Sunday, November 22, 2009

Love River


Having my last post be the top post is depressing me, so I think I will put up some pretty pictures of Kaohsiung. These are all of the Love River, which runs through he middle of the city. It is quite lovely in the evenings when all of the lights sparkle and dance on the water. A week or so ago, a few of us went on the tour boat ride up the river and back again.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Today

Today was rough. After my first class this morning, I checked my email. My brother had sent me a message letting me know that my grandmother had passed away earlier in the morning (afternoon/evening in Illinois). I've kind of been a mess ever since. Not sure what to do. All I want to do is go home. If you're reading this, please pray for me and my family, especially my mother. That's all.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Oh children...

The troubles of remembering, or even recognizing, 750 Taiwanese children plague me frequently. There are a handful of students now whom I am able to recognize and call by name (a fact which is probably much more exciting for me, than for them). These would be all of my club students and resource class kids, whom I see on a weekly basis (many of the club kids I even get to see multiple times a week). Recently, I have hung out with another group of my students in a non-school setting via one of my church friends.

Phoebe and I

I first met Phoebe a few months back at my church, the Bilingual Community Church (BCC). She came with Katherine (another one of the ETAs here), whom she went to school with back in Buffalo, NY. Both of them graduated last spring, Katherine with her BA and Phoebe with her MA. Katherine then moved to Kaohsiung through Fulbright, while Phoebe moved back home to Kaohsiung to be near her family and to teach English in the cram schools. About a month ago, Phoebe discovered that she teaches some of my students from Minghua at her English cram school. When the kids figured this out (I think they saw a picture of Phoebe and I together on her facebook - which is why I do not friend my students on fb...), they got super excited. I now receive random phone calls from Phoebe's phone on weekday evenings or Saturday mornings, on occasions when the students have snatched her phone with the intention of calling "Teacher Grace." A few weeks ago, she invited them to church, and three of the girls came, just to see "Teacher Grace." I went out to lunch with them afterwards, which completely made their day.

Anyways, last night, one of the churches in the area hosted a Thanksgiving dinner and invited a few other churches in town (including BCC) to attend. Originally, I had not planned on going, but was later talked into it by several of my students at school. Phoebe had again invited them, and this time, all of them wanted to go, as long as I promised to go and eat with them.


The dinner was quite the interesting and awkward event. First of all, the only part of it that was remotely "Thanksgiving" style was the fact that there was a turkey and mashed potatoes. Sadly, though, the turkey was cooked Asian-style, and the potatoes did not have matching gravy... And there was no pumpkin pie... Luckily for me, I went with few expectations, so was not too crushed by disappointment.


The awkwardness of the evening came in with the seating arrangements. Katherine and I scootered over to the hotel hosting the event, and arrived slightly late. This meant that most people had already arrived and claimed tables. Phoebe met us and informed me that Katherine was sitting at her table, and I was sitting with all of my students at a different table. Now you might think this would be a fun idea, but that is because you neither know my students' English level nor my Chinese level. Awkward is the appropriate word. Phoebe later told me that the kids had all told her that they did not want her sitting with them at their table. So sweet, since she was the one who invited them - little gems, all of them... She was quite hurt by their attitudes, I think. Anyways, why they thought this seating arrangement would be a good idea, since we clearly have communication issues, is beyond me. There were eight of them, and only about two of them were brave enough to initiate conversation with me. This group of students is probably representative of the average Minghua student. They have been learning English since the third grade, and all of them are currently enrolled in English cram school, yet their learning has been limited to reading and writing. Listening comprehension and oral communication skills are noticeably lacking (My favorite is when I ask students, "how are you doing?" and am met with a "聽不懂" - honestly, if you do not know the most basic of all English greetings, we have a problem!). I did my best to get them talking in both English and Chinese, but did not meet with much success. My students are so shy! I had thought it was just in class and that they would be more talkative when in a non-school setting one-on-one with me, but alas no. Apparently the beauty of my blond hair and green eyes are just too overwhelming for them, especially the boys. :) The boys were truly hilarious - I am not sure that I have ever made anyone so nervous in my entire life.

So moral of the story: if someone invites you to a dinner, you should never be so rude as to refuse to sit with them. And secondly, never over-estimate your language skills and think that you can have a comfortable conversation with your language teacher without a translator present.

Phoebe and her sister

Friday, November 13, 2009

Meeting official people and pretending we're important too

One of the benefits of being a Fulbrighter is our close relations with AIT (American Institute in Taiwan). Since Fulbright is sponsored through the State Department, they make efforts to take care of us and to invite us to important functions. We first met the AIT people at the opening Fulbright conference in Taipei back in September. Since then, we have had multiple occasions to meet and talk with the Kaohsiung branch people -- at baseball games, lectures, luncheons, the America Center (Zhongshan University), the America Corner (located at a library in town which hosts story-telling and games for children who lost their parents in the typhoon) etc etc. These events are always fairly fun, as they usually involve excellent free food and the opportunity to meet fascinating people from all around Taiwan.

