Grace's Adventures in Taiwan

Life as a Student

2010-10-14T04:05:00.001-07:00

Since I am living the life of a student now, my life is not nearly as exciting as it was last year. Last year, we would often travel two out four weekends a month, or at least have amusing/entertaining functions to attend. Now I sit around memorizing vocabulary lists and grammar structures all day. And even after all of that effort, I am constantly frustrated by how slow my learning curve is. Foreign languages have never come easily for me, but I think I had hoped that in coming back here to solely focus on language study, I would wake up one day and suddenly become like my grandfather, who managed to master some half a dozen languages during his lifetime. What I lack in genes, though, I make up for in determination. After three hours of class in the morning, I typically spend another three hours studying and doing homework before my brain completely melts or I am called off to teach some small child English. My most productive time is actually in the mornings before class (also the reason why I am loving my morning classes this year, and did not absorb any knowledge from my night classes last year). No doubt about it - I am a morning person. Further proof of this happened just last night.

Wednesdays are my busiest days, as I go straight from Chinese class to Minzu Jr. High School (my school from last spring semester) to teach two periods of English club. Then I go to Sophie's for two hours of tutoring and finish with another two hours of tutoring two high schoolers who attend the Kaohsiung American School. In other words, I am gone from around 8:30am until past 10:30pm (college all over again, no?). So last night I was hanging out with Sophie after tutoring (we often go out for dinner afterwords), when I remembered that I had an exam this morning. In my defense, we have been having exams all week, so it is not like I have not been studying throughout - I just had momentarily forgotten about this particular one. So when I finally got home around 11pm, I decided to buckle down and study. I prepared well, stuffing my system full of caffeine and sugar. Did it work? Well, ask my roommates when they found me 45 minutes later sound asleep on the couch. So much for that idea. :) Sometimes I wonder how I ever made it through college...

On the bright side of things, my Chinese is improving a lot (just not as fast as I would like, which would be fluency by tomorrow ha). My reading and writing have improved drastically, as has my listening. For some reason, I still cannot speak. Whenever I open my mouth, all knowledge of complex grammar structures and interesting vocabulary flees my head, and I am left stuttering in incoherent thoughts. Everyone is very sweet and encouraging, though. For example, this past Sunday, I attended the wedding of one of the teachers from Minghua Jr. HS. We had been in the same office last fall, so it was fun to go see her all dressed up and beautiful. Taiwanese wedding banquets are all about the wardrobe changes of the bride and the plethora of dinner courses. People eat and eat and eat... way too much food... It is a good thing there is no dancing at Taiwanese weddings, because after consuming that much food, there is no way anyone could dance. Anyways, several weeks before, my old office conspired against me and nominated me to give a speech at the wedding. After the dinner, the bride and groom go around to each table, drinking a toast with all of their guests. When they came to MY table, everyone thought it would be "cute" or "funny" or "endearing" if I stood up and made a bunch of toasts in Chinese. Oh Taiwan.... The whole previous week I spent in nervous preparation, practicing my string of Chinese wedding blessings (Chinese loves the use of idioms - the language has them for just about every occasion, and when it comes to weddings, there are many such as: 早生貴字 - wishing the couple the early birth of a son; or 百年好合 - wishing the couple may have a hundred years together; my office friends gave me a whole list of these to memorize) on any Taiwanese local who would listen. Sunday afternoon, Phoebe took me out to get my hair washed and styled for the wedding, and I rattled off all my phrases to the hairdresser who found me incredibly amusing.... When the time finally came, I managed to get out all of the words without any major catastrophe, and everyone present seemed to get a kick out of it (which is what we foreigners are for - entertainment for the locals lol).

Pictures: (above) me and Phoebe; (far left) me and the hairdresser; (near left) my hair - pretty! too bad it did not stay that way long...

In case you are thinking it is strange that I was so nervous to speak in Chinese at the wedding, I have recently discovered something about myself. Most people know I have always loved public speaking (thanks to my mother's efforts during early childhood). Whether impromptu or prepared speeches, I always have fun. Impromptu amuses me, because I love to see what happens when everything is spontaneous; but the process of brainstorming, writing, practicing and delivering a speech is also rewarding, from the creativity and organizational skills involved all the way down to the thrill of connecting with an audience. What I have now realized about myself, though, is that all of this is null when the speech is in Chinese. Whether I am standing at the front of class to give a five minute speech or being forced to speak in front of everyone at a wedding, my gut feeling is to panic and stand mute. Every thought flees my head and I begin exhibiting classic symptoms of stage fright. Must show how self-conscious I am when speaking Chinese...

Back to weddings for a moment, though - the Chinese and Taiwanese see luck and superstition in everything. For seemingly insignificant details, there is a proper way in which things must be done in order to bring good luck to yourself and those around you. For example, certain days are more lucky than others to get married on (or to be born on). When giving the bride and groom their red envelope (wedding presents here are done in the form of money, presented in a red envelope), you should give in even number amounts - for example, 1200NT but not 1100NT or 1300NT. When getting married to your spouse, there are lucky and unlucky age disparities. Marry someone 1, 4, 7 or 11 years different from you, but stay away from possible partners who are 2, 3, 6 or 8 years different.

My Chinese has been facing other challenges this past month, which has the side result of making me very tired. Last weekend, one of the ladies in my class (the Korean lady - whom we all call "Korean Mama" since she is the only one with kids) invited us all over to her house for dinner. My teacher lives just a few blocks away from me, so she offered to pick me up and give me a ride. What would normally have been a 20 minute ride turned into an hour long trip due to the weather and rush hour traffic. Imagine me trying to keep up a one-on-one conversation with my teacher in Chinese for over an hour... painful. Once we arrived at Korean Mama's house, we of course had to continue talking all in Chinese, as we have to whenever our teacher is present (she is apparently fluent in English, having lived for two years in Philadelphia, but I have never heard her speak English). By the time I returned home, I had spent over 5 hours in concentrated Chinese conversations - intense and exhausting. This coming week, I am going to start hanging out with a language partner, so hopefully, I will begin having many more protracted Chinese conversations (the problem with most of my Taiwanese friends is that their English is much better than my Chinese, so it is easier/more natural to use English when we hang out).

Tutoring English also has its amusing moments. All of my students are "special," some more so than others. The continuing saga of Jane, my problem child, might sadly (or happily) be coming to an end. Jane is a fifth grader who transferred this year from Chinese school to KAS, and has been having problems adjusting to the level of English, since no Chinese is allowed at the American School. Jane, however, does not like to learn. She is the classic strong-willed child coupled with a streak of laziness. She has major attitude problems and no respect for authority. Luckily, having been a strong-willed child myself, I can have way more attitude when necessary and will win any battle in stubbornness. That being said, Jane has absolutely no desire to cooperate and no motivation to even make an attempt at learning - with that I really cannot help. Her mother tells me that Jane is the same way with both of her parents, and both of them are at wits end to know what to do with her. We are beginning to think it might be better for Jane to take a hiatus on her lessons since her attitude is preventing her from actually gaining anything out of them (other than the joy of a battle of wills - which I may find entertaining but suspect she does not ha). Such encounters make me relieved I am not yet a mother and responsible for the moral upbringing of another human being.

A more comical tutoring situation happened this week with one of my high school students. He is a junior at KAS, and I typically help him with his English literature assignments or SAT prep. We just finished working on Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," discovering different literary techniques, analyzing plot and character developments etc. Having never read the book myself, it was slightly challenging to help him wade through the book. The other day, he showed me his new book for class, "The Kite Runner." I got excited, because not only have I read the book, but I loved it. In my forever-absentmindedness, I happened to forgot a few major plot points... We started reading chapter two together, and almost immediately, the realization of what I was getting into hit me. We were only on chapter 2 - chapter 2! - and already the book was graphically mentioning sex! It is one thing to have a mature conversation about such a book with a friend, quite another to analyze it with a high schooler, slightly more awkward when that high schooler is a boy and more awkward still when the high schooler's English is not good enough to understand what he is reading! Imagine reading a mildly explicit sentence, and then having the high school boy ask you to explain it to him. Oh goodness... One of those many moments when I think to myself: "I am not getting paid enough for this." All I know is, there are certain chapters in that book which I will NOT be reading with him. He can just go ask his teacher to explain those passages to him. After all, what is an American teacher thinking to assign such a book to Taiwanese high school students?! The SAT-level vocabulary and political setting alone put the book way over the poor guy's head, let alone the adult content and deep psychological issues which are taking place. But no matter how much I feel for the guy, we will NOT be discussing rape or sex during our tutoring time.

On other lesser news, I finally bought a blender (called a "juice machine" in Chinese - is not that cute?). I love smoothies, and one day, decided to make one at home. Having dragon fruit (see picture) already in the fridge at home, I stopped by a market to pick up pineapple on my way back from school. Looking in the freezer, I realize we have no ice and no ice trays. So I turn around, go back downstairs, find the nearest 7-11 and buy ice. I march all the way back upstairs only to discover that our kitchen is lacking in a blender! What to do? I believe I have already mentioned my stubbornness in this post? Well, that particular personality trait rarely lets me give up on an idea, no matter how futile or bleak things are looking. Being resourceful, I pull out a mixing bowl and a blender. Oh terrible terrible idea. In less that 10 seconds, the ENTIRE kitchen is covered in magenta-covered goop. Ceiling, cabinets, floor, counters.... I wish I had taken pictures, because it was awesome. Needless to say, I purchased a blender soon thereafter. Moral: never ever attempt making a smoothie in a mixing bowl with an electric blender (I do not have pictures of the actual incident, but I took some today to show the color of the smoothie, so you can imagine that substance being flung about and covering everything in sight).

PS - Happy Birthday, Mommy! :)

Back in Kaohsiung

2010-09-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

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...).

Outing with Sophie

2010-05-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

One of the things I do in addition to teaching at school is tutoring. By contract, we are allowed to work 4 additional hours tutoring outside of class. My first tutoring student was Sophie, and while I have since accumulated others, Sophie remains my favorite. Sophie lives in my same apartment building just across the courtyard, so every Thursday evening, I trot over to speak English with her for an hour.

Sophie is delightful. She is one of the sweetest people I know - always thoughtful, always adorable, always going out of her way to help others. She brings fruit or home-cooked meals to our apartment at least twice a week; invites me out to dinner with her family; always prepares a drink and fresh fruit for me during our lessons; and usually sends me home on Thursdays with multiple bags of everything from breads, to cakes, to books, to DVDs to English New York Times issues (how she procures these is beyond me). My roommates and I have decided that she has adopted me. Her husband commutes every day to his job in Kending (which is a two-hour drive one way), and she only has one son, who is currently in high school (which means he is constantly busy studying). We think that she must have always secretly wanted a daughter, and here I am, the perfect age. :) Not that I am complaining - I adore Sophie.

Three times a semester, junior high schools here have major exams. The exams last for 2-3 days, and since I do not need to administer the exams, this means that I get 2-3 days off school. for our most recent exam testing period, Sophie invited me out with her on a day-trip to Tainan. Tainan, half-an-hour north of Kaohsiung, is the fourth largest city in Taiwan, one of the oldest cities on the island and also the old capital before Taipei. It is also known for having the most number of temples anywhere in Taiwan, not hard to fathom after walking around the city and literally seeing one on every street corner.

While I had been to Tainan various times with my host family and friends, this time, Sophie wanted to take me to a famous restaurant there. It was started by a woman as a way to show off her artwork - displayed both in the architecture and in the sculptures. Sophie had been very moved by the woman's story when she first heard it years ago, and she still finds her life very inspiring. This woman grew up in the country with almost nothing, never finished school, was forced into marrying someone by her brother and did not manage to find herself until she reached middle-age. After she escaped her unhappy marriage, she began her artwork, creating statues solely using natural, recyclable materials. She built her first restaurant entirely by herself, with ocean driftwood and other damaged materials she found after a typhoon. She now has over half a dozen restaurants scattered around Taiwan, each unique with its own theme and specially designed environments and artwork. For example, the restaurant in Tainan, as you can tell by the pictures, has a forest feel to it, with trees growing up from amongst the tables
to the skylights in the ceiling. Her artwork focuses on women's empowerment and has a strangely Picasso feeling to it... The food was also superb, though as I understand, not inspired by the same artist, but by a chef who has paired up with her.

After the restaurant, we did a bit of sight-seeing, visiting the Eternal Golden Castle and the Chikkhan Towers. It was interesting seeing how much the land has changed over the last few hundred years, as both forts were originally built right on the water and are now several miles inland. The Eternal Golden Castle was built in 1874, by a Qing Dynasty official to help defend against the Japanese. Sadly, it proved mildly ineffective, as the Japanese would invade two decades later. The Chihkan Towers were constructed in 1653, during the Dutch colonization. However, they were later rebuilt, which is why the buildings today look Chinese, although their foundation is the original Dutch brickwork.

Above: at the Eternal Golden Castle
Below: (left) Chihkan Towers; (right) statue of Dutch surrendering to the Chinese

Below: (left) god of literature - the figure is holding a writing brush in one hand and an inkwell in the other, one foot on the head of a tortoise and the other kicking the stars, the symbolism of which means high academic success, so students often come here to pray before taking exams

Above: (right) classic Chinglish

On a sillier note, Sophie also insisted that I let someone at each site take my photograph. I could not figure out what was happening at first, but it turned out that she was signing me up for insurance cards. The city of Tainan has a free insurance program for tourists, covering all of its historic sites. Basically, if you give them your name and other identifiable information and let them take your picture, they print you a nifty little card and guarantee you free insurance for the duration of your stay in Tainan. Plus you end up with a cute little souvenir - a card with your picture in front of the historic site. Sophie got so excited by it, that she even ended up getting a card herself at the second site.

We have arrived: living the adventure of the Hello Kitty Ferris Wheel

2010-05-19T07:14:00.001-07:00

The first week we arrived in Kaohsiung, we were taken to the Dream Mall, the largest shopping mall in the city. On top of this mall, rests the second-largest Hello Kitty ferris wheel in the world. Awesome. I love how that sounds: Kaohsiung has the second-largest Hello Kitty ferris wheel in the world. Which means, there are "at least" two Hello Kitty ferris wheels in the world - perhaps more! In case you have never been to Asia, Hello Kitty is beloved and adored by all age groups and all genders. Her iconic little face gets put on everything, rivaled only by Sponge Bob (Hai Mian Bao Bao!).
For the first couple of months, Hello Kitty Ferris Wheel was a thing to laugh at and mock. Slowly, I began to secretly want to ride it. When I heard that each car has a Hello Kitty cushion inside, I began to earnestly desire a picture of myself with that cushion on the ferris wheel. Yes, it is true - I am developing certain Asian tendencies, such as the overpowering yearning to take pictures with ridiculous "cutesy" things. Each time I had family come to visit me, I would mention the ferris wheel off-hand, demeaning it as childish and eccentrically Asian, secretly hoping someone would see the joke in it all and also want to ride it with me. Alas, no.

