It seems fitting that things should come full circle, and so it is with my re-initiation back into Taiwan. Last year, I had all of a week to acclimate before Typhoon Marakot hit the island. This year, there have already been three to pass by, the last one, Typhoon Fanapi, being the worst. It hit Sunday morning, lasting into the evening, at which point it finally crossed the Taiwan Strait into China. We had all sorts of exciting adventures such as losing Cable internet/TV for 19 hours, losing cell phone service intermittently, getting stranded at McDonald's when we tried to walk home from church in the middle of the storm... Of course, it could have been worse. Many people lost power, had basement/garages flooded, lost sides of buildings, wiped out while scootering (yes, you would be surprised by how many people were still on scooters in the typhoon...). Katherine even saw a tree fall across a car. Would hate to be that person the next morning.... Even though the storm had mostly blown itself out by Monday, the City still called a Typhoon Day, I suppose as a clean-up/put-back-together day.
Other than typhoons, coming back to Taiwan has been an easy adjustment. I was supposed to fly back September 2nd, and after minor adventures in Champaign, Chicago and Narita (that would be every single airport where I had a connecting flight), I finally made it to Kaohsiung on the evening of the 4th, after 51 hours of traveling.
This year, I have relocated to a new apartment building up north along the Love River, relatively close to the Kaohsiung Arena, Ruifeng Night Market and my old school Minghua Jr. HS. It is also two blocks away from church, which is - non-coincidentally - how we got the apartment. My two roommates this year are both on staff with church, so the pastor helped us set all of this up through a friend of a friend. Katherine, one of the other ETAs last year, is now working part-time at church as the youth ministry coordinator and part-time as an English cram school teacher (though they both seem to add up to two full-time jobs). Jennice, a local Taiwanese, is also on staff at church, helping out with so many different ministries that I cannot even keep them straight. Additionally, she attends seminary two days a week up in Tainan. Both of the girls are incredibly sweet and very fun to live with, when I see them that is. Since I have class in the mornings, and they work afternoons and evenings, it is very easy to miss each other for days on end. I think I only saw Jennice once the entire first week I was here, and that might have been at church. Lately, though, we have all been home more, which is fun. And while Jennice helps me with my homework, I look forward to teaching her more about American sarcasm! (NB - Taiwanese people do not understand sarcasm - it is a fine art which I often see as my mission to spread the joys of whenever possible)
The first week here, I got to do lots of independent, grown-up activities, with the added bonus of doing it all in Chinese. Last year, I never fully appreciated how much work Fulbright did for us - or that is, how much FONDA did for us... I started off by visiting the immigration office to register for my ARC (alien residency card), attended orientation at school, applied for a school parking permit, had Cable installed, attempted to get health insurance and visited the DMV to renew my drivers license, re-register my scooter and buy new motor vehicle insurance. Getting Cable hooked up might have been both the most frustrating and most amusing experience. For a full week after I arrived, we had no internet service. Katherine would steal off of a neighbor's unencrypted line, but for some reason, my computer refused to connect. Internet is always priority number one for me, so you can imagine how frustrated I was. Jennice had promised to look into it, but since she was never around, I tried to find a faster solution. When I would try to ask the guards downstairs, my Chinese would utterly fail me. Two of my co-teachers from last year came over one night, and I dragged them downstairs to question the guards for me. However, the apartment internet turned out to be incredible slow and not what we wanted. Katherine had been not wanting Cable internet since it is so expensive, but in the end, we decided it was the best option since it is the fastest. Plus now I get to watch international CNN TV coverage 24/7 again, which makes me happy! But back to why this story is amusing. As sweet as Jennice is, she often has no clue about real life things. I mean, I make no claim to understanding the adult world, but in comparison, I must know something... The Cable guy comes over to hook up our TV and router. He starts explaining in Chinese how since our TV is an older model, you cannot simultaneously hook up both the DVD player and the Cable box without buying an additional cord (something about the outlets at the back of the TV). Jennice is so confused and not understanding anything he is saying, so keeps patiently asking questions in her sweet, innocent way. You can tell she really wants to understand, but just cannot. The Cable guy, meanwhile, is getting super fed up at having to repeat everything and has a very annoyed expression on his face. I, of course, understand very little of the Chinese, but comprehend precisely what the trouble is with the TV, yet am equally unsuccessful at explaining it to Jennice in English as he is in Chinese. When the poor Cable guy finally left and Katherine got home, we had a long laugh about the whole situation. And then Katherine looked at the television herself and realized the Cable guy was wrong the whole time - both the DVD player AND the Cable box can be hooked up simultaneously. So much for Cable guys...
