We wish you a Merry Christmas

The heart of the holiday season has come and gone, and what a merry Christmas it was! I must say, I was a little worried about spending the holidays so far away from home, but, entirely courtesy of my amazing family and friends, I had a wonderful Christmas.  I spend Christmas eve with my co-teachers and school's TA staff at one of the universities in Taichung, where we listened to a Christian church service (in Chinese), sang hymns (mainly 'silent night' repeatedly), and counted down Christmas day with the ringing of the bells 100 times (it is tradition to count each 'dong' of the bell and then make a wish at the 100th ring).  Christmas day was spent with my closest friends in Taiwan, who I call my "Taiwan family'.  The day was spent in Yuanlin, where we started with a steak lunch, then proceeded to one of the teacher's houses for our gift exchange (we played Secret Santa amongst the teachers, and may I just say that the pictures and trinkets I received from my gift-giver almost made me cry, they were so well thought out), consumed some mulled wine (that was my first time ever drinking mulled wine, why have I never been introduced to this Christmas tradition?) and snacks, and played some games.  Overall it was a perfect Christmas day.  The next morning I was able to have a more traditional Christmas day, thanks to the wonders of technology I spent some time with my family at the cabin and enjoyed opening family presents which have been patiently waiting for me to open for a month (when you are a child your parents monitor your presents to make sure you don't open them, when you are an adult you have to monitor yourself, it is tough work).  Also, for anyone who was worried about it, Santa found me out here and was able to fill my stocking!

The Homei teaching staff - 'ringing' in Christmas day in Taichung

My 'Taiwan family'

Seeing as it is the week of Christmas, I also got to bring the holidays into the classroom.  Monday was a theme-teaching day with the CEI classes, so my co-teacher and I combined classes and hosted a singing competition, decorated gingerbread man cookies, and watched the claymation Rudolph (for me it just isn't Christmas without that movie).  In each of my classes (courtesy of my wonderful mother) I was also able to present the students with stockings filled with 'American candy' (tootsie rolls and laffy taffy).  Christmas may not be a big holiday here, but it was still fun to subject the Taiwanese children to some of our 'quirky' traditions.

As much as I would like to overlook the negative parts of my week, it would be skewing reality too much.  The first, and most unfortunate thing that has happened this week is that my brand new camera   went missing (almost certainly at the night market).  I have filed a missing property report with the Changhua police department, and now I am sitting patiently, hoping it is returned to me.  I also managed to lose my keys on Christmas day (this story has a much happier ending however).  On the taxi ride back from Yuanlin, I joked to myself about leaving my keys behind, but I hadn't, and I pulled them out to prove it.  My keys must have fallen as I was getting out of the taxi however, because as soon as I stepped out, they were no where to be found.  As I was having a borderline break-down in the middle of the street, my friends called the taxi back (who originally told us he he didn't have the keys, but agreed to drive back when we offered to pay him) and lucky me (though luck had nothing to do with it, since I had already confirmed that they keys weren't with me), we found them in the taxi right away! The real memory in this 'unfortunately adventure' is the fact that the taxi driver was so apologetic for not having found the keys by himself, that he refused to let us pay him for his troubles, which goes to show either the spirit of the holidays or the good-nature of Taiwan.  Final bit of negative is that I'm getting sicker...I am much more congested this week.

My random thought of the the week involves Taiwanese eating customs.  In Taiwan, nothing is considered a finger food (because, as is logical, our hands are dirty, though not everyone is strict with this), so 'finger foods' such as hamburgers or chicken wings pose a complication here.  I was reminded of this tonight when, at dinner, our basket of forks and knives was also accompanied with plastic gloves.  We ate at a hamburger restaurant, and, because that is a food which is common to pick up, the solution is to cover your hands first (pretty clever if you ask me).  The aversion to touching foods is also noticeable when purchasing fruits, which are always sold with skewers so you can stab your food instead of picking it up (as I discovered this week, that is an exceptionally difficult way to each pomegranate seeds), when buying street food which always comes in paper wrapping (and often with a skewer again), and when buying cakes (which are sold with the knife for cutting pieces, and the plates and tiny forks for eating).

Unfortunately the countdown to Christmas has restarted, and since I don't want to count the next 358 days, I'll do the brief countdown to New Years, in which the festivities will commence in: 1 day!

Its the end of the world as we know it?