Well, this week, Kristin's friend Maddalena is visiting from the States, so we have been entertaining her with wild and crazy adventures. On the list, I suggested Hello Kitty. It was epic. We went late at night, when you can see all the lights from around the city. Maddalena had the great idea to bring Mr. Donut with us for our mid-air snack. Living the dream - Hello Kitty Ferris Wheel - do not miss it on your next vacation to Taiwan.

Taiqi

2010-05-17T07:09:00.001-07:00

As I have mentioned before, I practice taiqi three mornings a week with a lovely little group of Taiwanese people, all over the age of 50. I like to think of myself, the tall blond 30 years their junior, as their mascot - I show up to things, make a solid effort, usually get my butt whipped by all of the 70-year-olds, understand about 30 per cent of what is said around me and have an overall grand time. Everyone else in my group works at the Kaohsiung City Tax Office, just a block past my apartment building next to the Cultural Center. There are a couple of other people who come regularly, who clearly know everyone, but who always walk off in a different direction. Maybe they are retired now? One of these is my coach, a little old guy, completely adorable. He is always walking over and correcting my body posture - I do not know where he finds the patience. :) Then there is also the main teacher. He only comes some of the time, which confuses me. I did not ever work with him until back in January when I finally became good enough to join the entire group. Even so, he often comes and just observes from the back the whole time. Every once in a while, he will get on a microphone and demonstrate things for us.

Back when my family visited in March and came to watch me practicing taiqi in the Cultural Center, my group asked if I wanted to join them in a performance come May. I readily agreed, of course!

The performance turned out to be an exhibition of nearly all of the certified taiqi groups in southern Taiwan performing for the Kaohsiung mayor. There were over a thousand people, coming from Tainan, Pingtung etc. Kaitlyn came with me to watch and take pictures. As we were driving up to the stadium, she started to point out someone wearing the same uniform as me, to ask if they were from my group. She was shocked to discover that all 1000 of us were wearing the exact same clothes. Looking for me in all of the pictures and videos she took is a little like "Where's Waldo" Grace-style.

While we had to be at the stadium at 8am, nothing really happened until after 10am when the mayor finally arrived. We spent the several hours getting marshaled around the field, arranged into lines, marching out, marching back again. We even did a practice run of the whole thing with music and girls (dressed like majorettes) holding signs. Once the mayor did finally show up, we had to stand, in the by-now oppressive heat, listening to nearly an hour of speechifying and acknowledgments for every single person of the several dozen sitting on stage. If this sounds boring/tortuous, now imagine listening to all of the speechifying in Chinese. Haha I really wanted to strip off all my clothes and then pass out in the middle of the field. In the end, I decided that might not be kosher... After all, I was already the only non-Asian on the field, so I had a reputation to uphold as the sole westerner. :)

We were finally allowed to start, and for the next seven minutes, the whole experience was very fascinating to be a part of and to watch. All 1000 of us were in lines, doing the same routine, moving in "perfect" uniformity to the music (It was actually far from perfect, thanks to the grass making it very difficult to turn properly. The best part was these two guys right in front of me - not from my group! - who obviously had no idea what they were doing. It was hilarious, and made me feel much better about myself). It was cool to watch all of the lines move as one, almost like waves of the sea. At the front of the lines, were nine taiqi masters, wearing silken pajamas. I did not realize until later when Kaitlyn showed me pictures, but one of these was my group's instructor. If you look in the videos, he is the one closest to the camera (or on the far right if you were facing the field).

After baking in the sun for a few hours, the entire field retired to another in-door stadium across the street where certain taiqi groups entered into a competition. My group did not take part in the competitions, for they told me they did not have enough people. This surprised me, because there are usually over 20 people at practice on a given day. Anyways, after about 30 minutes of watching more of the same routine performed again and again, Kaitlyn and I were utterly bored and left. The morning was a very fun experience, though, and I am glad I was able to participate.

Bike Riding in Meinong

2010-05-16T06:45:00.001-07:00

Bekah and I had both been to Meinong with our respective families, but we thought it would be fun to take a scooter rode trip out by ourselves. One of the things Meinong is famous for is bike riding, so we decided to rent bikes for the day and go exploring. Meinong roads used to be covered in color-coded bike paths, but the old markings were either so old and faded or else paved over that they sadly did not exist anymore. Luckily, the town itself is very small and the surrounding countryside is fairly logical, so we never got too lost. There was one moment, though, where we almost started biking straight up a mountainside, but a local saw us trying to make out a sign, and kindly pointed us in the proper direction (our bikes were far from mountain bikes).

Since living in Kaohsiung, I have done surprisingly little bike riding, considering the amount of bicycles in the country and my love for cycling. This is due to three factors: my scooter is faster and more fun, the heat/humidity makes cycling an unpractical mode of transportation for anyone hoping to arrive at work with dry clothing, and the bikes here are not built for my body type. Back in October, Minghua's PTA council gifted me with a bicycle (which was so sweet of them!). It is foldable, making it great for taking on the MRT. This same feature, though, means that the wheels are about one foot in diameter and the frame is very unstable. I am always afraid I will break it when I ride it! Anyways, the bikes we rented in Meinong were more sturdy, but still built all wrong for me. Even with raising the seat and handle bars, things were still out of proportion. Maybe my torso is too long? We had meant to stay out most of the day, but after less than two hours, my body was ready to quit. Bekah was done too, as the heat was terrible. One thing I am looking forward to this summer is taking my American bike out for long cycling adventures through Illinois cornfields haha.

After buying fresh pineapple from a fruit stand along the road (while I will be upgrading my bicycle, I will sorely miss Taiwan's fruit this summer - nothing compares to it), we set out riding amidst banana and beetlenut trees, through quaint villages and along the mountain ridge. Once we had given up on the bikes, we took a walk around a pretty little lake and even got to listen to some traditional aboriginal music. It was painful. One could hear it from a mile away, and of course, Bekah needed to get up close so as to better savor the experience. I have included a recording of it so that you call all witness the discordance.

Maolin

2010-05-11T00:30:00.001-07:00

Bekah and I have been wanting to take a road trip all year - we do, after all, have our own scooter gang lol. We finally decided on road-tripping it up to Maolin, one of Taiwan's national scenic areas, about 2 hours northeast of Kaohsiung (closer to one hour by highway with a car). The park area, according to Lonely Planet, has "pristine mountain landscapes, vertiginously high suspension bridges, waterfalls, natural swimming pools and even free outdoor hot springs." Maolin is also world-famous for its Purple Butterfly Valley, the second most important butterfly migratory resting grounds in the world after Mexico City's Monarch Butterfly Valley.

Tragically, much of Maolin was destroyed by Hurricane Morakot last August, and we were saddened to see, the area still lies mostly in ruins. We had heard about the damage last summer, but whether we forgot or just assumed that it would have been restored by now, we were both amazed at the amount of damage everywhere. When Fonda told us that much of Maolin no longer existed, we did not understand until we got there and saw it for ourselves. Whole mountainsides were washed away, etching ugly scars into the valley walls and leaving the riverbeds coated in mud and boulders. The river does not really exist anymore - instead, the riverbed is mile after mile of muddied wasteland. Roads and bridges were destroyed everywhere, and only now, do they appear to be beginning the rebuilding with makeshift bridges and a few construction zones to rebuild necessary parts of the road. There is only one main road through the park, so you can imagine what it must have been like for the people in villages deeper inside the gorge with no road to reach them and to connect them to the outside world. Everywhere you go, there are abandoned buildings, caved in or filled with mud and debris. Most of the hiking trails are completely gone, washed away with the sides of cliffs; and none of the hot springs exist anymore, or at least, they are buried deep underground once again.

Above: (left) trail washed away by landslide; (right) me bemoaning more trail ruins
Below: (left) makeshift road alongside concrete supports of the old bridge; (right) this trail we hiked supposedly once had five bridges crisscrossing the ravine, all of which are now in pieces as evidenced by the pile of bricks you see here

Bekah and I drove up on a Saturday evening, stayed the night at a lovely little hotel run by aboriginals, hiked/scootered around all day Sunday and then drove back that evening (there is no transportation inside of the park, which is one of the reasons why we took our own scooters - also, I would recommend to any future travelers to bring in all of your own food). We stayed at the De En Gorge Guesthouse, which is a bit outside of Maolin Village and nestled on the hillside overlooking the valley. I thought of doing taiqi when I woke up early in the morning, but then had more fun watching another Taiwanese lady doing her morning exercise routine. Taiwanese people are so cute when they exercise in the morning - I think that may have been the main reason why I started doing taiqi every day last fall. It is just so entertaining to watch them.

After being invited to morning tea with some other guests, Bekah and I set out on our scooters to find adventure. What we found were a lot of missing trails, broken bridges and ruined buildings. However, we still discovered some beautiful spots, and Bekah was even brave enough to go swimming in a waterfall pool. I thought about it, but decided I did not want to be wet the rest of the day - or at least, for the next hour or so. The pool she took a dip in, though, ate one of my socks, so I do not bear it much goodwill... There were also lots of beautiful dragonflies around the pool which kept me busy for a while.

Above: trail head for the first one we hiked / waterfall Bekah swam in
Below: Bekah swimming in said waterfall pool

Above: fun wildlife on the trail

By early afternoon, we had reached the village of Dona, a cute little place inhabited by no more than 200 people. It did have an elementary school, though, so we joked that Fulbright could have placed one of us there for the year. Talk about remote. I am not sure I would have survived. On the other had, that is the kind of place where the people would probably benefit most from having a foreign teacher, since they have so little contact with people from beyond their valley, much less outside of Taiwan. We were happy to see that the village still maintained its Rukai aboriginal roots, with beautiful artwork and shale houses, and NO 7-Elevens. The people were very sweet, and we made friends with a couple of small children, before going in search of the hot springs which no longer exist.

Above: farming valley below Dona
Below: remains of two different hot springs, both nothing but rubble now

Other sites of Maolin which do still exist are the Dragon Head and Snake Head Mountains. They are both hills which pop up out of the middle of the riverbed, looking like - you guessed it - dragon and snake heads. We never made it down to the Snake Head, but we did hike all over the Dragon Head, and got several beautiful shots with it.

My favorite photo shoot, though, came at the end of the day as we were leaving the park. On the side of the road, we passed two very large statues of aboriginal men. Amazing. I claim the tall one as my aboriginal boyfriend now. If only real Taiwanese men came in that size... I would even settle for half that size! :)

Cishan with Vincent and Sunnie

2010-05-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

Vincent and Sunnie took me out on another day trip, this time to Cishan by way of Fo Guan Shan (佛光山). Foguanshan is the largest Buddhist monastery in all of Taiwan, and located just an hour outside of Kaohsiung. I had been wanting to visit for a while, but as most of my friends had already gone with their host families, I had been unable to find anyone who wanted to go with me. When Sunnie mentioned we would stop there on our way to Cishan, I was quite happy with the idea.

Religion in Taiwan is a bit convoluted. Most people believe in something, but few people know exactly what that is. Religion for them is more about family traditions that are passed down from one generation to the next. For example, Tomb Sweeping Day, where everyone goes out into the countryside for the day to sweep their ancestors' tomb - considered a deeply important family holiday. In talking to them about their religion, most of them do not seem to have very solid beliefs. Many people believe in a mishmash of Taoism and Buddhism, not even knowing themselves where one belief ends and the next picks up. For the majority of people I have met, religion does not have a major impact on their lives (though I have met a very few devout Buddhists). It is something you do when you need good luck - such as going to the temple to pray before a big exam, or once a year paying money to light candles in the temple to help your family in the upcoming year. It is not something you need do every day, but rather, just when you feel so moved (however, there is one lady who lives in our apartment who "feels so moved" way too often - she is forever burning paper money in the courtyard directly below our windows at around 5-6am; hence we often wake up with our entire apartment smelling like burned paper money - not a happy smell...). The thing I find refreshing about religion here is that they never try to prove their religion based on a set of logical points. It is very freeing to be in a society that is not hostile towards religion. In the States, I always feel defensive about my beliefs, as if I have to prove myself to people - prove to them that what I believe is rational and real. In Taiwan, everyone has a slightly different take on religion (for example, Sunnie is a mix of Buddhism and Taoism leaning more towards Taoism, whereas Vincent is agnostic - sort of), so there is a natural curiosity to learn more about other people's beliefs, without any type of judgmental baggage. Since I love learning about other people's religions as a way to gain insight into their culture and way of life, I enjoy being able to have friendly religious conversations with people, without anyone becoming upset or heated (not possible in America).

We wandered around Fo Guan Shan for about an hour, but as it was very hot and Vincent does not particularly enjoy heavy physical exertion (walking up hills qualifies as "heavy physical exertion" here), we never actually made it up to the famous 36 meter tall Buddha statue. Instead we did our best to stay on level ground or walk downhill for the entire time - quite the feat considering that the monastery is built onto the side of a mountain... I love my host family - they never cease to amuse me. :)

After our brief jaunt visiting the monks, we went on to Cishan. Now Taiwan is entertaining in that every single town, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant it may appear, is famous for something. Cishan is famous for its bananas. This does not mean that it the only place in Taiwan to find bananas or that their bananas are somehow better than the bananas elsewhere on the island. No, there bananas are exactly the same as all of the other bananas in Taiwan. The entertaining part is that every hamlet and village wants to be unique and renowned for something, so Cishan chose bananas. The capitalize on their logo/mascot/export by making famous banana coffee, banana ice cream, banana shaved ice and the list goes on. They decorate in bananas, there is a museum dedicated to telling about banana farming, there are banana statues - in short, everywhere you look, bananas. Now I love bananas as much as the next person, so I was hugely bemused and enjoyed myself thoroughly. And it should be noted: Cishan's banana coffee = 很好喝。
Above: (left) Sunnie and Vincent on a banana seat; (right) me eating a delicious banana split sundae

Above: (left) eating lunch - a meatball dumpling thing; (right) riding a banana bicycle
Below: at the Banana farming history museum, converted from an old elementary school

Host Family Outing

2010-04-20T06:12:00.001-07:00

13 hours. THIRTEEN HOURS. That is a long time, especially when that time is spent with all of the ETAs and their respective host families - think upwards of 50-60 people. Two buses picked us up at the Cultural Center at 7:30am, and were not scheduled to bring us back till after 8:30pm (we actually made it back slightly early, but still). I may love my host family, and I may love my fellow ETAs, but this does not in any sense add up to me wanting to spend 13 solid hours with all of them altogether.