ETAs with Maestro Curry: (L to R) Kristin, me, Kelley, Carol and Kevin

Last Sunday, AIT/Kaohsiung sponsored an orchestra concert put on by the Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra held across the street from us at the Cultural Center. The concert was titled an "Evening of American Music," and was structured around the guest conductor William Henry Curry. One the Friday before, AIT hosted a press conference for Curry and invited all of us ETAs to attend. Beyond sitting through several rather lengthy opening remarks all made in Chinese, witnessing a blur of photographic activity and treating ourselves to some excellent Western food, we had the opportunity of talking personally with Maestro Curry. He is the resident conductor of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, and has an impressive resume including having conducted over forty orchestras across the US and internationally and having won a Grammy for his work. I think it is rare to find a man as passionate and in love with his work as Curry obviously is. He talked to us ETAs for a long time about his love for teaching, his love for music and his love for humanity. After spending our days teaching small children how to say "hello" and "how are you," his academic language and thought-provoking philosophies were beautiful to listen to. It is moments like this which remind me how much I miss Wake and all of my professors and classmates there (one of the other ETAs remarked the other day, how it is odd that we should have accepted a Fulbright for a year, and thus witnessed a decrease in our IQ - sad but probably true...). At any rate, Maestro Curry duly impressed all of us and filled us with excitement for his concert on Sunday.

AIT encouraged us to invite our co-teachers and provided us all with concert tickets. Neither of my co-teachers were able to come (they are both currently enrolled in masters program and in various stages of stressing out over their theses), so I invited my host sister Sunnie instead. Charles, Kristin and I took our guests out for Thai food beforehand and then on to the concert (Kaitlyn was MIA for the weekend as her parents were visiting).

Charles, Kristin and I with three co-teachers (Charles and Kristin), two interns (Kristin), two gym friends (Charles) and host-family (me).

Me and Sunnie

The concert was quite beautiful. Again, I often forget how privileged I was at Wake where we constantly had renowned musicians, famous guest lecturers and gifted student performers hosted at Scales or Wait Chapel. The Kaohsiung Orchestra performed a span of American music: S. L. Rosenbaus's Oklahoma!, Gershwin's Summertime, John Williams's Star Trek through the Years, Theme from ET and Raiders March, Dvorak's New World Symphony and William H. Curry's Eulogy for a Dream. The last piece, composed by Curry, was laced with excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches, memorializing the struggle of African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement and inspiring all of humanity to greatness. Bill Thissen, the ICRT radio news anchor, read the passages accompanying the music (we also had the chance to speak with him at the press conference, and were regaled with his stories of watching Taiwan transform from a state of martial law into a democracy).

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Classroom Observation


Once each semester, we ETAs get observed co-teaching in our schools. Representatives from the Education Bureau and Fulbright along with our adviser come to sit in on one of our classes. There are three advisers, professors from NKNU, who work with us. Each week, we are supposed to send them weekly reports about our lesson plans and daily teaching experiences, and they are also the ones who lead our bimonthly ETA-LET workshops on Wednesday afternoons. My adviser is Professor Lee, and she is lovely. Very sweet, very elegant, very articulate.












I scheduled my observation for a Monday afternoon class, with the lesson about restaurants and Thanksgiving. I discuss this lesson more in my "Thanksgiving" entry, but I wanted to include pictures of my observation here.

Being observed is actually a lot of fun. The kids know they are being watched, so they are on their best behavior. Never have I seen my kids so attentive. When they were supposed to be quiet, they were dead silent. When they were supposed to answer questions and participate, all hands were in the air. There was no background level of Chinese going on (which there usually is) or kids blatantly zoned out with the thought that sleep is an easier option than focusing their brains on deciphering my English. The whole time, the kids were engaged and fully focused on what I was saying to them (proof yet again, that they CAN understand what I'm saying when they put a little effort into listening).



Everyone was very complimentary about my lesson and impressed with how well the kids behaved and interacted in class (as was I!). I am the first ETA to be placed in a middle school here in Kaohsiung, so I was happy to give them a good first impression of how effective an ETA can be in the middle schools. I clearly love my school and hope that they expand the program to more middle schools in the future. :)

Taiqi Chuan

Last month, I picked up a new hobby. Ever since I visited a taiqi class with my roommate Sarah last year, I have been wanting to join a class myself. Moving to Taiwan for a year, I figured this would be the perfect time to pick up such a hobby. Every morning, there are hundreds of people out in the Cultural Center in front of our apartment doing taiqi or other morning exercise routines. I really wanted to go join a group, but it took me a long time to work up the courage necessary. In the end, Fonda went with me to find a group and to meet the teacher.

