Monday, January 25, 2010

Mid-Year Conference


Fulbright Taiwan held its three-day mid-year conference in Kenting. All of the Fulbrighters - researchers and ETAs - came down south, so it was kind of fun for us Kaohsiungers to finally have everyone on our side of the island. In Taiwan, most people stay up north around Taipei, and never make it very far south (Taipei locals are rather snobbish about how "rural" it is down here, whereas Kaohsiung locals criticize Taipei for being too over-crowded, noisy and fast-paced - I find city rivalries so entertaining...).











The conference was hosted at the Caesar Hotel, a beautiful resort right on the beach. The hotel rooms were lovely, as was the in-house buffet restaurant which included an all-you-can-eat sushi bar. However, we hardly had time to enjoy our setting since we were kept so busy with meetings and excursions. They had us at breakfast by 7:30 in the morning, and we did not have free time again until we returned to our rooms around 10 at night. Even though we were not doing anything grueling or tedious, it was difficult to remain enthusiastic and engaged with so little down time. Every ideal conference should at least set aside a designated nap time.











Mixed in with the presentations from each scholar were various excursions and outings. The first day we visited the Kenting Aquarium, the largest in Taiwan. It was actually quite impressive with a 3-story kelp forest tank, the longest under- water viewing tunnel in Asia (81 meters long and containing 1.5 million gallons of water) and a 3D video room of what the ocean looked like billions of years ago. Never having been much of one for aquariums, my only comparison is with Chicago's Shed Aquarium, and I would say this one compares favorably. However, Kenting's beluga whales were not as cute and had a much smaller tank. Also, the aquarium's penguins (they breed seven different species) would have been cuter to watch if the exhibit hall had not been quite so frigid (props to Kenting to recreating an authentic environment, I suppose). What truly made the whole thing entertaining, though, was seeing the types of fish and coral from Finding Nemo. We would get so excited seeing Nemo or Dori or Scarface. Thank you, Disney, for giving me a frame of reference for life in the coral reefs.












The second day we were supposed to go hiking through the National Park. Alas, "hiking" means something different for Taiwanese people than it does for Westerners. First they took us to the park office headquarters where we watched an hour-long video about the park's topography and the "myriads of natural miracles found in the surrounding plant and animal wildlife." Then they loaded us onto buses, where we stayed for the remainder of the morning, hopping off at various points along the beach for ten-minute photo-shoots. Once we reached our final stop, they took us for a short nature walk, stopping to examine the fauna and crabs which lined the paved path. We really should have known better going into it - "hiking" here never means actual "hiking." I just never cease to be amused by how every aspect of life for a Taiwanese person is conducted for the sole purpose of the end photo result. This taichi photo with Charles was done in tribute to us being culturally Taiwanese (which tangentially by the way, Frank and I just finished learning all 37 postures of the taichiquan!! Huge cause for celebration!).












My favorite part of the conference was hearing about how everyone else's year had progressed so far. Some of the scholars' research is incredibly fascinating, and it was fun to see how far their projects have come since our Taipei conference back in August. Over the past semester, I have seen a few of the Yilan ETAs who came to visit us, but I have not really had contact with any of the research Fulbrighters. It was great to see how excited and passionate each one of them is about their work. A few of my favorites were a professor who does computer generated costume design, a professor writing his book on Victorian literature while teaching classes about postmodern literature (and hearing his stories about how Taiwanese college students grapple with Nietzsche - made me really want to join his class), a junior researcher studying the Encyclopedia of Dreams (she has traveled all around East Asia to study and compare different editions of the text - never have you seen someone so excited about their work, as in, she was literally jumping up and down while presenting her findings to us), a junior researcher examining the correlation between employment and crime levels in Taiwan/China and the US, and a junior researcher who has been working at Taiwan Radio creating news pieces and computer graphics design. It made we want to study something completely random and esoteric with my life as well - I cannot wait for grad school!











