Happy Sad Anniversary

One year ago today, I walked home from my last undergraduate final exam and opened my inbox to find the most important email of my life: the email announcing I had gotten the Fulbright. I was blown away.

Or, technically, what the letter said was that I should call Jonathan Akeley at my earliest convenience to discuss the status of my Fulbright grant; and, technically, what I was was frozen stiff, then spurred to frenetic energy as I dug through my drawers looking for older correspondence, and then frozen stiff again. But you get the picture.

I don't know if I've mentioned it on here before, but I was actually an alternate to come to Taiwan. That means that in April, when everyone else here was getting their life-changing letters, jumping up and down with joy and calling their friends and family to share the good news--and believe me, they all remember the precise moment they got their letters, we've compared notes--I got, instead, the deflating news that I had gone from "recommended candidate" to "alternate." That was all the information I was given--that I was an alternate, and that, if someone backed out or they got more funding, I might get to go. There was no mention of the likelihood of that happening; nor did they tell me whether I had a dozen people before me on the alternate list, or if I was the first.

As it happened, the latter. But the not-knowing that plagued my April-June was one of the biggest testings I've faced so far, and the pay-off was easily the best. One year later, I cannot fathom what my life would have been like if today had passed like any other, consigning me forever to the phantasmal status of alternate.

I suppose it's fitting, then, that today featured our unofficial LET-ETA Farewell Potluck. One year ago today, I learned that I would have the opportunity to come to Taiwan and meet and work with hundreds of wonderful people; today, I began to learn what it is to say goodbye to them.

The existence of the potluck, and the number of people who came, actually says a lot about our group. See, we had had an official farewell dinner planned for all the ETAs, LETs, and host families. Then it got cancelled, thanks to budget cuts. At our last Wednesday workshop, they gave us the microphones--and all anyone could talk about was how much we wanted a real goodbye, funded or not. So potluck it was!

And I'm so glad it was. For a strictly voluntary event on a weekend night, a huge number of people showed up--and, Taiwan being Taiwan, way more than enough food. I spent the night shifting around the room and chatting, and in addition to chilling with the other ETAs (which we've done surprisingly little of this year) and with Maggie, Alison and Patty (ALWAYS a pleasure), I got to catch up with several of the LETs, like Kiwi and Karen, with whom I'd loved to hang out back during orientation, but hadn't been able to see much of since then. And, of course, I ate myself sick.

Foooooooood

Pictured: Patty succeeding in getting Analicia to try the duck blood rice. Brittany is still being persuaded. I held strong.

Lovely people!...many of whom I didn't know were in the picture until I uploaded it. In a crowded room, pictures grow as soon as you start posing!

I love these people so much!

I can't help but think how perfect the timing was that our potluck should be today, exactly one year after I found out I was coming here. What a perfect way to celebrate, and to remind myself of the possible outcome of a period of intense uncertainty--which, incidentally, is also what I'm dealing with right now in regards to the coming year.

Today ushers in a new year for me, one with many goodbyes to be made, but also many hellos which I don't know about yet. And, as sad as the goodbyes are, and will be, the best possible way to look at them is in light of the fact that they can be made--that I met all these wonderful people in the first place. Thank you all for a fantastic year, and thank you, Fulbright, for changing my life with a single email sent one year ago today.

Reflections

I've been doing a lot of them lately, and I expect I'll be doing a lot more as my time here winds down. Some for Fulbright, some for myself; some big, some miniscule. Might as well get used to it. In any case, here are a few more.

Today was our last Fulbright workshop. For it, the new Director General of the Education Bureau turned up to present all of the ETAs and LETs with a Certificate of Appreciation, and to give the ETAs a faux-glass clear engraved award. Then we passed a microphone around praising each other (all well-deserved, truly, and at least 100 times over) for a bit. Then things devolved into what my brain kept telling me was best described as a s***storm. Honestly, I tried to think of better words for it to keep from writing that--but they're just not there.