Congratulations! The fact that you are reading this means we have all survived December 21st, 2012: 'the end of the world'.
If I were being 100% honest with myself, I would say that this has not been my favorite week.  I'm feeling a little out of sorts right now, likely for one (or more of the following reasons):
*this past week was a 6-day work week rather than 5 (in order to have new year's eve and new year's day off from work we had to hold an extra day of classes, so that fell on Saturday)
*two of my friends went home this week (goodbye Zach and Wendy)
*It is almost Christmas, but Taiwan is lacking the level of holiday-spirit which I am accustomed to (I have my tree, and I am excited about the pile of presents and cards which are waiting under it, but it is the first time I haven't been home for Christmas day, and that is a weird feeling)
*I am sick (its just a minor cough, but as my friends warned me, something about the first time you are ill in Taiwan is more crippling than it would be back home, and this cough has affected my sleep patterns, eating patterns, and has caused a dull pain in my eyes) which usually wouldn't bother me too much, except that teaching small children, particularly teaching them Christmas Carols, can be straining on a healthy throat, and the process keeps sending me into coughing fits
Don't get me wrong, I'm in Taiwan, which means that overall there is more good than bad happening in my life.  This week I bought my first scooter (moped), which makes me a Taiwan Adult (or a proper nerd, depending on how you look at it).  It may not be the motorcycle I have always talked of wanting, but it is the closest I have ever come, so I'll take it!  I have really enjoyed my new-found means of exploring the city, it gives me a chance of actually learning my way around Changhua.  Also in my list of exciting purchases are a hot plate (so I can finally cook in my apartment), a teapot (first one I have ever owned, and with it I just made my first cup of tea), and a cup of strawberries (I know what you are thinking, but I haven't had strawberries in at least 4 months, and they were delicious).
Comparison time! Did you know, that in Minnesota right now, the daytime temperature is 15 degrees Fahrenheit (with a windchill causing it to feel like 5 degrees).  The daytime temperature in Taiwan today was 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  The interesting thing about temperature is that it is all relative.  Have you ever noticed that as autumn begins and the temperature drops, we are quick to bundle up, but when spring begins and the temperature starts rising we are quick to shed our extra levels.  The temperature when we add layers, tends to be higher than the temperature when we start losing layers.  The bodies tolerance for cold increases the longer it has been exposed to it.  Most of the Taiwanese people I know have been wearing winter jackets and thick knit sweaters for weeks now, and wool scarves and hats have been on sale for months, but I can picture my friends and family shedding all of their winter-protective-gear if the temperature today rose to 70 degrees.  I've always had a good tolerance for the cold, but I'll admit, even I had on a long sleeve shirt, vest, jacket, scarf, and gloves today.

Taiwan 'family photo' - gathered around the Christmas tree

Countdown to Christmas: 2 days (wow, tomorrow is Christmas eve already!) Happy holidays!

A fond 'farewell'

As is the nature with most travelers, nothing is permanent.  For the majority of the teachers living in Taiwan, we understand that we will eventually move on from here, possibly to another school, or to another country, or back to our previous homelands.  The last of which is in the near future for one of my close friends here in Taiwan, who will be moving back to the states on Thursday after 3.5 years of living here.  By the time I leave, I know I will have seen the majority of my current friends leave, but this is my first real 'goodbye' since arriving, and unlike in the states where I have always been within a few hours of my friends, now when we part, they will be worlds away from me.  It certainly is hard to say 'goodbye' to people.  The optimist side of me adores the realization that I could meet up with friends all over the world now, while the realist side of me remembers just how expensive that will be (its a good thing my optimistic side always wins).
As some people have observed, I don't often reference people by names in my writing.  I don't know if it is to avoid sounding too repetitive each week, or if it is to avoid boring my readers with those 'you had to be there' moments, but it has been an intentional effort.  I have decided, however, that since this is primarily a means for me to remember my time here, that is the first of what I imagine will be a long list of 'dedication posts' where I will reflect upon some of the defining moments of my close friendships here.  Today's post is to Zach, one of the first friends that I made here in Taiwan.  Most of my memories of Taiwan thus far have involved this man, which makes whittling the list down to 'defining memories' more difficult.  Zach is credited with being the reason why I know my Chinese numbers, was the 'cause' of the first bee sting I've ever had, and was the person who introduced me to a lot of my favorite restaurants here in Taiwan, but I'd say the race for 'defining moment in a friendship' goes to either our 'non-dating date night' which consisted of dinner, waltzing lessons in front of the train station, and my first trip to Johnny Bar (where we were sold the worst smelling flower I have ever experienced and split a frozen potato) OR the night his scooter ran out of gas and we pushed it across the city to the nearest gas station and spent a lot of the walk reminiscing on other key moments in our friendship.  He's been a great friend these past few months, this move wouldn't have been the same without him.

Goodbye Zach

This 'goodbye', however, is coupled with a 'hello'.  On Friday we welcomed my manager's baby into the world.  He's a healthy, 3kg baby boy (who does not have an English name yet, and I don't know his Chinese name).  The biggest change that this will bring about (in my life) is that the school will be functioning without our manager for at least the next month.  While the TA staff has been trained in how to run the school while she is away, there will still be an interesting work dynamic for the next few weeks.
The most time consuming event of the week is actually an extension from last week, and that is because, as you know, Chanukkah lasts for eight nights.  As I previously mentioned, we began lighting Chanukkah candles last week on Saturday, and that has continued through the week, with the commencement of Chanukkah being sundown tonight.  We observed many [not-so-traditional] traditions of Chanukkah over the last several days, such as the traditional making of the Jewish puns, the traditional breaking of the candles, and the traditional sharing of the convenient store foods.  While these are obviously not 'Chanukkah traditions', they were a fun addition to the traditional candle lighting ceremony we observed each night.
This week's unrelated thought process reflects on the availability of certain products in Taiwan.  There are things that we accept as not only normal in our lives, but also as necessity, but we rarely think about how necessary other people would consider these items.  In other cultures, the items which westerners find essential, may hold very little importance at all, and I have found this to be the case especially when looking for certain toiletries here.  For example, there is no stigma attached to women having hairy legs in Taiwan, which means that products like shaving cream are not made for women (which has resulted in my use of men's shaving cream).  Another note that I doubt most people have considered (though women who enjoy travel should look into) is the prominence of tampons abroad.  In many countries, Taiwan included, pads are the popular choice for women, and the tampon selection is limited to one or two brands (quite a difference when compared to an aisle of similar products in any US store).  Some of my male friends have also commented on the limited number of deodorants/antiperspirants designed for men in Taiwan (I have not found this to be the case for women's deodorants/antiperspirants, though I have noticed that the selection of products for females contains far more spray products and far fewer roll-on products that I am used to).  This is only the skimmed surface of the differences between toiletry shopping in Taiwan versus the US, but overall the differences don't matter, a good traveler learns to acclimate to their surroundings after all.