Our Kaohsiung ETA group was scheduled to go on the last day, right after the Yilan ETAs. The same thing happened in August, and I think we need to object for the May end of the year conference. They were scheduled for 45 minutes, and took over an hour and a half. Why no one cut them off sooner is beyond me, but it resulted in our group being rushed and the AIT people being grumpy throughout our whole presentation. After all, the 28 of us all do the exact same thing, and there are only so many amusing stories people want to hear about teaching English in a Taiwanese classroom. And not to be cruel, but the Yilan presentation was a bit of a disaster. Haha I am too nice to actually repeat what happened in print here, but if you would like to know, ask and I will tell all. For our presentation, Kristin and Kaitlin compiled a powerpoint of pictures, set to the music of "Sorry Sorry" and "Nobody Nobody but You." If you have yet to experience the wonder of these two Asian hit songs, please YouTube them. It will explain to you much of my life working with middle schoolers here. Each of us then spoke for a minute or two about a different aspect of our life in Kaohsiung. As the only middle school teacher here in Kaohsiung (there are four up in Yilan), I talked about my teaching experience and showed off my school's newspapers. I am still so proud of my kids for putting those together that I had to brag on them a bit in front of everyone.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Sunnie and Vincent's Wedding


Two weekends ago, I got to go to my first Taiwanese wedding. My host family, Sunnie and Vincent, got married! My roommate Kristin came as my date and to save me from the severe awkwardness of not knowing anyone other than the bride and groom (and a very small handful of other people).




Sunnie was so cute and had thoughtfully arranged for us to sit at a table with all other English teachers. Therefore, we had plenty of other people to talk to. This is me posing with the English teachers' table name card. :)

Taiwanese weddings are basically just a huge banquet. Asians love food, and weddings are the perfect time to indulge. Lots and lots of food. Beyond the food, the other main purpose is for all of the photo ops. Walking into the banquet hall, pouring the wine, cutting the cake, making toasts - each of these are ideal for Kodak moments, which we all know Asians adore.










Weddings are also something like a fashion show. The bride wears three different outfits throughout the ceremony, each with separate hairstyles and jewelry/accessories, as well as matching components on the groom. Vincent was adorable throughout the whole affair, by the way. :) So the banquet started off with Sunnie and Vincent walking in, while we all shot off streamers from firecrackers. Then they jointly poured the champagne into a pyramid of champagne glasses (symbolizing their new life together?) before turning to cut the cake (which turns out was not even a real cake - just designed for the picture...).










After mingling for a bit and sitting down for all of ten minutes to eat a few of the multiple dozens of courses, the happy couple disappeared to change for their next entrance. This time they walked in carrying balloons, which they passed out walking around the room (my guess at symbolism: spreading the love and joy of getting married?). This second outfit is also used for proposing each of the toasts as the couple walks around to each of the separate tables to greet guests.

The third outfit is the receiving line dress. As guests filter out of the banquet, thanking their hosts and congratulating the newlyweds, more pictures are in order. My summation of Taiwanese weddings: they should seriously consider incorporating dancing. That being said, Sunnie was gorgeous, and she and Vincent looked very happy. :)

Monday, January 11, 2010

Picturing America Lesson Plan










While having to create my entire curriculum this semester from scratch has been frustrating at times (I must create and improvise all of my own teaching materials - both time consuming and a stretch for my creativity skills), the upside is that I have a lot of flexibility. At the beginning of the semester, I put together a series of week-by-week lessons, each focused on a different topic, for example sports, education, restaurant, movies etc. However, for the last two weeks of class, I decided that I would ditch my final lesson and do something completely different.












At the beginning of the month, AIT made a gift to all of the Kaohsiung ETAs of the "Picturing America" teaching series. "Picturing America" is a series of 20 different paintings and portraits depicting America's history over the last 400 years, and comes with an amazing teacher's book with detailed lesson plans and project ideas. Most of it is way to complicated to use in an EFL classroom, but I liked the basic idea behind it.












I put up all of the pictures around my classroom, and then chose 8 to make up summaries and questions about. The desks in my classroom are arranged into six groups of students, so I had each group choose one of the paintings which they wanted to learn more about. While the book came with descriptions about both the artwork and the artist as well as appropriate questions, I ended up having to rewrite everything in order to make it understandable for my students. Even so, I know it was a bit of a stretch for some of them... At any rate, they were supposed to read their summaries, study the picture, try to answer the questions and then present in front of class. Since I love American history, art and group projects (they rarely understand when I lecture anyways - I have discovered that success in teaching a foreign language is based in how little I have to talk and how much I can get them to talk), I thought this would be a fun activity for our last lesson. Most of the classes seemed to enjoy the lesson and really got into studying their picture (there were only a few classes which found the looseness of the lesson a good excuse for goofing off the whole time - oh middle schoolers...). I also had fun with it, finding it amusing to watch my Taiwanese eighth graders trying to discuss Lincoln's assassination, Native Americans or World War I victory celebrations on Fifth Avenue.