See, our end-of-the-year banquet was unceremoniously cancelled last week. Everyone was disappointed, and disappointment soon turned into person after person saying the same thing--we need a time to hang out and say goodbye--and asking why we couldn't have it. And, while this might not be too bad if it were just a group of ETAs and LETs, it wasn't; rather, the group included the absolutely wonderful and sweet local Education Bureau--you know, those people who probably had to make this call, but without having any choice but to do so. It was awkward.

Eventually we quit complaining and pulled together a plan for something resembling a potluck--and why it took a good half hour to get to that conclusion, I'll never know--but the needlessly combative middle of the workshop was absurdly uncomfortable, though also in a way the "perfect" close to a year that began with such stress back in August. I'm sure the potluck will be fun, though.

On an entirely unrelated note, I've been thinking lately about NaNoWriMo. For those in the know, yes, I am aware we are nowhere near November; for those not in the know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's an American-based community whose members devote themselves to completing a 50,000-word novel in the month of November.

I have never tried it; I've never considered that I would have time. I have friends who've done NaNoWriMo, and it's a lot of work; it's an understood thing among those who do that many people revert to copying song lyrics or other such text into their "novels" in order to keep up on the word count.

So what's my revelation on all this? Oh, only that I've essentially been doing a nonfiction version of NaNoWriMo for the past 10 months, that all. Seriously. In order to hit 50,000 words in a month, you have to write about 1,600 words a day--sound about like a blog post to you? OK, in all honesty I'm probably under 50,000 a month, but I bet I'm consistently hitting around 30,000, on average. Every. Single. Month. And, my occasionally pathetic asides aside, I have at least yet to resort to lyric copying!

So who knows, maybe this November I'll take up the fiction gauntlet for a bit. Can't be worse than finding material for a daily blog!

Sweat, etc.

It's back, and in full force. Today, the high was 30C (~87*F), plus a balmy 80% humidity and sunlight the brightness of which could definitely burn through any sunblock you dared to set up against it. The heat. It's here.

And it's not come alone: it's brought its faithful companion, sweat. What joy is ours.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. We don't get a lot of days above the 80s (F) there, and no one really talks about humidity because there's never enough of it to matter. As a result, sweat was a pretty foreign concept to me before I came here. Sure, people sweat, but usually just a little, and usually just when they've been working out or something.

Not so here. It took less than a month here for me to buy a little washrag to take with me everywhere; a little more than a month to realize wearing makeup was a futile waste of money. Then the heat waned; Kaohsiung's pleasant Fall and Winter approached, and I even had to don a coat a few times. But no more. Now the heat's returned, and, with it, the sweat.

Why am I writing about sweat? It's simple, really: it's the closest thing I have to a uniting force of my day today. It was certainly ever-present, anyway.

This morning, I arrived at school with my hair in low pigtails--a response to its newly cropped length which doesn't allow for any other sort of hairstyle that would simultaneously fit under my helmet and keep my hair off my neck. I didn't want to sweat. But what had I unfortunately forgotten as I styled my hair? Oh yeah: the interview.

Today, my LETs applied for the Fulbright program for next year. Seeing as how the interview fell in the middle of a school day, and involved all of the people that I usually share classes with, Hanmin asked if I would accompany them to the interview. Which I did--IN PIGTAILS. So much for professionalism.

The interview went fine--I mostly just sat there as moral support, though I did manage to throw in a quick plug for my schools right before we left--and then we went out to lunch at a local duck noodle shop. There, I had a bit of a problem with my chopsticks--they were slipping out of my fingers. No, not because I don't know how to use chopsticks--believe me, it's second nature at this point--it was because of sweat. And that's when I realized: it's back!

Thankfully, my heat annoyance was soon relieved by a SCRUMPTIOUS visit to a shave ice place with Hanmin's principal, academic director, and Maggie (a visit which meant we were 20 minutes late to our next class, but hey! We had the principal's and the academic director's explicit permission!)