The group we settled on meets Monday, Wednesday and Friday for an hour starting at 7am. Most of the people in the group all work together at the nearby city government office building. I am the youngest person in the group by about 30 years... That coupled with my obvious non-Asian features, makes me quite the object of interest for your average passerbyer (remember, we do this in the middle of the Cultural Center, a ginormous park). Some are discreet, whereas others will just stop a few feet away and stare at me for about 15 minutes before losing interest and moving on down the path. I guess I do look rather odd to them, with my Chinese-style white shirt, long billowy black pants, and special taiqi shoes (Fonda took me shopping so I would look official!).

I really enjoy my taiqi group. There are probably over 20 people who have been doing this for a while and are pretty good now. Our group does the 37 postures of traditional taiqi martial arts each morning, which takes about half an hour. Then they spend the second half of the class doing movements with swords or fans. Luckily, I am not the only new person. There are 4 of us who all started roughly around the same time. Frank and I are the regulars. We both started on the same day, and he was the one who told Fonda where we could find the taiqi store (in this little out-of-the-way alley - full of all sorts of cool traditional martial arts excessories). Frank is my hero. He tranlates for me, making the whole experience possible for me. There are two other ladies who also come occassionally. The four of us work separately from the main group with our own teacher every day. He is the cutest older gentleman, and considering his age, it is incredibly unfair how much more flexible and strong he is. To look at him (very slender), you would never guess how muscular his legs are. He tells me multiple times a week that I need stronger muscles... Yes, the 70-year-old guy is putting me to shame...

Our beginners class starts at 6:30am, so that we can do warm-ups. For the first few weeks, all we worked on was learning how to move forward and backward, and left and right. A lot harder than it looks in all of those martial arts movies, I would like to say. Two weeks ago, we finally started learning the first posture! I now know the first three postures, which is quite exciting. My biggest failing in taiqi is that I do not "luo4 kua4" enough. This means to feel your weight to go down, bending your knees and going into a semi-sitting position. Oftentimes, when I turn, I tend to stand up a little, but one is supposed to keep their weight down the entire time. This takes impressive quad muscles, it should be known. Taiqi is not a whimpy sport (even though it always seems to be done by old people here in Taiwan?). I have always thought highly of my leg muscles, but now it seems that I need to "retrain my muscles" as Frank says, and become stronger.

And the reward at the end of all of this? I get to learn taiqi with swords. Maybe in April, if I am so lucky. I am stoked. :)

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Chinese Bloopers

Learning any language is, of course, difficult, but I feel that it is a fair assessment to say that learning Chinese ranks near the top. I have two amusing stories from the past week to demonstrate this fact.

Last Friday, one of the other teachers in my office brought in passion fruit popsicles to share. I was a big fan, and when mentioning them to Tsuili on Monday, she proposed that we make our own. She would bring in the ice, and I would bring in passion fruit. So Tuesday morning, I stopped by the outdoor fruit market on my way to school to purchase passion fruit. Thinking I knew all of the needed Chinese to arrage such a transaction, I had a lovely little conversation with the fruit stand lady, and departed with roughly ten passion fruit (we were making popsicles for the whole office). Now, I realize that I am probably a very clueless American, but I have never seen a live passion fruit before. I have had passion fruit juice (and popsicles, clearly), but never eaten an actual passion fruit. This means that I have no idea what a passion fruit looks like. So I arrive at school with what I think are ten passion fruit. When I get to the office and proudly show everyone the fruit, they all start laughing at me. What I had wanted to ask for was bai2 xiang1 guo3 (百香果), but somehow, I asked for bai2 xiang1 guo1 (百香瓜) instead. So instead of passion fruit, I arrived with 10 white melons... Neither of which is readily available in your typical American supermarket, so I really feel that it was an understandable mistake to make. On the positive side, white melons also make great juice, so my failure was not debilitating. :)

My other funny story happened the next day in the office. We were again making juice (the fruit in Taiwan is amazing, which consequently, makes the juice here equally incredible). This time, we had a fair amount left over, so we were trying to think of more people to whom we could give some. I thought it would be nice to run some over to the principal's office across the hallway. So I tried to ask Vicky (history teacher in my office) if I should bring some over to our "xiao3 jiang4" (小將 - principal). She gave me an odd look, so I tried again with a different tone. This time she bursts out laughing. So now I just give up and say it in English, at which point, the entire office is again laughing at me. Apparently, I had asked her if we should give some of the juice to xiao3 zhang1 (小蟑), the little cockroach.