Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Taiwan, one of the many countries on Earth which has barely heard of the holiday. One of the weird things about celebrating Thanksgiving in Taiwan was the fact that, unlike Halloween which was some-what acknowledged in stores, and was well known among all of the foreign teachers, Thanksgiving is a strictly American (and Canadian) tradition, which meant it wasn't only new to my students, but also to most of my friends.  While the original intent was for the American teachers to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for our group, those plans were eventually extinguished with the realization that none of us has an oven, no one knew how to find a turkey here, and no one had time to cook because we all teach until 9pm on Thursdays.  Plan B was a modification on tradition which included the gathering of our "Taiwan family", and the consumption of a delicious (though non-traditional) Italian dinner.  It served its purpose well.  This year I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities that my life has awarded me, the bravery it took to leave my comfort zone, and the support I have been given by friends and family (both here and in the US), I am very blessed indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving from my CEI02 class, proudly displaying our hand-print turkeys.

The big update from school this week is that I had my first observed lesson from head-office on Tuesday.  Each of the Shane schools in Taiwan is observed by our head-office supervisors [at least] 3 times a year, and in each visit two lessons by two of the school's teachers are observed.  For small schools like mine this system means there is the possibility of the same teacher being observed every time.  Observations cause a stressful atmosphere in the school, as a lot of pressure is put on the manager to showcase a productive and high-functioning school, the TA's to showcase organization, and the teachers to demonstrate competence in the classroom.  The irony in such a stressful environment is that the teachers tend to be the least worried about the observation, and it is focused on us.  Most teachers understand that an observation is an opportunity to hear what we are doing well, and a chance to get advice about what we can improve upon.  As the newest teacher of the school I knew that I was due for an observation the next time head office came to town, however, I did find it frustrating that I was notified only 24 hours in advance when it is common to receive 1-3 weeks warning, in order to allow the teacher ample time to complete the paperwork (as I found out in a discussion with my observer, he had sent notification to my manager over a week prior, but communication issues and likely a lack of e-mail checking caused a delay in the message).  My observation went well, and I was complimented on my fun personality, good rapport with the students, and my ability to address the target language in an entertaining manner.

Outside of work this was not a particularly noteworthy week.  On Tuesday I had my first guitar lesson, which went well.  I am (as are most beginners) pretty bad at it, but I can now "play" 8 cords! In other news, I finally felt the urge to buy a comforter for my bed.  Since arriving in Taiwan, the thought of buying something to make me warmer sounded like a terrible idea, considering the temperature has been around 85-90 degrees Fahrenheit every day since I arrived, however the nights have dipped to a cold enough temperature to have something warmer than the thin blanket I have used for 3 months.  Don't let this deceive you, the daytime temperature is still 80-85 degrees, so it is plenty warm here (doesn't look like I'll be having a white Christmas this year).

Speaking of Christmas, I have received my first care-package since arriving in Taiwan (from my parents), which was Christmas-themed.  Along with my game-bag (which I am incredibly excited to have in Taiwan because it means I can start playing Bananagrams with my students and start hosting game nights with my friends), it was full of Christmas decorations (including an artificial tree which I intend on setting up on my desk) and presents for me and my students which still have a month to wait before they can be opened).  Being in a primarily Buddhist/Taoist country, Christmas is not a 'big deal' here, meaning that most businesses remain open (including schools).  Because Shane schools hire a great deal of foreign teachers we were given the choice of whether or not we would be available to teach on Christmas, and we opted for a day off so we could spend the day together, but many other buxibans don't have this luxury.
This week's unrelated thought pertains to superstition, because as any foreigner will learn when living here, the set of superstitions believed by the Taiwanese are very different from those believed in western culture.  In the past I have mentioned the relationship between the number 'four' and the word 'death', which causes an avoidance of using that number for floor numbers, but that is just skimming the surface of these superstitions.  One of the biggest categories of superstition involve ghosts.  It is believed that whistling at night can attract ghosts, swimming in a lake/ocean during ghost month can put you at risk of being drowned by ghosts, seeing the reflection of a coffin at a funeral can cause you to be possessed by ghosts, and other various activities which cause various ghost-related responses.  The superstition that I have found to be most interesting this week (because it would be completely unacceptable in the US) is the superstition about facial mole hair.  It is believed to be good luck to grow out your mole hair, so on occasion you will see inches of hair sprouting from the middle of a person's face.  Facial hair isn't as common in Taiwan (in part, I'm sure, due to the superstition that un-groomed facial hair or abnormally shaped facial hair (particularly moustaches) is bad luck) so it is very noticeable when you see an individual with long mole hairs.

Expenses

Moving to Taiwan has been one of those experiences that has helped prove to me that there are few limits to what I can do if I am motivated.  In an attempt to continue that state of self-discovery I bought a guitar this week, and I start lessons on Tuesday.  In the past I have studied the piano and the clarinet for brief periods of my life, but I have never been particularly instrumentally-minded, however right now I am completely motivated to learn.  While it isn't much of a feat, I have learned 6 notes (not cords) on my own, and have taught myself to play Ode to Joy.  My personal goal is to learn how to play Jingle Bells before Christmas so that while I take my students caroling I will be able to play along with their singing.

