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').