Firsts

A lot of firsts today, beginning of course with it being both the first of September and my first day in the schools. Fortuitous, I thought.

This morning I awoke to my alarm, turned over, turned it off, and laid back down to let the fog clear. *Ugh, 6:40am is way too early. Hold on...SIX forty?!?! I have to be gone by 7!*

So yeah, that happened. After all my careful planning and all the attention I paid to get to bed early, have food and gifts ready to go, set the alarm to allow for a full twenty minutes earlier than I usually do, just so I wouldn't make Maggie wait for me--I screwed up by a FULL HOUR. So I scrambled to get dressed, get my teeth brushed, makeup on (introduced in a big meeting to all the teachers and principals from both schools today!), shoved a piece of bread down my throat, gulped some OJ and coffee (still a necessity), and headed out the door 5 minutes after I should have.

Try as I did, those five minutes would not be retrieved. I sped-walked across the Cultural Center to the MRT station, remembered that I had to buy a ticket (my MRT card went missing about a week ago), and then had to deal with the machine spitting my money out repeatedly like the Pepsi machine I would have kicked back in middle school. When I finally got my ticket, I found out that I had missed the earlier train and would have to wait another couple of minutes before I could get on. Perfect.

So, long story short, Maggie had to wait about 7 minutes for me, which just so happens to be roughly the amount of time we were late to the all-teacher, all-administrator meeting she was taking me to. Shoot.

Anyway, they introduced me, then had me tell a little about myself (Hi, my name is Bekah Graham; I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, which is on the West side of America, and I went to school at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington, where I studied English. I don't know Chinese yet, so if I make a mistake, please correct me. I'm so excited to be here and meet all of you!), I shook the principal's hand, and then Maggie whisked me out the door to where Alison was waiting with a helmet for me; we walked straight down to her scooter and she drove me from Han-Min to Cing-Shan (also written Qing-Shan; pronounced Ching-Shan).

Once there, the routine was roughly the same to start out--Patty rushed me up to the conference room where the presentation of new teachers was already underway, and soon I was on stage. This was a little different, though, because Patty had translated the short self-introduction I had written for her earlier (I understood bits and pieces), and the principal read it out. So there went my spiel, all of my most important personal information already laid out for the watching crowd. Then they handed me the microphone. I basically recapped my name, that I was learning Chinese, and that I was excited to be there, and we moved on to the long meeting, which was of course all in Chinese. So I sat in the back next to Patty glancing through the pamphlet she had given me about the school and my weekly planner.

Somewhere along my rushed trip between my three LETs I had managed to give Maggie and Alison the gifts I brought for them, delicious jam from Detering Orchards and Theo chocolate with hazelnuts, but in the rush, I realized then, I hadn't gotten a chance to give the principal at Han-Min his gift. So, to be safe, I asked Patty at the end of the meeting if I could give my gift to her principal. He graciously accepted, and Patty and I moved on to talk to the other English teacher at the school (though it was mostly them talking, in Chinese, about curriculum), and then she took me to her classroom (she has and English classroom--yay! Alison and Maggie have to move around to the home rooms), where I was able to give her her gift, too.

Here's the classroom at Cing-Shan!

From the back of the classroom, where our desks are--it's huge!

Patty (R) and the other English teacher trying to fix the SMART board

The principal came in and gave me a spectacular gift of a complete lunch set--stainless steel lidded dish, chopsticks, spoon, carrying case, a water/tea bottle, and a coffee/tea mug. It was fantastic--and I was glad I gave him his present already!

And then, after all that rush, it slowed down for a while then. Patty didn't have any classes until after lunch, in fact, so she and I lesson-planned for next week (moon festival--woo!) and then just sat around chatting for a while while she shared her breakfast with me (by the way, almond milk: chalk another one up for drinks I love in Taiwan. I think I'm going to buy some to add to my coffee in the morning to make it more filling...and tasty :) ).

