After four flights and nearly 30 hours of transit time, I arrived here in Kaohsiung. For the last leg of the trip from Taipei, all 12 of the Kaohsiung ETAs were on the same flight. It was fairly easy to recognize each other since we were the only 12 westerners on the otherwise all-Asian flight. The local Fulbright staff met us at the airport a little before 8am, the beginning of a very long day. They were gracious enough not to plan too many activities for us, but the very fact that we had to stay awake till evening made most of the day a blur for me.
The staff here have been wonderful. Fonda is our local Kaohsiung Fulbright representative who will be here with us all year. She lived in Vancouver for 10 years, studying for her graduate degree in hotel management, but then moved back here to Kaohsiung and now works with us. Two other Fulbright staffers, Alex and Cherry, were with us for the beginning days, but have returned the the main office in Taipei. Our fourth main contact person, Chris, is our liaison with the Kaohsiung education system. He worked as a high school teacher for several years before this, and is now in charge of matching us up with our schools and aiding us in working with our co-teachers. All of them have been so sweet, eager to help and patient in explaining things to us.
This first week has been extremely structured, so much so that I do not feel as though I have seen the "real" Taiwan yet. Our entire days are planned out, being shuttled together by bus from one activity to the next. While I love being taken care of, I am excited to be able to explore the city on my own and to begin interacting more with the locals. I will say, though, the effect of always staying with the group has been to avoid all culture shock so far. Remembering my first few days in Beijing, this experience has been completely different - far less stressful and certainly more convenient and painless.
As I mentioned before, there are 11 other ETAs here in Kaohsiung. The other 16 Taiwan ETAs are placed in Yilan, a city outside of Taipei, which I understand to be more of a rural farming community (Kaohsiung is more urban and industrial). All of us live together in the same apartment complex, located downtown across the street from the cultural center. The apartments are beautiful and much nicer than I had anticipated. The first day we arrived here, we drew at random our apartment spots, dividing us into three groups of four. Last year, the groups were supposedly in different apartment buildings spread out around town, so I think it will be much nicer for us to all be close to each other this year.
My apartment-mates are Charles, Kristin and Kaitlyn. They are all lovely, and I think we will make quite a happy little family for the year. We have a shared living-dining area, kitchen, laundry room (washer - no dryers in Taiwan, apparently...) and balcony. Additionally, there are three bathrooms, and we each have our own room of varying sizes. Mine is one of the smallest, which made me happy because it also means I have the cheapest rent. Speaking of cheap rent, I would just like to rub it in for anyone currently living in DC or NYC that my rent is the whopping price of $160/month, and the apartment comes furnished. :) On Monday, our second day here, our whole group spent the day out shopping at Carrefour and IKEA, buying fun items like bedding and curtains. Last year's ETAs left us a whole lot of stuff (kitchen items, lamps, dehumidifiers, drying racks, hangers etc) to use which has been very helpful in minimizing the amount of items we needed to buy ourselves. However, there were still a few items which we found it essential to puchase, such as mattress pads (the bed mattresses here are more in-line with box-springs -- "very hard" being a more accurate label than "very firm" -- I was fairly sore after the first night on my bed) and a convection oven (how could I survive a whole year without baking?). Plus we decided that our apartment's living room was several decades out of date and in need of a make-over. We are still in the process of hemming new curtains and pinning new couch covers, but I think the end result will be well worth the effort. Pictures will be up soon!
There are several interesting things to know about Taiwanese apartments. The first one is that, for some unknown reason, the faucets and shower-heads collect tiny pebbles which clog up the water flow. Therefore, it is necessary occasionally to pull them apart and to empty out the pebbles in order to maintain steady water pressure. Otherwise, the water begins to sputter and come out in spastic bursts. A second interesting phenomena is that, regardless of the fact that we always take our shoes off before entering the apartment and both sweep and mop the tile floors 24/7, the floors still are perpetually dirty! As a person who enjoys cleaning things and then *keeping* them clean, this is mildly frustrating... A third amusing story has less to do with the apartment and perhaps more to do with our ineptness. This morning, we woke up to find the laundry room flooded under four inches of water. In loading the washer, someone must have bumped the connecting water tube, because it had fallen out of place, and water was gushing out of the machine - gushing out onto the filthy floor creating a lovely concoction of hair/dust balls swirling in dirty water. As the laundry room is not technically inside the apartment (it is in an attached room/balcony overhanging an enclosed stairwell - er not quite, but it's hard to explain) we had not gotten around to scrubbing it down yet. Of course, our mini-flood half did the cleaning job for us, so I guess we cannot complain too much...
Tomorrow I will try to explain what we have learned about our teaching positions so far. Many of you know I was a little hesitant about being thrown into a classroom, so you should know that this week has made me very excited to be paired with my co-teacher and to start working in the classroom!
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