This week we have our midterm, so we reviewed by playing a game of Jeopardy where all the questions are things they were supposed to learn in the past two chapters (hahaha). It was kind of good because the kids are really competitive, so they tend to get pretty involved in any kind of activity that pits them against each other. What I didn't anticipate is the pressure that playing team Jeopardy entails...one player from each team comes up for each different question, but because the team as a whole loses points for a wrong answer, the rest of the team can be kind of hard on the kid who gets something wrong. I hadn't thought much of this, and in most classes this didn't turn out to be a huge deal, but in one class I had a little boy who couldn't take the pressure. He was sure that he wouldn't know the answer, so when his turn was about to come, he put his head down on the desk and just sobbed quietly. Of course the other kids, with the sensitivity of 11-year-olds, were all like "TEACHER HE'S CRYING" and crowded around him. I made them leave him alone, and tried to comfort him a little bit myself, but since he barely knows any English, there wasn't much I could say to him to help. I ended up dispatching Patty to take him outside and talk to him a little bit to make him feel better, while I got back up front and kept the game rolling to take the other students' attention away from the problem.
My heart just breaks in a situation like that, for one because it's my fault for giving them such a high-pressure game, but also because I have something like 280 fifth graders that I teach, and it's so hard to give them all the help they need. Many of my more privileged kids have parents that pay for them to go to buxiban ("cram school") after school, where they take supplemental classes to stay ahead of their classmates. However, for the kids who don't have this opportunity, school can be a constant struggle. When they're having trouble with material that their peers have already mastered outside of school, they experience a great loss of confidence, and sometimes start feeling like it's useless for them to even try to catch up. In every class I have some kids like this, but in a class of 36 kids, it's hard to notice and give individual attention to them on a daily basis. When we grade classwork and quizzes, though, it's impossible to ignore the fact that some of the students haven't even tried to answer a lot of the questions. Patty and I have been working on identifying the kids who need the most help, and trying to figure out a way to give it to them.
On Tuesday, I have an open slot last period, which I usually use to talk about lesson plans and random stuff with Patty. This Tuesday, we had a small group of students come in during that period to retake their lesson 2 quiz, which they had all bombed. As they were about to leave, I asked Patty if they had this period free or not. She informed me that they had a sort of flexible class for the last period, so I asked if I could keep them to do some review. When she proposed this to the kids, they all opted to stay and work with me. At first I was just trying to chat with them a little bit, but because they didn't really know what I was saying or how to talk to me, it ended up turning into a full-fledged vocabulary and grammar lesson on the words we were supposed to learn in the past chapter. I had to break out some of my Chinese in order to communicate with them effectively, but they took it in stride, and we actually started getting somewhere. Having only seven kids meant none of them could slip under my radar, and everybody had to talk. Producing their own sentences of spoken English seemed like a foreign concept to them, but by the end some of them were getting really into it. At the end of the period, I asked my quiet-as-a-mouse student Jason how he felt, and he told me, "I feel happy!" I was totally jazzed. I still have lots of students who need extra help, and even the students I got to work with for a bit still have a ways to go, but you have to take small victories where you can get them. I probably have something like 40 or 50 students who need a lot of help, and having that many kids in one session of extra-help would probably ruin its efficacy, so I need to find another solution.
It's been a good learning week for me too, so far...on Monday I went to bellydancing again and we tried doing this one dance all the way through and I felt like I had caught on pretty well. The teacher even complemented me on something, which was special because since I am the newbie in the class, I am usually the one who does things wrong and has to get corrected. On Tuesday the English Angels taught me how to say "photosynthesis" in Chinese, and my little swim team girls taught me how to say "submarine" (preceded by me trying to explain to them what the English word "submarine" meant, which is a lot easier to do when you are in a pool). Also, the swim coach Jessica decided that it would be fun to teach me how to do the butterfly. Fabulous!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
East Coast Adventures!
Note: I hope you have a fair amount of time on your hands, because this might sort of be a post of gigantic proportions. Sorry.
English Village was still on break last Friday, so Gered and I took advantage of the 3-day weekend and jaunted off to Hualien! We left Friday morning at 7-something, and after a mere 6 hours on the train, we were there.
Where exactly is Hualien? I'm glad you asked.
The skinny red line from Kaohsiung to Hualien is the railroad (approximately; I drew it in myself but I think it's pretty good).
On the way to Hualien, I'm checking out my travel guide to see exactly what there is to do in Hualien. Here is a summary:
-there are these special dumplings you should eat
-it's next to the ocean, so I guess you could go check that out
-there is this special dessert that you should eat, mochi
-there are a couple of temples and museums...of course Taiwan is covered with temples but if you're in town you could go check out these ones if you wanted
-I hope you didn't want much in the way of nightlife or anything
Basically, Hualien is not a super-hopping town. Also it rains a lot. So our Game Plan upon arrival was: 1) check into hostel, 2) eat some special dumplings for lunch, 3) go down to the beach, 4) poke around a little bit, maybe see a temple and find some mochi? Beats me.
As you can see, it was a highly specific game plan. The hostel was nice, they had cute little dogs and I think we were the only people staying there. The special dumplings were pretty decent, and came in an oniony broth that tasted pretty much like the flavor packet from a package of ramen. We got to the beach okay, except it turned out that the beach was under construction, so we didn't actually go down to the water. The edge of the beach was comprised of giant cement things that looked like jacks, presumably a sort of breakwater. So maybe the construction machines down on the beach were putting in some more jacks. I didn't look very closely, plus there was a fence. It was a different sort of beach.
Anyway, we walked down the coast and chilled a little bit, when it started to rain. It was a nice little refreshing drizzle for a while, but then it turned into pouring buckets. Annnnd the rest of the afternoon and evening was on-and-off crazy rain. Welcome to Hualien! Also it got dark really early. Gered was ready to go to sleep by the time we got back to the hostel at night...at 7 pm. However, the hostel did not in fact have towels available (the internet lied to us about this!), so in order to shower we had to venture back out into the dark and stormy night on a quest for towels. Which then turned into a quest for mochi, after we had found towels and were feeling a bit hungry. If you have not had mochi, they are a kind of dessert-thing that I believe is of Japanese origin, with a chewy outer layer made of glutinous rice and some kind of filling. It is a dessert well-suited to the Taiwanese, who are pretty much suckers for anything glutinous. There are mochi shops everywhere you look in Hualien, EXCEPT for of course anywhere in the vicinity of our hostel, so it was kind of a longish mission to find mochi, but it was totally worth it.
On Saturday, we woke up early and got a bus up to Taroko Gorge National Park. I'm going to go ahead and say that Taroko is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. The mountains are breathtaking, giant and green and gorgeous, with rushing rivers wrapped around their feet and occasional waterfalls tumbling down their sides. True Fact: there are taller mountains in Taiwan than there are anywhere in the entire eastern half of the U.S. Perhaps this is part of why I was so impressed. True But Lame Fact: my camera failed to work at all on this trip so I have no pictures of any of this. I will steal Gered's pictures whenever I get the chance.
From the entrance to Taroko, we hopped on a big old tour bus and hulked our way along some skinny little roads, winding around and sometimes underneath the mountains, until we ended up at a small town called Tianxiang in the middle of the park. Tianxiang seemed to consist mainly of a bus stop, a visitor center, a few crummy little restaurants, and 3 hotels: a big resort, a medium sized but still expensive hotel, and a cheap little hostel. Guess where we stayed.
Aside from having extremely firm (shall we say) beds, the hostel was actually kind of amazing and very idyllic. Perched up on a small hill, it was surrounded by plants and flowers, and there was even a rooftop garden as well. A hilarious little dog guarded the door, and a mama cat lounged around the patio while her kittens wrestled with each other. There are towering mountains on every side, and on the other side of the street the land drops off sharply into a gorge. For less than US$20 per person, you can have a room with a balcony that overlooks all of this. Taiwan is so excellent.