Another benefit of the lesson (at least I think it's a benefit) is that it gave some of my students the chance to show off random knowledge they had somehow picked up from somewhere. For instance, when I showed the picture of "Washington Crossing the Delaware," one student raised his hand and recited the entire story for me, replete with the hired Hussein soldiers (where did he learn this word?!) and the Christmas Day attack.









There are two points about the Taiwanese education system with which I strongly disagree. One is the heavy emphasis on memorization and testing (students are tested every day on the information they learned the previous day, building up to larger monthly and semester exams which culminate in the BCT test, the determining factor in which high school they get into, which later decides their college and career choices - thanks Mom and Dad for letting my attend Judah instead of shipping my off to a Taiwanese boarding school...), which encourages regurgitation and burn-out without nurturing creative thinking or thoughtful analysis. My second biggest issue with the system is that it does not allow tracking. Parents have effectively blocked the system from ever allowing tracking, arguing that they would never want their children relegated to the "dumb" class. While I see their point, I would much prefer to put my child into a class geared towards their appropriate learning level instead of a class either way over their head or so easy it is a bore. In either situation, my child would not be learning to their full potential (perhaps not learning at all), which ought to be my highest priority as a parent. In language classes particularly, I do not see how the current system is at all effective. Every single one of my classes is a mix of kids who are fully fluent (can carry on a conversation with me on just about any topic with decent fluency and a large vocabulary) down to an English level of zero (cannot even answer the question "how are you?"). All semester I have been plagued by this question. How do I make the class both useful and fun for every single student. Well, the answer is a I can't. However, moments where I can either allow a kid to use his superior English skills by telling me about Hussein soldiers or where I can get another kid to simply tell me the English words for colors he sees in a painting - I find both equally rewarding.










Being the end of the first semester and the end of my time at Minghua (I will be moving to Minzu Jr. High School in February), I find it a good time for reflection. All of us ETAs have spent a lot of time discussing our time here. Are we here to actually teach English or merely to inspire enthusiasm for English learning? From my experience, I would say the latter. This has been simultaneously frustrating and liberating for me all semester. Frustrating in the sense that I know I am being fairly ineffective as a teacher - I had no teaching experience prior to this so I am far from being a great teacher, and the fact that I cannot effectively communicate with half of my students does not help. Liberating in the realization that the program has few expectations of what we will accomplish so there is very little pressure. They want the kids to be exposed to foreigners, becoming comfortable with us and also understanding the usefulness of learning English (if a student wants to talk to me, they know they need to use English, meaning that they must either study hard or bring a friend, the latter being the preferred method lol). My students may not have learned much in my class this past semester, but I hope that they did come away with more confidence in themselves and an idea of how fun English can be (it is not just about repeated testing and complicated grammar structures). At the very least, I trust that they will no longer be that amazed Taiwanese person who gawks and giggles at the lone wai guo ren (foreigner) walking down the street haha. If not - I will just have to go back and beat them with my squeaky hammer again! 開玩笑 :)

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Me and Joyful

Due to some family issues, I returned home for Christmas to see my family. I was only able to make it home for one week, though, because as school continued as normal here in Taiwan throughout the Christmas season, I did not want to miss too much of work. I was back for class the Monday after Christmas, and two days later, Joy came to visit! It was kinda fun saying goodbye to her in Illinois, knowing I'd see her again in a few days.

For New Year's, we went up to Taipei to see the fireworks at Taipei 101. It's one of the biggest New Year's celebrations around the world, attracting well over a million people. After taking the HSR up from Kaohsiung, we went to check into our hotel and then went downtown to meet the other Kaohsiung people. However, due to the crazy crowds, certain metro stops kept closing down. It turned out to be too infeasible trying to find everyone, so we waited for Kristin and Kaitlyn and then walked over to get into position for the fireworks. The Taiwanese have a saying for large crowds: "people mountain people sea." In other words, there are as many people as a tall mountain and as vast as the sea. When I had told my Taiwanese friends that we were going to the celebration, they all repeated this phrase over and over to me. And it was not an exaggeration, for there were more people downtown than I have ever seen concentrated in one place before. It took us 2.5 hours to get back to our hotel afterwords, because in trying to walk back to the metro station, we ended up walking past four stations along the line before finding one that was open and allowing people to enter. By the end of the evening, my lower back and feet were so sore that I could hardly move.

