Saturday, December 31, 2011

Basking in the light of Taipei 101

Turn on the TV on New Years' Eve in America and, after watching the pre-recorded yet utterly necessary footage of the ball dropping in Times Square, you'll be treated to a montage of fireworks going off all around the world. You'll see Paris. And Sydney. And Taipei, where fireworks spurt from the many tiers of Taipei 101 to create a magnificent spectacle of light and color.

And guess where I'll be?

If you guessed the Eiffel tower, you're wrong.
This is the view from our hostel window. Really. See, Karina booked us for a hostel out in the countryside of Taipei because that was what was available, but apparently, they were overbooked, so they offered us an alternative--you know, MERE BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE MAIN EVENT. We didn't say no.

I'm psyched. This will be my first major New Years event I've ever attended--New Years has historically been an understated affair of board games and watching the ball drop for me--AND it just so happens to be one of the first celebrations, too. It had never really occurred to me before, but obviously all the footage shown on New Years Eve is pre-taped; America's actually the last place to get New Years, while Taiwan comes in at around the halfway mark. (Though, major country-wise, it falls behind just Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, and parts of Russia, since it turns out time starts in the middle of the Pacific.)

Tomorrow, I'm sure we'll wander around in the crowd for a while. Karina wants to see if we can get a primo place to stand in the crowd, but I'm skeptical. In my mind, we should just come back to our hostel and hang out with our brilliant view of the focal point of this New Years celebration.

So when the time rolls around in your neck of the woods and they start showing the fireworks, keep an eye out for us, basking in the light of Taipei 101.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Blinking cursor

Some days, when I sit down to write, that's all I see: a blinking cursor. Today is one of those days.

And sometimes, when this happens, I have some sort of clever answer for my writers' block, something like a list, or a video or even a link to a cool article.

But alas, today I have nothing. At all. Really. Yet, as my self-made vow requires, today I am posting a blog nonetheless. Because that's what writing is about: pushing past the block and writing anyway.

Writing something, anyway. But, this time, not much.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Ingrained Acculturation

At school today, I came to an odd realization while drawing a window.

See, our lesson this week is about modes of transportation; the main question we ask is "How do you get to school?" Kids answer with the sentence form "I go to school by..."

This of course, naturally lends itself to the board game-like set-up I described yesterday, in which kids go from home to school by answering our questions. This, in turn, means that every class period I get to draw the game path on the blackboard, beginning at a drawing of home and leading towards one of school.
The board looks something like this...

And today, while drawing the "home," I realized something: I can no longer draw houses--or, more specifically, windows--in the American way. Instead, I'm ruled by Chinese rules of stroke order. See, here's a rough approximation of the house I would draw:
Image apologetically stolen from Google and some 5-year-old somewhere


See the window? It's a pretty standard Western-style window, one of those things which, for whatever reason, has bars on it (if I were a child psychologist perhaps I'd say something about feeling trapped or something?). Just a box with an up-and-down cross. Pretty simple. American five-year-olds draw it all the time.

But how?

See, today, I drew it like this:
Purple = the new strokes; all strokes start at the top/left and move down/right
 
I drew it like this without even thinking. It seemed natural. It seemed normal. It also happens to be exactly how you would draw a window if you were writing it as a Chinese character.

Which, I discovered, it is. And it is drawn this way. Seriously, go to that link. It's "田," pronounced "tian?" and it means farm or field, as Alison later told me.

And I cannot, for the life of me, think of how I used to draw these windows. Was it the box in one stroke, then add the middle? Where did it start? The bottom left? The top?

Seriously, if anyone reading this can tell me, please do. How did I use to draw this picture??? I know it wasn't in the Chinese style, but I absolutely can't think of another way.

In other news, a few days ago I was lost in an odd daydream about making a new recipe. And, at the end of the daydream, I ate my recipe--using chopsticks.

You know, it's odd how acculturation seeps into you unnoticed, subtly shifting your worldview and changing the parts of your consciousness that tell you how to draw simple shapes or how to properly eat a meal. I've only been here about 5 months, and I've already forgotten how to draw a window.

Give a Hug

"Boys, stand up!"

