had to drive along a track six inches wide and fifteen meters long within a time period of 7-14 seconds without putting your feet down. This means you have to drive at a snail's pace, balancing carefully so that you do not fall over or cross over the sensors. While I succeeded in passing the written exam my first time around (95% woot!), it took me two attempts to get through the driving test (I put my foot down on my first trial - luckily they give you two attempts before failing you).


I am now a proud scooter license-bearing resident of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Bekah and I got our licenses on the same day, and as you can tell, we are super excited about it. :) Oh, another cool thing about having a Taiwanese driver's license? It serves as my second form of official Taiwanese identification, along with my ARC. I feel so legal and grown-up!

Now I am sure you are all wondering about Taiwanese traffic? Well, it is a bit crazy, but also very fun. I love to drive, and scooters are so much more fun than cars, because you are out in the open with the wind ripping through your hair etc etc (I change my mind whenever it is raining...). There are more scooters on the roads than cars here, but it is not as dangerous driving in Kaohsiung as in Taipei because the roads are so much wider. I am not sure I would be comfortable driving in Taipei, because it has even more traffic in a much tighter space on very narrow roads. Kaohsiung roads are quite nice, and many of the main avenues even have a special scooter lane separated from the main road by a grassy meridian. My least favorite part of driving in Taiwan is the no left-turn rule. Scooters are not allowed to make left-turns for safety reasons (crossing over traffic). Instead, they must cross the intersection, stop in a "turn box" and then wait for the other light to turn green in order to cross the second street. The reason I find this so frustrating is that if you are stopped at one red light, that means you will have to sit through two red lights in order to get through the entire intersection and on your way again. At a major intersection, this process can take over 5-10 minutes (yes, Mother, I am using hyperbole, but it feels that long)! Because of my aversion to left turns, I usually try to plan my travel route in such a way as to minimize left turns as much as possible.

Final thought on scooters. Taiwanese people carry all sorts of ridiculous things on their scooters, from furniture to pizza (Pizza Hut delivery guy is on a scooter) to pets (I am always amazed that the dogs do not go flying off the scooters with the way their owners are driving) to entire families (biggest family I have seen on a single scooter? five people - Asians may be small, but not THAT small...). I have yet to become so skilled. :) However, I can drive one other person on the back of my scooter. So, incentive to come visit me in Taiwan: I will give you a scooter ride!

First Two Weeks of School

It has recently come to my attention that I am quite far behind in my blog, so I will try to make amends and do my best to catch everyone up on my life. This was my second week of teaching, though only my first full week, as last week I spent a few days in Taipei at a Fulbright conference. I love my job so far - the kids are so sweet, my co-teachers are great and the school has gone out of its way to make me feel welcomed and at home.

Two of my co-teachers: on the left is Anita (Minzu) and the right is Yachi (Minghua). This picture was taken right after they announced the co-teacher pairings, and sadly, Ellie (my other co-teacher at Minghua) was not able to be there that day.

I mentioned last time that I am teaching at Minghua Junior High School this semester (next semester, I switch schools to Minzu Junior High). Supposedly, each ETA should work 20 hours a week - 16 at their school and 4 at English Village (EV starts next week). However, some of us seem to be working way beyond those hours, while others are only occupied by their schools for 11-12 hours, so it is a broad spectrum dependent on the school. Schools are not technically allowed to make us teach over 16 periods, but some schools have gotten around this rule by spreading out the hours so that the ETA is forced to be at school all day long. For example, one girl was told that she needed to be at school every morning by 7:40am, regardless of whether she is teaching then or not, and then they expect her to stay until the end of the school day. The complete contrast is one of the guys who was told by his LET to "flee" school as soon as possible after the principal falls asleep, getting him home every day by lunch time.

My schedule is pretty much amazing. I teach 19 classes of eighth graders every two weeks, and each week I have 2 resource classes, 2 hours of office hours to talk with English club students, a one-hour "tea time" with the other English teachers where we have conversations in English and a one-hour language exchange with the principal. This means that I have one real prep every other week. The two resource classes are extra tutoring classes for slower learners. Tsuili, the academic director, told me that rather than focusing on grammar rules or even trying to drastically improve their English, the school is just hoping that I can help the students to learn to enjoy English. These kids are so far behind that they have given up on their English classes. The idea is for me to make English fun for them, and to make them interested and excited to learn. So if anyone has any fun, interactive activites for junior high ESL students at an elementary level, let me know!! Tsuili originally suggested that I review phonics with them, but after teaching each class for the first time this week (one 8th grade and one 9th grade), I think I will try to use their English textbooks as a jumping off point. If I can pull a few basic ideas from them and then simplify the concepts, the students might be able to gain some concept of what is going on in their daily English classes and not be so lost. The best part of these classes is their size. Each has 6-8 students, which means I can do lots of fun games and give them lots of personal attention, unlike my other classes which have about 40 students each.

