Counting Down to Chinese New Year

Being a teacher sort of makes you feel bad for the teachers that you had years ago, because you start to realize your own youthful behaviors.  For instance, I spent the week thinking, ‘my students are out of control, are struggling to focus, are acting out in unusual ways, what could be wrong?’, but the answer was obvious, this was the week before Winter Break.  The kids can see the light at the end of the tunnel, they are on the brink of a two-week vacation and the last thing they want to do is learn English.  I can’t pretend I was different when I was a kid, however, those last few weeks before summer or winter vacation were always a struggle on my attention span.  To help keep their attention I’ve tried to add a few more memorable aspects to my classes through art projects (everybody loves collages, right?), field trips (to the front stoop of the school), and some temporary shoe thievery (in an attempt to teach possessive pronouns to my youngest class stole a shoe from each of my students and they had to identify the shoes using the target language of “It’s my shoe” or “It’s his/her shoe”).  It may not have been as fun as a day at home with friends and video games, but I’m sure my lessons beat reading text books or taking exams.

Hard at work making a tree collage in our weekly science lesson.

One of the ‘selling points’ for a lot of people when they consider moving to Taiwan is the friendliness and hospitality of the residents, but what does that mean.  Do you move to a country because people smile at you?  Do people need to give you things for you to see their kindness?  Don’t live in a naïve bubble when you travel or you will be taken advantage of, but don’t shy away from kindness either.  This morning I was disappointed to discover that my scooter tire was flat, so I pushed it around the corner to the nearest scooter repair shop, and as I was walking I passed an older Taiwanese couple out on a walk.  For whatever reason the shop was closed this evening, so I turned around and made my way to a main road, where I crossed paths with that same couple.  The man, seeing my struggle directed me forward and began pushing the back of the bike to lighten the load.  Within two minutes he told me to stop, and I looked around confused, not seeing the scooter shop he must be taking me to, only to see him open the door to his own apartment, pull out a tire pump and inflate re-inflate my tire for me.   If that wasn’t enough of a favor, he then brought out his squirt bottle and inspected the tire for cracks (a technique the repair shops seem to rely on here) before fetching his children to translate that the tire was not broken, it just had no air.   I wasn’t asking for help, this family had no obligation to me, but they saw someone in need, so they helped.  Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone thought that way?

And Meanwhile, Outside of the Polar Vortex...

Bundle up, America! Any time I think I'm cold, I just remember the polar vortex which is freezing the entirety of the United States with temperates of 0 degrees Fahrenheit (and colder) even in the south and with windchill bringing midwestern temperatures as low as -36 degrees Fahrenheit with a windchill of 20-30 degrees colder than that.  I will gladly keep my Taiwanese temperatures.
Our 'little' franchise is growing this week.  I'm excited about the arrival of three new teachers that have joined our team of teachers.  The best thing about the arrival of these teachers is that we aren't 'losing' any friends on the island, we are just adding more people.  I have said it before, one of the main deterrents from staying here too long is how much I hate seeing people leave, it is difficult to form such temporary bonds with people and to constantly feel like you are saying 'goodbye', but no one is moving away during this influx (they are just moving to new schools in the same area).

The welcome tour to Taiwan began with a trip to the top of Baguashan.

I love it when I get the chance to break-free of the normal classroom structure and bring something unique to a class.  This week I was able to do that with my youngest ‘intensive’ class using new vocabulary and a new setting.  We went to one of the local pet stores to look at all of the animals and practice free-style conversation.  In general, the focus of the lesson was on identifying, counting, and describing the animals using questions and answers, but if I’m being honest, we did such a good job pre-teaching the language that is stopped being a lesson and was just an hour conversation with the kids.  Everyone found something fascinating, and everyone wanted to draw my attention to it, or to know more about it, “Teacher Kaitlin, what is it?”, “Teacher Kaitlin, it is cute!”, “Teacher Kaitlin, the fish is eating rocks!”.  The kids were so excited to be around the animals, that it naturally elicited speech from them, which was excellent.  The problem, however, was that the small aisles, watchful staff, and limited timeframe limited the activities I would have liked to do.

The kids are excited to see the fish.