My students emit a collective squeal/groan as the boys stand--and immediately rush around the room to hug each other. The girls laugh as the boys dog-pile onto each other, creating massive hug-groups from which it takes several minutes for us to extricate them.

I never expected this! When I wrote out the game path on the blackboard, blocking out squares where students had to jump on one foot, or turn in a circle, or do a dance, I added "give a hug" as an afterthought, something which,I thought, the kids would surely hate. They are 5th graders, after all.

But not in this class!

The game board keeps bouncing them back to this square and the boys are thrilled to jump back up and back onto each other, each time exuding more energy than the last. They love it, and each other!

Of course, this is only the first class of the day. The next two show more of the expected hesitance, more of the laughter by the opposing team as they keep returning and returning to that square--because, as the game master, I of course designed it so that on either side is an aptly placed "go back 2" or "go forward 1" square which ensure that it gets hit at least one time, and usually more like 3.

I love how much the first class loves it, though. Maggie tells me that that home room teacher's class always loves each other that much, year after year, and I wonder what she's doing right to change most 5th graders' version of punishment--hug a classmate??--and turn it into a genuine enthusiasm at the prospect. Love it!

And so, evidently, do my students. My job rocks.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Pastime

I don't really feel like writing today. This is in part because I finally just finished uploading the 170 or so photos my mom and I took while she was here visiting me; if you're interested, you can see those here.

But mostly I'm just languishing in the wonderfulness that was the holiday special episode of Downton Abbey, a masterful British TV drama that I follow. And since that's mainly on my mind right now, know that if you're interested, you can watch it here. Because perhaps the only thing better than great character development and superb acting is great character development and superb acting coupled with a British accent.

Which is appropriate, I guess, seeing as how it's Boxing Day today: perfect time to watch British TV!

So that's it for tonight. Enjoy. :)

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christmas in Kaohsiung (in which I heap praises on Skype)

Cookies. Skype. Cookies. Church. Cookies. Friends. Cookies. Skype.

That, in a nut shell, describes my Christmas today. I slept in--bizarre for Christmas--and then set about leisurely making Nanaimo bars, while intermittently hanging out with my roommates (who were, incidentally, watching Armageddon, which was the best thing we could find on TV) and Skyping for several hours with my family.

Around 4pm, I went to church, where I sang Christmas carols (the real classics) for the first time this season, and met three college students who had volunteered to come here over Christmas for a Winter break mission trip. At the end of the service, we had a candle-lit portion, which was wonderful since that's been an element of my Christmas tradition since time immemorial.

First attempt: they're not pretty, but they taste good. :)
Then I came home, finished my cookies (who'd have thought that melting and spreading chocolate would be the most difficult part of the Nanaimo bar recipe???) and went to a little Christmas gathering with the other ETAs, and which turned out to be a more international Fulbright gathering, since Esther's fiance Marlie, an ETA in Korea, is in town, as is Lydia's friend Noah, who's a research scholar in Xi'an, China.There, I ate far too many sweets and laughed with some good friends.



Our spread, including Steven's sweet potato pie, mid slice

Now I'm home, just having finished Skyping with my friend Anna as she is en route home to Spain, and awaiting midnight, when I can do "Christmas morning" with my family via Skype.

It's been an unconventional, yet fun day. And, thanks to Skype, I do at least get a "fly on the wall" perspective of the Christmassy goings-on at home. And that's something.

Also, in the vein of "unconventional Christmas," I give you perhaps the single least conventional Christmas song of all time. Good luck getting it out of your head for the rest of the year--but you won't regret it. :) Merry Christmas!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Christmas Eve

This has been the most unconventional Christmas Eve of my life, bar none. But it was wonderful.

See, I slept in. Then went to Dream Mall with my lovely host sister Emily, finished my Christmas shopping, and went to go see Mission Impossible 4 (surprisingly good for a fourth installment).

And then my marvelous host parents Margaret and James came, and we had delicious beef noodles for dinner.

And then I was able to find all of the ingredients for Nanaimo bars--the culmination of a many-day search--at Carrefour and the baking store on the way home.