Despite all of this, it was still a lot of fun. We had gone downtown early in the evening, so had gotten fairly close positions to the main stage where all of the entertainers were performing. I am sure that we saw loads of very famous Taiwanese musicians, though we only knew a small handful of them. President Ma Lingzhou also put in an appearance, and led a mini rally leading up to the countdown: "Taiwan - UP! Taiwan - UP!" Haha this year's theme was not the most original. The fireworks themselves were quite impressive, though apparently not up to par with what they have been in previous years. Last year they attempted to scale back the budget, and while this year was an attempt to reinvigorate the program, it still disappointed many commentators. There were also two pauses in the middle of the display, which later were attributed to problems with the lighting. My biggest complaint was simply that after standing up and being pushed by the crowds for over four hours, by the time the fireworks started, I was really tired and achy. Next time, I will find a spot farther away where I can be more relaxed (or watch it on TV lol).


The next day, Joy and I slept in till noon which was beautiful. Then we went to visit the National Palace Museum. I had been back in September, but as Joy really wanted to go (something about her being a history graduate student?), I was happy to go again. They were having a New Year's Day special with free entry that day. It also might have had something to do with the President putting in an appearance (we saw him enter accompanied by his secret service entourage - quite exciting). The Museum itself is quite fascinating, housing over 650,000 ancient Chinese artifacts and spanning over 8000 years of history. I had known that the museum had a lot of artwork, but had not realized the full scale of it before. Displays are rotated every three months so that 60,000 different pieces are visible to the public every year. This means that it takes a dedicated museum-goer nearly 12 years to see every single piece! The collection was moved from Beijing to Taiwan back when Nationalist government fled across the strait to escape the Communists. Therefore, much debate has broken out over the decades about whether the collection was stolen, whether it showed the true legitimate government or whether it was just being preserved from destruction during the Cultural Revolution. Politics aside, my opinion of the museum is that it could be redesigned with better lighting to show off the pieces to the best advantage. Many of the rooms are quite dark with shadows across the pieces, making viewing tiring to the eyes, or at least, my eyes. :) Joy and I also walked around outdoors to enjoy the gardens, and took a trip up to the tea house on the top floor.

That evening, we took the metro north to Beitou to enjoy the public hot springs. I was super excited about this as I had never been to a hot springs. Besides, after the previous evening, my muscles needed some serious relaxation. The springs were a lot of fun (Joy and I never did make it into the hottest spring at the top - the middle one was already scorching!) aside from the many men in speedos. The reason I had originally chosen this public spring was because I do not do nudity. Seeing as speedos are the closest thing one can get to nude bathing, I was not the biggest fan... Can someone please explain to me why guys like speedos? Not cool...

The next day, we returned to Taipei 101, this time to ride the elevator to the top and make the claim of going up the tallest building in the world. Except not really, since Dubai just surpassed it... At any rate, this is Joy mailing her roommate in Wisconsin a letter from the top.


















After seeing the modern side of Taipei, I thought it would be fun to go experience the ancient art of tea time at a country tea house. There is a gondola which connects Taipei to this place just outside in the middle of tea plantations famous for its tea houses. The only problem was, once we got there, we discovered that the gondola had not been working since the August typhoon. So there went that idea. Being resourceful, I decided we should take the bus. Bad idea. The bus ride out there was nearly an hour (I did not know this going in). While the gondola ride would have been thirty minutes through misty mountains (noted for being scenic and romantic), we instead got a long bus ride out, and a long bus ride back, neither of which was particularly scenic since it was foggy and drizzly. At least the actual tea house part was fun.





















Back in Kaohsiung, Joy had the great privilege of trailing me for a few days and seeing the daily life of Grace. She got to observe school, witness English Village, eat beef noodles, hang out with my co-teachers, enjoy my apartment's lack of water (the week she was here, we first lost all hot water, then lost all water pressure to the point where there was no water in the house...), ride my scooter (she declined learning to drive hah) and see the many fun sites of the city. We stopped by Lotus Lake and saw the Tiger/Dragon Pagodas, climbed up to the British Consulate, took the ferry to Cijin Island where we ate lots of seafood, saw the beach and the harbor etc etc. It was fun having her here for the few days and seeing everything through her eyes.




















By the way, the only thing more wild and crazy than a tall green-eyed blond lose on the Taiwanese streets, is TWO tall green-eyed blonds.... None of my students could get over how tall she was. Just wait till my brother gets here. :)