The heat continued to plague my day in various forms which, thankfully, had less to do with sweat. My shoes began to fall apart and blister my feet, which sucked, and I got really thirsty, which also sucked.

It also impacted my favorite moment of the day: the moment a gaggle of 6th grade girls stretched my birthday into a second week, crowding my desk and handing me notes written on paper shaped like Facebook "like"s, a box of cute chocolate (like what Analicia got me!), some almond cookies, and a big ol' chocolate bar. It was so nice of them, and they were so wonderful, yet what was I worried about? The heat. And the chocolate.

Thanks for the likes, Mandy, Anna, Lillian, Natasha, and Cindy!

Favorite parts: "Fo" Bekah Teacher and the squares bottom left--each with a different design and different type of chocolate inside!

All I can say is "Thank goodness for refrigerators!"...And AC. It's the one surefire way to get out of the heat, and so to avoid melting--whether chocolate or self.

Halfway

As of today, I am halfway through my time here in Kaohsiung. I didn't figure this out on my own; rather, fellow Taiwan ETA Elaine posted about it on her Facebook and made me do a double take.

She said: "Today marks the halfway point of my time in Taiwan. It's been an amazing 5 and a half months and I'm sure the next 5 and a half will be even better."

Wait, it's been 5 and a half months? And I only get 5 and a half more months here? Both of those statements seem impossible to me.

Did I really not know Fonda, or Maggie, or Alison, or Patty, or Fiona, or Chialing, or Tom, or any of my other Taiwanese friends before 5 months ago? Did I really not know Margaret, James, and Emily, or Bunny and Jenny? Did I really not know my students? Had I really only met Karina, and Rachel, and Brittany, and Analacia, and Tiffiany, Emily, Lydia, Samia, Esther, Andrew and Steven only once, at a conference? Had I really never driven a scooter, or taught an English class, or planned a trip to Taipei (or anywhere else, independently), or grown to love tea, or tried stinky tofu, or had a conversation in Mandarin?

Have I really not seen my family or US friends, or driven a car, or stepped foot in America for five months?

It seems unfathomable.

On the flip side, will I really only be in Taiwan for 5 and a half more months? Will I really just be a plain old American living in America, then, just another of the horde of college graduates looking for a real job? Will I really be able to call up or stop by my family's place, or hang out with American friends, at will? Will I really just slip back into my old routines, old activities, old mindsets, as if I'd never left?

I'm determined that that last one, at least, won't happen: my year as a Fulbright ETA in Taiwan will never be reduced to just a line on my resume that I have to explain to every potential employer for the rest of my life. Even now, there are aspects of my thought processes which are irrevocably changed for the better. But some of it is irresistible: I will leave Taiwan. I will no longer drive a scooter, and there will no longer be tea shops on every corner to cater to my craving for grapefruit green tea, or fresh milk tea, and of course a weekend trip to Taipei will be out of the question.

I will be overjoyed to return to all my American loved ones. But I can't even think about the people I'll leave behind yet. That's the hardest part about building multiple home bases across the world from each other: you never get to have everyone you love in the same place at the same time. I have 5 and a half more months with my loved ones here, and I refuse to confront how short a time that is until I absolutely have to.

Wow, this post has taken a turn toward the depressing. But halfway does also mean that I still have half of my time to spend here, and 5 and a half months is still a pretty long time to squeeze in as much of the amazingness of life here in Taiwan as possible. And I will certainly try. After all, I'm only halfway.

Thanksgiving in Kaohsiung

Today wasn't Thanksgiving. It couldn't have been. I got up early, put on a t-shirt, skirt and sandals, bought an iced coffee, went to an RT competition (in which both of my schools competed), came home, took a nap, went to school again--oh, and then taught Thanksgiving, so I guess it must have been--but then I came home, went searching for turkey, and ended up eating steak at a Canadian restaurant.

And this is Thanksgiving? Really? You're serious? Huh. I didn't even consume any turkey.