Having found a home base in Tianxiang, we launched off to hike the Baiyang Waterfall trail. Although the trail itself was very flat and easy to hike, it involved passing through a number of tunnels, some of them quite long and quite dark. At the entrance to the first tunnel, a sign reminded us to bring our flashlights. We had no flashlights. Consequently, I found myself walking fairly long distances in the dark, carefully treading ground that I was unable to see. Usually there was some glimmer of light in the distance or around a corner or even from another hiker's flashlight, but at times I found myself in complete pitch blackness, clutching the handrail for direction. The thought even crossed my mind: what if there is a giant pit in the middle of the trail up ahead of me? I would fall right into it! This was closely followed by the thought: Gered is a couple steps ahead of me, so if there were a pit, he would fall into it first and yell, so I am probably safe. Dear paranoid part of my brain: way to be rational! Gered later referred to this part of the hike as a Tunnel of Doom, which I appreciated, and you should too if you are a Kreher. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my Tunnel of Doom kit with me to Taroko (or Taiwan for that matter...I believe it is at home under my bed), so I was woefully underprepared for a real live Tunnel of Doom.
Anyway, all of the doom tunnels were totally worth it, because there were some spectacular views along the actual sunlit portion of the trail. The trail was not named Baiyang Waterfall for nothing - several times I rounded a corner or came out of a tunnel and was met by the view of a waterfall or two or three. One particularly picturesque set of waterfalls had what can only be described as a Crazy Death Bridge in front of it. It was the kind of skinny wooden thing suspended by ropes that you always see in movies. In the movie, there will be some kind of crucial chase going on, and when our hero tries to cross the bridge, the rotting wood collapses under him and the ropes snap and how will he ever survive!?! but of course he does. In real life, the Crazy Death Bridge was not rotting and the ropes were made of metal and it seemed generally sturdy, but that does not negate the fact that it swayed and bounced when I walked on it, and there was a warning sign saying that the bridge had a 10-person limit. Also it was over a GIANT FRICKIN GORGE. Nevertheless, I managed to survive and make it back through the doom tunnels safely. Hooray!
I forget if this happened before or after we went on a hike, but we also had a kind of amazing experience at the visitor center in Tianxiang. First, I must explain that when we left on this trip, Gered still didn't know whether or not his Frisbee team was participating in a tournament in Taizhong on Sunday, so we weren't sure if we'd have to leave Saturday or Sunday. Hence, when we found out Friday night that they weren't going, we didn't have much of a specific game plan for the rest of the weekend. Since we were already in Tianxiang, we thought that we might possibly kind of just make a loop and go out through the west side of the park and down the west coast to Kaohsiung. Here is my amazing map again, in case you forgot what it looked like:
This would mean taking the yellow route home (the red is how we got there). The east-west portion of this route goes along the Central Cross-Island highway, straight through more of those spectacular mountains that run down the middle of Taiwan. It seemed like it would be a pretty cool scenic route to get home. We also thought we might just go out to Hehuanshan (one of the big peaks on the far western edge of the park) and then come back the way we came, if going all the way through didn't work. With these goals in mind, I peppered the nice lady at the visitor center with questions about how we could pull it off. She told us that there was a bus that went as far as Dayuling (about 2/3 of the way into the park), but after that there were no buses, and the only way to get any further was dabianche. This was a word that I had never heard before, but since che means "vehicle," I knew it had to be some form of transportation. I asked again a couple times about getting to Hehuanshan, but the answer was always the same: you can take the bus to Dayuling, but after that the only possible way is dabianche. We were at an impasse until another man entered the visitor center to ask the woman a question. He overheard our conversation a bit, and tried to help me out with a little English. Finally I asked him directly, "what does dabianche mean?" He informed me very matter-of-factly, "Dabianche means hitchhike!"
My eyebrows pretty much hit the ceiling on this one. This is the recommendation from an official park visitor center! Isn't it dangerous? I asked. Oh, just try to find a family with kids, she told me. It's pretty safe. Ooooookay.
Well, we pondered hitchhiking our way back into the realm of Available Public Transportation, but in the end we just didn't have enough buffer time to risk it. If you glance up at the map again, the black section of the route is the part where there is no way to travel besides hitchhiking (well, and actually having your own car), and over the rest of the yellow part between there and Taizhong (T'aichung on this map) we'd have to rely on the occasional public buses, which probably wouldn't be running anymore by the time we got there at night. In the end, we resigned ourselves to going back the way we came.
That evening, I had a kind of exciting experience, for Taiwan: I was cold, and not just from being in an overly-air-conditioned space! No, it was genuinely cool outside in Tianxiang. I wore jeans and a sweatshirt! It was crazy. We went for dinner at a little cafe in the other hotel, where it turned out that the fare consisted mainly of microwave personal pizzas. Mmm, deliciously mediocre! And of course it had peas and corn and random stuff on it, because we are in Asia here, let's not forget. Eating microwave pizza in a secluded village in the mountains of Taiwan: kind of surreal. After a pot of raspberry tea (because it was cold enough out to really want hot tea!! this was amazing), we retired to the hostel for a wild and crazy night of reading a little bit and falling asleep promptly at 9:30. Woooo!
Our bus back to Hualien left at 9 am, so we got up at 7ish and did some final poking around Tianxiang. There was some kind of pagoda up on the side of one the mountain at the edge of town, so we went up to investigate it. Apparently it was a temple to the God of Stairs, because getting up to the pagoda involved climbing approximately 547382534982795392 steps of stairs. I'm pretty sure that I filled my entire stair quota for all of October in that one morning. The pagoda was nice...very pagoda-like? I don't really know what to say about it. The temple also had a gift shop and a little stand where I got some sort of fried pancake and a couple slices of tofu for breakfast. We took the breakfast to go, because it was time to catch the bus back to Hualien!
In Hualien we grabbed a little lunch, bought some more mochi, and tried to find a bus that would take us down the east coast. The train line is further inland, but you can take a bus right down the coastal highway, which is really pretty. My travel guide informed us that there was some kind of restaurant by the normal bus stand where you could get bus tickets to go down the coast. The normal bus station didn't have any buses that would take us all the way to Taidong, where we wanted to go, and we asked at a restaurant around the corner that looked promising, but they only rented vehicles. It was really hot and sunny at this time, and I was feeling hot and a little bit grumpy. I wanted to just take the normal bus and transfer, but Gered was convinced that we could find the bus line mentioned by my travel guide, so we poked around the area a bit more, ending up at the visitor center. The helpful folks at the visitor center gave us free postcards of Hualien, and pointed us to a nearby row of mochi shops. It turns out that one of the shops, in addition to selling traditional local snacks, sells bus tickets down the east coast. Go figure.
So we grooved on down the east coast on a bus, taking in the sights. One of the characteristic features of Taiwan is unusual juxtapositions: ornate temples in the midst of weather-beaten concrete buildings, bus tickets in a mochi shop, and huge mountains right smack dab next to the sea. It's really amazing that Taiwan has such high peaks, considering that they have to get all the way up there from sea level over a pretty short distance. Driving down Taiwan's east coast, you can have the ocean on your left, and on your right, a big ol' mountain rising right out of the sea. It's definitely a must-see part of Taiwan.