My 19 eighth grade classes are also fairly unique. Minghua decided to invent a new class for me to teach, so there was no curriculum or previous lesson plans for my class. They wanted me to see as many students as possible, and in order to see all of the eighth graders (here they are called second years; 7th grade - first year, 8th grade - second year, 9th grade - third year), I teach each class once in the period of two weeks. The downside to this plan is that I have over 800 students, each of whom I only see once every other week. Wish me luck learning names. The students, though, still have their normal English class four days a week, so this just means that for one of those class periods, they are pulled out to have a supplementary "fun" English class with me. The school told me that I could do whatever I wanted for the class, and I was like ummm - did I mention I have no teaching experience? Good good. So Ellie, Yachi and I went out to a bookstore the first week in order to find some type of textbook which I might want to use as a resource (notice: we went out the "first week of class" and not before school started; I asked them if it was important that we should know what we were teaching before the semester started, and they were like "oh no - whatever is fine..." so the class is pretty laid back lol... they just want me to make English "fun" for all of the students). We picked out a book based on English conversation. All of the lessons have a three paragraph summary about a topic (such as sports, American holidays, movies, traveling etc) with related vocabulary the students would need to discuss the issue. We chose eight lessons to use, and then I came up with discussion questions for each one. Tsuili also had the inspired idea that I should draw clipart on all of the worksheets - yes, she wanted me to personally draw the pictures and not just find images online... Therefore, I spent almost my entire Thursday this week drawing little pictures all over my worksheets. They are planning to make photocopies of all of the lessons and to then give bound copies to each of the students over the course of the next two weeks. Oh I almost forgot the best part! Ellie, Yachi and Tsuili thought it would be "cute" if my picture was on the front cover of the book. Oh yes. So now about 800 junior high students in Kaohsiung, Taiwan will have a picture of me with them always. How sweet.

For my first lesson over the past two weeks, I did a very simple get-to-know-you lesson. First, all of the students had to make namecards with their English and Chinese names on it. In each class, about 2-6 students did not have an English name, so I either helped them come up with one, or they chose one themselves. While I was giving out lovely names like "Sarah" or "Jenny" or "David," a few of them decided they wanted to be more unique with names like "Corn" or "Oh Hey" or "Fredders" (I tried to convince he he meant "Freddy," but he would have none of it) or "Handsome Man" (though I insist on calling him "Handsome Boy," much to his chagrin). Some of my favorites were a group of girls who called themselves "Pear," "Apple" and "Banana."

After coming up with English names and making their namecards, each student had to pick a partner and inerview them. I wanted them to ask: (1) What is your name? (2) How old are you? (3) What do you like to do for fun/What are your hobbies? (4) What did you do over the summer vacation? The biggest challenge of this activity was getting them to do it all in English. The mere fact that this is *English class* does not signify to them that they should only be speaking in English. Normal English classes here are taught mostly in Chinese, so my demand that they speak solely in English - no Chinese, no Taiwanese - is rather unique and very hard for them to comply with. Nonetheless, they must speak in English. Because I say so. I have discovered that being a teacher has its upsides, such as the power to force students to do whatever you want. :) It does require a lot of patience, though, as I must repeatedly explain to them that they must ask the question in English, answer the question in English and then write down their partner's response in English. For the last 10-15 minutes of class, I then had students come to the front of the class to introduce their partner to the rest of the students.

I hope that, despite my only being with them for one semester, they will be able to learn something in my class. As I mentioned before, my class is taught very differently than a normal Taiwanese English class where the teacher would lecture in Chinese for most of the period about English grammar and sentence patterns. I do not care so much about the students using perfect grammar (even when I speak, I rarely have correct grammar!), but rather, I want to boost their confidence in communicating in English and also help them to improve their pronunciation.

My classroom: I actually get my own classroom, which is a big deal. In Taiwan, junior high teachers float around to the various classrooms, while the students stay in the same class the entire day (except for music, art class, PE and other special subjects). However, the school decided to make my life easier, so they gave me my own classroom - yay! The room is fairly sterile at the moment, but I am hoping to decorate it festively for various holidays. And if any of you have fun "teacher" posters lying around your house, you should mail them to me! Another thing of note about my classroom is the lack of technology. When we visited all of the elementary schools, I was so impressed by the level of technology in the classrooms (smart-boards, flat-screen TVs etc). Not so at the junior high level. This is one of the best and wealthiest junior high schools in Kaohsiung, yet none of the normal classrooms come with any such technology (an "abnormal" classroom being a computer lab or screening room)! After talking with multiple teachers about this including junior high English teachers at other schools, this seems to be the way things are. Junior high schools do not have much technology, yet elementary schools are all trying to become more edgy and advanced in their teaching instruction. Rather interesting, yes? You can see the amount of resources poured into the elementary school system with such projects as the English Villages, the ETA program (this is the first year the program has been in the junior high schools, and even so, there is only one ETA position compared to 11 who are teaching in elementary school) and the technology used. My classroom does not even have a projector screen. This mean that should I want to use a powerpoint or to show videos, I would have to borrow both a computer/projector set and a portable screen. I find it strange that, considering the quality of the school in general (it really is amazing - I will try to take pictures soon so you can see just how beautiful the building is; it was just built 7 years ago), that it would not have higher standards for individual classroom IT equipment. I should also mention that *NO* school in Kaohsiung has air-conditioning, other than in the principal's office and in official conference rooms. Did I mention how humid it gets in Kaohsiung?...