Then she took me on a tour of her school, which I wish I had taken pictures of--there's a super lush green courtyard between the "old building" and the "new building" (we're in the new building), and a big double-layered cover for the central part of the courtyard. It's to ward off the sun, which I think is funny because we have similar structures in the Northwest to ward off the rain. She also introduced me to most of the classes and their teachers--sometimes during recess, and sometimes in the middle of class. Either way, the response was uniform: dropped jaws and stares, while whispers of "Meiguoren, Meiguoren!" Ta shi Yingwen laoshi?" ("American, American!" "She's an English teacher?") circled around me. Also, almost without fail, one of the students or teachers would say I was beautiful--this is, by the way, probably one of the most awkward things to respond to when happening in quick succession and you are pretty certain they're just saying that because you look different, and just so happen to have blue eyes and lighter hair. My standard response was a little laugh and "Thank you?"

One adorable kid, I think he was a first grader, literally just stood and stared at me, eyes huge, mouth hanging open. It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen, even if he was looking at me like I had a third eyeball. I didn't even care. Made me wish I got to teach younger grades.

So after lunch, which the school is graciously paying for for me, and which I ate together with Patty and several of the administrators, none of whom really speak English but all of whom were anxious to give me more food, Patty and I went back up to her classroom to prepare for the 6th graders. I asked her what she was teaching (today was strictly observation for me), and she said she was just going to arrange their seats and get their English names, and that should take most of the time. If there was extra time, she had a worksheet for homework that they could start filling out to introduce themselves.I'll be honest, I thought there was no way arranging a seating chart could take 40 minutes.

Which just goes to show you, I've never taught 6th graders before.

Our first class was CRAZY! Patty did finally get them all into their correct seats and get their English names written down on the seating chart, but it did take the whole class period. As for me, I got to deal with the entirely new experience of being hit on by 6th grade boys; one of the more rambunctious one, whose English name is Jack, was continuously leaving his seat and coming to where I was sitting, where he would ask me, in English and Chinese, if I had a boyfriend. Ohhhhh joy.

The only really productive thing I did in that class and the following was help adjust names--and boy, did we have some great English names come through. In that first class, we still have a Howard, Betty, Wilson and Wendy; one boy wrote ADDP on the board, though, and Patty asked for my help to find a boy's name that started with C. So ADDP became Cory, and I became inspired: how many normal English names could I come up with?

The second class just kept 'em coming, with Henna, Bel, Doris and Cosby all in attendance. I thought one kid but down "Kiln," but I was happily proven wrong--her name was "Kim." But it was in this class that I met----Box. And he was determined to keep his name that way! I don't know why, and neither does Patty (apparently his name back in 3rd grade was Bob), but eventually I persuaded him to change it to Max, which is infinitely better, and still has the cool "x" factor (sorry, bad pun). Here again, Patty asked for a boy's name that started with "E," and so a boy became Evan. I was liking the whole naming thing.

The next class brought even weirder names, but because Patty had taught them already this week, I didn't get to see a list--she just told me later that their ranks included Monkey, Bear, Red Bean and AKA. So I spent the majority of that class period compiling a list of normal English names that should (hopefully) be fairly easy to use--I'm going to try to persuade some of the more unusually-monikered kids to change with my big *American* list. Patty also informed me that she is going to give the 1st graders their English names on Monday, so I'll be giving her a copy of my list, and hopefully preventing another generation of Taiwanese kids with laughable English names! Hoorah!

After school we did a few projects, and then Patty drove me to the nearest MRT station at Kaohsiung International Airport, which would be a bit of a walk, I think. It also earns the dubious distinction of being the first subway stop I've seen since I got here that *looks* like a subway--that is, somewhat dirty and sketchy. The ride itself confirmed it for me: if possible, I'm getting a scooter. 45 minutes on a train crammed full of giggly high schoolers after a long day is just too much, especially when you top it off with having to walk another 10 minutes once you get 'home.'

So yeah, that was my day! And it starts again tomorrow at 7:50 back at Kaohsiung airport, so I'd better go to bed now. Bedtime moving up every night, it seems! Yet another first.