The Kaohsiung Education Bureau kindly wanted to host an outing for all of us, taking us to the Sandimen Aboriginal Cultural Center along with a few other random sites. It was truly very sweet of them, but as the saying goes, sometimes less is more. Saturdays are my one day to sleep in, so rising before 7am is not ideal. A few days before, we had coerced Chris into promising to bring us all coffee. And he remembered! I love Chris. :) The Bureau provided us all with breakfast, matching hats and crab name cards, but sadly, breakfast consisted of a sandwich with fuzzy meat. Have I mentioned in my blog before about my extreme distaste for fuzzy meat? And when I say "my," I mean every westerner I have ever met, aside from Kristin - but then, she is in fact Asian... :)

Anyways, we all gathered at 7:30am, found our host families, loaded onto the buses and settled in for a long trip. Vincent, Sunnie and Nana all came. Vincent promptly fell asleep, and I think the rest of us dozed a bit (happy thought: they were all equally disgruntled with the early morning call to action; whenever we plan things ourselves on the weekends, we usually do not start moving until 10am; this is why we get along so well!).

We went first to the Aboriginal Cultural Center, which boasts a museum, large performance hall, examples of aboriginal villages and aboriginal lifestyles and lots of beautiful land rich in forests and ravines. We were greeted by some of the aboriginals lighting a fire with sticks and then firing a multi-cannon salute. They started us off in the museum, watching a 20 minute introductory video. Now, I have already received lots of grief over this, but if you were put into an air-conditioned room to watch a long, rambling video after you had gotten little sleep the night before, and then they turned the lights off on you (!), well... who would not fall asleep? People around me are always amazed at my sleeping skills. If there is one thing I excel at, it is sleeping. Anytime, anyplace, any noise level - I am out.

After that somewhat less than informative video, we were walked around the museum by a tour guide, and also led outside to watch the aboriginals ceremonially set off their canons. Very loud. Then they piled us into tram buses and whisked us farther up the mountain to watch the aboriginal show. Lots of traditional dancing and singing and fun costumes, but also lots of modern dance, which I had not been anticipating. The show told the story of one aboriginal group who became cast-offs, tried to join another tribe, but caused problems, stirring up anger against themselves. The other tribe attacked, killing all but two, who escaped and called down a curse on the tribe. This is why, every year to this day, the tribe has a special ceremony to try to pay remittances to the gods and to all who needlessly died early.

Dr. Cai, the head of the Kaohsiung Education Bureau, came out to meet us all for lunch. He also stayed a while to join us in putting fake tattoos on our faces (in aboriginal culture, the men and women wear face tattoos - men wear them on their forehead and chins, whereas women wear them on their cheeks - a little bit like war paint) and to play with aboriginal music makers. These were kind of like a back-pack, in that you wear them slung over your back. They are made out of brightly colored fabric (though ours were a bit faded) and have strings of beads tasseled to the bottom. When you wear them, you are supposed to move your body in a rhythmic motion, so that the beads hit your butt, making noise. In the aboriginal show, the dancers did this while walking around the entire perimeter of the stage - something which would take a surprising amount of strength to keep up for that long.

Above: wearing the aboriginal music makers -- left: host family / right: roommates plus P. Lee
Below: modeling aboriginal tattoos -- left: with Dr. Cai / right: with host family and roommates (Vincent refused to get a stick-on tattoo, can you believe it...)

In the afternoon, we stopped at all sorts of random little places - to see an old tobacco storehouse, to look at ducks, to walk on an island made entirely of oyster shells, to go paddle-boating, to have a clam bake, to have dinner - before finally making it home late at night. Taiwanese tours are random, I do not know what else to say. The ducks might have been my favorite, though the island of oyster shells was quite impressive. Over the years, fishermen dumped all of their shells in the same place, until they built up large enough to be an island. The island is now a little mossy and hosts a tourist stand selling fried oysters and other souvenirs. We took a windy boat ride out into the lake, to land on the island and walk around for a few minutes taking pictures. The clam bake was also amusing. Vincent is allergic to shellfish, so while they went to find him ice cream, I settled down for some oysters and clams. Having never tried to barbecue my own oysters before, I was not sure where to start. Fortuitously, Kaitlyn flagged me down, so I sat by her and her host family. Now Kaitlyn dearly loves her host family, but their biggest fault in her eyes is that they are always trying to feed her too much food. She has a weaker stomach, and Asian food often does not sit well with her. I, on the other hand, will eat almost anything (I get it from my father). I love being fed, Kaitlyn's host dad loves feeding people, and Kaitlyn did not want to eat anything, so it was the perfect situation. :)

Above: Sunnie and I on the way out to the oyster island / Island made entirely of oysters
Below: On the oyster island

We did finally manage to make it back home alive after an incredibly long day. Taiwanese host family outings are quite the event. Happily, Vincent, Sunnie and Nana are all very restful people, so the day was not nearly as stressful as it could have been. I will say, though, they should consider scheduling in a mid-afternoon nap-time for next year. But then, everyone knows my proclivity for naps. :)

Easter

2010-04-14T08:18:00.003-07:00

This year, I celebrated Easter both at school and at home with my roommates. Holidays here are always a bit odd, because you have to decide which traditions from growing up are ones that you want to carry on yourself. Being a teacher adds the additional responsibility of trying to determine which parts of a holiday are essential for your students to know in order for them to understand the purpose and beauty (or craziness) of a holiday.

For me this year, Easter was incredibly hard to decipher. I love Easter, but for me, the beauty of the holiday comes from its Christian/religious meaning. Hiding Easter eggs and eating chocolate bunnies may be fun for small children, but it is also fairly pointless. I thought it was important to teach my kids about the holiday - it is a major American holiday after all - but I did not know how to do it without talking about the Easter Story. If there is one thing that is ingrained into me after years of American education, it is the separation of church and state. I am incredibly squeamish about religious discussion in the classroom, particularly if it is coming from the teacher. Talking about God in a secular classroom feels awkward and unnatural. So I was stuck - wanting to teach the meaning behind Easter, but not wanting to touch on any sensitive subjects (I guess I am not as brave as I act sometimes).

Above: dying Easter eggs
Below: blowing eggs into buckets and recycled pudding containers

I went to ask my co-teachers their opinion, and was amazed to find that they had no idea what Easter was about. All they knew was what the children's English textbooks taught - some rubbish about White House Easter egg rolls (I had never even heard of this tradition before...) and the Easter Bunny. They both told me that they wanted me to teach about the origins of Easter including the Christian story and traditions (after all, if you go back far enough, Easter was a pagan holiday). I guess the way to think about it would be if a teacher wanted to do a cultural lesson on India, so they taught about a Hindi holiday and the different traditions associated with said holiday. In the end, I did what they wanted and taught Easter, including the Easter story. The kids were surprisingly interested... The best part, though, was arts and crafts afterwords. We made blown eggs, dyed Easter eggs, made egg chicks and did several other random activities. It was so entertaining to watch the kids' curiosity when they went to dye eggs. Something which is so natural to me was entirely exotic for them. It was cute.

For Easter at home with the roommates, we went all out with Easter dinner. Kristin and Kaitlyn cooked up awesome American food, Katherine brought over a gorgeous carrot cake and I made my mother's famous Easter bread bunnies! Every Easter Sunday growing up, my mother would wake up at 5am to make these bread bunnies from scratch for us, so that they would be ready before church. They were always one of my favorite things when I was little (that and our coconut lamb cake, but where was I going to find a lamb cake mold in Taiwan?), so I decided it was a tradition I needed to perpetuate here in Kaohsiung.

My Eyes

2010-04-14T08:18:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned in my last posting, I currently have keratitis, infection of the cornea. It is incredibly painful, causing my eyes to tear, turn red and be incredibly sensitive to light. What the doctor thinks happened is that, during the dust storm from China three weeks ago (when I was in Kending with my family), something got into my eyes and became minorly irritated. By the end of the weekend, my eyes were fairly bloodshot but not in pain, so I blamed it on sleep deprivation (I had gotten very little sleep while my family was here). The next two days, my eyes were tired and easily irritated. I remember rubbing my eyes a lot and thinking that the air had dried out my contacts. Tuesday night, I was working at my computer and grading papers, when I started tearing up in earnest. My eyes had been hurting since dinner, so I took out my contacts, put on my glasses and tried to work again. Now my eyes started crying in earnest. Within an hour, I could not even see anything, so I decided to give up and go to bed. I honestly just thought my eyes were tired and needed rest.

However, the next morning, I woke up early for taiqi and could not see a single thing. I could hardly open my eyes, they hurt so badly. I stumbled into the bathroom, took a shower, got dressed and then stood in the middle of the hallway wondering what to do. I still could not see, could not stop crying and any light was incredibly painful. My biggest concern was how to ride my scooter into work. At this point, Kristin came out of her room, took one look at me, and told me I was not allowed to go into school.

I went back to bed for a few hours, and then Fonda came to take me to the hospital. Most painful car ride of my life. Even with sunglasses and covering my eyes, the slightest amount of light hurt terribly. The doctor told me that I had keratitis, and that there were now holes in my cornea. Keratitis, when not caught promptly, can result in cornea erosion and eventual loss of the eye! He told me to not wear contacts for 2-4 weeks, and gave me three types of antibiotics to put into my eyes multiple times a day.

That was two weeks ago, and my eyes are still red and still sore. I have been to three different eye doctors, been prescribed seven different eye drops and eye creams, and nothing! The worst part is that people keep coming up to me with horrified expressions, asking what is wrong with my eyes and do I know that they are completely red and bloodshot? Why no! Thank you for telling me. I had no idea... YES, my eyes are red. YES, I have a cornea infection. NO, I did not get plastic surgery on my eyes (a Taiwanese person asked me this...).

One good thing to come out of this all is that I got new glasses. I have always hated wearing glasses (still do), but now that I have to wear them every day, I figured I ought to at least get trendy, cute ones. Funny story, second day of me wearing glasses, Fonda asks me if I would like to buy new ones. Puzzled, I say, "No - do you think I should?" Fonda, "Well, yours are crooked..." Haha I love Fonda. :) Yes, I have had my old ones since high school, and they are neither stylish nor straight nor the proper prescription. All excellent reasons to get new glasses. Fonda took me out to an eye glasses store in Xin Jue Zhang, staffed by many good-looking Asian men, and got me fitted out with new, classy, black plastic frames. My mother might be appalled - she has never liked black frames on blonds... But I took a vote in the shop and had the unanimous support of all of the good-looking Asian men.

Despite my new frames, I still hate glasses and deeply hope that my eyes will be returned to normal again soon.

Taidong

2010-04-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a lovely little weekend excursion to Taidong. The original plan was to visit Green Island (famous for great snorkeling and hot springs), a one hour plane ride east of Taidong. Sadly, our plans fells through when we discovered that the sole daily flight was completely booked for Thursday through Monday. While there is also a boat which runs regularly out to the tiny island, horror stories abound as to the terrors of seasickness. Apparently, no matter how strong your stomach is, it is impossible to ride this boat without succumbing. Considering that a number of us are already susceptible to seasickness (remember Phuket?), we decided that the boat ride was out of the question. Therefore, we are postponing our Green Island trip until some later date.

Taidong was not a bad substitution. Located on the east coast, south of Hualien, it is literally minutes from both the mountains and the ocean (everyone from Illinois should know my passion for both).

From Kaohsiung, one must take a 3-4 hour train ride across the central mountains. Our biggest problem in setting up the travel arrangements was securing train tickets ahead of time. Because of the weekend being a national holiday (Tomb Sweeping Day - Monday, April 5), everyone in Taiwan had decided to take advantage of the long weekend and travel (thus the plane tickets to Green Island were all booked over a month in advance). At the last minute, Fonda worked her magic and somehow managed to secure us reserved seats. The train was packed, with people standing in the aisles and crammed into every nook and cranny.

Left: Awesome bedazzled scooter I found in Taidong. In case you cannot tell, the whole thing was covered in rhinestones.

Our adventure started off with a bit of a mishap. About five minutes after leaving the station, we (Katherine, Caroline, Kristin, Kaitlyn, Fonda and myself) were all chatting away happily - perhaps being noisy, obnoxious Americans? But I think not so much. We were using our in-door voices, merely telling entertaining stories and laughing a lot... The train had "just" left, so people were still settling in and getting arranged. Well, mid-laughter, we suddenly hear this guy yell at us from the back of the train car: "Bull shit! Please be quiet!" He was using his angry voice. And let me tell you, he looked quite angry too. The entire car went deafeningly quiet, as all of the Taiwanese people tried not to stare at us. We all sank down into our seats as far as we could, not sure whether we were more horrified, embarrassed or entertained. It was really quite hard to suppress the giggles. First of all, by Taiwanese culture, what he did was quite rude. Taiwanese people are all gentility and and subtlety, usually avoiding conflict, particularly with foreigners. You could tell that everyone else on the train was very embarrassed by what he had done. Second of all, the matter of the "bull shit." It has come to our notice over the course of the year, that swear words do not translate well. People with poor English do not know how or when such words are appropriate. Now, I honestly feel that no time is the appropriate time, but recognizing that there are extreme situations which certain people feel require extreme expletives, I can grant a person the occasional swear word. But here in Taiwan, I hear them all the time: from my children, from co-workers, from the random person on the street... I blame Hollywood. Taiwanese people think that Americans use these words all the time, and that the words are just a natural part of our speech. The other day, I had a child write "Oh my God" on his homework. Appalled, I showed my co-teacher and questioned the student. He had just meant, "OMG - this homework is so fun" (yes, I do give "fun" homework assignments - they were supposed to draw pictures). I tried to explain that this phrase is offensive to me, but it did not seem to translate well. At any rate, tangent aside, it was obvious the man had poor English and did not understand the full implications of his rebuke. The "bull shit" and the "please" seemed at odds with each other in our minds... It was clear he was annoyed, but I do not think he was that enraged. I believe the "bull shit" was just his way of trying to get our attention - which it certainly did.

