Weekend Trips, Field Trips...trips, trips, trips!

It's nice to shake things up a bit, it helps avoid monotony, and this week was exactly the change of pace I needed.

For starters, while most of the school week was fairly typical, the highlight would have to be my first school field trip.  I took the school's intensive classes (CEI03 and CEI09) on a trip to the high speed rail (HSR) station to teach them how to use the trains and what different areas of the station are called in English (like elevators, tickets booths, and information desks).  I really enjoyed the trip, it was nice to deal with the kids outside of the classroom, but don't let anyone lie tell you differently, simultaneously teaching student's at such vastly different levels is hard (okay, so I don't think anyone was going to argue with that).  My solution to the levels problem was to mainly conduct the lesson through worksheets which translated pictures and Chinese characters into English, but when in doubt, I have learned that songs always work with younger students of all levels, and watching them sing "I've been working on the railroad", was probably as entertaining for everyone who walked by as it was for me.

Look at the youngsters! My CEI03 and CEI09 classes at the HSR station

Also among the highlight reels for my school week was the start of my first evenly shared class, but more excitingly, it was my first chance to teach day 1 to a beginner class which means that, while most of the students have probably been subjected to English in kindergarten and Chinese school, I am probably their first foreign teacher ever!

I feel like I haven't had a weekend trip in ages, so much to my relief I got a chance to visit Tainan this weekend.  Tainan is one of my favorite cities here, and it wasn't entirely because the temperature was around 25 degrees Celsius (which is significantly warmer than Changhua has been recently), though that was a bonus, and it allowed us to spend most of the night on the beach (telling ghost stories and practicing our cheer-leading moves, a logical combination).  Tainan is such an old city that there is so history, and I won't be able to do this trip justice in my writing (but of course, I'll leave you with a summary).  We began our temple tours at the Chihkan Tower (also called Fort Providentia), a fort built by the Dutch in 1653.  The original site of the temples were leveled over a century ago in an earthquake, but the site has been rebuilt and the grounds are garnished with stone turtles, a garden, and banyan trees.  Seeing as it is a temple city, we also visited several of the key temples, including the Confucius temple which was built in 1665 and is the oldest Confucian temple in Taiwan, the God of War temple, which was originally built for the worship of Guan Di, the patron saint of soldiers, and the Beiji temple.  One of my favorite sites, which  was surprising to me, it is called the Tree House, and is an old shed which has been taken over by giant banyan trees whose roofs cover the walls and non-existent ceiling.

A banyan tree growing through the Tree House

Informational tidbit of the week: A lot of people when they first arrive in Taiwan notice a rather surprising surplus of swastikas among the food stands and temples of various cities.  Upon closer examination, these people eventually realize that they are not actually looking at a swastika, but are looking at an ancient Buddhist symbol which has been used for about 2500 years (whereas, the image of the swastika as used by Germany was not used until 1920).  In Chinese countries, the reverse swastika (called a sauvastika) marks a Buddhist building, and, when used on a food stall, marks vegetarian food.

Found in a temple, this is a Buddhist suavastika