Merry Christmas from TeaWork

By the way, the countdown to Christmas is 8 day! My goodness, where has the time gone?!

Chanukkah in Changhua

Happy Chanukkah (or Hannukah, or Hanukkah, or whatever your spelling preference may be) from the small (and not particularly Jewish) island of Taiwan.  Today is the second night of Chanukkah, and because our small group is so diverse, we have reason enough to celebrate the holiday.  To start off Chanukkah, last night we had a hanukiah-making, candle-lighting, latke-eating, dreidel-playing party.  Tonight while slightly less traditional (slightly may be an understatement), included lighting the Shamash ('helper candle') from the stovetop, the recital of Hebrew blessings by three Gentiles (because there were no Jewish people present due to a last minute scheduling conflict), and the recreation of the Team America theme song (so it pertains to Chanukkah).  As per the traditions of Chanukkah, we will continue lighting candles for the remainder of the eight days.

Sharing Andy's gold coin winnings following the dreidel game.

Since the main focus of my adventure here is my teaching experience, I had better hurry up and share my big accomplishment of the week.  I spend a lot of time talking about my CEI class (the class that I posted Thanksgiving pictures with a couple of weeks ago), which is the class I spend the most time with each week (an average class has two lessons each week, while a CEI has four).  My CEI class began studying at Shane on the same day that I began teaching at Shane (so unlike my older classes who have studied under many teachers in the past, I am their first Shane teacher), and have by far been the class I have struggled with the most. I have a special bond with this class, and I know that despite everything I am about to say, that they genuinely like me (as much as any student could like a teacher I suppose) and I know this because they will visit me before/after my classes and are lovely children, but in-class they have always been, for lack of a better word - naughty.  Unlike a normal class of 7-9 year-olds who tend to be enthusiastic about new games, afraid of punishments, and overall sponges for new information, this class has been mildly-violent and some students celebrate punishments (such as receiving extra homework).  In the last four months I have tried various punishment and reward systems, I have tried a plethora of new games, I have modified my teaching style through varying levels of strictness, and nothing seemed to work.  It appears, however, that I have made a breakthrough with them, which was showcased during their second parental presentation (on Friday), which has been noticed (and complimented) by my TA's, co-workers, and my manager!

That class has been a bright spot on what has otherwise been a dark week.  That wasn't meant to be a metaphor, after 3.5 months without rain in Taiwan, we have been subjected to rain everyday for the last 2 weeks, which has caused a shortage of sunlight.  The upside to this is the fact that it brings this country to an ideal temperature for me (which is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit), but the lack of sunlight, and excess rain make most activities less achievable, and therefore make most days less enjoyable, which is a major downside (also, in a country where you depend on hang-drying your clothes, the lack of fresh air for your "dryer" really complicates the process).

On an unrelated note, this weekend has involved an unofficial, yet ongoing scavenger hunt among the foreigners in all Asian countries (though I will clearly be focusing on how it pertains to Taiwan), which is the quest to find comical examples of Engrish (specifically Chinglish).  That was not a typo, I am referring the misuse of written English in many Asian-countries (known as Engrish) and the narrower category of mis-typed English when translated from Chinese (known as Chinglish) on signs, shirts, products, etc..  While English is not a native language in Taiwan, it is still very popular in education, shopping, and the fashion industry, and while some of the uses of English are perfect, others have errors that provide not only noticeable, but comical mistakes (some of which are so severe they make the entire piece unintelligible).

Dream (not)
 hvops last stop like castle lock
pvats biost off like
roose we came to get storted throw
imbows like some angry
thers our dolvery's pedigres hdaded
sharpoon like the chambass at the wu fang our
shots got that mathod man wann
shong with the otangutans moss op
imbows like some angry
shots got that mathod man wann
shong with the otangutans moss op

Final thought: the countdown to Christmas is at 15 days! Happy Holidays!

Welcome to the holiday season

My big news of the week is that I got health insurance.  I know, that doesn't sound like a big deal, health insurance is commonplace, especially in countries like Taiwan with National Health Insurance policies available to all of its citizens, but I was originally denied insurance due to my, shall we say, "American size".  While I acknowledge never having been on the thin side of the spectrum (even in my younger, 'more athletic days') I have also never considered myself to be too large, so this was upsetting news to me.  I have worried for the last few months about what would happen if I got sick or injured here, and thankfully nothing of the sort has happened, but it is comforting to be fully insured.  I wish I could explain what happened, what changed about me or the system to allow me to gain health insurance, perhaps I lost weight, perhaps they checked a BMI scale, perhaps they simply realized that I am taller than 5ft...I don't think I will ever know for sure.

There are no noteworthy moments from my teaching week, which is a positive sign that teaching has morphed into being second nature for me.  I have spent the week introducing some new games to my classes, teaching Christmas Carols, and prepping most of my classes for the fact that final exam and parent presentation 'season' is upon us (yet again).  Within the next 3 weeks ALL of my classes will have had an exam, that'll be a lot of work!