As for school, I am loving my classes so far. It is the most amazing feeling to be the student again, learning information that you honestly and truly really want to know, versus being the teacher, trying to force information down unwilling teenagers' minds. Plus I just love learning Chinese. By the end of last year, I was quite frustrated with Chinese. Since I had no time to spend actually learning the language (or perhaps I am just a poor manager of time), I usually just felt fairly stupid since my limited Chinese could not service me through many different kinds of situations. Learning again makes me feel so happy, and also makes me increasingly excited for grad school in the future. My classes are also fairly entertaining, which makes them that much more enjoyable. I have class every morning, three hours a day (though last week I had an additional two hours a day, as I took an extra class to try to learn b-p-m-f, the phonetic symbols which Taiwan uses instead of Pinyin - it was mildly terrible and made me feel like I was 5 years old again trying to learn the alphabet...). On Monday/Wednesday/Friday, I have a grammar class, and on Tuesday/Thursday, I have conversation. At first, I like my grammar class a lot better because we do more advanced things, in terms of both vocabulary and grammar structures. The conversation class, on the other hand, has stayed on much more simple topics, things that I already feel I know. Our teacher keeps making us repeat the same things over and over again. At first, I found this very boring, but I may be appreciating it more now. My listening comprehension is much better than my speaking. I can usually understand the teacher, but have a much harder time answering questions. While it may be boring, it is probably good for me to keep trying to practice the elementary conversation so that I do it correctly, versus knowing a lot, but not being able to verbally express myself well.
The classes are fairly diverse at NSYSU. In my two classes, I am the only American. The other kids are from Canada, Czech Republic, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, and possibly a British guy who comes occasionally. More surprisingly, I may be the youngest. The Canadian is an English teacher here in a cram school and is in his mid-twenties. The Czech guy just graduated from college and is here on the MOE scholarship - same one I have. His girlfriend is Portuguese and also here studying Chinese on the scholarship. One Japanese girl is 26, and being paid by her hotel hospitality job back home to live here for the year and to learn Chinese. The other Japanese girl studied abroad in the States, met and married a Taiwanese guy, moved back to Kaohsiung with him and is now trying to learn Chinese. I cannot tell how old the Korean guy is, though he has some of the more fluent Chinese in the class (the Japanese girls said that he is repeating this class for the second time...). Another Korean lady just joined our class halfway through last week. She is in her mid-forties, and I just found out that her teenage daughter attends youth group at our church (which I started helping out with last Saturday, and thereby met her daughter - random). The Vietnamese guy has moved here permanently to work, and seems to be a very committed student, spending most of his afternoons at the school library.
Other than class every morning, I have picked up with my tutoring again. The scholarship is nice, but certainly not lucrative. I am slightly poorer than last year, so private tutoring is perfect. I think I have ironed out my schedule to have 12 hours a week. There are a few other students who would like to start up, but I am already feeling quite busy, so they might get turned down. My tutoring students this year all seem nice so far. I do not have any where the parent has obviously signed the kid up against his/her will (had a few of those last year, and they were like pulling teeth).