The bus ride was pretty, albeit rather long. This was alleviated a bit by the presence of a really adorable small girl in the seat in front of me. First, I noticed the shiny black top of a small head peeking over the seat. A pair of eyes appeared, and I smiled at her. She immediately ducked back out of sight. This little peekaboo ritual was repeated a number of times, but each time she came up for a little bit longer, and each time she ducked back down, Gered and I would grin like fools at the cuteness. Once I even got a little answer to a question in Chinese! Then her mother moved the two of them to another seat on the bus, and I was a little bit sad.
It was already dark when we got into Taidong, and we still needed to catch a train back to Kaohsiung. At the train station, the ticket agent informed us that the next train was at 7:13, but there were no seats left. The next train after that didn't get into Kaohsiung until very late, so we opted to suck it up and just take the first train. Riding the train was another one of those Great Adventures in Staring for a little bit...when we were waiting to sit down, a little girl pointed at me and asked her mother loudly, "What kind of person is THAT??" Then we sat in some unoccupied seats for the first leg of the journey, across from a man who blatantly stared at me the whole time. Staring Man got off at the next station, but our seats' owner got on, and we were forced out. We ended up just sitting on the floor in the back of the car, tiredly typing up our weekly reports for Fulbright (due every Sunday night!) on Gered's little computer.
When we got into Kaohsiung, it was quite late, but the subway was still running, so we subwayed it to the stop near our apartments and walked the final stretch. It was around 11 pm when I finally arrived home...one looooong day of transportation, considering that we left Tianxiang at 9 am, but definitely worth the trip. Maybe sometime when there's a little more time I can do it again and dabianche my way home.
English Village was still on break last Friday, so Gered and I took advantage of the 3-day weekend and jaunted off to Hualien! We left Friday morning at 7-something, and after a mere 6 hours on the train, we were there.
Where exactly is Hualien? I'm glad you asked.
The skinny red line from Kaohsiung to Hualien is the railroad (approximately; I drew it in myself but I think it's pretty good).
On the way to Hualien, I'm checking out my travel guide to see exactly what there is to do in Hualien. Here is a summary:
-there are these special dumplings you should eat
-it's next to the ocean, so I guess you could go check that out
-there is this special dessert that you should eat, mochi
-there are a couple of temples and museums...of course Taiwan is covered with temples but if you're in town you could go check out these ones if you wanted
-I hope you didn't want much in the way of nightlife or anything
Basically, Hualien is not a super-hopping town. Also it rains a lot. So our Game Plan upon arrival was: 1) check into hostel, 2) eat some special dumplings for lunch, 3) go down to the beach, 4) poke around a little bit, maybe see a temple and find some mochi? Beats me.
As you can see, it was a highly specific game plan. The hostel was nice, they had cute little dogs and I think we were the only people staying there. The special dumplings were pretty decent, and came in an oniony broth that tasted pretty much like the flavor packet from a package of ramen. We got to the beach okay, except it turned out that the beach was under construction, so we didn't actually go down to the water. The edge of the beach was comprised of giant cement things that looked like jacks, presumably a sort of breakwater. So maybe the construction machines down on the beach were putting in some more jacks. I didn't look very closely, plus there was a fence. It was a different sort of beach.
Anyway, we walked down the coast and chilled a little bit, when it started to rain. It was a nice little refreshing drizzle for a while, but then it turned into pouring buckets. Annnnd the rest of the afternoon and evening was on-and-off crazy rain. Welcome to Hualien! Also it got dark really early. Gered was ready to go to sleep by the time we got back to the hostel at night...at 7 pm. However, the hostel did not in fact have towels available (the internet lied to us about this!), so in order to shower we had to venture back out into the dark and stormy night on a quest for towels. Which then turned into a quest for mochi, after we had found towels and were feeling a bit hungry. If you have not had mochi, they are a kind of dessert-thing that I believe is of Japanese origin, with a chewy outer layer made of glutinous rice and some kind of filling. It is a dessert well-suited to the Taiwanese, who are pretty much suckers for anything glutinous. There are mochi shops everywhere you look in Hualien, EXCEPT for of course anywhere in the vicinity of our hostel, so it was kind of a longish mission to find mochi, but it was totally worth it.
On Saturday, we woke up early and got a bus up to Taroko Gorge National Park. I'm going to go ahead and say that Taroko is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. The mountains are breathtaking, giant and green and gorgeous, with rushing rivers wrapped around their feet and occasional waterfalls tumbling down their sides. True Fact: there are taller mountains in Taiwan than there are anywhere in the entire eastern half of the U.S. Perhaps this is part of why I was so impressed. True But Lame Fact: my camera failed to work at all on this trip so I have no pictures of any of this. I will steal Gered's pictures whenever I get the chance.
From the entrance to Taroko, we hopped on a big old tour bus and hulked our way along some skinny little roads, winding around and sometimes underneath the mountains, until we ended up at a small town called Tianxiang in the middle of the park. Tianxiang seemed to consist mainly of a bus stop, a visitor center, a few crummy little restaurants, and 3 hotels: a big resort, a medium sized but still expensive hotel, and a cheap little hostel. Guess where we stayed.
Aside from having extremely firm (shall we say) beds, the hostel was actually kind of amazing and very idyllic. Perched up on a small hill, it was surrounded by plants and flowers, and there was even a rooftop garden as well. A hilarious little dog guarded the door, and a mama cat lounged around the patio while her kittens wrestled with each other. There are towering mountains on every side, and on the other side of the street the land drops off sharply into a gorge. For less than US$20 per person, you can have a room with a balcony that overlooks all of this. Taiwan is so excellent.
Having found a home base in Tianxiang, we launched off to hike the Baiyang Waterfall trail. Although the trail itself was very flat and easy to hike, it involved passing through a number of tunnels, some of them quite long and quite dark. At the entrance to the first tunnel, a sign reminded us to bring our flashlights. We had no flashlights. Consequently, I found myself walking fairly long distances in the dark, carefully treading ground that I was unable to see. Usually there was some glimmer of light in the distance or around a corner or even from another hiker's flashlight, but at times I found myself in complete pitch blackness, clutching the handrail for direction. The thought even crossed my mind: what if there is a giant pit in the middle of the trail up ahead of me? I would fall right into it! This was closely followed by the thought: Gered is a couple steps ahead of me, so if there were a pit, he would fall into it first and yell, so I am probably safe. Dear paranoid part of my brain: way to be rational! Gered later referred to this part of the hike as a Tunnel of Doom, which I appreciated, and you should too if you are a Kreher. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my Tunnel of Doom kit with me to Taroko (or Taiwan for that matter...I believe it is at home under my bed), so I was woefully underprepared for a real live Tunnel of Doom.
Anyway, all of the doom tunnels were totally worth it, because there were some spectacular views along the actual sunlit portion of the trail. The trail was not named Baiyang Waterfall for nothing - several times I rounded a corner or came out of a tunnel and was met by the view of a waterfall or two or three. One particularly picturesque set of waterfalls had what can only be described as a Crazy Death Bridge in front of it. It was the kind of skinny wooden thing suspended by ropes that you always see in movies. In the movie, there will be some kind of crucial chase going on, and when our hero tries to cross the bridge, the rotting wood collapses under him and the ropes snap and how will he ever survive!?! but of course he does. In real life, the Crazy Death Bridge was not rotting and the ropes were made of metal and it seemed generally sturdy, but that does not negate the fact that it swayed and bounced when I walked on it, and there was a warning sign saying that the bridge had a 10-person limit. Also it was over a GIANT FRICKIN GORGE. Nevertheless, I managed to survive and make it back through the doom tunnels safely. Hooray!