Once in Taidong, we met up with Kim and bused over to our hotel. Fulbright Alex's family lives in Taidong and runs a hotel there. It was a very Taiwanese hotel, rather old and endearing, with everything in miniature. For example, the mirror reflected my stomach - nowhere close to my face, and the towels were the size of wash clothes (and also left bits of yellow tuft all over one's body when rubbing down...). Alex's family was adorable, though. So tiny! His mother must have been the size I was in second grade. Actually no - I have no memory of ever being that size haha. He and his brother had all of the same mannerisms and expressions. It was like talking to Alex, except not. Very crazy.

The first night there, we bummed around a bit - finding food, indulging in shaved ice and renting scooters. The shaved ice place was also home to a very minuscule dog, much to the delight of Kristin and Kaitlyn. I must say, for me, small does not equal cute. Give me a golden retriever or a labrador any day. We also visited Starbucks for late-night coffee. Odd things happen with caffeine late at night as evidenced by the video and pictures below...

Pictures Above: First night there - can we blame sleep deprivation?

The next day, we set off adventuring on our scooters to see the ocean cliffs by morning and to soak in hot springs by afternoon. The week before we left for
Taidong, I developed an eye infection in my cornea. For a while, I was uncertain whether I would even be able to go, especially since the group had been depending on me as one of the scooter drivers (only half of the people going had scooter licenses). By Friday afternoon, though, I could see clearly and with relatively little pain. The tearing had, for the most part, ceased, and as long as I wore my sunglasses and avoided direct sunlight, I was ok. Still, Kaitlyn had an enormous amount of faith to trust me driving her around town and up and down country roads.

We started by driving up north along the coastline, stopping periodically to scramble down to the ocean and take photo-shoots. One of the most interesting spots had rock formations named for their similar appearance to tofu. It would have been more beautiful if I could have seen clearly, but after a while, the sunlight got to me, and I had to go hide under a tree with my eyes closed.

Pictures Above: tofu rock formations
Pictures Below: Caroline and I enjoying the ocean; Kim, Kait, Katherine, Kristin, Fonda and Me

In the late afternoon, we went to the Zhiben Hot Springs. To all future hot springs goers, make sure you bring your own towel and swim cap. You cannot get into the water without a swim cap. Surprisingly, though, the place had plenty of hair dryers to use after coming out of the showers. The hot springs were amazing - soaking in bubbly hot water while staring up at the hills and forests surrounding us. We stayed till the sun went down and the lights came on, and even then, had to tear ourselves away. The Zhiben hot springs are quite large, with six large pools and lots of smaller tubs. Some had boiling hot water, others freezing cold, some with jacuzzi bubblers, and some with scented/colored water (lavender and rose).

For dinner, Fonda took us to a lovely little barbecue place. You could pick out different meat and vegetable shish kabobs, and then the guy would barbecue them for you with a certain sauce. It was amazing! I wish we had one of those places in Kaohsiung.

Before heading home the next day, Fonda said we had to get the famous Taidong sweet potatoes. Taidong is known around the island for its candied sweet potatoes and sweet potato chips. The tiny hole-in-the-wall shop did not open till 9am, but when we pulled up at a quarter till, there was a line halfway down the street already. However, now speaking from experience, the sweet potatoes were fairly amazing, though perhaps not worth the half an hour wait in the sun?

The great thing about traveling with Fonda is that we get a glimpse into how the locals travel and go on vacation. Taiwanese people travel for the food. Every town in Taiwan is famous for some special delicacy, and Taiwanese people will travel halfway across the island for the sole purpose of eating the food in some small local shop and then buy extras to take home to all of their friends. Traveling in Taiwan is all about the food and the photo-shoots, and not so much about the actual sight-seeing or "doing." For example, when I travel with my host family, we always need a picture in front of everything, but we will rarely "do" the activity. And our whole schedule is planned around meals and famous snacks. In Taidong, that would be sweet potatoes. :)

After indulging in sweet potatoes for breakfast, we set off for one last adventure. We had heard that there was paragliding about an hour up the mountain. The drive up was quite scenic, but sadly, when we reached the top, weather conditions prevented us from jumping. It was too windy, and the trainers said that they were not letting anyone go off. While we chilled at the top for over an hour, we only saw one guy jump, and he was only in the air for about ten minutes before he went down. Happily, though, we did find lots of amazing fresh pineapple and ice cream to amuse ourselves with while waiting. In the end, we decided to give up and drive back. Since I had gotten to go while my family was here the week before, I was not too crushed. Hopefully, there will be another time for other people to try it.

School Anniversaries

2010-03-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

School birthdays are a big deal here in Taiwan. Lots of preparation goes into them, and the week of includes all sorts of games and competitions. The actual anniversary day is built around a school carnival and the finals of all of the contests and races. For some reason unbeknownst to me, my two schools picked the same week to have their anniversaries. Luckily, for the big day, one had chosen Friday and the other Saturday - otherwise, I really would have been in trouble.

Above: Me with co-teachers Carol and Anita

On Fridays, I have English Village in the morning and the afternoon off (all of the ETAs are supposed to have Friday afternoons free for "cultural exchange" purposes), so I usually do not go into school. This Friday, though, I had to try to make it from one side of town to the other in under ten minutes (it normally should take quite a bit longer...) so that I could make the tail end of Minzu's carnival. The seventh graders (my students) had started working their stalls early in the morning and would be closing up around lunchtime. When I arrived, I realized that I had made the mistake of not bringing any small change. So I handed a $500 bill (equivalent to US $15) to my co-teacher, asking for change, and ended up holding $500 worth of tickets. Not quite what I had in mind... I now had the remaining 15 minutes of the fair to spend $500 on carnival food and drinks. I walked around all of the tents, holding my wad of tickets in one hand, while students hung bags of food over my other arm and stuffed all sorts of fried food (which I don't even eat), blow-up toys, drinks and ice cream into my purse. I was quite a sight... I had finally had enough, so I gave the remainder of my tickets to a student and roped two other students into helping me carry everything upstairs to my office, where I proceeded to give as much of the food away to other teachers as possible.

Above: Me with Carol's homeroom classroom

A list of everything I acquired (I honestly do not remember buying most of this - I was just telling students to take tickets and put stuff in my bag haha):
8 drinks (everything from coke to green tea to black tea ice cream floats)
3 juice boxes
1 bowl of spaghetti
6 boxes of sushi (don't ask... that was my co-teacher's class's stand - I think she was abusing her power lol)
2 bags of friend chicken
3 slices of cake
3 bags of popcorn
2 bowls of ice cream
6 tiny Hello Kitty key chains (only in Asia...)
2 blow-up toys

Above: Me with Minghua office buddy Vicky

The next morning, I tramped over to the other side of town to Minghua's birthday celebrations. Their carnival was huge - much larger than Minzu's and encompassing nearly the whole of the grounds surrounding the school. I was wiser this time around, and only bought $200 worth of tickets. It was hard, because while I do not eat carnival food, I wanted to visit all the stalls and buy things from my students. Basically, this means I got lots of drinks and ate lots of ice cream - not a bad thing. :) As always, visiting Minghua was fun, as students were very excited to see me. The day was quite festive, starting off with an opening ceremony, then including an English spelling bee, 80 meter races, art exhibits and live performances with students dancing and singing on stage. I heard all of my favorite Asian teen-sensation songs, such as "Nobody Nobody" and "Sorry Sorry."

Above: Me with old co-teachers Yachi and Ellie
Below: Me and Phoebe (church friend who teaches some of my kids in her cram school)

Sun Moon Lake

2010-03-21T05:47:00.002-07:00

This past weekend, Kaitlyn and I went to Sun Moon Lake (日月潭). It is north of us in the middle of Taiwan between Taichung and Hualien (remember, where we went to Taroko Gorge). The lake is the largest natural lake in Taiwan, one of the 13 designated national scenic areas and one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country. In fact, someone told me that it is the most popular destination for tourists from mainland China. The name "Sun Moon" comes from the shape of the lake, which is in two connected parts, one side looking like a sun and the other in the shape of a moon. In the middle of the lake is Lalu Island. Kaitlyn and I both really wanted to boat out to the island, so that when people asked us what we had done for the weekend, we could mispronounce the name and tell them we had boated out to "Lala" Island.

Once we arrived, we met up with Vivian (Fulbright staff) and Deborah, Monica and Kim (Yilan ETAs), in honor of Kim's birthday. The first night, we just all ate dinner and then crashed, as we were exhausted. Kaitlyn and I stayed at a different hotel from the others, called the Teachers' Hostel. It was a lovely hotel, scenically placed right on the lake, came with breakfast included, and had the added perk of giving teachers a discount. We were initially a little freaked out because Lonely Planet told us we could walk there from the tourist information center in the middle of town. Turns out that the walk is quite long down dark forested roads. Luckily, Taiwan is one of the safest places on earth, and we did not get jumped or mugged. The next day, when we went for an early morning run around the lake, the path no longer looked sketchy, but merely scenic and peaceful. It is all about perspective. :)

Our run was actually one of my favorite parts of the weekend. The lake was beautiful, especially in morning with the mist rising off of it and mountain-top pagodas in the background. The lake was quite large, so we did not make it very far around, just a few miles down before having to turn around and come back. We had to shower and eat breakfast before busing it over to the opposite side of the lake to meet the other people around 10am.

Kim had heard about an aboriginal village/theme park which she really wanted to visit, so Kaitlyn and decided to go with them (it was her birthday, after all). However, aboriginal theme parks are not something I would recommend. Normally, one thinks of going to Sun Moon Lake because it is so peaceful and relaxing. Aboriginal theme park - not so much... It was incredibly crowded and very noisy. To get into the park, one had to take a cable car up over the mountains into a nearby valley. While the seven-minute cable car ride was lovely, providing excellent views of the surrounding area, it was not worth the two hour wait to get onto it, nor the one and a half hour queue to get out of the park back to the lake. The park itself was also an experience. Taiwanese aboriginal culture, traditional dancing, roller coasters, fried food, gift shops... Strange. The best part was an hour-long show we watched. Great singing and dancing, accompanied by men in loin clothes swinging across water on a rope - rather Tarzanish. Not sure I had ever seen a man up close and personal in a loin cloth (Discovery Channel does not count). Guess there is a first time for everything...

Kaitlyn and I were quite worn-out by the end of the day, so we spent the evening wandering around the tiny lakeside town where our hotel was. The lake was so pretty at night with all of the lights shining. We even managed to avoid Taiwanese food for the night, finding an Italian place on the lake boardwalk.

Left: I do not know how Taiwan pulls off flying a "Nazi Party" sign...

The next day, we rounded out our lake adventure by going out in a row boat. Turns out Lalu Island was way to far to reach, but we still had fun trying to maneuver our rusty boat (maybe it is a good thing I never joined crew in college lol). It was the official start of our Dragon Boat training! :)

Taipei and Pingxi Lantern Festivals

2010-03-21T05:47:00.001-07:00

A few weekends ago, we went up to Taipei for the Lantern Festival. Just like Kaohsiung had its lantern display along the Love River, Taipei also had a huge display at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Every year, the Lantern Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year (this year on February 28th), bringing the Chinese New Year two-week holiday to a close. The lantern displays are kept up for another week of viewing, so we went the final weekend on March 5-7. Our plan was to go downtown Friday night to see the Taipei lanterns, and then go to Pingxi on Saturday to watch the sky lanterns (平溪天燈) be released.

Friday afternoon, Kristin, Bekah, Katherine and I took the HSR up to Taipei, where we met up with Kim at the station. While Kristin went to visit her aunt and Bekah took off for swing dancing, the other three of us went downtown to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall to meet Annie (a Fulbright junior scholar researching the Avian bird flu). The place was packed! Not quite as bad as during the New Year celebrations at Taipei 101, but still very crowded. The lantern display featured massive tiger and floral arrangements (I think in acknowledgment of the International Flower Expo in Taipei later this year). While the Kaohsiung lanterns were roughly the size of a large couch or bed, the Taipei lanterns were more on the scale of large sheds or small houses. The size and intricate detail of each lantern was impressive. My favorite part, however, might have been the English translations for the names and descriptions of each lantern. On one side of the hall, there was a whole sections of lanterns devoted to different countries from around the world. We could not really determine what the criteria was for why which countries were chosen - obvious countries like Taiwan and China, alongside predictable Asian neighbors like Malaysia and the Philippines, with odd European choices such as The Netherlands and Greece (but no France or Germany), and several countries none of us had ever even heard of before (we assumed they must have been tiny Pacific islands... four Fulbrighters fail at geography...). There was also a giant tiger lantern in front of Taipei 101, rotating in circles and bathed in colorful laser lights.

Left: Awesome winged tiger with caption "Everything as your wish is like the tiger with wings."
Right: Most intimidating Sponge Bob ever.

After walking around the lanterns for a few hours, Annie took us to a night market near Shida University where we joined up with Deborah and Jessica (Yilan ETAs) for shaved ice and some late-night shopping. Visiting Taipei is always fun, because there are so many other Fulbrighters to find and hang out with. There are only 12 of us down south, so I think we often forget about the other 30+ people up north. Bekah even got to bump into one unexpectedly while swing dancing.

The next day, we went to the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival (after an odd morning of touring the Taipei Miniatures Museum - not something I would recommend to others...). Pingxi is a small village just outside of Taipei up in the mountains, and hosts one of the largest lantern festivals in all of Taiwan every year. When we arrived in the afternoon, the street fair was already spilling over with people, buying fried food and fresh fruit juices while shopping for tiny collectibles and souvenir lanterns (I may or may not have bought six tiny and two large ones... They were just so pretty!). As the sky darkened, people began releasing huge paper lanterns. These lanterns are made out of colorful paper, each color signifying a different meaning such as luck, love or wealth. People paint their wishes and dreams on them, releasing them into the sky. I love the poetry of the idea - sending our hopes and prayers up into heaven.** You must think of it in a metaphorical sense; dreams are transitory and ephemeral, with us for a moment and then gone, released into a space of time we cannot follow or find again. But they are lodged with God, who knows all things and who understands our deepest desires and most secret fears and joys.

Starting at 6:30pm and occurring again every thirty minutes or so from out front of a local school, there were scheduled releases of a hundred lanterns at a time. Of course, one could set off lanterns from anywhere along the street. One of the best places was on top of the railroad tracks, which ran along a ridge overlooking the main part of town, giving beautiful views of the sky. The entertaining part came every time a train passed by, as people had to grab their lanterns and jump out of the way. The whole festival had a very joyous air, as everyone would clap and cheer for each new lantern set off, no matter how many had gone up before or would go up later.