And then I got home and found Brittany and Chialing making preparations for our evening together with Rachel, Fonda, Chialing, Chialing's nephew and a friend. And now we're going to watch Sherlock Holmes 2.

Not what I would normally be doing on Christmas Eve. AT ALL. But still lots of fun. :)

Melancholy Christmas

You know, it's amazing how many Christmas songs adopt a melancholy tone in wishing people 'Merry Christmas.' As I write this, even, I'm listening to Michael Buble sing "The Christmas Song" in a slow, almost mournful voice; moments ago, he was singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas," a song which I've all but sworn off this holiday season.

Even without it, though, I feel the melancholy of Christmas this year more than ever, my excited students and festive decorations notwithstanding. I've always loved Christmas, and I've always been a huge one for keeping traditions alive (just ask my mom and anyone else who's ever tried to change our family Christmas; they'll tell you that my cousin Mollie and I are an unstoppable force for tradition!), but even so I've always seen myself as a Christmas moderate in America. I've even been called a Grinch on occasion, usually due to my refusal to start celebrating Christmas (and this includes with music) before Thanksgiving.

Being in a country like Taiwan for the holiday puts this in perspective rather quickly, though. Our apartment building is the sole Christmas light-bedecked building in our entire neighborhood; I feel lucky this year that Christmas falls on a weekend, because if it didn't, I would spend the day teaching just like on any other day. Our apartment building had a Christmas party, but you could scarcely tell what it was celebrating: they were eating typical Taiwanese food, and though they began by blasting Christmas music, it soon turned into Taiwanese karaoke, and went on in that fashion for HOURS, with no crevice of the apartment building safe from the loud, off-key sounds.

Tomorrow (or, since it's almost 1am, today) is Christmas Eve, and I'm doing my best not to think too hard about that fact. I'll spend the first part of the day with my host sister, Emily, and the evening with my roommates. I think as long as I keep busy it should be okay...

But still melancholy. There's just no getting around that aspect of the season, when you're sitting in a foreign country with most of your friends and all of your family on a different continent, celebrating traditionally almost a full day later. I guess I'm just experiencing a different element of the season, but it's not one I would have necessarily sought out had I been home for Christmas.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Strollin'

When I bought my scooter in September, it opened the world of Kaohsiung to me--and simultaneously shut it out. Whenever people here talk about scooters, one of the first things out of their mouths is "It's so convenient!"--and that's true. A little too true, really: scooters make it incredibly easy to go from point A to point B, without seeing any of the points in between.

I was reminded of this today, as I traversed Kaohsiung, scooter-less once more. My trip to school was longer and more complicated, true, but as I went I got to look around and see my fellow commuters, both Taiwanese and (gasp!) foreign, and remember that I lived in a community beyond that of annoying people who pull out in front of you without bothering to notice that you're even there. (Fun side note about scooters: YOU CAN SEE when people don't look.)

My trip back was even better. My lovely co-teacher, Patty, drove me to the department store near Central Park where the Western supermarket Jason's is located (Being in Jason's felt like HEAVEN, surrounded by American goodies and English signs!), and talking with her and being able to look around on the drive was great. I didn't find what I was looking for at Jason's (Graham crackers and instant vanilla pudding = fail, though they had six or seven varieties of Jell-O...), but I wasn't able to say no to a package of double fudge soft baked Pepperidge Farm cookies. Mmm...I'll be visiting again.

But quite apart from the food, going through the Christmas-bedecked department store down to the busy grocery store in the basement, and then walking the several blocks back to the MRT to go home, was great. It was absolutely glorious out, not too cold or too hot, and I enjoyed my stroll so much that, after I got home and had dinner, I went out again and went on a good 45 minute walk to the bank and to a local baking store (where, incidentally, I found some decent substitutes for Graham crackers and instant vanilla pudding in Digesta biscuits and custard powder).

It was on this walk, actually, that I realized that I rarely walk around my neighborhood any more. I have my established routes, to and from places I like, and that's about it.

But why? Again, I blame the scooter. Well, that, and my flat feet and months-long failure to remember to wear good shoes.