I forget if this happened before or after we went on a hike, but we also had a kind of amazing experience at the visitor center in Tianxiang. First, I must explain that when we left on this trip, Gered still didn't know whether or not his Frisbee team was participating in a tournament in Taizhong on Sunday, so we weren't sure if we'd have to leave Saturday or Sunday. Hence, when we found out Friday night that they weren't going, we didn't have much of a specific game plan for the rest of the weekend. Since we were already in Tianxiang, we thought that we might possibly kind of just make a loop and go out through the west side of the park and down the west coast to Kaohsiung. Here is my amazing map again, in case you forgot what it looked like:
This would mean taking the yellow route home (the red is how we got there). The east-west portion of this route goes along the Central Cross-Island highway, straight through more of those spectacular mountains that run down the middle of Taiwan. It seemed like it would be a pretty cool scenic route to get home. We also thought we might just go out to Hehuanshan (one of the big peaks on the far western edge of the park) and then come back the way we came, if going all the way through didn't work. With these goals in mind, I peppered the nice lady at the visitor center with questions about how we could pull it off. She told us that there was a bus that went as far as Dayuling (about 2/3 of the way into the park), but after that there were no buses, and the only way to get any further was dabianche. This was a word that I had never heard before, but since che means "vehicle," I knew it had to be some form of transportation. I asked again a couple times about getting to Hehuanshan, but the answer was always the same: you can take the bus to Dayuling, but after that the only possible way is dabianche. We were at an impasse until another man entered the visitor center to ask the woman a question. He overheard our conversation a bit, and tried to help me out with a little English. Finally I asked him directly, "what does dabianche mean?" He informed me very matter-of-factly, "Dabianche means hitchhike!"
My eyebrows pretty much hit the ceiling on this one. This is the recommendation from an official park visitor center! Isn't it dangerous? I asked. Oh, just try to find a family with kids, she told me. It's pretty safe. Ooooookay.
Well, we pondered hitchhiking our way back into the realm of Available Public Transportation, but in the end we just didn't have enough buffer time to risk it. If you glance up at the map again, the black section of the route is the part where there is no way to travel besides hitchhiking (well, and actually having your own car), and over the rest of the yellow part between there and Taizhong (T'aichung on this map) we'd have to rely on the occasional public buses, which probably wouldn't be running anymore by the time we got there at night. In the end, we resigned ourselves to going back the way we came.
That evening, I had a kind of exciting experience, for Taiwan: I was cold, and not just from being in an overly-air-conditioned space! No, it was genuinely cool outside in Tianxiang. I wore jeans and a sweatshirt! It was crazy. We went for dinner at a little cafe in the other hotel, where it turned out that the fare consisted mainly of microwave personal pizzas. Mmm, deliciously mediocre! And of course it had peas and corn and random stuff on it, because we are in Asia here, let's not forget. Eating microwave pizza in a secluded village in the mountains of Taiwan: kind of surreal. After a pot of raspberry tea (because it was cold enough out to really want hot tea!! this was amazing), we retired to the hostel for a wild and crazy night of reading a little bit and falling asleep promptly at 9:30. Woooo!
Our bus back to Hualien left at 9 am, so we got up at 7ish and did some final poking around Tianxiang. There was some kind of pagoda up on the side of one the mountain at the edge of town, so we went up to investigate it. Apparently it was a temple to the God of Stairs, because getting up to the pagoda involved climbing approximately 547382534982795392 steps of stairs. I'm pretty sure that I filled my entire stair quota for all of October in that one morning. The pagoda was nice...very pagoda-like? I don't really know what to say about it. The temple also had a gift shop and a little stand where I got some sort of fried pancake and a couple slices of tofu for breakfast. We took the breakfast to go, because it was time to catch the bus back to Hualien!
In Hualien we grabbed a little lunch, bought some more mochi, and tried to find a bus that would take us down the east coast. The train line is further inland, but you can take a bus right down the coastal highway, which is really pretty. My travel guide informed us that there was some kind of restaurant by the normal bus stand where you could get bus tickets to go down the coast. The normal bus station didn't have any buses that would take us all the way to Taidong, where we wanted to go, and we asked at a restaurant around the corner that looked promising, but they only rented vehicles. It was really hot and sunny at this time, and I was feeling hot and a little bit grumpy. I wanted to just take the normal bus and transfer, but Gered was convinced that we could find the bus line mentioned by my travel guide, so we poked around the area a bit more, ending up at the visitor center. The helpful folks at the visitor center gave us free postcards of Hualien, and pointed us to a nearby row of mochi shops. It turns out that one of the shops, in addition to selling traditional local snacks, sells bus tickets down the east coast. Go figure.
So we grooved on down the east coast on a bus, taking in the sights. One of the characteristic features of Taiwan is unusual juxtapositions: ornate temples in the midst of weather-beaten concrete buildings, bus tickets in a mochi shop, and huge mountains right smack dab next to the sea. It's really amazing that Taiwan has such high peaks, considering that they have to get all the way up there from sea level over a pretty short distance. Driving down Taiwan's east coast, you can have the ocean on your left, and on your right, a big ol' mountain rising right out of the sea. It's definitely a must-see part of Taiwan.
The bus ride was pretty, albeit rather long. This was alleviated a bit by the presence of a really adorable small girl in the seat in front of me. First, I noticed the shiny black top of a small head peeking over the seat. A pair of eyes appeared, and I smiled at her. She immediately ducked back out of sight. This little peekaboo ritual was repeated a number of times, but each time she came up for a little bit longer, and each time she ducked back down, Gered and I would grin like fools at the cuteness. Once I even got a little answer to a question in Chinese! Then her mother moved the two of them to another seat on the bus, and I was a little bit sad.
It was already dark when we got into Taidong, and we still needed to catch a train back to Kaohsiung. At the train station, the ticket agent informed us that the next train was at 7:13, but there were no seats left. The next train after that didn't get into Kaohsiung until very late, so we opted to suck it up and just take the first train. Riding the train was another one of those Great Adventures in Staring for a little bit...when we were waiting to sit down, a little girl pointed at me and asked her mother loudly, "What kind of person is THAT??" Then we sat in some unoccupied seats for the first leg of the journey, across from a man who blatantly stared at me the whole time. Staring Man got off at the next station, but our seats' owner got on, and we were forced out. We ended up just sitting on the floor in the back of the car, tiredly typing up our weekly reports for Fulbright (due every Sunday night!) on Gered's little computer.
When we got into Kaohsiung, it was quite late, but the subway was still running, so we subwayed it to the stop near our apartments and walked the final stretch. It was around 11 pm when I finally arrived home...one looooong day of transportation, considering that we left Tianxiang at 9 am, but definitely worth the trip. Maybe sometime when there's a little more time I can do it again and dabianche my way home.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Banana Dog!
Ingredients: 1 slice of bread, 1 banana, peanut butter
Step 1: spread peanut butter on bread
Step 2: peel banana
Step 3: wrap bread around banana
Step 4: EAT!
Serves 1.
This has nothing to do with Taiwanese culture or anything, but it's such a fun (and nutritionally balanced!) breakfast that I just had to share. It's sort of the lazy man's peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, I suppose.
Step 1: spread peanut butter on bread
Step 2: peel banana
Step 3: wrap bread around banana
Step 4: EAT!
Serves 1.
This has nothing to do with Taiwanese culture or anything, but it's such a fun (and nutritionally balanced!) breakfast that I just had to share. It's sort of the lazy man's peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, I suppose.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Living it up in Taipei
This past Friday I went to Taipei with some of the other Kaohsiung ETAs to attend a 10/10 celebration hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now 10/10 is sort of like Taiwanese Independence Day, IF Taiwan were in fact an independent nation, which everyone knows it is CERTAINLY NOT, so I guess it's really NOTHING LIKE Independence Day after all. Right, People's Republic of China?