We decided to join in the tradition, so all bought our own lanterns to paint. Bekah and I got a red one (when in Asia, one must do red :) ), and decorated it with our wishes and extremely talented drawings of tigers and stick figures. We did not join in on one of the big releases, but sent ours up a ways down the road. When lighting the lantern, we had to stand on the edges to hold it down until the heat from the flame filled it, causing it to gently float into the sky. Luckily, we sent off our lanterns early in the evening, around 7pm. The night quickly deteriorated into sporadic rain and gusty winds. We saw many failed lanterns, which were blown into trees or buildings on the way up, causing them to catch on fire. One lantern was whipped against a telephone line, going up in flames before dropping to the ground and nearly burning the shrieking crowd beneath. Strong winds and paper lanterns do not mix well.

The hardest part of the evening was trying to get home. Since Pingxi is quite remote, the best way to get in and out is by bus. The city ran free buses for people from the Taipei Zoo metro stop out to Pingxi and back all day and night; but even with buses running every couple of minutes, we had to wait in line for close to forty minutes to get standing spots on the hour-long bus back to Taipei.

** Do not try to over-analyze the idea of sky lanterns: my father's first response was to criticize the theology, and Bekah could not help but ponder the many negatives for the environment of sending up thousands upon thousands of paper lanterns which must land and litter somewhere. Though, I went and looked this up, and the government actually pays the locals to go into the mountains afterwards to clean up the area. The surrounding area is very impoverished (tourism from the Sky Lantern Festival brings in enough revenue to support the village the entire year), and the lantern clean-up is an important source of income for the locals.

A New Semester: Minzu Jr. High School

2010-03-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

This is my second week of school at Minzu Jr. High School. As you all know, I bid Minghua farewell last January, and am now working with two new co-teachers at another middle school across town. While the semester started off slightly rough, things are beginning to settle into patterns, and I find myself enjoying the new school and the new students. Whereas last semester I worked with eighth graders, this semester I am teaching all seventh graders. I have 500 students in fifteen classes (instead of 750 from nineteen - smaller class sizes this time around), and I see them every week (instead of every other week). This will be a decided improvement, and I am hoping to try to learn most of their names. In addition to the fifteen classes, I also teach two periods of an English conversation club class.

The frustrations which I am facing at my school this semester are similar to the problems I had at Minghua and are, I believe, based on a misunderstanding of how the program works. The Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) program is based on the idea of co-teaching. Young American college graduates are paired with experienced native Taiwanese English teachers to work together in the classroom. The American ETAs are (obviously) native speakers and supposedly full of enthusiasm and crazy ideas. The local English teachers (LETs) are the ones in control of the classroom, with a vision of course goals, an understanding of their students and the years of wisdom to know how to run a class (class management etc). The program goals and perimeters were explained to us all at the beginning of the year during orientation, but certain schools do not seem to have absorbed the program ideals. Last semester, it took me a month or two in before I realized that my situation was different from most of the other ETAs. By that point, I felt that it was too late to change anything and thought that it would be easier to continue in the way things were already going. This semester, though, I really do want a "co-teaching" experience, so am hoping that my co-teachers will become more involved.

The problem lies in how some of the schools and co-teachers have interpreted the program. Instead of seeing us as partners who come in to join in with the work the LETs are already doing, they view us as specialty teachers who come into the schools to do "our thing." Therefore, the LETs do not see any role for themselves, and therefore, abstain from either contributing ideas or giving direction for how the class ought to run. While not ideal, this could work if I was indeed a specialty teacher, or a qualified teacher of anything, for that matter. However, I do not have a background in teaching, nor has the program ever given us solid training in education (assuming all along that we would not need it since we are each paired with multiple experienced teachers).

Let me back up for a moment and explain the last few weeks. After trying to get in touch with my new LETs all through January and February without a single response back, I was under the assumption that they had the semester under control and just expected me to show up and do whatever tasks or activity planning they assigned me. Since neither of them ever returned my emails or phone calls, I figured that they must not have anything for me to do to prepare for the new semester. To be honest, I was kind of excited to finally have co-teachers who would run the classroom and let me do my “foreign” bit on the side (remember, at Minghua, my co-teachers never helped me lesson plan and rarely participated in class, preferring to hang out in the back, grading papers from other classes etc). Two days before the first day of class, one of them finally contacts me and says we should meet Sunday. This sounded like a great idea to me, since I had not been to the new school since August and only knew what time to show up Monday because Fonda had asked the Bureau for my schedule. I had no idea what I would be doing, or even where I should go in the school.

Sunday afternoon, the day before school started, my LET casually asked me what I had planned for the semester since I am in charge of planning the entire curriculum. I started to laugh, thinking she had heard about Minghua and was making a joke. No no. She was entirely serious.

Ok, first of all, I do not want to plan another semester’s curriculum, because that is not my job, nor am I qualified. I was not an education major in school and had no teaching experience prior to last semester. While last semester worked out fine, it could have been so much better if I had had someone work alongside me who knew the students’ abilities better and was trained in teaching EFL. In asking my LET what the students’ English abilities were, she replied very vaguely about having done phonics the previous semester. Then I questioned her on what Minzu wanted out of the course. Were they looking for me to teach them new vocabulary and language tools, make it more of an American culture class, or just play fun games and do activities/projects with them? The answer was that I could do whatever I wanted. So in other words, they were asking me to plan a curriculum for students whom I did not know (either temperament or language skill level) and giving me absolutely no guidance in course objectives or goals.

Secondly, they asked me to do this THE DAY BEFORE THE SEMESTER STARTED. We had an entire month off of school. If they really wanted me to design a new curriculum, why would they not ask me before break, so that I could spend time thinking about and planning for it? My co-teacher responded to my incredulous stare by pointing out that I already had my own curriculum which I used at Minghua, so I could just do that at Minzu too (as if I have teaching materials which I just peddle from one school to the next?). The problem with this is that I was teaching a higher grade level last semester (eighth graders instead of seventh), and the English level at Minghua is just higher across the board. After I showed my Minzu co-teachers the book I used last semester, they finally agreed with me that it was indeed too difficult for their students (why had they not bothered to look into any of this back in January?!). On Monday afternoon after our first two classes, we sat down and pulled together topics from other English textbooks to make up our own book.

Eager to avoid the miscommunication problems from last semester, I decided to directly ask my co-teachers about lesson-planning together and what our respective roles in the classroom would be. My LETs told me that they had no intention of helping me lesson plan because they had nothing to contribute. According to them, I am the young American teacher with all of the fun new ideas. Despite them having a decade of teaching experience, they have no good ideas; anything they contributed would just be “the same old, same old,” defeating the purpose of why they applied for the program. They also do not see themselves having a role in the classroom. The students already see my them on a daily basis, and would rather just have me teaching them for our “special class.” One of my LETs mentioned that although I am called an “ETA – English Teaching Assistant,” they see me as the main teacher, and themselves as the class “assistant."

After the initial shock and vexation last week, I have calmed down and tried to look at the situation more objectively. Honestly, being the one planning for and leading the class does not bother me. I do not mind the work, and generally have fun coming up with ideas. What concerns me is that I am not a qualified teacher. I may have loads of ideas, but I have no idea which ones are good and which ones will flop. I know I will have fun with the students for the next few months, but whether or not they will learn much from me is an entirely different matter. The school may believe that having a foreign teacher in the classroom is beneficial no matter what, but I would argue that giving that inexperienced teacher the back-up help and support which an involved co-teacher could offer would bring even better results in effective teaching for the students. In the end, I will enjoy myself regardless, but the students may suffer, which I believe is unfortunate, lamentable and unnecessary.

Spending time with Sunnie and Vincent -- remote canals, salt mountains, Chinese characters and lanterns

2010-02-23T06:11:00.001-08:00

Sunnie and Vincent recently took me out on a couple of different day trips. The other week, we went to a place near Tainan and took a boat ride up a canal and back. Two of Sunnie's friends joined us (they were her two bridesmaids) for the day. During the boat ride, we supposedly saw lots of interesting plant and wild life - rare forms of fauna and crabs etc. Our guide gave very lengthy explanations about everything in Chinese. Honestly, I thought the best part was getting to wear the hats. Remember how excited I was about the hats in Taroko? I insisted we do our photo ops in the hats, and I am pretty sure Vincent and Sunnie found my enthusiasm amusing. After all, the hats here are not considered "cool" - they are what the farmers and peasants wear. Maybe it would be comparable in the US to getting excited about wearing overalls and then taking tons of photos in them - except wait, I've done that... :)

Above: (left) Vincent displaying one of the rare flowers to be found; (right) the amazing ecosystem of the canal
Below: (left) us bedecked in awesome hats; (right) us with a dragon boat

After getting lunch at this cute little seafood place, we visited the salt museum. The museum would have been more interesting if it had had plaques in English. Unfortunately, there was only Chinese, so I ended up milling around and just looking at pictures. Entertaining for maybe 15 minutes, but not for over an hour. As the place was fairly large, we spent a significant amount of time there. I tried my best to look around by myself and to appear engaged the whole time, as I always feel bad trailing people and thereby imposing on them to do constant running translations (again, something which is maybe fun for them for a few minutes, but not for a whole museum that large). It was interesting, though, seeing how they used to harvest salt. I never realized what an involved and heavily physical job it was. The museum had wax figure exhibits set up so that one could see in 3D what the process used to look like. Nowadays, it has all been modernized. There is a nearby giant salt mound which one can walk up, and the surrounding area has been turned into a mini theme park. Oddly enough, the salt mound was made with salt imported from Australia instead of local salt... The salt museum is also famous for its "salty" popsicles. I was skeptical in trying them at first, but it turns out, they are really good! Their "salty" flavor is actually just almonds. I was a little sad when Sunnie told me you cannot buy them in bulk anywhere...

During the Chinese New Year, I met up with Sunnie and Vincent again. This time we stayed in Kaohsiung, going down near the Love River to a warehouse art museum there. The current exhibit, the Delight of Chinese Characters Festival, uses Chinese characters to create image- and wordplay through artwork. I found it interesting because, while I know English can be used in playful ways, I had never thought of the potential in Chinese. With all of the verbal tones and characters themselves, there is unlimited potential for witty play in Chinese. The artists were very clever in creating artwork which integrated both the physical character and the encoded meaning. For example, the word for door - 門 mén: imagine blowing that character up into 3D and making it the size of a real door; the artist used half of the character set on a hinge to swing back and forth in contrast with the wall, so that no matter which way the door was set, you saw both the full character and could walk through the other opening.

Above: (left) the meaning of the characters is shown in the boxes where each thing (dragon, girl, pig) is shown underneath a roof, representing a house, just like the character! (right) this clock shows how the characters for the numbers are symmetrical - only half of the character is there, but you see the whole character from the side view because of the clock's reflective surface
Below: (left) we are sitting on a seat in the shape of the radical for 地, meaning ground; once two people sit on it like us, we form the character 坐, meaning to sit; (right) the shadows cast by the wood piles form a boy and a girl; above them, stylistically painted on the wall, are the characters for the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac

Leaving the museum, we got dinner and then moved farther down the Love River to the lantern displays and carnival festival. For Chinese New Year every year, each school in Kaohsiung is responsible for creating a lantern to be put on display. The lanterns are fairly large - about the size of a sofa or a bed - and made out of soft velvety material. They can be made in any shape desired - this year's most popular design being that of a tiger, as it is the year of the tiger. However, we also saw plenty of Sponge Bobs (all elementary schools) and even one Elvis. Some schools will spend the whole previous semester working on their lantern. Minghua chose a team of students to put theirs together over the winter break. They wanted me to know that the reason why theirs might not win the best prize was because they insisted that the students do all of the work, whereas other schools might cheat and let the teachers make theirs. I guess there are not very strict guidelines for the competition. At any rate, the lanterns were beautiful in the evening. There were hundreds of them, stretching for over half a mile along the river.

While we were walking through the lanterns, we also saw special performances going on. The city had set up a stage in the middle of the river with a large crane stretching out over it. Acrobats did a number of impressive dances, dangling far above the river on a giant ring or being twirled up and down while holding nothing but ribbons. Very beautiful and very dangerous looking. Also, every hour or so, the city set off fireworks from the harbor. Fireworks are one of my favorite things about living in Asia - the Taiwanese set off fireworks for every major or minor event here, and I love fireworks.

Above: (left) Vincent and I waiting for the fireworks to start; (right) acrobat on the ring - hard to tell how high she is since you cannot see the water, but believe me, she is very high in the air

Taiwanese Soaps

2010-02-15T19:41:00.001-08:00

I have found a new guilty pleasure in life: Taiwanese soap operas. They are incredible. Do not be misled, though, by the term "soap opera." They are more the equivalent of our mini-series, not nearly so shallow and meaningless as American soap operas.

My roommate Kristin (who is an ABC) introduced me to my first one last fall. After not sleeping for a week until I finished "命中注定我愛你" (translated Fated to Love You), I decided that Taiwanese soaps were a vice I needed to do without. Well, alas, winter break arrived, Kristin ordered her favorite soap off Amazon, and I was a lost cause. Carol and I finished the 30 hours of "流星花園" (translated Meteor Garden) in two days. It is considered a classic here, having started off the careers of many current stars and breaking ground in the industry. Nine years later, it remains extremely popular here as well as in Korea and Japan.

After Meteor Garden, I started "下一站，幸福" (Autumn's Concerto or translated Next Stop, Happiness). I have actually been irregularly watching this one for the past two months with Kristin, but now have gone back and re-watched the whole thing from the beginning online with English subtitles (amazing how much more one can learn from English subtitles lol). The final episode comes out in two more weeks, and Kristin and I are in agony waiting for it. The series has become a sensation here, and it is so fun for me to watch interviews of the cast on the evening news or eavesdrop on conversations in Starbucks where girls are discussing how attractive the leads are (I really wanted to jump in and join them, but my Chinese is just not good enough for that – and besides, it would truly have been too embarrassing). It is a great way to bond with locals, since all I have to do is mention the Chinese name to my Taiwanese friends (adults or middle schoolers), and we start jumping up and down and getting really excited (yes - it is that good). Even the ETAs up in Yilan are watching it - we have g-chat sessions while watching it every Sunday night. I am currently trying to memorize the two main songs from the show - they are so beautiful! And I get so excited when I hear them playing in department stores and can sing along. :)

So that’s that for my guilty pleasures. But before you judge, you really should try looking them up. :)

Cambodia: riding elephants and dodging tuk-tuks

2010-02-12T07:12:00.000-08:00

Cambodia was my favorite part of the trip. Before we went, there was slight fear and trepidation due to Lonely Planet quotes such as: Dangers and Annoyances: Armed robberies are fairly common, so we recommend you do not go out at night, and if you do, refrain from carrying bags or purses. Do not worry much, though, because statistically speaking, it should not happen to you. We took care to be back near our hostels each evening, and usually took a guide with us when we went out, so luckily, we escaped the statistic. Still, we faced plenty of other problems such as food poisoning, money flow issues and extortion, both from private enterprises and from the government. But all that aside, we had a great time. :)

Cambodia was my first real third-world country experience. It has the most corrupt government of any country I have seen firsthand (World Democracy Audit ranks it in the 20 top most corrupt states), evident in its flagrant extortion of foreigners, complete lack of infrastructure, neglect of historical and cultural sites, obvious misappropriation of funds etc. From the moment we landed in the airport and were charged a $20 entry visa to the moment when we faced another $25 exit fee just to leave the country, we found ridiculous taxes and charges attached to everything we tried to do. One might wonder where all of this government money is going? We did, and saw no evidence of it in our travels.

