Mid-Year Conference

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











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











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












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












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











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