I believe I have gone on more trips to the movie theater in the 3.5 months I have spent living in Taiwan than I did in the rest of 2012 (which isn't saying much, since I have only seen four movies here, but since two of them were this week it seems like a big deal).  Many people are curious about what the movie viewing experience is like here, since I am in a country where English is not the primary language.  My experience does not summarize the entire film industry of Taiwan, simply the limited selection of movies which I have viewed, which were all in English with Mandarin subtitles (no dubbing!).  As you have probably already realized, Taiwan is not particularly a film capital, so many of the movies here are foreign, and a lot of them are played in their original format (and therefore original language) because the process of dubbing movies is a time-consuming and expensive process.  The only real differences between seeing these movies here, and what I imagine seeing them at home would have been like, is that the cost was cheaper here (190NT per ticket, which is approximately $6USD), the theaters are smaller, there isn't always a huge concession stand in the theater's lobby (and if there is a concession stand, it doesn't sell buttered popcorn since that is primarily an American snack), and the movie doesn't play through all of the credits following the film.  These are all differences which I am willing so accept, so on Wednesday several of the Changhua teachers went to Life of Pi, which was recently released both here and in the states (one of the frustrating things about movies in Taiwan is that their release dates are often delayed, sometimes by multiple months, from their US release dates).  I'll start by saying that this was a beautifully filmed movie, and I recommend everyone see it, but I don't intend on providing a review of it here.  Instead I would like to talk about why this movie is important to Taiwan, which is a short list starting with the mention of its director, Ang Lee (did you know he is Taiwanese?), and ending with the fact that some of the scenes were filmed in Taiwan in Taichung and Kenting.  It may not seem like much, but when you think about all the times 'movie magic' is used instead of location-shooting, and when you think about how often people think about Taiwan (which, for the average American (those American's that don't know anyone who has moved here) is not too often), it is a little more impressive.  I also saw, and don't make fun of me for too long about this, part 2 of Twilight: Breaking Dawn.  This movie had no significance to Taiwan, but I have to hand it to everyone involved, I found this to be a monumental improvement from the other movies in the series.  

I inadvertently ended up at the outdoor portion of the Life of Pi  exhibit at the Taichung Science Museum.

Saturday was a strange day.  The activities of the day were normal enough, the strangeness came in those moments that trailed between the main events of going to the art museum, eating at a western restaurant, and having a game night.  The adventure started with my taxi ride through Taichung to meet up with my friends at the art museum.  For starters, taking a taxi has become a semi-regular means of transportation for me, because the cost here is far more reasonable than back home (for example, I can get home from my school, which is about a 15 minute ride, for 200NT (about $6), or I can get anywhere in Changhua for 100-150NT ($3-5)).  I should have known this would be an interesting taxi ride when the driver handed my phone out the window to a different taxi driver to get directions, and I really should have known when I heard the driver shouting out the window that he was driving a foreigner (wai guo ren) around town, but it was when he tried to sell me his cell phone that the oddities clicked for me.  The irritating, yet somehow fitting thing about this taxi ride was that he ended up dropping me off at the wrong museum (I was at the science museum, not the art museum), and I had already paid and left the taxi by the time I discovered this, so I had to catch another cab to get to the right location.  Somehow, many hours later, destiny saw fit for me (and several other people this time) to find the first taxi driver again, in our quest for a ride back to the train station.  This time, while there were no phone sales tactics, he did decide that getting into the car to back it into a suitable loading zone required too much effort, so instead he just pushed it (literally, pushed this mid-sized car) several feet backwards.  The other noteworthy moments of the day were: finding Dr. Pepper (in Taiwan the soda selection is limited to Sprite and Coca-Cola), seeing Christmas displays, and eating enchiladas (enchiladas are so much more exciting when you haven't seen Mexican food in 4 months).

'TEACHERS, ASSEMBLE! Standing strong with the metallic silhouettes at the entrance to the Taichung art museum

Getting in the Christmas spirit by riding reindeer in Taichung

Speaking of Christmas (and by that I am referencing the above picture), the Christmas countdown is at 22 days! Happy Holidays everyone!

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.

Happy Halloween

This week we got to bring one of the famous holidays of western culture to the Taiwanese children: Halloween.  Halloween is not highly celebrated in Taiwan, but many children become familiar with it through their English schools.  Included in the festivities for my students were Halloween-themed classes, a haunted house (with games and challenges), a costume contest, and trick-or-treating.  My Halloween lessons were primarily with my youngest class (CEI02) and focused on using 'monster vocabulary' like ghost, vampire, skeleton, etc..  Each teacher was also responsible for adding a Halloween-themed craft to their lesson, so my children decorated paper pumpkins.  As for the haunted house, one of the most impressive aspects of the week, our TA's decorated an entire classroom into a maze, and stationed the teachers in booths within the maze.  Each teacher was responsible for creating a game for their booth which children would play for prizes (the games included: pin the tail on the monster, bean bag toss (that was my booth, complete with Angry Birds bean bags, and a cut-out pumpkin target), mystery box (where children would stick their hands inside and be startled by a bowl of cold noodles which felt like intestines), apple bobbing, and a heaven/hell challenges (students sit on one of two boxes, one is a seat and will hold them, one is a balloon and will pop when sat upon).  Approximately 150 students showed up to the haunted house (which is a great turn-out for our tiny school).