Two of those tutoring hours I actually spend at my school from last spring semester, Minzu Jr. HS. As happy as I am to not be teaching full-time again this year, it is rather nice to be back in the classroom once a week. I have decided that teaching is fun in small doses. I teach two different English conversation club classes for the school. One is for the eighth graders, which is fun since I know all of them from last year. The other is with the seventh graders. I have only had them once so far, since this week was a holiday, but they are quite cute. Very nervous and shy about being in junior high school suddenly, but very adorable. I had forgotten the barrage of questions I would be greeted with:
"Teacher, do you have a boyfriend?"
"Teacher, are you married?"
"Teacher, where are you from?"
"Teacher, how old are you?"
"Teacher, how tall are you?"
So predictable... Oh and a child corrected my English! They had to pair up and ask each other questions, then introduce their partner to the rest of the class. On the board, I wrote out the questions, one of which was "What is your birthday?" One student raised her hand and asked in clearly enunciated English, "Teacher, shouldn't it be 'WHEN is your birthday?'?" I went home and asked Katherine, who agree with the small child. Then I emailed my whole family, who agreed with me! Perhaps it is a midwestern colloquialism, but we often say "WHAT is your birthday?" meaning I suppose, what is (the date of) your birthday. Linguistics... Amazing that anyone would want to hire me to teach English haha. Supply and demand is a beautiful thing. In my defense, though, while my English may not be perfect (and you really should not hire me to teach phonics), I have been told that I am a very entertaining and patient teacher, which must be worth something. :)
As a sidenote, I am no longer doing Minghua's English newspaper. Last year, I supervised their newspaper the entire year, even after moving to Minzu. While I loved the kids and enjoyed moonlighting as a newspaper man, it took a huge amount of time, which I simply do not have this year. Feeling bad about not being able to help out again, I passed on word to this year's ETAs. One of them was a journalism major and worked for the past year as a news reporter - perfect! I was so excited, Minghua is excited, she is excited - basically win-win for everyone.
On a more day-to-day level, this week has been a bit odd. First with the typhoon canceling everything Sunday and Monday, and then today is the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節 or Moon Festival). Classes are canceled at NSYSU today and tomorrow. As a result, I will only have class twice this week - Tuesday and Friday - quite strange. I have made a commitment to be productive with my time, though. However, seeing how I have already caught up on the season premiers for Chuck and Glee, it might not go as well as planned.... And Bones comes out in another day. And I want to start watching a new Taiwanese drama (they really can help you learn Chinese! haha). So if you know of any good ones, let me know (and no, Joy, I do not want to watch your Korean drama, but thanks...).
Other than typhoons, coming back to Taiwan has been an easy adjustment. I was supposed to fly back September 2nd, and after minor adventures in Champaign, Chicago and Narita (that would be every single airport where I had a connecting flight), I finally made it to Kaohsiung on the evening of the 4th, after 51 hours of traveling.
This year, I have relocated to a new apartment building up north along the Love River, relatively close to the Kaohsiung Arena, Ruifeng Night Market and my old school Minghua Jr. HS. It is also two blocks away from church, which is - non-coincidentally - how we got the apartment. My two roommates this year are both on staff with church, so the pastor helped us set all of this up through a friend of a friend. Katherine, one of the other ETAs last year, is now working part-time at church as the youth ministry coordinator and part-time as an English cram school teacher (though they both seem to add up to two full-time jobs). Jennice, a local Taiwanese, is also on staff at church, helping out with so many different ministries that I cannot even keep them straight. Additionally, she attends seminary two days a week up in Tainan. Both of the girls are incredibly sweet and very fun to live with, when I see them that is. Since I have class in the mornings, and they work afternoons and evenings, it is very easy to miss each other for days on end. I think I only saw Jennice once the entire first week I was here, and that might have been at church. Lately, though, we have all been home more, which is fun. And while Jennice helps me with my homework, I look forward to teaching her more about American sarcasm! (NB - Taiwanese people do not understand sarcasm - it is a fine art which I often see as my mission to spread the joys of whenever possible)