Going along with the semi-major investments of my week, I also bought a new digital camera, because mine has been broken for almost two months now.  While I am incredibly excited about this purchase, and look forward to recording plenty of memories with it, I have to say that camera shopping in Taiwan was a very frustrating experience.  Here I am, on a continent known for technology, and the majority of my camera options were either low-level featureless cameras for 3000NT (approximately $100) or over-the-top cameras for 15000NT (approximately $500), it was very difficult to find a balance.  I settled on a Sony Cyber-Shot WX10, which, despite my previous claim was actually a reasonable price (though it was, admittedly, the most expensive camera I have ever purchased).

It sure is a nice thing my life here revolves around work so I can afford these 'lavish' purchases.  Speaking of which, This was a pretty rewarding week at work.  One of the nice things about working for Shane Schools is that I am provided with the materials to teach and test my classes, but I am given the freedom to design my own lesson plans and use my own games, activities, and teaching techniques.  The teacher who taught before me however, opted against this pre-established set of supplies for one of his classes (now CEA03 and the most advanced class in the school), and, as his replacement I was expected to continue designing my own course guides, vocabulary requirements, classroom reader (I selected a collection of Grimm Fairy Tales), and midterm/final exams (on top of each day's lesson plans).  While I initially worried that this would be overwhelming, I have found the freedom to design everything about this class really rewarding.  This week I distributed my first self-designed test, and was very happy to see how well my students did.  

This weekend has been the rainiest weather I have seen in Taiwan since typhoon season ended in September.  While there hasn't been excessive downpour, there has been a light drizzle for most of the last 3 days.  The benefit of this rain is that it has settled the temperature to something more suitable to my tastes (around 18 degrees Celsius/64 degrees Fahrenheit), but it ruined several plans for the weekend and seemed to set an over-arching negative mood in people.  Setting that aside though, we still managed an enjoyable weekend.  Friday night was spent in Taichung enjoying another night of live music provided by the talented teacher community in Taiwan (concerts are really fun when you know the bands).  Saturday was spent in Yuanlin, and today was spent in Changhua, neither of which were highly exciting days, but both of which were perfect because of that.

Thought of the week: why hasn't American adopted a train system similar to Asia? While the US has trains, subways, and even has high speed trains like Asia, we don't utilize them like we could.  In Taiwan there are several train lines which run through the majority of the country, which gives me the access from here in Changhua to almost anywhere.  Should I find myself in a hurry to get around the island I also have the option of taking the high speed rail (HSR) which could could take me the distance of Taipei to Kaohsiung (approximately the full distance of the island which is close to 345km) in 1.5 hours.

The Changhua train station.

Chris and I, excited that our HSR has arrived.

11.11 make a wish!

I am completely exhausted this week.  I have, on several occasions this week, made the foolish decision to stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning, which has left me under-rested.  Most of the nights where I stayed up late I was being productive by cleaning, doing schoolwork, or spending time with friends (which reminds me, this week I accomplished a Taiwan milestone: during one of my late nights I learned how to drive a scooter, so now I will be prepared for when I purchase my scooter in December), but regardless of the reasoning, it has severely affected my energy levels (so the goal of this next week is not to repeat the same 'mistake'). 

Sometimes it is evident that the schools of Taiwan are not run in the same fashion as the schools in the US, the last two weeks have been proof of that.  As I have mentioned before, my school is one of four schools operated under the same owner, and while we are separate schools, we function together as a "self-sufficient unit".  What I mean by this is that we don't bring-in outside teachers as substitutes, but instead are shuffled about by our managers to cover classes when a teacher is sick or away on holiday.  The upside to this is that all teachers will have received the same training, will be familiar with the class lay-outs and class ranks, and can be paid easily (plus, it can be nice to get a little extra money for picking up extra hours)...the downside is that when a teacher gets sick during a week where another teacher has booked holiday, the schools find themselves understaffed.  This has been the problem for the last two weeks, as one of our teachers has found himself seriously ill at a time where several teachers have booked back-to-back holidays.  As a result, the rest of the teachers in the four schools have been taking on the role of substitute teacher in several extra classes, I myself have had my busiest week since starting here with three extra classes and an extra private student.  The best thing about being a substitute teacher in my school (which I acknowledge is not true for most substitute teachers in the US) is that students respond well to a new teacher because they bring new games and a new atmosphere to the classroom, so while it was a lot of work, I really enjoyed my teaching week.

The most frustrating aspect of my week was the fact that I was placed on a direct deposit system for my paychecks.  While most people would consider this a good thing, I found it left me in a rather unfortunate situation.  Payday is on the 10th of every month, so on Saturday I activated my bankcard and went to withdraw some money, only to discover that my bank account was empty and, since it was the weekend there was no one I could contact to remedy the situation.  