Overall I would say the biggest complication with Halloween in Taiwan is finding pumpkins to carve.  I have heard multiple stories about the lack of pumpkins, one of which being that pumpkins are not native to Taiwan and therefore need to be imported (however I know there are pumpkin farms because I've just learned Hsinchu county has one), and the other being that pumpkin season is in the spring rather than the fall (I'll have to wait half a year to confirm that).

Happy Halloween from the CEI02 and CEI08 classes

This weekend I went on my first trip to Taipei since training week.  We left Saturday morning and caught a bus to Taiwan's capital city (the trip took about 2.5).  The activities yesterday were devoted mainly to Taipei gay pride, starting with gate-crashing the parade (yes, much like we did in Kaohsiung) and ending with a night of visiting the oldest (and most famous) gay bar in Taiwan: Funky.  Today was primarily dedicated to a scenic view of Taipei from the Maokong gondolas, my first teppanyaki dinner (here), and the bus ride home (which, after the scare of racing through the Taipei metro stations because we were late to the bus was very relaxing).  It may sound like there weren't many noteable moments from this weekend, but that is just due to the difficulty of separating individual memories.  The entire weekend was somewhat of a blur, caused by the constant movement (buses, trains, walking, running, etc.) and seemed to fly by. 

Gate-crashing the Taipei gay pride parade.

This week's interesting facts play into my main interest: language/linguistics.  While I am still struggling with the acquisition of Mandarin, at least I can learn more about language itself.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the Chinese writing system is logographic, meaning that it uses a symbol to represent an entire word or concept, but the character does not indicate its pronunciation (except the tone marker).  This system is called hanzi (and is a complete mystery for me, aside from the characters for numbers(which are similar enough to Japanese that I already knew them), and the character ren  人 which means person).  One of the ways to 'simplify' Chinese for pronunciation and typing purposes is through the use of Pinyin which uses the Roman alphabet (the characters of English) to show a more phonetic pronunciation of the word.  The Pinyin alphabet isn't perfect however, because many sounds in Chinese are not sounds in English, so it requires a base knowledge of Chinese pronunciation to use, but it is the transcription system which I (and many others) find most useful.  The predecessor to Pinyin, which is outdated but still used in Taiwan is the Wade-Giles system, which also Romanizes the hanzi characters, but notes the aspiration/unaspiration of plosive consonants (like p-b, t-d, k-g).  An unaspirated consonant is notated with an apostrophe, so that a word like "Taiwan" would be written T'aiwan to show that it starts with a /t/-sound rather than a /d/-sound.  The main downfall of this system is that people who are unfamiliar with it tend to ignore the apostrophes (both in writing and pronunciation) which leads to constant mispronunciations.  My favorite example of these mispronunciations is a common term among Chinese food eaters around the world: Peking (as in 'Peking duck' or 'Peking chicken'), which came from the Wade-Giles writing of Beijing (China's capital).  The last of the systems that I am vaguely familiar with is BoPoMoFo, which uses symbols and tone-markers to represent all possible sounds in Chinese, which makes it the most accurate system.  Most children in Taiwan learn Bopomofo in school, which they can use for learning new symbols, inputting text into a computer/phone, etc..

wo ai Taiwan (I love Taiwan)

"The best laid plans [of mice and men] often go awry." My resolve to update this blog every weekend was broken last weekend when I got home to discover my internet wasn't working, so this post will need to encompass two weeks of Taiwanese adventuring.

For starters, there is school.  I am quite comfortable in my school now, and lesson planning has become second nature to me, which is a welcome relief.  If I'm being honest with myself I would say that these last two weeks have been more stressful work-wise than I would like.  As all teachers here eventually discover, our teaching systems are very flawed, and there is little we can do to change them.  My frustration of the week stems from a lesson with my youngest class, who are on average 7 years old and have been studying English for about 2 months now.  I stayed late after one of my classes to help them with their homework, and it came to my attention that the school's expectations of the students is completely unreasonable.  While I can't paint you a picture that will thoroughly explain the context of this story, I can briefly explain that I have just been working with the students on household items (toothbrush, comb, table, chair, etc.) and simple prepositions (in, on, by, under).  In their homework they were working on questions like "Is the chair under the table?"  In class we use flashcards and the whiteboard to teach vocabulary, so there is some focus on word recognition for vocabulary and simple sentences (for example: "Yes, it is." "No, it isn't.").  We also teach phonics, by teaching the alphabet and teaching the sound that each letter makes.  What we do not focus on much is how to use phonics to get to word recognition.  Shane schools expect students to learn whole word recognition before they learn how use their phonics to sound out words, which means that, while it is impressive that a young learner can see the word "toothbrush" and pronounce it, if they are shown the word "toothbrushes" they will either not understand the word, or will not pronounce the "-es" because it is foreign to them.  The concept of word recognition teaching is presumably taken from a Chinese approach to reading, which has to rely on this method because of the logographic nature of written Chinese, however it fails to allow the students to utilize the productivity of language.  My frustration with this system began when I was informed by my manager that one of my students (the smallest and probably sweetest little girl in the class) started crying when she could not understand her homework.  Remember that these students have only been studying for 2 months, and expecting whole sentence recognition and comprehension is unreasonable, especially remembering that they are 7-9 years old which puts them in a similar age group as American children who are learning to read.  Can you imagine asking an American 7 year old to comprehend full Chinese sentences? Even if they are in an immersion school you probably don't even expect them to comprehend full English sentences at that age.  While I admit, that rant does not change the situation, it does put into words the inspiration for goal to change the way we teach reading in the school.