This past week I have been working hard to learn and use a new phonetic 'spelling' system in Chinese, called Bopomofo (or Zhuyin fuhao).  I have previously been taking notes using Pinyin, which is a writing system that uses roman characters and tone markers.  I have found Pinyin very useful in my Chinese lessons, but it falls short when it comes to typing, because it requires tone marks that my American keyboard doesn't naturally produce, and while I could use applications and inserted characters, it has simply deterred my from using Chinese on technology.  Bopomofo, however, functions without roman characters.  It was introduced in Taiwan (and is now only used in Taiwan) and consists of 16 vowels and 21 consonants that blend to form all sound possibilities in Chinese.  The importance of a system like this is that, since Chinese is a logographic language (each character represents an entire word or idea), there needs to be an external system for 'sounding out' the words.  As a linguistics major, the thing I appreciate most about Bopomofo is that the order of the characters follow a very logical articulatory pattern, listing all of the similarly articulated sounds together (for example, /b/ /p/ /m/ and /f/ are all articulated with the lips, and /d/ /t/ /n/ and /l/ are all articulated behind your teeth) making the system more logical than most aspects of language.  Because of this, I have begun writing in Chinese more (mainly on my iPod because I can convert the keyboard into Bopomofo), and I am excited about the extra practice it is giving me with character recognition.
My cultural thoughts for the week are fairly food-centric, I was thinking about how much I love Taiwanese street food.  Street food is certainly not unique to Taiwan, it can be found all over the world, but growing up in the midwest, it wasn't a very common sight to see.  Sure, there would be a hot dog vendor here and there (especially around college towns and sporting events), but I couldn't have planned a meal around it.  Here, street food seems to be a staple, and now just for us foreigners without kitchens, but for the majority of the population.  Whether you are craving food or drinks, noodles or rice, meals or desserts, meat or vegetarian, you can probably find it within a 5 minute walk.  The thing about street food that is strange to me though, is how common it seems to be for people to open food stands (or other businesses) on the ground floor of their homes.  It isn't strange to utilize that space, in theory it makes a lot of sense considering you are paying for it already, the thing that confuses foreigners is distinguishing whether or not those are businesses or simply families we are looking at.

Well 'Hello' to You, 2014

Reflection.  Another year is complete in my life, and if anything I could say that it was a unique one.  For the entirety of 2013 I resided outside of the United States, and it is interesting to wonder whether I will be able to say that about any future years of my life.  I am a traveler at heart, and I love being out in the world, but will I have another chance to dedicate a full year to it? Will I have another place I could even imagine spending a full year residing in?  Right now I can't say.  What I can say is that over the past 365 days I have met some amazing people, visited some of the most strikingly beautiful places on this little island, celebrated a year's worth of new holidays, begun studying the most difficult language I have ever faced, learned how to drive a scooter, sung countless songs at karaoke, watched my students grow, and back in my American life I was able to be a bridesmaid in one of my best friend's weddings.  It goes without saying, this was a year I will never forget, it never stood a chance at being forgotten though.

I celebrated the new year as anyone else would, there were fireworks, and drinks, and friends.  The main differences were that instead of watching a ball drop on the top of a skyscraper, I watched fireworks illuminate a giant statue of Buddha, and instead of hearing shouts of "Happy New Year" there were shouts of "Xin Nien Kuai Le".  It was a beautiful holiday, and I rang in the new year with some amazing people, I wouldn't have changed anything about it.

Another tradition in buxiban culture is for the schools to have an end of the year dinner for their staff.  Traditionally this dinner takes place between Christmas and Chinese New Year, and is intended to wrap up the year in both cultures.  My franchise has our end-of-the-year dinner this weekend at a buffet in Taichung.  Take all of your western conceptions of an all-you-can-eat buffet and throw them away, this restaurant was far better.  The food was a combination of western and eastern-style meals hot and cold meals all around, but there were also several stations where they prepared fresh meals for you as well (like teppanyaki, barbeque, sushi, fresh-sliced meats, and soups).  The dessert tables were filled with cakes, and the freezers were filled with Haagen-Dazs ice cream and the drinks were filled with smoothies, coffee machines, juices, and a beer tap.  The best thing about the evening was being out with all of the teachers, TA's, and managers of the franchise, enjoying the conversation and countless picture opportunities.  It was a nice reminder of the things I have liked about the school.

Essentially the entirety of the current Changhua Shane Franchise's full-time staff.

The full time teaching staff of Homei Shane.