Despite my unfortunate financial situation (which could have been remedied with my US ATM card, but I didn't want to undergo the $30+ service charge for making a withdrawal again) I had a lovely weekend in Tainan with several of my friends.  Tainan is a decently large city located about 2.5 hours (by train) south of Changhua.  We stayed in the Anping district, which used to be an island off the coast of Tainan which played a role in international trade, and has now, due to sandbar changes caused by the ocean, become part of the mainland. One of the points of interest in Anping which we visited today is the formerly Dutch fortress: Fort Zeelandia.  We also explored the flower night market (where I ate chicken cockscomb for the first time (and promptly added it to the list of foods I would rather not consume again)), a day market, a free radio concert by a band called Cosmos People, and KTV.

The group at Fort Zeelandia.

This week I have spent a lot of time listening to Chinese pop music (courtesy to Asian MTV and KTV).    One thing that is interesting about Asian pop music (notice how I do not narrow this statement to Chinese music itself, because it includes, at a minimum, Japanese pop (J-POP) and Korean pop (K-POP)) is the prominence of boy (and girl) bands with similar style to the 1990's American and British boy bands (like the Backstreet Boys or 'Nsync).  The music videos feature all members of the band in coordinated outfits doing synchronized dances to catchy (but often lyrically unintelligent) dance songs.  Another common feature of Asian pop music is to have a few sporadic English words intermingled with the singers' native language as well.  Despite fitting into a genre of music which for me is outdated, I find Mando-pop (Mandarin pop) very entertaining to listen to.  One of my favorite Mando-pop singers right now is Jolin Tsai (I particularly enjoy her song 'fantasy').

"I'm so happy you came to Yuanlin"

I wish I knew why I am so tired today, apparently my relaxing weekend has taken "taking it easy" one step too far and completely drained me of energy.
A few things happened this week that helped establish the fact that I live in Taiwan (yes, it did take almost 3 months for this, but that is a normal time-frame).  I received my Alien Resident Card (ARC) which is an identification card issued to foreigners to verify that our presence in the country is acknowledged and legal (so, unlike the horror stories I have heard, particularly relating to Taiwanese Kindergartens, I can not be spontaneously deported now).  Having an ARC means that I don't need to rely on my passport and travel visa as my sole means of identification here (it also means that I have been issued a Chinese name which I can't read).  Along with my alien residency being established, I have also been able to open a bank account this week, which will make saving money a lot easier.
As I mentioned, after the hectic weekend we had in Taipei last week, we decided to have a low-key weekend.  A few of us visited the biggest town in Taiwan: Yuanlin which is home to one of the four schools owned by my manager.  Yuanlin is still within Changhua County, but looks significantly nicer than Changhua City.  We enjoyed an afternoon of KTV (which is a completely different experience when there are only four people, there is a lot more freedom with song selection, and a lot more "singing time" rather than waiting around for the microphone to get back to you).  I discovered, in an unfortunate but comical way, that singing Don McLean's 'Vincent' is not my forte.  Afterwards we went to a wonderful steakhouse (which I was not expecting to find in Taiwan, but while this was the first steakhouse I have been to here, I have noticed they are not a rarity), and finished the night in a local bar.

Finishing the night at HiRelax

Sometimes I come across concepts here, and I wonder why they have not been popularized in the states.  This thought comes to my mind most often when I order a drink from any of the street vendors, and receive a cup with a firm plastic seal across the top.  I'm not talking about a flimsy plastic lid, like you would get on any fast food drink cup, I am talking about a spill-proof plastic firmly pressed to the top of your cup, which must be pierced with a plastic straw to access the cup's contents (I admit, that makes things sound more intense than they are, but I really like the idea so the intensity is warranted). The benefit of serving drinks like this is that the cup can be transported without worrying that half of the liquid will be unintentionally spilled.

GeorgPeck pearl milk tea (yum!).  The 'lid' is the aforementioned plastic wrap 

Speaking of drinks, another interesting difference between American and Asian food cultures involves the presence of drinks in restaurant settings.  It is likely caused by the popularity of street vendor restaurants in Taiwan which specialize in only one thing, but it is common to need to buy your food and drinks from separate locations if you wish to consume both during the same meal.  For some of the restaurants that do provide drinks, rather than providing a full drink menu they may have a communal tea "bucket" which contains a cold, sweet tea which customers may help themselves to for free (personally I am a fan on the free teas, but I know some people don't enjoy them much).  
Hope everyone back home remembered to set their clock back for daylight savings time.  Here in Taiwan (and all of Asia, I believe), daylight savings is no longer observed.  The practice of setting the clocks forward and backward to adjust daylight hours has been practiced in many countries at some point in history, but is now practiced in a relatively small number of countries.  This time change now means there is a 14-hour time difference between Taiwan and mid-west time.