On a happier note, there is so much happening outside of my school life in this country (which, while it might sound like I dislike my school, that is completely untrue.  I adore my school and classes immensely, and if I didn't care about them so much, then I wouldn't care to evaluate the ways I would like to improve things).  October 10th is a festival known as "ten-ten" day in Taiwan, a holiday to commemorate the start of the uprising which eventually lead to the establishment of the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan).  Ten-ten day is a national holiday, and many businesses (including the buxibans) were closed, so a group of 11 people, consisting of teachers and Taiwanese people, went for an all-day scooter trip through the mountains.  We at lunch in a French restaurant atop the mountains, crawled through a bat cave, had dinner at an Indian restaurant in Taichung, and my favorite thing about it was the complete spontaneity of everything, we literally picked the events and directions by randomly screaming "left", "right", or "straight" each time we came to a set of lights.

Enjoying 10-10 day in the mountains.

Last weekend was the annual Chili cook-off in Taichung, an event featuring local bands, and lots of homemade chili.  First of all, I just want to say that every time I go to Taichung I am amazed at the number of foreigners who live in the city.  I know that Taichung is the third largest city in the country, which results in them employing more people, but there are easily hundreds of foreigners that live there, and to be surrounded by English speakers when you are used to being a minority is a strange feeling.  Second of all, I have some amazingly talented friends here, two of which performed in the concerts portion of the event which made the event more personal.

These past couple of weekends have been very "low key" which has allowed me more time to explore the city I live in.  Markets are very common in Taiwan (and I know I have mentioned the night market in multiple posts), and today I visited the day market.  The night market is very focused on food and games, while the day market is where you would do most of your shopping (it is easy to find cheap clothes, shoes, fruit, bedding, etc.).  

This week I also began meeting with my language exchange partner.  Language exchange is, as it sounds, an opportunity to practice your language skills with a native speaker of the target language (so in my case I help a Taiwanese woman speak English, and in return she helps me to speak Mandarin).  Having a language exchange partner is a fairly common experience among the teachers I know (however for many people they don't last long).  My Mandarin is coming along very slowly, I have yet to make a major break-through with it, but I manage to get by and get what I need, so I believe that is a start.  The trick to learning in an immersion setting is to keep using what you know/learn, so that is exactly what I do.

October!

Welcome to October, my how the days fly by.
I know I will jinx myself by saying this, but my class schedule was fairly close to perfect this week.  No early starts, 3 early finish days, and mostly brilliant students.  There are definitely some classes that frustrate me more than others at this point, particularly the classes that won't stop speaking Chinese as soon as the TA leaves the room (in my buxiban (another word for Cram school, which is the type of specialty school I work in) we have a fairly strict "no Chinese in the classroom" policy to encourage immersion learning).
This week one of my favorite classes to teach was my private lesson with two teenagers who are relatively advanced in English.  The nice thing about teaching private students is that they can help you select what topic they want to learn about, so this week my privates agreed to a lesson about psychology (which is actually a unit in their student book, so it wasn't completely random, however I still can't get over how perfect of a topic is is for me considering it was one of my majors).  It gave me a chance to use what I know outside the book and get genuinely excited about a lesson!
I went on several adventures this week, the first of which was to a waterfall on Tuesday (before class).  Sounds like a simple little photo-opportunity, right?! Let me assure you, it wasn't, but it was still a fun time.  For starters, the path to get to the water wasn't so much a path, as an incredibly steep hill, and the path along the water to the waterfall was so grown-over that it wasn't even an option for walking.  As a result, our path to get to the waterfall involved climbing over and under boulders IN A RIVER for 20 minutes.  We all walked away with battle-wound scratches from the experience (but luckily none of us fell in the water).
Most of the weeknights, while exciting to me, leave little to be reported.  My friends and I had mini-adventures like going to the Homei and Changhua night markets, playing our weekly pool games, shopping (my first encounter with Caves bookstore and Carrefour), and ever-enjoyable trip to Flamingos (one of the most "Western" food experiences in town).
This weekend I finally got to visit Lukang, the city I have been dying to visit since I got here.  It was a wonderful day trip!  Among the historic streets, beautiful temples, and shopping districts are two artist's whose work I have heard about for months: a famous lantern painter and a famous fan painter, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to purchase a piece of work from each of them.  I bought a beautiful scenic painted Chinese fan, and a personalized Chinese lantern which says "Make your dreams come true, step by step".

The owner and artist of a beautiful hand-painted fan shop.

One of the most famous lantern stores in Taiwan, with the artist who personalized my lantern.

Taiwan fact of the week: in Taiwan it is the year 101.  The Minguo calendar, which is used in Taiwan originated in mainland China in 1912 (the year of the founding of the Republic of China (Taiwan)) but its use was discontinued in China in 1949 with the founding of the People's Republic of China (mainland China).  Like the Gregorian calendar, the year changes on January 1st, so, for this upcoming New Year I will be "watching the ball drop" into the year 102 while my friends and family back home will be celebrating the start of 2013.

Happy Moon Festival

There is no way that week contained 7 whole days, it absolutely flew by.  Upon leaving Kaohsiung last weekend I think all of the teachers were dreading the work week, thinking with the various presentations and tests that the days would drag on, and yet, here we are at the end of another week (and, regrettably the end of another weekend).  