I've neglected one of the biggest things to come to Taiwan, which has caused countless tourists, plenty of pages in local and international newspapers, and several cries of 'murder'.  What is this over-reaction you might ask? It is nothing less than the arrival of the giant inflatable yellow duck in Taiwan.  Yes, you read that correctly, a Dutch artist created an inflatable model of the beloved bath toy which is 82 feet tall and has been floating around in harbors since 2007.  The duck made its way to Taiwan last September and has visited three of our big cities, but, some people suspect conspiracy as the duck has popped twice in it's short stay around the island (first around Halloween and then on New Years Eve).  There are mixed reviews on the duck, but if you ask me, it is a brilliant idea.  It is a traveling attraction which has visited 12 countries, doesn't cost people money to see, and creates profit for the host countries through travel and souvenir sales.  As of yesterday the duck has been patched and is back on display in Keelung Harbor.

Welcome back, Yellow Duck.

 

Merry Christmas from Taiwan

Merry Christmas! It certainly doesn’t feel like a second Christmas has passed since my arrival in Taiwan, and yet, I know it has.  I was pleasantly surprised last year how much less heartbreaking spending the holidays away from home turned out to be, and, for as much as I look forward to a future Christmas with my family, I wasn’t heartbroken this year either.  I’ve had this conversation with people a lot recently, and I would say it comes down to technology, social networking and Skype have kept me in contact with all of the people who are most important to me.  When my mother was around my age she moved to Mexico for a while, and saved money for weeks to be able to call my father for the first time.  Now, for no money at all, I got to see my parents on Christmas day (and open my presents with them), and I joined my high school friends at a Christmas party via the computer screen (I even dealt myself into their game of Cards Against Humanity and was able to play by holding my cards up to the camera).  It helps to keep the world a much more manageable size.

I didn’t send my entire Christmas week on the internet, that would be a waste of all of the wonderful things there are out here in Taiwan.  Instead, I spent my day in Yuanlin with my “Taiwan family” of co-teachers, where we ate gingerbread cookies and did a Yankee Swap-style gift exchange (which was fun, but I do miss shopping for specific recipients rather than for generic gifts). 

Merry Christmas from the reindeer teachers!

Aside from the Christmas festivities, the other major event of this weekend was the third consecutive weekend of birthday celebrations.  December seems to be the month of birthdays among the Taiwan teachers, and within the last three weeks we have had a barbeque, teppanyaki dinner, a mountain hike, and now the experience of a Gold Class movie theater.  What is Gold Class you might ask? It is the movie theater equivalent of flying first class; you get a recliner, a blanket to curl up with, and a meal served to you in the theater, is there any other way to see a movie?

A view from above, dinner at Spaghetti House.

For all of the things I love about Taiwan, there are still aspects that drive me crazy, and one repeated aspect happens to live below me.  You know I’ve talked about my neighbor countless times because she is known for unplugging my internet whenever she sees fit.  That has been annoying, but I have taken solice in the face that she appear to be afraid of me and returns to her room if she knows I am in the hallway.  The new game today, and it better be some sort of misunderstanding, is that someone has stopped my washing machine mid-cycle.  They did not steal attempt to kick my clothes out of the washer to run their own load, they simply stopped the spin cycle from continuing so my clothes were not being cleaned, but were simply sitting in a pool of water.  It seems to be petty and college-like behavior if you ask me.

Enough about that, I had a very interesting conversation with my manager today, which is the basis for my cultural note of the week: baby names.  A name is a very important part of any person’s identity, and different cultures go about selecting their children’s names based on birth order, family history, name meanings, and an uncountable other selection of reasons.  In Taiwan, parents must consider many more factors that commonality or pronunciation.  There is a superstition that the number of strokes that make up each character of a name as well as the total number of strokes in a child's name can be lucky or unlucky, so a fortune tell is to be consulted when considering what the name shall be.  A fortune teller should also be consulted to help select lucky names according to the bazi, which are the four pillars of destiny based on the year, month, day, and hour of birth.  The fortune teller will provide the parents with a list of names that according to the alignment of the 'blocks of time' will be lucky, and the parents then select the one which they feel best fits their child.  To an extent, it would be nice to have something narrowing down the long list of potential baby names, but it also means that you can't really pre-plan the name.  The other thing that is interesting about certain days or times being lucky is that it causes an increase of C-sections for the more desirable times.  There are just so many things to consider when selecting a Chinese name, and most children (at least in Taiwan) end up with an English name as well which means they might not even use their Chinese name later in life, what a strange realization.

Walks and Waterfalls

Well, I don’t mean to brag, but, who am I kidding, Homei deserves to brag.  We are a competitive school with a lot of talented students, and once again we are showed that off.  In a nation-wide Shane writing contest we took home 3 out of 9 final prizes (the same percentage we won at the speech contest).  We are the only school in my owner's franchise to have students take home a prize!