Anyway, it was a real fancy shindig, held at the President's mansion, and there were tons and tons of guests in attendance, most of whom were bona fide dignitaries of some kind, as opposed to elementary school teachers. I caught a glimpse of the President himself, but having been unceremoniously pushed aside by an army of security guards, I was unable to shake his hand, as some lucky Yilan ETAs got to do. There were people in traditional costume performing traditional arts around the party, like weaving on a loom, or mashing rice with a giant wooden smashing stick. In fact, after the President's triumphant entrance on the red carpet, he came down and did a little rice-smashing himself. I think it's one of those things that presidents do sometimes, like throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game or whatever. Anyway, I guess he smashed the rice pretty well, because everyone seemed very pleased.
The rest of the party mostly consisted of waiting in line to get things to eat, eating things, and walking around awkwardly, not knowing how to begin introducing myself to random dignitaries. (Side note: I was having lunch at school the day before the party, and talking about anticipating this kind of awkwardness, and I taught the other teachers at my table the word "schmooze." Score!) I ate a lot of delicious things, although there was one incident in which, intending to get a red bean cake (the desserty sort), I got one with salted dried turnip in the middle instead. Fabulous. There was a traditional Chinese opera-type performance, with lots of high singing and ridiculous slow-motion fight scenes, so of course that was excellent. And the house itself was huge and elaborately decorated...the most amazing part was actually the walk to the bathroom, which involved going through almost a maze of corridors with crazy glass floors. And did I mention there was FOOD everywhere?
Here I am being fancy in front of a tasteful display of produce:
The Chinese character for the number 10 looks like a cross, so the big red thing on top of the fruit is sort of the 10/10 logo - two 10s put together. The 97 is because it's the year 97 in the Taiwanese Minguo calendar, which is measured from the founding of the R.O.C. I must confess that my first thought upon seeing the abbreviation ROC is usually "hey, Rochester!" Then I remember where I am, and that it's slightly more probable that they mean Republic of China.
Although the party was theoretically from 6-7 pm, we kind of went a bit earlier than that and stayed a bit later. They were definitely turning off lights and playing slow, boring, go-home music by the time the Fulbright crew finally headed out. Afterwards, I opted to go out to karaoke with the Yilan posse and a couple of Fulbright staff. Maya and I were the only Kaohsiung folks in attendance, but we represented to the best of our ability. We sang and danced and were generally silly for a full 3 hours, when our time ran up after a magnificent rendition of Gettin' Jiggy With It. Then we went out dancing! It was an exhausting night, but so good for me to get out what seemed to be a reserve of pent-up ridiculousness. Of course I am silly on a regular basis, but usually to a milder extent.
On Saturday, I spent the whole morning sleeping until the very last possible minute before I had to check out. As I was leaving, I noticed that the room I stayed in last time was open and had been vacated, so I snuck in real quick to get a picture of the spectacular Love Tub. Here it is, in all its heart-shaped glory:
Yes, that's the kind of hotel Fulbright puts us up in! It's pretty super.
In the afternoon, I wandered with Gered up to Danshui, which is north of Taipei, on the coast. We went to what seemed essentially to be the boardwalk. It was cobblestone, but definitely the same concept. With the exception of the university that we went and strolled around, the town of Danshui was a densely packed mass of humanity. On the bright side, there was Dunkin' Donuts at the Danshui train station! Their Boston Cream didn't quite live up to my expectations, but still: Dunkin' Donuts! Unhealthy fast food chains have got to be America's first or second biggest export, right up there with pop culture. No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're so silly.
Came back from Taipei Saturday night. Sunday I went to church and made some new friends (I don't think I've ever escaped a church service in Taiwan without making some new friends and probably getting a couple phone numbers), and I went out to lunch with this gal Vivian, after which we went to Costco! Haha I have never been to Costco in the U.S., I don't think, but now I have been in Taiwan. I think Vivian figured I would want to go because, I don't know, Costco is a bastion of American-ness in Taiwan? Also I kind of did really want to get lettuce. Taiwanese people don't really believe in raw vegetables, so salad is kind of rare here, and often consists of shredded cabbage and Thousand Island dressing. (Asia's favorite kind of salad dressing, right up there with straight mayonnaise!) So I got a giant thing of lettuce, and today I went out and bought tomatoes and chicken and Parmesan cheese and salad dressing, so now I have to eat chicken caesar salad like a fiend or else I won't finish the lettuce before it goes bad. I had some tonight and mmm I miss salads! And raw vegetables! Taiwanese food is pretty good, but the vegetables are rather few, and often are cooked into oily oblivion. Also, it's nice to cook my own meat so I know it isn't full of surprise fat globs. A lot of times meat here is covered in/chock full of fat, which I guess Taiwanese people think is super, but I think it's kind of gross.
Oh man, so this next weekend I don't have anything on Friday (no English Village this week!) so Gered and I are planning a trip to Hualien on the east coast. I think it's a sort of sleepy little town, but Taroko Gorge National Park is right next to it, which is supposed to be pretty spectacular, and has lots of hiking and majestic views and hot springs and whatnot. Also Patty says you can go whale watching in Hualien? Might be fun...
Today was tiring. No English Village this morning, but I still felt exhausted at the end of the school day. My kids are on such drastically different levels that it's impossible to work with everyone effectively. On one hand, I have kids like Ryan, who's from Pennsylvania and is bored to tears when I'm teaching everyone how to say things like "I feel happy." On the other hand, I have kids who know next to nothing. My troublemaker Kevin is at such a loss when we do workbook activities that he writes down random strings of letters. I sat down with him a little bit today, and I had to break out a little bit of Chinese, but we were making some progress. Unfortunately, we don't have the class time for me to sit down with each kid who's fallen behind, especially when some of the others are so far ahead. Several times today I was in the middle of helping some student who was having a lot of trouble when Patty steamed on to the next activity, obliging me to move on as well. I know that we can't pace the whole class to suit the lowest common denominator, because it's so low, but I wish there was more I could do. It makes me a little annoyed that they have me teaching the gifted kids to sing English songs in my free period, and I don't have enough time to work with the kids who really need help. Not that it isn't fun to teach the good students to sing Y.M.C.A., but the English Angels program is really just to make the school look good, not really to serve the students. And of course it's our priority to look good! ...LAME.
Anyway, it was a real fancy shindig, held at the President's mansion, and there were tons and tons of guests in attendance, most of whom were bona fide dignitaries of some kind, as opposed to elementary school teachers. I caught a glimpse of the President himself, but having been unceremoniously pushed aside by an army of security guards, I was unable to shake his hand, as some lucky Yilan ETAs got to do. There were people in traditional costume performing traditional arts around the party, like weaving on a loom, or mashing rice with a giant wooden smashing stick. In fact, after the President's triumphant entrance on the red carpet, he came down and did a little rice-smashing himself. I think it's one of those things that presidents do sometimes, like throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game or whatever. Anyway, I guess he smashed the rice pretty well, because everyone seemed very pleased.
The rest of the party mostly consisted of waiting in line to get things to eat, eating things, and walking around awkwardly, not knowing how to begin introducing myself to random dignitaries. (Side note: I was having lunch at school the day before the party, and talking about anticipating this kind of awkwardness, and I taught the other teachers at my table the word "schmooze." Score!) I ate a lot of delicious things, although there was one incident in which, intending to get a red bean cake (the desserty sort), I got one with salted dried turnip in the middle instead. Fabulous. There was a traditional Chinese opera-type performance, with lots of high singing and ridiculous slow-motion fight scenes, so of course that was excellent. And the house itself was huge and elaborately decorated...the most amazing part was actually the walk to the bathroom, which involved going through almost a maze of corridors with crazy glass floors. And did I mention there was FOOD everywhere?