Cambodia is fairly impoverished, with more than a third of its population living below the poverty line and living on less than one dollar a day. Although we knew that we were supposed to be bargaining when shopping from markets, street vendors or street children, it was so hard for us when we realized that their starting asking price could be their day's wages as opposed to the price of a can of soda for us. Their own Cambodian riel currency is so devalued (and faces a near 20% annual inflation) that most people prefer to use US dollars. In fact, when withdrawing money from an ATM, you get back US dollars. However, they do not use US change, only bills. Often when paying for something in US dollars, we would get change back in both dollars and riel, where the riel was the small change (1000 riel = one US quarter). On a few occasions, I experimented with trying to use American coins. Even though I would point to the writing on the coins and repeat "America - America," the people would always just shake their heads and hand it back to me.

We landed in Phnom Penh late afternoon, but had hotel reservations in Siem Reap. The 190 mile road connecting the cities, one of the seven main roads in the country, is happily paved (the majority of roads in Cambodia are still gravel or, more likely, dirt). However, buses only make the trip a few times a day, and if we had waited for the next bus, we would not have left till midnight. Therefore, our only option was to hire a taxi. The trip took us 6 hours, which might sound like a long time until you realize that we were on a two-lane road after dark - a road which we shared with other cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, bicycles, pedestrians and lots of cattle. Topping speeds of 30m/h would probably result in taking out a cow or two, something frowned upon by the locals. Let's just say that the taxi ride to Siem Reap was very educational about life in Cambodia.

Our hostel in Siem Reap was very Western-backpacker friendly, with great food, bar area, movie nights, billiards tables, computer room and pool. The best part of the hostel, though, was Bob. Bob works the night shift, so he was the one who first checked us in and showed us our rooms. From that point on, he adopted us and went everywhere with us as our personal guide. We still do not know whether this is regular procedure or because we looked very lost and foreign or because he just thought we were cool people and wanted to hang out with us. Whatever the reason, Bob was very sweet and fast became our favorite person - we are now all facebook friends with him. :)

We spent our first day visiting the temples of Angkor. The Angkorian period began around 800 CE and lasted until the mid-1400s when Thailand invaded and sacked the capital. During the Khmer Empire, over 1000 temples were built in the area, the largest of which is Angkor Wat ("angkor" meaning city, and "wat" meaning temple). The entire land mass area of Angkor is huge and separated into different temple complexes, as each new Khmer king chose to build his own capital city and religious temples. The sites are each set off with giant city walls, and some even have moats. While the temples were originally built in the Hindu tradition, later kings rededicated them all into Mahayana Buddhism until settling into Theravada Buddhism. It is interesting to me how fluid Eastern religions are. We started off the day at Angkor Thom (c. 1180), the last capital of the Khmer Empire. The famous temple site here is Bayon, famous for its 200 ginormous "enigmatic" faces, which stare off into the jungle. I think it would have been so cool to have been a Portuguese or French explorer hundreds of years ago, and to suddenly come upon the faces, overrun by jungle vines and animals. We visited countless other temple sites that day, including Preah Khan and Ta Prohm (this is the temple where they filmed Tomb Raider).

We ended our tour at Angkor Wat (c. 1150), perhaps the best preserved site. Originally built as a private mausoleum for King Suryavarman VII, after the king died, it fell into disuse and was replaced by Angkor Thom (built by King Jayavarman VII, whom we nicknamed Jafar, mostly because we could not pronounce his name, but also because we kept singing Aladdin - it all started with the elephants...). In fact, King Suryavarman died elsewhere, and for some reason, his body was never returned for burial. If I was the architect of Angkor Wat, I would have been quite put out. On the other hand, it does leave an incredible archeological site for the future generations to admire. Both the size and the level of detail in the stone carvings and decoration were inspiring. However, by this point in the day, it was so hot and we all felt completely drained. We spent a lot of time just sitting in the middle of the temple because no one had any energy to stand up and walk around. Angkor Wat is surrounded by a moat, after which you walk through the city walls into a large field, dotted by smaller stone structures thought to be libraries. The other secular city buildings inside the walls have long disappeared, as only the temples (and I guess libraries?) were built out of stone. Most of this area has reverted back into jungle, though restorers have cleared the front end into a level plain. Crossing the grounds, you reach the outer buildings of the temple complex which lead you into the main courtyard. At the heart of the temple is the central shrine, which as in all of the other temples, rises up to the highest point. These towers usually have steep, narrow stairs you must climb, representing the difficulty of ascending to the gods. It is actually fairly amazing that they let tourists crawl all over these temples, as there would surely be huge liability risks in most other countries. Rather than having tourists sign liability waivers before climbing up the massive rock structures, they instead insist merely upon a certain dress code. I had to borrow a sarong to tie around my waist in order to go up, for my shorts were too indecent. This was the only Angkorian temple in which we saw live monks scurrying around, so perhaps it is still in use and this is why they were more strict (Bangkok's temples had similar dress codes - at one of them, I had to borrow a shirt to put around my shoulders because I was wearing a tank top; it is very difficult to dress conservatively when the temperatures are so hot). The climb was worth it, though, as we had beautiful views of the whole area.

(Above: Charles and I mimicking a scary statue; monks)

We ended the day by riding elephants. Well, sort of. It was rather expensive to go for a decently long ride, so we decided just to ride them for a few minutes for the kodak moment (I know - we have become so Asian). All the same, I can now say that I have ridden an elephant. :)

The next day, we decided to be more low-key and relax. In the morning, Fonda, Kim and I rented bicycles from our hostel and went out for a ride along the canal (Kim - Yilan ETA who joined us for Cambodia). After that, Kristin and Kaitlyn joined us for a Cambodian cooking class. I learned how to make Cambodian spring rolls and pad thai - not that I could recreate them, though. The three ladies leading the class did not speak the best English, nor did any of the ingredients have English labels. A lot of our cooking involved them handing us unknown spices and sauces to dump in at unknown quantities. Still, it was fun, and we got to eat everything we made which was the best part of all. :) Oh and I might have failed to mention this previously, but Southeast Asia makes the best mango smoothies.

In the afternoon, Bob took us on another outing, this time to the Chong Khneas Floating Village in the Tonle Sap Lake (one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia during the rainy season) to watch the sunset. We took a boat ride out into the lake, passing by trees which Bob told us are entirely submerged during the rainy season. The village was comprised of hundreds of house boats, each individually moored (for some reason, I had envisioned them all tied together in a giant raft...). The town even included a floating church and an elementary school. When I asked Bob what happens to the children after primary school, he said that they would have to move to a nearby city in order to continue their schooling. Most families are never be able to afford this, though. Cambodia actually has fairly high rates of enrollment in primary school. The thing is, so many children have to repeat grades that the average time to graduate is ten years, and many kids will drop-out before then.

One of the more bizarre parts of the floating village were the small children in buckets or the children with snakes. Some kids would be rowed around by their parents in small canoes. When their boat pulled up alongside ours, the child would hop ship and walk up to us, trying to sell us drinks. Other children were more independent, paddling themselves about in large tin buckets with one arm while bailing out water with the other. The strangest of all, though, were the children with snakes. Small children, maybe six years old, would have these giant snakes wrapped around their bodies. Why they thought having a snake around their necks would make us want to give them money is beyond me. If anything, it just terrified us. Bob said that the reason the snakes did not hurt the children is because the parents found the snakes when they were really tiny. That way, the snake grew up as a pet in the family, domesticated. Now I do not buy this. People in America have attempted domesticating snakes or tigers or other wild animals with disastrous results. I would never let a snake drape itself around my five-year-old child's body!

(Above: snake on children; Below: Kristin and Carol with Bob, and Me with Fonda)

We left the next morning on a bus back to Phnom Penh. The most entertaining part about the trip was that at every stop, we were greeted by street vendors trying to sell us baguettes and brie. I take it they normally cater towards a European tourist population.

The main things I had wanted to see in Phnom Penh were the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields. I would never say that this part of the trip was "fun" or "enjoyable," but it was powerful and one of my favorite things that we did. Despite having read about the genocide before, I did not remember most of the details, so it was an intense experience to relearn the history while standing in the places where it happened. Unlike the Holocaust where you understand it as ethnic cleansing and a systematic societal brainwashing of hatred, the Khmer Rouge created a chaotic society of terror overnight, mass-murdering thousands of its own people while thousands of others died of starvation and disease. In essence, they tried to create a more extreme version of China's Cultural Revolution, eliminating their entire intellectual class and emptying all major cities to force the people into an agrarian society. During Pol Pot's reign, 1.7 million people of the 8 million population died - or about 21 percent of the total population. Khmer Rouge took over a high school on a quiet residential street in Phnom Penh, turning it into the S-21 prison camp (now the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum). The school was surrounded by barbed wire, and the classrooms converted into tiny cells. The prison was used to interrogate and torture an estimated 17,000 Cambodians. Today, one of the three buildings is filled with picture after picture of the murdered victims, including hundreds of pictures of young children.

The Choung Ek Killing Fields lay a few miles outside of Phnom Penh and have today been converted into a memorial for the victims of the mass graves. A commemorative stupa stands in the middle, holding the sculls of the victims. One of the grave sites contained the bodies of hundreds of women with their babies. The tree next to it is called the "Killing Tree," because it is where soldiers bashed babies before throwing their corpses into the grave.

(Pictures: stupa filled with human sculls; pits from the excavated mass graves)

The following is a poem by Sarith Pou, displayed in the S-21 prison.

The New Regime

No religious rituals.
No religious symbols.
No fortune teller.
No traditional healers.
No paying respect to elders.
No social status. No titles.

No education. No training.
No school. No learning.
No books. No library.
No science. No technology.
No pens. No paper.

No currency. No bartering.
No buying. No selling.
No begging. No giving.
No purses. No wallets.

No human rights. No liberty.
No courts. No judges.
No laws. No attorneys.

No communications.
No public transportation.
No private transportation.
No traveling. No mailing.
No inviting. No visiting.
No faxes. No telephones.

No social gatherings.
No chitchatting.
No jokes. No laughter.
No music. No dancing.

No romance. No flirting.
No fornication. No dating.
No wet dreaming.
No masturbating.
No naked sleepers.
No bathers.
No nakedness in showers.
No love songs. No love letters.
No affection.

No marrying. No divorcing.
No marital conflicts. No fighting.
No profanity. No cursing.

No shoes. No sandals.
No toothbrushes. No razors.
No combs. No mirrors.
No lotion. No make up.
No long hair. No braids.
No jewelry.
No soap. No detergent. No shampoo.
No knitting. No embroidering.
No colored clothes, except black.
No styles, except pajamas.
No wine. No palm sap hooch.
No lighters. No cigarettes.
No morning coffee. No afternoon tea.
No snacks. No desserts.
No breakfast [sometimes no dinner].

No mercy. No forgiveness.
No regret. No remorse.
No second chances. No excuses.
No complaints. No grievances.
No help. No favors.
No eyeglasses. No dental treatment.
No vaccines. No medicines.
No hospitals. No doctors.
No disabilities. No social diseases.
No tuberculosis. No leprosy.

No kites. No marbles. No rubber bands.
No cookies. No popsicles. No candy.
No playing. No toys.
No lullabies.
No rest. No vacations.
No holidays. No weekends.
No games. No sports.
No staying up late.
No newspapers.

No radio. No TV.
No drawing. No painting.
No pets. No pictures.
No electricity. No lamp oil.
No clocks. No watches.

No hope. No life.
A third of the people didn't survive.
The regime died.

The last day in Phnom Penh, we visited the Russian Market and walked around a few parks before attempting to go to the airport and leave the country. We nearly did not make it out, for as we had not previously realized there was an exit fee, many of us found ourselves illiquid. We came up with all sorts of schemes - such as pooling our money to buy a tuk-tuk and set up our own business - trying to figure out how to come up with the money. Luckily, we managed to get out without committing any felonies, but it was funny that we did not learn our lesson from Singapore. Looking back, Cambodia was about twice as expensive as all of us had thought, perhaps because we kept getting ripped off everywhere we went... It is just so draining to always have to bargain for everything you want, whether it's food, a tuk-tuk ride or buying souvenirs. I like people to be honest with me and to tell me the price up front. Sometimes, it is just not worth it to argue with people because spending the extra money spares yourself the headache. About half of our group was especially happy to return home, as they had become progressively ill from the food on the trip. Kristin and Kaitlyn spent the majority of Cambodia feeling terrible, and then Charles, Carol and John came down with something the final day. I guess I have a pretty strong stomach.

(Above: riding in a tuk-tuk; wearing our t-shirts which read (in both English and Cambodian) "NO! I do NOT want a tuk-tuk!")

We flew back to Bangkok to spend one more night there before flying back to Taipei and on to Kaohsiung, making it home for the Chinese New Year.

Thailand: as much pad thai as you can eat

2010-02-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

After Singapore, we flew to spend the next few days in Thailand. We first landed in Phuket, Thailand's largest island situated off the western coast. It is quite touristy, but with good reason. The beaches and water are picturesque and postcard-worthy.