This past week, two more of my classes graduated terms, and I held two more presentation lessons (and starting next week I have to attempt to merge together those two completely different classes).  I am proud to say that 'throwing me into the deep-end' with presentations has successfully calmed my fears about them.  My manager says that I am very confident 'on the stage' of the classroom (her words, thought the theatre analogy applies so well to my life that I'm surprised I didn't say them).

September 28th in Taiwan is Teacher's Day.  This date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Confucius, who was believed to be the master educator in China.  I may not be a master educator, but I still got to enjoy teachers day, mainly by creating an activity in which each student had to write a card to the teachers in the school (the cards could be to the manager, the TA's, or the foreign teachers).  As a result a lot of the people in the school have a lot of beautiful drawings and cute cards from the students, and I have 'new wallpaper' for my desk area!

Happy Teacher's Day from CEI07.

This weekend's trip was a short day trip to Maoli county to see the Sanyi wood-art festival.  Many of the residents in the town have wood-carving businesses, and for one month a year they hold a festival to draw attention to the fact.  Each store displayed a variety of furniture and sculptures of a variety of subjects from religious figures, to zodiac figures, to animals (particularly horses for some reason) which were intricately designed.  I am disappointed that I didn't end up buying any souveniers from the festival.

Saturday night I had my first KTV experience, a staple of the Asian lifestyle.  KTV is a karaoke business, but unlike the traditional style of American karaoke, you are only singing for your friends.  Large groups will rent out a room with a TV system (with the appropriate karaoke supplies like lyrics and microphones), seating spaces (and dancing spaces), and an all-you-can-eat buffet.  The room was ours from midnight-6am, but we only lasted 4.5 hours before surrendering to exhaustion and sore throats.  It was a lot of fun (particularly the large group numbers like "I will survive" and "It's raining men")

The full moon tonight can only mean one thing, it must be the Moon Festival (also known as the mid-Autumn festival) in Taiwan.  Many ancient traditions associated with the Moon Festival, such as sacrifice and prayers to the Gods of various religions (such as Tai Yin Hsing Ju the Taoist moon goddess) have faded away through the years, and now the main tradition on the holiday is a family barbeque.  With all of us to far from our families the TA's organized a 'school family barbeque' and we sat around for 4 hours eating (for the number of times in my life I have been told that Americans have huge potion sizes, or Americans eat too much, I have to comment that I find the amount of food consumed here to be much more than I would have been subjected to in the states).  Most of the food was things I come across on a regular basis, I believe the only new foods of the day were rice sausage (which is, as it sounds, a sausage casing stuffed with rice), and water bamboo (which is one of my new favorite foods).

Famous in Taiwan

While it occasionally sounds like my life in Taiwan is a fairy tale (and in many aspects it is), this week I was reminded that this is the real world, and sometimes things are stressful.  This week was filled to the brim with stress at school (and I was repeatedly reminded reminded of how wonderful my friends are at relieving that stress).  The main stress hanging over my head for the entire week was the fear of my first presentation which occurred during my CE15 (mid-level English class around 12-14 years old) on Friday.  In Shane School a presentation lesson occurs at the end of each term (a term lasts 24-25 lessons) and is an opportunity to prove to the students, parents, and manager how effective the class, school, and teacher are.  A presentation is a 30 minute long window in which 5 or more activities should be used to summarize what the students have learned and how their English abilities have developed during the term (and of course, if a student's abilities have not improved the parents are less likely to enroll their students in a following term).  I would have greatly appreciated the opportunity to observe a presentation lesson before having one of my own, but unlike many teachers I did not have this luxury.  While I have not received the feedback from my presentation, my self assessment is that the worrying and over-preparation I did paid off with a successful presentation with a good parental turn out, high participation rates, and behaved students. What a relief!  Too bad I have to spend this week worrying and planning for two more presentations (but then I should have a month or so of freedom).
I have completed one of the items in my Taiwan to-do list (though I know I will repeat this trip many more times over the next year) I finally went to visit the statue of Buddha on Baguashan (this landmark is known as 'The Big Buddha' and is located approximately 20-30 minutes walking distance from my house), which I was originally told was the largest Buddha in Taiwan, but I believe that is a former (or entirely false) title because my research does not seem to support the claim.  I like to compare my 'first encounters' with locations and foods in Taiwan with how I feel other foreigner's 'first encounters' went, and I feel that my trip to Buddha was completely unique in the fact that the trip began at 1am, and involved toasting Buddha at the base of the temple staircase with Heineken beers.  I also added and (and completed) 'ride the High Speed Rail (train)' to my to do list.
One of the remarkable aspects of the "teacher life" in Taiwan is the fact that we are a novelty to the majority of the people we interact with each day.  Many Taiwanese people have a fascination with foreigners, sometimes to the point that they engage us in [limited] conversations on the streets/buses/subways/etc. and (though it is less common) some ask us to pose for pictures.  One of the most interesting (and comical) experiences for me is when our group poses for pictures, and behind whoever is taking the photograph is a group of Asians taking taking our group picture for their own archive.  I think that makes us local celebrities.
This weekend I went on a trip to the second largest (and most modern) city in Taiwan: Kaohsiung, this is where the 'celebrity status' was most apparent (though, we did make a spectacle of ourselves on more than one occasion).  This weekend Kaohsiung hosted their annual gay pride festival, and what began as a plan to watch the parade became the spontaneous decision to walk in the parade (which was a two-hour ordeal which took us around a large square of the city).  During the parade we were in countless pictures and videos with fellow allies of the gay community.  Much of the walk was spent talking to the Taiwanese people around us, and serenading them with our acapella version of countless showtunes and classic 80's songs.