The first week here, I got to do lots of independent, grown-up activities, with the added bonus of doing it all in Chinese. Last year, I never fully appreciated how much work Fulbright did for us - or that is, how much FONDA did for us... I started off by visiting the immigration office to register for my ARC (alien residency card), attended orientation at school, applied for a school parking permit, had Cable installed, attempted to get health insurance and visited the DMV to renew my drivers license, re-register my scooter and buy new motor vehicle insurance. Getting Cable hooked up might have been both the most frustrating and most amusing experience. For a full week after I arrived, we had no internet service. Katherine would steal off of a neighbor's unencrypted line, but for some reason, my computer refused to connect. Internet is always priority number one for me, so you can imagine how frustrated I was. Jennice had promised to look into it, but since she was never around, I tried to find a faster solution. When I would try to ask the guards downstairs, my Chinese would utterly fail me. Two of my co-teachers from last year came over one night, and I dragged them downstairs to question the guards for me. However, the apartment internet turned out to be incredible slow and not what we wanted. Katherine had been not wanting Cable internet since it is so expensive, but in the end, we decided it was the best option since it is the fastest. Plus now I get to watch international CNN TV coverage 24/7 again, which makes me happy! But back to why this story is amusing. As sweet as Jennice is, she often has no clue about real life things. I mean, I make no claim to understanding the adult world, but in comparison, I must know something... The Cable guy comes over to hook up our TV and router. He starts explaining in Chinese how since our TV is an older model, you cannot simultaneously hook up both the DVD player and the Cable box without buying an additional cord (something about the outlets at the back of the TV). Jennice is so confused and not understanding anything he is saying, so keeps patiently asking questions in her sweet, innocent way. You can tell she really wants to understand, but just cannot. The Cable guy, meanwhile, is getting super fed up at having to repeat everything and has a very annoyed expression on his face. I, of course, understand very little of the Chinese, but comprehend precisely what the trouble is with the TV, yet am equally unsuccessful at explaining it to Jennice in English as he is in Chinese. When the poor Cable guy finally left and Katherine got home, we had a long laugh about the whole situation. And then Katherine looked at the television herself and realized the Cable guy was wrong the whole time - both the DVD player AND the Cable box can be hooked up simultaneously. So much for Cable guys...
As for school, I am loving my classes so far. It is the most amazing feeling to be the student again, learning information that you honestly and truly really want to know, versus being the teacher, trying to force information down unwilling teenagers' minds. Plus I just love learning Chinese. By the end of last year, I was quite frustrated with Chinese. Since I had no time to spend actually learning the language (or perhaps I am just a poor manager of time), I usually just felt fairly stupid since my limited Chinese could not service me through many different kinds of situations. Learning again makes me feel so happy, and also makes me increasingly excited for grad school in the future. My classes are also fairly entertaining, which makes them that much more enjoyable. I have class every morning, three hours a day (though last week I had an additional two hours a day, as I took an extra class to try to learn b-p-m-f, the phonetic symbols which Taiwan uses instead of Pinyin - it was mildly terrible and made me feel like I was 5 years old again trying to learn the alphabet...). On Monday/Wednesday/Friday, I have a grammar class, and on Tuesday/Thursday, I have conversation. At first, I like my grammar class a lot better because we do more advanced things, in terms of both vocabulary and grammar structures. The conversation class, on the other hand, has stayed on much more simple topics, things that I already feel I know. Our teacher keeps making us repeat the same things over and over again. At first, I found this very boring, but I may be appreciating it more now. My listening comprehension is much better than my speaking. I can usually understand the teacher, but have a much harder time answering questions. While it may be boring, it is probably good for me to keep trying to practice the elementary conversation so that I do it correctly, versus knowing a lot, but not being able to verbally express myself well.