We stayed at a nice little hostel run by a South African guy. When we were first checking in, we noticed two other girls in the lobby, one of whom was holding a Fulbright Korea bag. We looked at each other and were like - no, what are the odds? Turns out they were Fulbright ETAs in Korea, also on break, touring Phuket and staying in the exact same hostel as us. I did not think too much of it, but later I remembered that another Wake student had won a Fulbright to Korea, and decided to ask the girls if they knew him when we met up with them for dinner that night. That evening when John and I were returning from the beach, I noticed a guy walking up the stairs in front of us and then turn into a room. Impossible, I thought. No way could that actually be Dave Wescott. I found Kaitlyn and Kristin in our room, and told them - how strange would it be if Dave was actually in the room below us right this moment?! We go downstairs to meet the Korea girls before going out to dinner, and who should be sitting with them, but Dave Wescott. We had a beautiful little Deacon reunion right there in Phuket, Thailand. Talk about coincidences. Tom Phillips would be so proud.

The next day we went out on a snorkeling day trip to Phi Phi Island (sounds like Pee Pee). It would have been much more enjoyable for me if I had not become hopelessly seasick on the hour and a half trip out. It was unavoidable, I suppose - I am my mother's daughter... Despite my woozy stomach, the snorkeling was still fun. Although we saw more fish snorkeling in Kenting, the coral around Phi Phi was beautiful. All of the colors of the different corals were just gorgeous. Our boat made a few stops along the way for us to get off and view some of the island. At one narrow strip of beach, we waded over to feed bananas and watermelon to monkeys. At another place, we jumped off the boat to swim to shore, crawl through a flooded tunnel and then hike across the island to a pristine beach on the other side. As John said, such a thing would never be legal in the States, but then again, that is why people love vacationing in Thailand. :)

(Above: monkey beach; tunnel we crawled through to cross the island - you can just make out the rope ladder going up and this shows the distance we swam to get there
Below: sunbathing on the boat)

The next afternoon, we left for Bangkok where we met up with Fonda's cousin, as well as several Yilan ETAs. The first evening, Fonda's cousin took us all out to dinner, chauffeured around by her "driver." Then we went shopping at a night market. With the cousin (who speaks fluent Thai) bargaining for us, we managed to not get scammed. However, in seeing what appropriate prices were, I had to face the depressing fact that I had probably been ripped off on everything I bought in Phuket. At least I know my money went to stimulate a needy economy. Anyways, the shopping in Bangkok was really fun, mitigated only by the surrounding shops flaunting their sex trade at us. That part of Thailand (and later Cambodia) was quite upsetting to see. The worst part was that it was not even tucked away on side alleys or hidden behind massage parlor signs. It was very loud and upfront, and it broke my heart to watch the girls. The other night, a CNN special came on about human trafficking in Cambodia, estimating that Cambodia has the largest sex slave trade in the world. It just makes me wonder, do the westerners who frequent these brothels (and we saw plenty), realize what they are supporting? Because if they are aware of what is really going on, then I think I might lose all faith in the human race.

The next day, we went to visit the Royal Grand Palace. Work on it began in 1782 by King Rama I, and continued for the next few decades as each new monarch built his own groupings of temples. Today it remains an impressive sight as the holiest of all temple sites in Thailand, ornate spires and columns bedecked in glittering gold and surrounded by immense demon guardians (called "yakshas"). The focal point of the outer court is the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Despite its name, this two-foot high Buddha is carved from a solid jade stone - not emerald. It has three different sets of gold clothing (made from solid gold), which are changed according to Thailand's season (hot, rainy or cool). As the temple is considered a private house of worship for the royal family and thus has no monks in attendance, the Thai king is the one responsible for changing the outfit of the Buddha with each new season. The Buddha has a fascinating history - created in India around 43 BC and then passed through Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia and Laos before finally being brought into Thailand, all the results of wars, insurrections and changing empire border lines. If anyone knows a good book detailing the history of the Emerald Buddha, let me know. Otherwise, I will make my sister change her PhD dissertation and write me a narrative (it would still semi-relate to India haha). It would also make an extremely exciting movie! :) Inside the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the walls are covered with beautiful murals depicting the life of Buddha and the steps to enlightenment. It reminded me of the Buddhist version of the Sistine Chapel. Outside of the temple, the surrounding walls are decorated with 178 scenes retelling the entire Thai version of the Ramayana. Joy, you will have to visit with me next time and explain all the images to me. I did find the scene, though, where Rama fights the evil king Ravana with the help of the monkeys to win back his wife Sita, so you should be proud. :)

Other than the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, there was also a huge scale model of Angkor Wat constructed by King Mongkut, meant as a reminder to the vassal state of Cambodia that they were still under Thai dominion. Littered across the portico are also many elephant statues. I later read that elephants are a symbol of power and independence. According to tradition, parents will walk their children around elephants three times to bring them strength, and one can also rub their heads for good luck. Now I know why King Rama IV offered to send President Lincoln elephants to aid in the Civil War. The final object of interest inside the Grand Palace grounds is the Grand Palace itself. The royal family no longer lives there, but it is still used for official ceremonies and treated as the king's private office.

(Above: Angkor Wat model, us posing as monkeys
Below: outside the Royal Palace, with the Royal Guards)

Moving on from the Grand Palace, we set out to see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. This is the largest Reclining Buddha in the world. The different postures of the Buddha - sitting, standing, reclining etc - all have a different significance. The Reclining Buddha is meant to represent enlightenment or Nirvana, perhaps because he looks so relaxed lying down with his head resting in his palm. The Wat Pho Reclining Buddha measures 46 meters long and 15 meters high, and is covered in gold plating with mother-of-pearl inlays on the soles of the feet. Besides housing the largest Reclining Buddha, Wat Pho also boasts to having the largest number of Buddha images in all of Thailand, with over 1000 stationed over the grounds.

(Above: mother-of-pearl design in Buddha's feet
Below: enjoying the surrounding temple gardens)

By this time, we were quite Buddha-ed out. We took a boat ride down the river, catching a glimpse of why Bangkok is considered the Venice of Southeast Asia (I do not agree, though - there are not that many canals, whereas Venice is nothing but canals). There is also a floating market on the outskirts of Bangkok which I would love to go to if I ever visit again. We did not have time as it was a day-long trip (plus you had to leave at 6am!).

Singapore: multiculturalism in Asia

2010-02-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

We began our trip by taking the HSR up to Taoyuan and flying out of the Taipei airport to Singapore. My previous conception of Singapore was as an incredibly wealthy country, spotlessly clean, with a high chance of one ending up in prison. Each of these expectations turned out to be a disappointment. Since our hotel was located in the red light district of Little India (I blame the boys entirely, though perhaps, I should blame myself - never ever let boys book hotel reservations), we saw sides of Singapore which were far from being either wealthy or clean, and in the two days were there, we all somehow avoided arrest. Maybe we should have tried spitting more... :)

Singapore started off poorly (story below), but I ended up enjoying it. IT is the most ethnically and culturally diverse place I have been to in East/Southeast Asia. Other than the expected East Asians, we saw many South and Southeast Asians, as well as many Westerners. In the airport alone, the majority of the workers were Indian, which was not something we had expected. The Singapore accent is interesting to listen to. Some shoot-off of the British/Australian accents, which sounds similar yet very different? We visited the Malaysian Cultural Center which had a lovely little museum on Singapore's history, explaining a lot about the ethnic diversity seen today. Other than not seeing Chinese people everywhere and not hearing solely Mandarin being spoken around us (I think we heard more English than anything else), we were also impressed by the traffic. First of all, everyone drives on the left side of the road (leftover from British colonization), and secondly, there were no scooters anywhere. We had forgotten what it was like to not see streets littered with scooters, the result being that the roads appear much more spacious. The architecture was also surprising. For example, Little India, aside from its residents, looked like New Orleans. French/Bayou influence? Not sure how that happened...

Funny stories from Singapore:

1) Our flight got into Singapore close to midnight, so it was quite late by the time we arrived at our hotel. When we get there (remember, we are in the sketchiest part of town), we find that our hotel has given away our rooms, despite our on-line booking. They tell us that we can go down the street to another hotel which might still have rooms available. So we tramp down the street with all our luggage, and are ushered into a single "family room." The seven of us got to spend the night in a room with two double beds - a room which had large holes in the ceiling, cockroaches on the wall and the faint yet undeniable smell of curry. Needless to say, we moved to a different hotel the next night.

2) Moving walkways in Singapore are called "travellators."

3) We went to the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo, one of the largest tourist attractions in the city according to travel guides. When we first walked in, we got to see an impressive flaming torch demonstration. The performers swallowed their flaming torches and then breathed out fire. It was just like in Aladdin! Then we went to watch a nocturnal animals show. It started off well, with the zookeeper up front warning the audience to stay clear of the aisles and to not try to pet any of the animals which would be running by and around them. We were so pumped. Alas, we saw few animals. Since nocturnal animals are shy, few of them wanted to perform. The zookeeper kept reminding us that the zoo staff would never force the animals to perform if they did not want to. Next she called up a little boy to help her with a trick. She asked him his name and where he is from. "Six" is his answer. After three awkward minutes of trying to get him to talk, she looks confusedly at the crowd and says, "I don't think he speaks English." All of us were trying so hard not to laugh. How did it take her three minutes to arrive at that conclusion and how has she never faced this problem before? Maybe she was new. The dad had to finally get up on stage and help, informing us that they were from Kyrgyzstan. The best part of the night, though, was by far the midnight tram ride. It was a guided tour around the zoo's open exhibits of nocturnal animals, all of which we were able to see up close. At a few points, we were so close to deer that we could have leaned out and touched them as they wandered right up to and across our train's pathway. Throughout our whole trip, our tour guide rambled on in his best flight attendant's voice about how beautiful the animals were, But alas, they are no match for the poacher's gun. Please remember the three Rs: reduce, reuse and recylce." He must have said this at every single exhibit we passed. It was priceless.

4) Perhaps the best story of all is how we nearly never made it out of Singapore. We had previously converted money for each country we were to visit. However, Singapore was a bit more expensive than any of had guessed. In the end, each of us was anywhere from 2-8 Singapore dollars short of getting out of the country. In the evening before going to the safari, we all scrambled to count up change and to do the math of how much we were collectively short. IT did not make sense to go to the ATM just to get out 5 Singapore dollars, but if no one did, we would not be able to catch a taxi to the airport. I did not even have enough for the bus ride home from the zoo. Fonda finally solved the problem by using her credit card to buy one of the safari tickets, so we managed to escape Singapore without anyone going to jail for theft (If you are wondering why this was so complicated, our bank cards in Taiwan are not credit cards and cannot even be used at ATMs outside of the country. Therefore, if any of us ever ran out of money while abroad, we would have to use our American credit cards. All of us have tried not to touch our American bank accounts this year, so traveling in different currencies presented a slight problem. We actually faced the same problem again in Cambodia, and I have another entertaining story for how that one was resolved.

5) Best quote in Singapore:
Taxi Driver: "Which airport terminal should I drop you off at?"
Kristin: "The international terminal." Since there is only one international terminal due to the large number of domestic flights in the country. :)

Pictures: famous mosque in Little India; Arab Street

Pictures: meat market in Chinatown; our Chinese representatives outside the Heritage Center

Winter Break Travels

2010-02-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

With a whole month off for winter break, we decided to go explore Southeast Asia for two weeks. Because of how late the Chinese New Year falls this year due to the lunar calendar, the break is unusually long. Sadly, Fulbright only lets us be out of the country for two weeks of our grant period, so I am stationed back here in Taiwan until school resumes.

Seven of us (Carol, Charles, Fonda, John, Kaitlyn, Kristin and myself) visited Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia, occasionally meeting up with other friends for parts of the trip along the way. Overall impressions before I go into depth for each place:

1) Southeast Asia is SO HOT. Please, God, do not ever make me live there in summer - if I cannot handle their winter, I never want to experience their summer.

2) Thailand and especially Cambodia made me appreciate Taiwan in new ways. Like the fact that I can eat street food here and never worry about getting sick, or the way that I never have to fear being ripped off when I go shopping or get into a taxi, or the way I do not have to bargain for everything I purchase, or the way I am not approached by beggars and street children every 3 seconds (about the street children - I now understand why foreigners travel to third world countries, and suddenly feel the need to stay and establish orphanages).

3) It was very strange to not be able to use Chinese to get around. Charles and Kristin said when we landed in Thailand that it was so weird for them to be in a country for the first time where they did not know the language. The rest of us just stared at them and were like: um, that's our daily life in Taiwan lol. Even so, it was still a little odd for us too. You get to the point where Chinese becomes your default second language, so if you cannot use English, it just feels natural to go into Mandarin. Unfortunately, this was not the most helpful habit in Southeast Asia (though there were large amounts of Chinese tourists everywhere...).

Mid-Year Conference

2010-01-25T08:41:00.001-08:00

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.

Sunnie and Vincent's Wedding

2010-01-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

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. :)

Picturing America Lesson Plan

2010-01-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

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 :)

Me and Joyful

2010-01-10T19:06:00.000-08:00

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. :)

Poetry Competition

2010-01-10T19:02:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, my school had an English poetry competition between all of the eighth grade classes. Back in September and October, they had asked me to come up with applicable poems for the children to recite. I was not given any guidelines, such as did they prefer funny or serious, the classics or fun poems for children. All they gave me was a time limit of five minutes. After I compiled a short list of sample poems, they inform me that the poems will be recited by the entire class. Well, a class of 38 students would recite a very different type of poem than a single student, which was what I had originally thought was happening. So again I came up with a short list, though I was a still rather confused. This time, my list had a whole range of poems, because I hoped they would tell me which type they liked, and then I would find more in that vein. Instead, they decided they liked the list as it was, from Robert Frost to Edward Lear, and everything in between.

The end of December finally came, and with it, the poetry competition. By this point, the rules had changed so that only eight students from each class had to perform each selection. Students kept trying to bribe me, though I repeatedly stated that I was not a judge. Instead, I offered to help them practice and to give them feedback. I was not sure how much help I was being, since I had no idea what the judges would be looking for or what particular standards the groups would be judged upon.

I really should not have been surprised when, the evening before the competition, Tsuili asked me to be a judge. My school loves to spring things on me. Or maybe they just assume I already know things, or that certain things should be obvious (such as, that the one native English speaker in the school should clearly be one of the judges for an English poetry recitation)? At any rate, I suddenly found myself as one of the four judges. I was more nervous than if I had been asked to recite my own piece of poetry. I am not the biggest fan of being placed into situations in which I have no clue what is expected of me - though truly, living in Taiwan has made me much better at this than I used to be.