Here I am being fancy in front of a tasteful display of produce:
The Chinese character for the number 10 looks like a cross, so the big red thing on top of the fruit is sort of the 10/10 logo - two 10s put together. The 97 is because it's the year 97 in the Taiwanese Minguo calendar, which is measured from the founding of the R.O.C. I must confess that my first thought upon seeing the abbreviation ROC is usually "hey, Rochester!" Then I remember where I am, and that it's slightly more probable that they mean Republic of China.
Although the party was theoretically from 6-7 pm, we kind of went a bit earlier than that and stayed a bit later. They were definitely turning off lights and playing slow, boring, go-home music by the time the Fulbright crew finally headed out. Afterwards, I opted to go out to karaoke with the Yilan posse and a couple of Fulbright staff. Maya and I were the only Kaohsiung folks in attendance, but we represented to the best of our ability. We sang and danced and were generally silly for a full 3 hours, when our time ran up after a magnificent rendition of Gettin' Jiggy With It. Then we went out dancing! It was an exhausting night, but so good for me to get out what seemed to be a reserve of pent-up ridiculousness. Of course I am silly on a regular basis, but usually to a milder extent.
On Saturday, I spent the whole morning sleeping until the very last possible minute before I had to check out. As I was leaving, I noticed that the room I stayed in last time was open and had been vacated, so I snuck in real quick to get a picture of the spectacular Love Tub. Here it is, in all its heart-shaped glory:
Yes, that's the kind of hotel Fulbright puts us up in! It's pretty super.
In the afternoon, I wandered with Gered up to Danshui, which is north of Taipei, on the coast. We went to what seemed essentially to be the boardwalk. It was cobblestone, but definitely the same concept. With the exception of the university that we went and strolled around, the town of Danshui was a densely packed mass of humanity. On the bright side, there was Dunkin' Donuts at the Danshui train station! Their Boston Cream didn't quite live up to my expectations, but still: Dunkin' Donuts! Unhealthy fast food chains have got to be America's first or second biggest export, right up there with pop culture. No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're so silly.
Came back from Taipei Saturday night. Sunday I went to church and made some new friends (I don't think I've ever escaped a church service in Taiwan without making some new friends and probably getting a couple phone numbers), and I went out to lunch with this gal Vivian, after which we went to Costco! Haha I have never been to Costco in the U.S., I don't think, but now I have been in Taiwan. I think Vivian figured I would want to go because, I don't know, Costco is a bastion of American-ness in Taiwan? Also I kind of did really want to get lettuce. Taiwanese people don't really believe in raw vegetables, so salad is kind of rare here, and often consists of shredded cabbage and Thousand Island dressing. (Asia's favorite kind of salad dressing, right up there with straight mayonnaise!) So I got a giant thing of lettuce, and today I went out and bought tomatoes and chicken and Parmesan cheese and salad dressing, so now I have to eat chicken caesar salad like a fiend or else I won't finish the lettuce before it goes bad. I had some tonight and mmm I miss salads! And raw vegetables! Taiwanese food is pretty good, but the vegetables are rather few, and often are cooked into oily oblivion. Also, it's nice to cook my own meat so I know it isn't full of surprise fat globs. A lot of times meat here is covered in/chock full of fat, which I guess Taiwanese people think is super, but I think it's kind of gross.
Oh man, so this next weekend I don't have anything on Friday (no English Village this week!) so Gered and I are planning a trip to Hualien on the east coast. I think it's a sort of sleepy little town, but Taroko Gorge National Park is right next to it, which is supposed to be pretty spectacular, and has lots of hiking and majestic views and hot springs and whatnot. Also Patty says you can go whale watching in Hualien? Might be fun...
Today was tiring. No English Village this morning, but I still felt exhausted at the end of the school day. My kids are on such drastically different levels that it's impossible to work with everyone effectively. On one hand, I have kids like Ryan, who's from Pennsylvania and is bored to tears when I'm teaching everyone how to say things like "I feel happy." On the other hand, I have kids who know next to nothing. My troublemaker Kevin is at such a loss when we do workbook activities that he writes down random strings of letters. I sat down with him a little bit today, and I had to break out a little bit of Chinese, but we were making some progress. Unfortunately, we don't have the class time for me to sit down with each kid who's fallen behind, especially when some of the others are so far ahead. Several times today I was in the middle of helping some student who was having a lot of trouble when Patty steamed on to the next activity, obliging me to move on as well. I know that we can't pace the whole class to suit the lowest common denominator, because it's so low, but I wish there was more I could do. It makes me a little annoyed that they have me teaching the gifted kids to sing English songs in my free period, and I don't have enough time to work with the kids who really need help. Not that it isn't fun to teach the good students to sing Y.M.C.A., but the English Angels program is really just to make the school look good, not really to serve the students. And of course it's our priority to look good! ...LAME.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Great Moments in Elementary School
Heading into the bathroom between classes, I'm spotted by a couple girls. By the time I emerge, there is a veritable HORDE of them waiting for me outside the bathroom, and when they see me, they all freak out and flock around me, screaming my name. This has got to be what it's like to be a rock star.
It's going to be so weird when I go back to the States and people treat me like a normal person again...
It's going to be so weird when I go back to the States and people treat me like a normal person again...
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Sorry
I know, I haven't posted in forever. Life has been busy. Things that happened recently, as well as I remember:
School was canceled last Monday on account of typhoon. It turned out to be a generally nice day, fairly sunny and no hazardous weather. Nice forecasting.
My classroom was really dirty and still had junk in it left over from last year's teacher. Patty tried to get the administration to send someone to clean it, but to no avail. Solution: I came in on Friday afternoon (usually I'm off) in my very best cleaning clothes, and put in a little elbow grease. Spent an amazing amount of time just cleaning the door, which was practically painted with dirty old tape residue. Took a scrub brush to the wall, which was covered with footprints. Apparently people walk on it? During the break between classes, students saw me scrubbing the wall, and one little girl came up and asked "can I help you?" Sure thing, honey, I said. Some of the other girls asked the first girl if she thought they could help too, and she said they had to ask my for my permission first. (It's exchanges like this where secretly knowing Chinese is kind of delightful.) One by one, they politely asked in English if they could help me. Soon I had a whole brigade of 11-year-old girls with scrub brushes helping me clean. Patty got in on the action too, and got another student to take pictures of the two teachers on their knees scrubbing. I believe this was for the purpose of shaming the administration later.
I stuck around in the afternoon, making posters to decorate the classroom. It was a productive time for me, although it turned out later that the class was far less productive than usual. These particular students never have class with me, so Patty surmised that my presence was sufficiently distracting to keep them from getting their work done. Whoops.
Guo Laoshi (Patty) and Teacher Rebekah cleaning our dirty wall:
Teacher Rebekah hard at work making beautiful posters, a.k.a. distracting the students:
This past Sunday, I went with Patty, my host sister Grace, Steven (an English teacher at our school), and 4 other ETAs to Meinong, a Hakka village north of the city. I was told by several people that the Hakka people are famous for their paper umbrellas, and I should get one. I kind of expected to see a lot of handicrafts, and there were a number of handmade things in the little shops around the "village" (it wasn't really a village, it was just shops for tourists, I'm pretty sure). However, some of the shops had a lot of stuff that, face it, looked like it was straight out of Oriental Trading. Much of it didn't seem to even be related to local culture at all, like the ceramic statues of black jazz musicians. This same shop also featured a classy wooden statue of mating pigs. Taking photos was forbidden.