The classes are fairly diverse at NSYSU. In my two classes, I am the only American. The other kids are from Canada, Czech Republic, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, and possibly a British guy who comes occasionally. More surprisingly, I may be the youngest. The Canadian is an English teacher here in a cram school and is in his mid-twenties. The Czech guy just graduated from college and is here on the MOE scholarship - same one I have. His girlfriend is Portuguese and also here studying Chinese on the scholarship. One Japanese girl is 26, and being paid by her hotel hospitality job back home to live here for the year and to learn Chinese. The other Japanese girl studied abroad in the States, met and married a Taiwanese guy, moved back to Kaohsiung with him and is now trying to learn Chinese. I cannot tell how old the Korean guy is, though he has some of the more fluent Chinese in the class (the Japanese girls said that he is repeating this class for the second time...). Another Korean lady just joined our class halfway through last week. She is in her mid-forties, and I just found out that her teenage daughter attends youth group at our church (which I started helping out with last Saturday, and thereby met her daughter - random). The Vietnamese guy has moved here permanently to work, and seems to be a very committed student, spending most of his afternoons at the school library.
Other than class every morning, I have picked up with my tutoring again. The scholarship is nice, but certainly not lucrative. I am slightly poorer than last year, so private tutoring is perfect. I think I have ironed out my schedule to have 12 hours a week. There are a few other students who would like to start up, but I am already feeling quite busy, so they might get turned down. My tutoring students this year all seem nice so far. I do not have any where the parent has obviously signed the kid up against his/her will (had a few of those last year, and they were like pulling teeth).
Two of those tutoring hours I actually spend at my school from last spring semester, Minzu Jr. HS. As happy as I am to not be teaching full-time again this year, it is rather nice to be back in the classroom once a week. I have decided that teaching is fun in small doses. I teach two different English conversation club classes for the school. One is for the eighth graders, which is fun since I know all of them from last year. The other is with the seventh graders. I have only had them once so far, since this week was a holiday, but they are quite cute. Very nervous and shy about being in junior high school suddenly, but very adorable. I had forgotten the barrage of questions I would be greeted with:
"Teacher, do you have a boyfriend?"
"Teacher, are you married?"
"Teacher, where are you from?"
"Teacher, how old are you?"
"Teacher, how tall are you?"
So predictable... Oh and a child corrected my English! They had to pair up and ask each other questions, then introduce their partner to the rest of the class. On the board, I wrote out the questions, one of which was "What is your birthday?" One student raised her hand and asked in clearly enunciated English, "Teacher, shouldn't it be 'WHEN is your birthday?'?" I went home and asked Katherine, who agree with the small child. Then I emailed my whole family, who agreed with me! Perhaps it is a midwestern colloquialism, but we often say "WHAT is your birthday?" meaning I suppose, what is (the date of) your birthday. Linguistics... Amazing that anyone would want to hire me to teach English haha. Supply and demand is a beautiful thing. In my defense, though, while my English may not be perfect (and you really should not hire me to teach phonics), I have been told that I am a very entertaining and patient teacher, which must be worth something. :)
As a sidenote, I am no longer doing Minghua's English newspaper. Last year, I supervised their newspaper the entire year, even after moving to Minzu. While I loved the kids and enjoyed moonlighting as a newspaper man, it took a huge amount of time, which I simply do not have this year. Feeling bad about not being able to help out again, I passed on word to this year's ETAs. One of them was a journalism major and worked for the past year as a news reporter - perfect! I was so excited, Minghua is excited, she is excited - basically win-win for everyone.
On a more day-to-day level, this week has been a bit odd. First with the typhoon canceling everything Sunday and Monday, and then today is the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節 or Moon Festival). Classes are canceled at NSYSU today and tomorrow. As a result, I will only have class twice this week - Tuesday and Friday - quite strange. I have made a commitment to be productive with my time, though. However, seeing how I have already caught up on the season premiers for Chuck and Glee, it might not go as well as planned.... And Bones comes out in another day. And I want to start watching a new Taiwanese drama (they really can help you learn Chinese! haha). So if you know of any good ones, let me know (and no, Joy, I do not want to watch your Korean drama, but thanks...).
