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.