All of the classes were so cute and did a great job. I was quite proud of how hard they had all worked. Oddly enough, the two most popular pieces were "The Owl and the Pussycat" and "Oh Captain, My Captain" (life in Taiwan offers many such dichotomies...). All 19 classes performed, and with so much overlap in the pieces, it was rather difficult trying to fairly assess all of them. Add to this the fact that few of them used proper pronunciation and some groups had bizarre interpretations. I witnessed a humorous version of "Oh Captain, My Captain"... Very funny and creative, but not at all what one would expect.

After the groups had all finished, the four of us judges stayed behind to deliberate. This was probably the most frustrating part of the whole process. Despite the fact that the other three are all English teachers, they spent the whole time discussing the groups in Chinese. I could not keep up with their conversation, though I could tell that their opinions differed from my own. However, all of my rankings were up for debate - I was not extremely attached to any of them - but I could not figure out enough of what the other teachers were saying to interject with pertinent comments. In the end, I gave up and just let them do all of the talking. The outcome was that they decided no consensus could be reached and that we would just have to turn in all of our numbers for someone else to compile. Oh well. I tried.

Hualien and Taroko Gorge

2009-12-12T17:21:00.001-08:00

This past weekend, Bekah, Kristin, Kaitlyn and I went to visit Taroko Gorge for a few days. Since we had no English Village (every couple of months, we get two weeks off from EV), Bekah and I had an extra long weekend. On Fridays, we usually do EV together in the morning at Sanmin or Lingzhou and then have the afternoon off (Fulbright asks all of our schools to give us Friday afternoons off, I suppose for the purpose of better engaging in cultural activities or exploring Taiwan? This is not to say that I have not spent the occasional Friday afternoon in the office at school doing work - the delights of newspaper editing). Therefore, we were both able to leave right after our classes Thursday afternoon. Kristin and Kaitlyn, who both have EV Tuesday/Thursday and therefore class on Friday, were to join us Friday afternoon/evening. I was very excited to go, as Taroko Gorge is reputed to be one of the most beautiful spots in Taiwan with gorgeous mountains and scenery.

The plan was to take the HSR (high-speed rail) up to Taipei, and then switch trains to go down to Hualien. Sophie (an older lady whom I tutor in English who also lives in our apartment building - she is an angel and deserves her own blog posting at some point...) drove Bekah and I to the HSR station. The HSR is amazing. It takes one between Kaohsiung and Taipei in under an hour and a half, a trip which takes about seven hours by normal rail. We arrived in Hualien, the nearest large city to the gorge, fairly late and opted to go straight to bed once we reached our hostel.

The next morning, we woke up early so that we could maximize our gorge visiting time. Bekah and I both love to hike, so we were pretty excited to get started. :) Since Taroko is about an hour's drive inland from Hualien and since we had been told that public transportation within the gorge was fairly nonexistent, we had planned to rent scooters for the weekend. Because Bekah and I both have our Taiwanese drivers licenses, we were able to rent for super cheap - 250 NTD a day! This is about 8 USD, which is an awesome deal. It turned out that renting scooters was the way to go, for besides the convenience, we had beautiful views riding along in the open air.

The biggest problem with the scooters was that the weather was freezing cold! When I say "freezing," we are probably talking about mid- to high-50s. There are two reasons to account for my sounding like a wimp here. For one, we are all clearly spoiled living in Kaohsiung, where I still traipse around in sundresses and shorts (not literally, I did graduate to pants a few months ago, but still...). Secondly, driving on a scooter with the wind rushing past you drops the air temperature significantly. I ended up wearing almost the same thing every day up there, which involved all of the "winter weather" clothing which I possess here in Taiwan: short-sleeve shirt, long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket and scarf. My hands wanted gloves, for the first time since the end of last winter in NC! Anyways, once Kristin and Kaitlyn arrived, we could snuggle with them on the backs of our scooters - the body heat definitely helped. :)

The travel books do not exaggerate. Taroko Gorge is beautiful. The only road in runs right along the main gorge, so you are driving along with mountain cliffs shooting up above you and the river slicing through the marble rock below you. Chemicals from the marble have turned the water an exquisite turquoise blue color. Everything looked so pristine and natural, a big change from the relatively polluted city of Kaohsiung. All weekend, Bekah kept taking deep breaths of air and making exclamations over the air quality.

The four of us spent Friday and Saturday nights at an aboriginal village up inside the gorge. That is, the hotel is on the site of an old village and is today run by aboriginals. We stayed in little cabins which are nestled inside a valley about 5-10 minutes up from the main gorge. It was so beautiful and relaxing. We loved every minute of it, aside from the coldness factor... Apparently, they do not heat buildings in Taiwan... At least the beds had electric blankets, so we survived. :) I have to say, though, it felt so good to finally feel "cold." We had breakfast included with our stay, as well as free evening entertainment. Every evening, they put on a show for their guests, singing and dancing and playing musical instruments. One of the guys, in particular, had a beautiful voice, and we all fell in love with his singing. On the first night, they even gave us nature trail around the site in the dark. We were looking for owls, but I do not believe we ever found any. Tragic.

Favorite moments: splashing my feet in the chilly water, eating toast stolen from breakfast for lunch next to a pond three hours up a mountain, posing on suspension bridges which could have been taken out of a kung fu movie and doing my taijichuan on top of a cliff overlooking the gorge.

Another amusing side story is about the shopping. Kaohsiung has zero cultural/touristy shopping, so we were all fairly excited to find a place with lovely indigenous Taiwanese handcrafts. The most funny item which we all ended up purchasing, though, was the wine. On the first evening, we were served their local wine - made and bottled by the aboriginals - in these tiny little pig cups. When I say "pig cups," I do not mean that they had pigs painted on them. No, they were in the shape of a pig, and you had to drink out of the snout. The wine was quite sweet and had an unusual tangyness to it which we all liked. For some reason, each of us decided that it was the perfect "gift" idea. By the end of the weekend, the four of us had accumulated ten bottles of the wine along with about that many of tiny wine bottles and two bottles of it in liquor form. Haha I swear none of us are alcoholics! It was just so unusual and packaged so lovely. :)

While we were up in the mountains hiking, we passed a college professor with his students who were out catching and documenting birds for a class. They let Bekah hold one of the birds before releasing it.

Shopping

2009-12-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

It is necessary to offer up a quick blurb update. Yesterday, I was out Christmas shopping, entered a Nike store and low and behold, saw not one – but FOUR UNC Tarheels t-shirts. You can imagine my consternation and rage. Why are the Tarheels being represented in Kaohsiung, and not Wake Forest?! I thought about giving the store manager a piece of my mind, but fortunately rethought that idea in time. No sense in confusing the poor Taiwanese with American college rivalries. :) Still, the impudence. One of the shirts had “Go Tarheels, Go!” scribbled all over it. Such gall.

Thanksgiving in Taiwan

2009-12-08T15:57:00.000-08:00

American holidays celebrated in foreign countries are always amusing. They are never quite what they ought to be, even though they seem to make a solid attempt at getting there. Here in Taiwan, I got to celebrate Thanksgiving multiple times: at school with my children, the day before with AIT and the day of with my roommates. We'll see if you can figure out which one was the most authentic. :)

Here in Taiwan, the average Taiwanese concept of Thanksgiving is some vague notion involving turkeys. At school, I wanted to devote part of my lesson to teaching about Thanksgiving - the history of the holiday and what it means to "be thankful." Since my book lesson for the two weeks was on "Restaurants," I figured that they sort of fit together (food? ok, so not really...). Now there are 750 Kaohsiung middle schoolers who ought to know the three minute basics of Thanksgiving.

Pilgrims came from England to America. They were cold, hungry and sick. Many of them died during the winter. The next year, they made new friends with the Indians who taught them how to grow food. That year, they had lots of food, and were all healthy and happy. Therefore, they had a big meal to celebrate and they thanked God for all of their blessings.

I have become an expert at simplified English!

Then we did an activity where all of the kids had to write down what they were thankful for. They could draw pictures (I showed them how to make hand turkeys - quite exciting), and then had to present before the rest of the class. Popular responses for: "I am thankful for_____" were "family," "friends," "Grace" (yes, I made the charts - the little brown nosers...), and "myself" (these were the children who did not understand the concept of "being thankful" - ah middle schoolers... one of them told me this was because his whole class was made up of megalomaniacs - yes, he did say that).

My favorite Thanksgiving moment at school, though, came from one of my English club students. He was supposed to write an article for newspaper about the First Thanksgiving. I would like to include here a few of the drafts I received from him. Hopefully, the "history" lessons here will give you a good laugh. Apparently, if you google "First Thanksgiving," all sorts of strange things will come up.

Thanksgiving, starring the most cooperative turkeys! The “First Thanksgiving” was on September 8^th 1565, and coming from the obvious hint in the name it was the first thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was a time for people to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude to your close ones but over the years tradition changed to what is it now, and that’s having a nice time with your friends over lunch or dinner. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4^th Thursday of every November. This year it will be on the 26^th, so get ready for a big feast, if you ARE going to celebrate it that is.
Of course the one thing you cannot miss is the turkey (火機). Just watching the enormous turkey being brought out of the kitchen with the steamy air rising above it can make your mouth water. Though the turkey is one of the most important dishes, the mashed potato and corn bread also serves a great deal during the meal! The mashed potato (馬鈴薯泥) is a great dish to go with the warm and lip smacking gravy (肉汁) that is just something you cannot not have! The cornbread (玉米麵包) is also a scrumptious dish that has a sweet taste of corn mixed together with the flavor smell of the bread.
Almost everyone in America celebrates thanksgiving, but not a lot of Asians do. Maybe on the 26^th you could try it out and see whether you like it or not, anyways, you’ll still have a great time! Happy thanksgiving!

After I corrected him that the First Thanksgiving was NOT with the Spaniards in Florida during the 1500s, this is the next draft I received.

Thanksgiving became a tradition in the United States since 1863, but it didn’t become a federal holiday until 1941. Thanksgiving was a religious observation to give thanks to God. Many people still celebrate thanksgiving as a time to give thanks to God, but some people celebroate it as a secular holiday too. On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers came to Berkeley Hundred in an area known as Charles Cittie. The group’s charter wanted the day that they arrived to be known yearly as “day of thanksgiving” to God. During the first day, Capt. John Woodleaf held the service of Thanksgiving. Quoted from the section of the Charter of Berkeley Hundred describing the thanksgiving service: "We ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."

I had never heard of Berkeley Hundred or Charles Cittie before. However, I am now an expert, as I had to go and do background research to try to figure out where in the world he was coming from. Never have I so doubted my Pilgrim origins! Never fear, though. I straightened him out, and in the end, his article was quite presentable.

So the day before Thanksgiving, AIT invited us all over to Chris Castro's (AIT/Kaohsiung director) house. Originally, we were led to

AIT, Education Bureau and Fulbright Taiwan people (left); Fulbright Taiwan director (Dr. Chen), AIT Kaohsiung director (Chris Castro) and another AIT/K guy (Mason)

believe this would be a small intimate affair. The invitations also specifically said dress "casual." However, when we found out that all of our co-teachers and principals had also been invited, we started to get a little suspicious. Since we went straight over to his house after school, most of us were in business casual from teaching, but a few had indeed taken the invitation seriously, appearing in shorts and t-shirts. Our suspicions were well-founded, for this was definitely an affair of state. All of AIT/Kaohsiung was there, along with all sorts of the other important people from the city - Education Bureau, bank managers, random American expats who head important industries etc. Chris's house (which was huge, beautiful and full of exquisite artwork; clearly designed to host State Department events) was packed with easily over 100 people. All of whom were in suits. We asked Chris to not write "casual" on the invitations next time when he meant "formal," and he told us that for the State Department, "casual" means suits and "formal" means tuxedos. Well, I suppose there is a reason we are all recent college graduates. :) It was certainly the most formal Thanksgiving dinner I have ever been to or wish to go to in the future. Thanksgiving is supposed to be super laid-back and casual -- jeans, t-shirts and sweatshirts; hanging out with your family; watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in your pajamas, stuffing yourself with incredible food; playing boardgames and watching football. Instead, we had "mingle" with a bunch of suits and eat food catered by the local culinary school. While their food was delicious, it was not appropriate Thanksgiving food. My favorites were their cranberry sauce, eggplant and cauliflower dishes. The turkey was cooked Asian-style (if you have ever had Asian meat, you know what I am talking about) and the pumpkin pie was rather rubbery and minus the whipped cream... Not sure how you mess up pumpkin pie... But overall, it was a lot of fun with good food, just not Thanksgiving feeling at all.

Our apartment decided to cook our own Thanksgiving meal the next day. When I got home from school mid-afternoon, I was fairly bent out of shape and planning to just go to bed. However, Kristin walked in the door soon afterwords, laden with Christmas decorations and singing Christmas songs. She dragged me off the couch and to Carrefour where we engaged in last-minute Thanksgiving meal shopping. When Kaitlyn got home, we started all of the cooking and ended up with quite a cozy little meal: chicken (no turkey, but after the turkey the night before, I can't say I missed it), mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, salad, green bean casserole, stuffing and both pumpkin pie and a pumpkin cream cheese loaf for dessert. Then we put on "Miracle on 34th Street" and decorated our apartment for Christmas - putting up the tree, hanging lights and garland etc. I truly do love my roommates - they are all so great. :)

To round out our Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to have our very own ultimate frisbee turkey bowl on Saturday. We went out to a park down by the harbor and engaged in some exciting frisbee competition. Pilgrims versus the Indians. I was a Pilgrim, obviously. William Bradford and William Brewster are practically my next of kin. You see, their descendants married each other, then married a Squirrel who married a Johnson who had me. It's a bit more convoluted than that, but it works out somehow. When I was little, I always thought it would be cool to be a Squirrel... At any rate, we Pilgrims crushed the Indians. As I said before the game started, history always repeats itself. We sang a lot of "Pocahontas," even though we are all well aware that Jamestown and Plymouth were entirely separate colonies... Favorite song to sing while rushing the Indians: "Savages, savages, dirty little heathen." Haha I hope no one thinks less of me now. I must say, being in Asia is quite liberating. There is not such a push for political correctness over here. Asians have every single ethnicity, race, people group and country stereotyped, and not usually with the most pleasant of connotations. The joys of being a homogeneous nation-state and not having to worry about diversity (though this is not as true as they would lead you to believe, for Taiwan has a fairly significant aboriginal population, where each group has its own language and culture; still they are all Asian - nothing like the "melting pot" or "salad bowl" of America).

Love River

2009-11-22T00:16:00.000-08:00

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.

Today

2009-11-18T03:15:00.001-08:00

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.

Oh children...

2009-11-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

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