Hopefully, I'll have my scooter restored to me soon. But when I do, I hope to remember that Kaohsiung is larger than the few main streets I routinely traverse--and that the smaller streets are well worth being opened up with a quick stroll.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Why Today Didn't Suck (though it could have)

I had a pretty good day, all things considered. And, by "all things," I mean my scooter breaking down on my drive home. Here's why:

1.) My scooter broke down on the way home, meaning I wasn't in any sort of a hurry and didn't have the panic of having to call my LETs and hope they picked up.

2.) It broke down next to the airport, meaning I just had to wheel it (an admittedly long way) into the parking lot, and I had a safe and easy-to-find place to park it, and then an easy access point to MRT to get me home.

3.) I had an amazing and relaxing (after the rowdy first period, that is) day at school. I taught my students vocabulary (donkey, camel, stable, manger, shepherds, wisemen, angel, gifts), told them the nativity story (no problem with teaching religious stories here!), which involved sentences like "The angel told the shepherds, 'Hey, there's a new baby down in Bethlehem, and he's God's son. You should go check it out!", and then watched Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, sans the nonessential parts, until the end of class, when I gave them all candy canes. Pretty wonderful teaching day for everyone--the kids loved it, too!

(and, for your viewing pleasure...)



4.) My dinner involved experimentation with whatever food I happened to have handy, and so turned into a light veggie pasta consisting of grape tomatoes, onions, green peppers, olive oil and spices. Quite yummy, and so pretty to look at!
Hmm..less yellow in person...
 5.) Fonda took care of my scooter problems, passing my keys off to a mechanic and informing me that I might have it back tomorrow. AND, if there's any day to be scooter-less, tomorrow's it: class doesn't start till 1:30pm, giving me plenty of time to tackle the lengthy and cumbersome MRT route.

So yeah. Not a bad day. :)

Christmas carolling in the halls

我可以唱歌嗎?

Four adorably small Taiwanese faces look up at me expectantly, their little yellow stamp cards clutched in front of them.

"OK," I say. "Go ahead!"

Their eyes widen and fix on me as they focus the entirety of their 3rd grade attention on getting it right.

"You better watch out, you better not cry! You better not pout, I'm telling you why--Santa Claus is coming to town. He's making a list..."

I can't help but smile; by halfway through the song I'm mouthing the words along with them, then wondering if I shouldn't, since the point is for them to have memorized it for themselves. But really, it's impossible not to sing--their enthusiasm and concentration makes for contagious joy.

Today at Hanmin we had a special Christmas day. All of the grades took half of the day to rotate between different stations, and every student was issued that little yellow stamp card with the word SONG written on it and space for three teachers' stamps; if they filled it in before the end of the day, they got to put their ticket in a raffle drawing.

This made for a day in which roving packs of tiny carolers roamed the hallways, grabbing willing teachers and breaking into song on a moment's notice. It literally made my day.

All of the 5th and 6th graders had learned "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," at my suggestion; the 3rd and 4th graders had learned "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," and the 1st and 2nd graders had learned "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I got mostly awe-struck 3rd graders singing just the first line of their song (though there were some brave enough to do the whole thing), and towards the end I had a tiny 1st-or-2nd grade duo brave confronting the foreign English teacher to "Wish me a Merry Christmas." I was more than happy to give them my little blue Yang yang stamp in reward for their efforts.
Good job! - Yang yang

By the last hour, I was racking my brain for all the Christmas songs I could replicate, making it through a fairly impressive repertoire and discovering that my strongest memory of the lyrics to "Oh Christmas Tree" are not actually to "Oh Christmas Tree," but to "Oh Big Green Tree," a parody version I learned for a church musical I was in back in middle school. Huh.

When I made it home, it had to be Christmastime THEN. So I turned on my Christmas lights in my room, grabbed a mug of hot chocolate, and watched the remainder of It's a Wonderful Life, then watched Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, (twice, so I could find start-and-stop points for my lesson tomorrow) and found a website offering Christmas music that I could listen to while reading--you guessed it--a Christmas book.

All in all, a pretty great way to spend the day, listening, singing, and just generally celebrating the celebration of Christ's birth! ...with Yang yang and Rudolph.