In other news, the Christmas season is in full swing and the classes this week have been themed to prove it.  With our front lobby decorated with trees and cards, and our fully teaching staff donning Santa hats, it is almost possible to forget that this isn’t a Christian country.  We have been spending weeks teaching our younger students Christmas carols, and this week we have begun to set up the final product of that, a music video competition between each of the classes to perform a Christmas carol, and since this is the day-and-age of social networking, the music videos are being placed on Facebook so the parents and friends of the school can vote for their favorites (see, we even compete against ourselves).  While I’m fairly certain it would be breaking the law in any western country to post videos of students to a public forum, this is just something that happens here in Taiwan.  Other Christmas-related activities included writing letters to Santa, and holiday crafts, and games.

While it may not be as cold as some of my past Christmas seasons, the weather has been quite rainy this week, most days felt more like a typhoon day than any of the actual tropical storms I have experienced, but with the lower temperatures it can be hard to stay warm.  That is why I  can say that nothing beats a nice warm shower and wrapping up in 3 layers of blankets (well, except maybe pajamas that are fresh from the dryer, but that isn’t an option right now).  Despite the weather, this weekend was a perfect getaway from Changhua and another chance to explore the scenic outdoors of Taiwan.  To celebrate the birthday of one of my fellow teachers, several friends and I made our way north for another hiking weekend.  I should have known when I set my alarm that meeting at 7:30 am wasn’t going to happen, but it took until my 7:48 phone call to really realize that, so from the start, I was braced for a bad day.  Still, I got up, showered, finished packing, and jumped on a train within the hour, fully prepared to spend the day alone on the mountain.    Lucky me, fate had different plans in mind, and as I stood in the last car of the train I spied another one of my friends who found the morning’s timing difficult to manage, so we made our way to Taipei together.  From there, we needed to get to Sandiaoling, a small city to the southeast of Keelung and a little over an hour outside of the main city.  We made our way along the tracks, one stop at a time, when suddenly…our whole group was standing outside of the train! As it turned out, they had been waiting to take a historic train for the final leg of the journey, but it never showed up.  The coincidence in all of this is remarkable, I should have been stuck alone all day, but I happened to pick the perfect train car to find another teacher, and that teacher and I happened to pick the train car that stopped right alongside where our friends were standing, perfect again.  We reached our destination within a few minutes and set off onto the trails.  The nice things about the Sandiaoling hiking trails are that they are known for several large waterfalls, are considered a relatively easy path, and they include obstacles like wooden ladders and rope bridges.  In total we saw 4 of the most impressive waterfalls I have seen here in Taiwan: Hegu, Motian, Papi, and Shifen and spent the entire day on the mountain.

Waterfall number three: Papi Waterfall.

The steep climb up the trail.

My culture notes typically consist of topics which I have recently been thinking about or things that I feel are unique, but this week my culture note is about something I had to research to even know it existed.  In Asia, there are four countries that make up the "Asian Tigers".  The Asian Tiger countries are Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea; and they are famous for their high economic growth rates since the 60's and their ability to maintain those rates.   Taiwan's role as a Tiger is mainly attributed to its participation in the export business of electronics, which can be seen in modern-day Taiwanese companies like Acer, Asus, and HTC.  Theories as to why these countries have had such immense success have included the role that Japan played past colonization of a couple of them, US affiliations with a couple of them, and the government and geography of the countries which allowed for freedom in ideas and movement; but definite explanations aren't known.