The crew at Kaohsiung Gay Pride Festival

There does not appear to be as harsh of a stigma against homosexuality in Taiwan.  One of the best moments on Saturday (the day of the parade) was on the walk home when we were over a mile from the festivities and walking to our hostel through a night market and a woman who barely spoke English pointed out our rainbow flags showed her support [for us and] the gay community. 

Today was spent further exploring Kaohsiung.  The day began with a walk to the old British Consulate where we enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea and got our first great view of the harbor.  The port of Kaohsiung is the largest harbor in Taiwan.  We later traveled through this harbor (by way of ferry) to the island of Cijin (a small island with a day-market and a lovely beach).

The harbor of Kaohsiung (including Kaohsiung's tallest building: Tuntex Sky Tower) 

One of the aspects of Taiwanese economy that I find most interesting is the Taiwan lottery system.  In Taiwan there used to be a problem with businesses failing to report all of their sales on tax forms as a way to either save money or receive more money from the government (it was particularly easy for small businesses and street vendors to get away with this).  Taiwan changed this in one of the most original manners I could imagine, by implementing a lottery system in which each receipt printed is eligible to win.  Each time something is purchased in Taiwan you are given a receipt (which may sound normal for the states as well, but think back on how many times you have thrown away your receipt or asked for it not two be printed) and each receipt is printed with its own lottery numbers.  Once every two month a new set of winning lottery numbers are released and everyone searches through all of the receipts they have collected to see if their numbers match.  A winning ticket can be worth 200NT (about $7) to 10,000,000NT (about $341,000).  I currently have a bag full of various receipts from 7Eleven/Family Mart/tea stores/etc. waiting for the next lottery number announcement.

One Month Anniversary

Would you look at the time (ok, I mean calendar), today is the 1-month anniversary of my arrival in Taiwan.  I've accomplished a lot in a month, but I think there are a few basic goals which I will highly regret if I don't accomplish them soon: learn basic directions around the city (getting from point A to point B without calling for directions every time would be a welcome change), go to a store (a department store preferably, I'd like basic things like a clothes rack, and a garbage can), get ahead on class planning rather than playing 'catch-up' by planning lessons on the day they are taught (I hear its possible, but I don't think most teachers actually do that), learn to produce the tones in Chinese so I can actually start learning the language, and visit Buddha (I live approximately a 20 minute walk away from the largest statue of Buddha in all of Taiwan, and I still haven't gone to see it). I have a lot of other things to accomplish this month, but those are the things that I should have done already.

This was my first week at school without any observation classes, and I must say that I enjoy the official teacher status I have achieved now.  I'm starting to get to know the students, which helps me to plan activities that will actually promote interaction, rather than promoting that 'I wish my teacher would shut up' facial expression that all teachers come to know.  During the school week I had several firsts including the delivery of my first (two) written and oral exams, I level-checked (interviewed) my first prospective private student (which is the teacher's chance to gauge the student's abilities, and the student's chance to decide if they like the teacher) and got my interviewee to sign-up for my class (which means I get a bonus of NT150), my first manager observed class (which I will get the results from this week, but if I had to guess, I would say that I will get a positive review) and my first paycheck.  The highlight of my school week came from a conversation I had with my manager early in the week though.  We were talking about some of the responsibilities I would have in the near future, and she told me that she thinks I was born to be a teacher!  I was literally 'all smiles' the rest of that day!

This weekend was dedicated to the exploration of Taichung, which is the third biggest city on the island (and is approximately a 15 minute train ride away from my city of Changhua). Yesterday I went to a beautiful concert put on by one of the other foreign teachers in the area, following which, the group celebrated week 2 of birthdays at a 'white party' (which was about clothing color, but every one of us laughed at the irony of inviting a bunch of Caucasians to a 'white party').

Dancing at Freedom for the "white party".

Today was my chance to introduce my friends to something new (since I came here I haven't been much of an event coordinator because I haven't had much of an idea of the possible options around here).  I took several of my friends on a geocaching trip in Taichung.  We only successfully found one cache today (we only attempted two however, so I guess 50-50 isn't too bad) which was in an abandoned military tank under an underpass (it was a very cool location).  It was fun to be able to introduce everyone to a piece of my home life (and it is a great way for me to explore the island).  The night ended with dinner at an Indian restaurant (which is slowing becoming my favorite food group) called Bollywood.

Here we are with our successfully obtained geocache (also, we are in a tank).

One of the aspects of Taiwanese culture that I would like to look into further while I am here is the Taiwanese funeral customs (which have been coming to my attention a lot in this past week because an apartment across the street from where I live is in mourning).  The mourning period of a family tends to be at least a week (and the body should be kept in the house during this time), during which time tents, pictures of the deceased, and floral arrangements are common outside of the family's house.  The aspect of funerals here which is most unusual in comparison to western funerals is the presence of funeral strippers.  That was not a typo, it is common (though it has become less common over the last few years) for strippers to be part of a funeral (there are many possible explanations for this tradition, among which are the belief that it is an 'offering' to appease lower-gods).  In time I will research this subject further.