One shop in the village sold ceramic tea sets, but you could also throw your own pot there, so naturally we did. It's been forever since I attempted pottery, and I am woefully out of practice, but it was fun anyway. At the end you pick a glaze and give them a few characters to write on your pot, and they will fire it and glaze it and then mail it to you when it's done! I made a vase-like thing that I intend to be a chopstick holder for my classroom. I made a bunch of chopsticks with numbers on them (each student in the class has a number), so when I want to call on someone in class, I pick a chopstick and that student has to answer the question. It keeps things fair, and keeps everybody a little bit scared, so it's good.
After throwing pots, we had a lunch of traditional Hakka noodles. I have had a lot of special local noodles in different places in China and Taiwan, and I have to say that I don't really differentiate that much. They are all noodley. However, my Taiwanese friends made a big deal about the specialness of the Hakka noodles. I'm not sure why they are special, but they were pretty good. Anyway, after lunch we went and picked lemons from Patty's farm. Patty recently bought a little piece of property out in the countryside that has lemon trees growing on it, and she kind of wants to retire there and have a nice little lemon farm. The farm was looking a little rough on Sunday - there isn't anybody actively maintaining it - but we had a fun time picking lemons anyhow. At school on Tuesday I had an interesting discussion with Steven about lemons. I told him that our lemons weren't ripe because they were still green, and he said no, lemons are always green. Umm no, lemons are traditionally yellow, I said. No, he said, limes are yellow. Lemons are green. I disagreed. In America, I said, lemons are definitely yellow and limes are definitely green, but he was adamant that it was the other way around. Lemons are green! Limes are yellow! Up is down and down is up! This is a crazy country, I said.
School is pretty normal...some of my classes are amazing, some are awful. Twice yesterday I had to make a student sit at the *special desk,* a.k.a. the desk that's all by itself in the very front of the classroom by the blackboard. I am still trying to work out exactly what I should be doing with my handful of completely uncooperative students. I have one kid who never opens his book or tries to follow along with the lesson, even when prompted repeatedly. He does, however, get out of his chair and wander around, sometimes leaving the classroom. The other students told me that he has some kind of problem, and Patty says that she thinks he has ADHD and his medication is not working. I'm really not sure how to get through to a student like that, especially since nothing I say or do to him seems to register.
I have a few bad classes, where a number of students have behavioral problems, and the class performance seems to suffer, but some of my classes are just fabulous. Tuesday morning I had a few classes in a row that were just torture, but then in the afternoon the kids were so sweet and so attentive that it changed my mood completely. In one class, we played a game that I made up on the spot: I wrote pairs of words on the board that differed only by one vowel (bad and bed, for example). Then I covered my eyes, and Patty would point to a word. The students would all say the word that she was pointing to, and I had to guess which word it was. This was surprisingly tricky, and there was a huge reaction every time I guessed wrong. A number of times I guessed "cap" when they were trying to say "cape" (pronouncing long A correctly is a perennial difficulty), and by the second or third time this happened the kids were like "NO, TEACHER! C-A-P-EEEEEEEE! Augghhhhh" It was hilarious, and an interesting illustration for the kids of how their speech comes across to a foreigner.
We played another good game in my band class (a.k.a. the smart class) last Thursday...they finished all their work early, so I had them play the snowball fight game. I discovered this game because it was mentioned in a newspaper article about our superb kindergarten teacher back home. The band class only has 30 kids, and the 7 top students were missing class to go to some invitational lecture or something for top students, so the class was nice and small, plus all of my spotlight-hogging star students were gone. It seemed like a great opportunity to let the other students do something a little crazy and have a chance to talk some more. Each pair of students brainstormed the most interesting word they could think of, and wrote it on two pieces of paper, once in English and once in Chinese. Then they balled up the papers and for 5 minutes we had a boys vs. girls "snowball fight" with them, after which everybody had to pick up a paper and find the person with the matching definition. Afterwards, each pair had to introduce their word to the class. Then we played another game where one student throws a ball to another and asks, "What does ___ mean?" and the student has to answer or else they are out. We used the words from the snowball fight, which was hilarious because they were so random. Some examples: organization, scorpionfish, Ancient Egypt, and, of course (we are in 5th grade here), "underwear." Underwear was definitely the hit vocab word of the day.
Today we had to do a special English Village event where the principals from all the Kaohsiung City schools came to see our English Village. We were supposed to perform the English Village dialogues with them, but this turned out to be kind of a lie, because of course it would be a terrible loss of face if one's spoken English is not very good, which is true of many school administrators. Whatever. On the bright side, they fed us twice! And called us aliens. Well, specifically, one of the principals was talking about us to everybody else, and she said that we were all E.T., which ostensibly stands for English Teacher, but everybody knows E.T., even in Taiwan. My feeling is: foreigner, alien, close enough. In Chinese they are very similar words; foreigner is waiguoren (outside-country-person) and alien is waixingren (outside-planet-person). I might as well be an extraterrestrial for the way people here react to me sometimes.
Ooh, so I've started swimming at my school on Tuesdays after class, because Gered's host sister Isabella takes swimming lessons at my school then. I get to swim with her and the swim team, and it's fabulous. The swim coach is an awesome lady. Also, one of the teachers in my teacher class (also the mother of one of my band kids) invited me to come with her to a bellydancing class that the teachers have after school on Mondays. I had never bellydanced before, but it was pretty fun. The other teachers were very encouraging, and seemed highly impressed by my proficiency at the booty-shaking move. I suppose this is where my comparatively large American rear is an asset. (zing!)
On Monday I also went shopping after bellydancing...we've been invited to a party in Taipei hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 10/10, Taiwanese Independence Day. The invitation said cocktail dress for ladies, so I had to go on a quest to find one. First I tried a dress-rental place, thinking it might be cheaper to rent than buy. Wrong! The only dress that I like much at the rental place was over US$200 to rent, which seemed not worth it for a single-night event. Instead I wandered home, stopping in any store that looked promising. I was feeling discouraged, since it seems like Taiwanese dresses come in my size, but not my shape. Finally I found a dress at a little boutique with an adorably effusive little saleslady. When I came out of the dressing room in the dress, she practically squealed, hao ke'ai! (how cute!) Then I discovered that it was 75% off, since the fall merchandise was coming in so all summer clothing was crazily on sale. Total damage: US$40. Much better. Still need shoes and a bag that's not my giant everyday one...that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Last time in English Angels we tried to learn "I Just Can't Wait to be King," and it was wayyyyy too fast for them and the words were too hard, so I promised I would find a replacement that is easier to sing. I'm thinking of "My Girl." Our best song by far is "Y.M.C.A.," though. Now my kids are all prepared to attend American weddings.
Ahhhhh must sleep! Look at the sacrifices that I make for you.
School was canceled last Monday on account of typhoon. It turned out to be a generally nice day, fairly sunny and no hazardous weather. Nice forecasting.
My classroom was really dirty and still had junk in it left over from last year's teacher. Patty tried to get the administration to send someone to clean it, but to no avail. Solution: I came in on Friday afternoon (usually I'm off) in my very best cleaning clothes, and put in a little elbow grease. Spent an amazing amount of time just cleaning the door, which was practically painted with dirty old tape residue. Took a scrub brush to the wall, which was covered with footprints. Apparently people walk on it? During the break between classes, students saw me scrubbing the wall, and one little girl came up and asked "can I help you?" Sure thing, honey, I said. Some of the other girls asked the first girl if she thought they could help too, and she said they had to ask my for my permission first. (It's exchanges like this where secretly knowing Chinese is kind of delightful.) One by one, they politely asked in English if they could help me. Soon I had a whole brigade of 11-year-old girls with scrub brushes helping me clean. Patty got in on the action too, and got another student to take pictures of the two teachers on their knees scrubbing. I believe this was for the purpose of shaming the administration later.
I stuck around in the afternoon, making posters to decorate the classroom. It was a productive time for me, although it turned out later that the class was far less productive than usual. These particular students never have class with me, so Patty surmised that my presence was sufficiently distracting to keep them from getting their work done. Whoops.