Taiwan in the News

I would love to tell you about all of the adventures this week held, all of the amazing new things I experience, anything new at all, but sometimes a week is just a week.  While I can not say that watching the second part of The Hobbit on its release date, or co-manning a group barbecue dinner, or covering classes in Changhua school are things that happen every week, their existence did not create stories which are worthy of retelling.
So, instead of discussing my week, I want to discuss some of the things that have put Taiwan in the news this week.  First, one of the biggest names in American sugary snacks arrived in Taiwan this week, and while their presence in department stores and gas stations across the US is likely to never diminish, their success in stand-alone businesses definitely faltered in the early 2000's, causing all of the store locations I can think of to close.  However, it appears their international market is doing well, and so the people of Taiwan can now be subjected to Krispy Kreme.  I have a feeling the company will do well in this country, mainly because they only have one strong competitor here (Mister Donut), and with a contract to open 10 stores within the next 5 years, their business should spread throughout the island.  The negative side to this, however, is that for a country which has been so concerned with its obesity rates over the last decade or so, a company like Krispy Kreme may not be the best thing to bring over from the States (what I wouldn't give to see a Sweet Tomatoes salad bar here).
Now for a bit of local news for the folks in my University-city: Milwaukee.  While you are possibly unaware of the fact, your hometown baseball team now has some Taiwanese representation.  Selected in the Rule 5 draft this week, Wang Wei-Chung from Taitung, Taiwan is on the Milwaukee Brewers as a hopeful pitcher for the season, though because his promotion to this new team was so extreme, is doesn't seem likely that he will remain there for more than a season.
Outside of the news, I simply want to share my new, and ridiculous clothes rack with you.  As the weather gets colder in Taiwan, clothes take longer to dry, and suddenly that load of laundry that used to air-dry overnight (I miss having a dryer) now take 2-3 days before they are foldable or wearable.  The problem this leaves me with is that my one drying rack is now insufficient because I get impatient and want to finish all of my washing around the same time.  There is a solution which I have found, and it is silly I know, but it is also one of the perks of having a drop ceiling: extra places for you hangers (be careful if you copy me, don't over-do-it on the weight).

My winter drying rack, what do you think?

The Start of the Holiday Season

"I'm dreaming of a [white] Christmas", well, the song may be stuck in my head, but I have no delusion about what color my holidays will be this year.  Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays, and I have loved the early stages of preparation.  The trees (yes, it is plural) are decorated, the stockings are hung, and I even bought an Advent calendar, so let the countdown begin!

Placing the star on the Christmas Tree.

It was a good week around work and the time really flew by, even though I haven't ad a typical work week in a few weeks now.  I seem to have taken on the role of Monday cover teacher around the franchise, and after tomorrow will have visited 4 of the 5 schools on consecutive Mondays.  Being a cover teacher can be really fun because the students generally love your games and are more enthusiastic during your lesson because they like the new experience, but I would always prefer teaching my own classes rather than someone else's. Mainly this is because there is a comfort level with your own school and your own classes.  Every time I cover another school I worry that my timing will be wrong, or I will miss a section of the lesson plan that exists in one school but not the other, and everything takes twice as long to plan.  When you teach your own classes, before you even open the book you know what will work and what won't and you know which students to watch out for and which ones will lead the discussion, cover teachers don't have this luxury.  Thankfully, over a year of experience has helped me cope with all of this, but it is still a thought that goes through my mind every time I am sent to another school.

This week also held the dreaded work meeting.  Why ‘dreaded’? I don’t know, really it was a wonderful meeting, and it was very nice to discuss issues from each of the schools in a forum where we could actually consider the possible solutions for them.  I’d say the main reason why people were so opposed to the idea of a work meeting were that this is the first job most of us have had which holds unpaid work meetings (and the idea of donating any more of our time to the company is unappealing) and the fear of the unknown in terms of structuring (whether we would be allowed to discuss the topics that really affect us).  Luckily, the way it worked out is that we were allowed to assign our own agenda and fuel it with our on problems and ideas, which led to some lively discussions on a lot of topics, and while not all of the advice shared might have been brilliant, it was nice to remember how many different ways there are to go about conducting your classes. 

My culture note expands to the world this week, though it mainly involves the reactions of Taiwanese Children.  As I’m sure you are aware, among the many people that undoubtedly died this week, two names are being widely discussed: Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker.  Of the two, Nelson Mandela is the more influential, but amongst my students he is often unheard of.  This is likely due to the age difference, and potentially due to the difference in topics discussed in world history in school, but what surprised me was not that my student’s hadn’t heard of Mandela, but that they had heard of Paul Walker (a man I didn’t know of by name (in fact, I originally thought of Scott Walker and was exceptionally)).  Why do my students all know who he is but most American students couldn’t even name a Chinese actor (let alone tell me if he/she died)? It’s because movies are a major export of the United States, and I think that is something we simultaneously assume and forget.  I’m sure you expect everyone to have seen the classics, whether that be The Godfather, or James Bond, or Star Wars, and so on, and you’d be right, these and many more have made it around the world, so it must follow that the new ones are even more widely circulated, but if you knew that most of these movies weren’t translated when they were sent over seas would you still assume they were widely viewed?  I can't imagine most English speakers would sit through 2 hours of a subtitles every time they wanted to see a new movie, but in Taiwan, that doesn’t seem to be a problem (I can’t speak for the whole world).  Think about that the next time you go to the theaters.