Guo Laoshi (Patty) and Teacher Rebekah cleaning our dirty wall:
Teacher Rebekah hard at work making beautiful posters, a.k.a. distracting the students:
This past Sunday, I went with Patty, my host sister Grace, Steven (an English teacher at our school), and 4 other ETAs to Meinong, a Hakka village north of the city. I was told by several people that the Hakka people are famous for their paper umbrellas, and I should get one. I kind of expected to see a lot of handicrafts, and there were a number of handmade things in the little shops around the "village" (it wasn't really a village, it was just shops for tourists, I'm pretty sure). However, some of the shops had a lot of stuff that, face it, looked like it was straight out of Oriental Trading. Much of it didn't seem to even be related to local culture at all, like the ceramic statues of black jazz musicians. This same shop also featured a classy wooden statue of mating pigs. Taking photos was forbidden.
One shop in the village sold ceramic tea sets, but you could also throw your own pot there, so naturally we did. It's been forever since I attempted pottery, and I am woefully out of practice, but it was fun anyway. At the end you pick a glaze and give them a few characters to write on your pot, and they will fire it and glaze it and then mail it to you when it's done! I made a vase-like thing that I intend to be a chopstick holder for my classroom. I made a bunch of chopsticks with numbers on them (each student in the class has a number), so when I want to call on someone in class, I pick a chopstick and that student has to answer the question. It keeps things fair, and keeps everybody a little bit scared, so it's good.
After throwing pots, we had a lunch of traditional Hakka noodles. I have had a lot of special local noodles in different places in China and Taiwan, and I have to say that I don't really differentiate that much. They are all noodley. However, my Taiwanese friends made a big deal about the specialness of the Hakka noodles. I'm not sure why they are special, but they were pretty good. Anyway, after lunch we went and picked lemons from Patty's farm. Patty recently bought a little piece of property out in the countryside that has lemon trees growing on it, and she kind of wants to retire there and have a nice little lemon farm. The farm was looking a little rough on Sunday - there isn't anybody actively maintaining it - but we had a fun time picking lemons anyhow. At school on Tuesday I had an interesting discussion with Steven about lemons. I told him that our lemons weren't ripe because they were still green, and he said no, lemons are always green. Umm no, lemons are traditionally yellow, I said. No, he said, limes are yellow. Lemons are green. I disagreed. In America, I said, lemons are definitely yellow and limes are definitely green, but he was adamant that it was the other way around. Lemons are green! Limes are yellow! Up is down and down is up! This is a crazy country, I said.
School is pretty normal...some of my classes are amazing, some are awful. Twice yesterday I had to make a student sit at the *special desk,* a.k.a. the desk that's all by itself in the very front of the classroom by the blackboard. I am still trying to work out exactly what I should be doing with my handful of completely uncooperative students. I have one kid who never opens his book or tries to follow along with the lesson, even when prompted repeatedly. He does, however, get out of his chair and wander around, sometimes leaving the classroom. The other students told me that he has some kind of problem, and Patty says that she thinks he has ADHD and his medication is not working. I'm really not sure how to get through to a student like that, especially since nothing I say or do to him seems to register.
I have a few bad classes, where a number of students have behavioral problems, and the class performance seems to suffer, but some of my classes are just fabulous. Tuesday morning I had a few classes in a row that were just torture, but then in the afternoon the kids were so sweet and so attentive that it changed my mood completely. In one class, we played a game that I made up on the spot: I wrote pairs of words on the board that differed only by one vowel (bad and bed, for example). Then I covered my eyes, and Patty would point to a word. The students would all say the word that she was pointing to, and I had to guess which word it was. This was surprisingly tricky, and there was a huge reaction every time I guessed wrong. A number of times I guessed "cap" when they were trying to say "cape" (pronouncing long A correctly is a perennial difficulty), and by the second or third time this happened the kids were like "NO, TEACHER! C-A-P-EEEEEEEE! Augghhhhh" It was hilarious, and an interesting illustration for the kids of how their speech comes across to a foreigner.
We played another good game in my band class (a.k.a. the smart class) last Thursday...they finished all their work early, so I had them play the snowball fight game. I discovered this game because it was mentioned in a newspaper article about our superb kindergarten teacher back home. The band class only has 30 kids, and the 7 top students were missing class to go to some invitational lecture or something for top students, so the class was nice and small, plus all of my spotlight-hogging star students were gone. It seemed like a great opportunity to let the other students do something a little crazy and have a chance to talk some more. Each pair of students brainstormed the most interesting word they could think of, and wrote it on two pieces of paper, once in English and once in Chinese. Then they balled up the papers and for 5 minutes we had a boys vs. girls "snowball fight" with them, after which everybody had to pick up a paper and find the person with the matching definition. Afterwards, each pair had to introduce their word to the class. Then we played another game where one student throws a ball to another and asks, "What does ___ mean?" and the student has to answer or else they are out. We used the words from the snowball fight, which was hilarious because they were so random. Some examples: organization, scorpionfish, Ancient Egypt, and, of course (we are in 5th grade here), "underwear." Underwear was definitely the hit vocab word of the day.
Today we had to do a special English Village event where the principals from all the Kaohsiung City schools came to see our English Village. We were supposed to perform the English Village dialogues with them, but this turned out to be kind of a lie, because of course it would be a terrible loss of face if one's spoken English is not very good, which is true of many school administrators. Whatever. On the bright side, they fed us twice! And called us aliens. Well, specifically, one of the principals was talking about us to everybody else, and she said that we were all E.T., which ostensibly stands for English Teacher, but everybody knows E.T., even in Taiwan. My feeling is: foreigner, alien, close enough. In Chinese they are very similar words; foreigner is waiguoren (outside-country-person) and alien is waixingren (outside-planet-person). I might as well be an extraterrestrial for the way people here react to me sometimes.
Ooh, so I've started swimming at my school on Tuesdays after class, because Gered's host sister Isabella takes swimming lessons at my school then. I get to swim with her and the swim team, and it's fabulous. The swim coach is an awesome lady. Also, one of the teachers in my teacher class (also the mother of one of my band kids) invited me to come with her to a bellydancing class that the teachers have after school on Mondays. I had never bellydanced before, but it was pretty fun. The other teachers were very encouraging, and seemed highly impressed by my proficiency at the booty-shaking move. I suppose this is where my comparatively large American rear is an asset. (zing!)
On Monday I also went shopping after bellydancing...we've been invited to a party in Taipei hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 10/10, Taiwanese Independence Day. The invitation said cocktail dress for ladies, so I had to go on a quest to find one. First I tried a dress-rental place, thinking it might be cheaper to rent than buy. Wrong! The only dress that I like much at the rental place was over US$200 to rent, which seemed not worth it for a single-night event. Instead I wandered home, stopping in any store that looked promising. I was feeling discouraged, since it seems like Taiwanese dresses come in my size, but not my shape. Finally I found a dress at a little boutique with an adorably effusive little saleslady. When I came out of the dressing room in the dress, she practically squealed, hao ke'ai! (how cute!) Then I discovered that it was 75% off, since the fall merchandise was coming in so all summer clothing was crazily on sale. Total damage: US$40. Much better. Still need shoes and a bag that's not my giant everyday one...that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Last time in English Angels we tried to learn "I Just Can't Wait to be King," and it was wayyyyy too fast for them and the words were too hard, so I promised I would find a replacement that is easier to sing. I'm thinking of "My Girl." Our best song by far is "Y.M.C.A.," though. Now my kids are all prepared to attend American weddings.
Ahhhhh must sleep! Look at the sacrifices that I make for you.
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