I've already detailed many of my Thanksgiving teaching tactics; what I didn't mention is that, on Monday, after I finished my spiel about how the most important traditions of Thanksgiving are to eat a feast, spend time with family, and say what you are thankful for (spot the vocab words!), a student asked, through my co-teacher, "But, Teacher Bekah, why aren't YOU going home for Thanksgiving?"

...

It's times like these that I really wish someone had invented a teleportation device, already!

But they haven't and so my Thanksgiving was spent here, cheering on my students and taking a prohibited (and, as a result of its secrecy, terrible quality-ed) video of them, then describing what stuffing was to a class full of 6th graders, whose wrinkled faces at the idea of it cooking inside the turkey were priceless, not least of which because they closely mirrored my own face whenever I come into close contact with stinky tofu or pig intestines.

On my way into school today, I saw my commute friend Rob (he's an English teacher from New York who works across the street from my school; we met en route one day and we're perfecting the art of 40 second stoplight conversations), who was driving another English teacher, Debbie, and they informed me that they were spending Thanksgiving with a friend who had had the foresight to special order a turkey and plan a Thanksgiving dinner. They also told me that last year they had eaten turkey at a local American restaurant. They gave me the name, but I was on a scooter at a stop light--not exactly the time to write it down.

The search was on. A quick Google search for Western/American restaurants in Kaohsiung provided a decently long list--I'm going to need to keep exploring, I think--but only one which looked remotely like the name I thought they told me. I remembered that it was a pub & grill type place, and that it sounded like a last name.

My hypothesis? Foster Hewitt's.

I looked up directions, grabbed Analicia, who also didn't have dinner plans, and set off down one of Kaohsiung's busiest roads, down which apparently Foster Hewitt's lay. When we got there, one thing immediately struck me: a Canadian flag. Yep, it was Western all right, but decidedly Canadian; posters, hockey jerseys and other memorabilia from Ontario crowded the walls.

It was still a very nice place, but not exactly somewhere that would be serving turkey on American Thanksgiving.

Reconciled, I ordered a steak and fresh lime soda. Nothing even remotely related to Thanksgiving food, but at least it was high-quality Western food; in a lot of ways, it beat my back-up plan of a Subway turkey sandwich. And the bartender was Western, and it was oddly comforting to be able to be served by a native speaker of English, as weird as that sounds. At least a little something of home in a native accent.

Ah, Thanksgiving dinner.

My mom complained last week when I described how great the Thanksgiving dinner in Taipei was rather than talk about how much I miss her cooking. Well, last week wasn't Thanksgiving. Today was. And I do miss her cooking--hers, and Aunt Linda's, and Uncle Pat and Aunt Christy's, and Karen's, and Jillian's, and Diana's, and Rosa's, and Joshua's, and Heather's, and everyone else in my family who cooks's. I wish I were home, eating moist turkey and flavorful party potatoes and oddly delicious stuffing and the many, many pies. I wish I were hanging out with my family and watching the parade right now, feeling guilty about not being able to do more to help.

Because, as I told my kids, that's what Thanksgiving is about: eating a feast and spending time with family.

But there was a third thing: being thankful. And I am, of course, thankful first and foremost for my family. But I'm also thankful that I'm here. I love all my wonderful students, co-teachers, host family, fellow ETAs, and other friends here, and I am so thankful they're in my life, and that I have the opportunity to be in theirs. I'm thankful that I have been blessed with a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, which is itself the chance of a lifetime. I'm thankful that I even have this dilemma, that I have to want to be in two places at once, that I have two potential places to spend the holiday.

Because today was Thanksgiving, no matter how I spent it. And turkey, as it turns out, is optional.

Technical difficulties

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. The food, the family, the contemplative mood--and, in my family at least, the desserts--are all great reminders of what makes life so special.

Which is why I was overjoyed that all of my LETs wanted me to teach the holiday at their schools. This is, according to other ETAs, a bit of a rarity; Thanksgiving is, after all, a uniquely American holiday (when celebrated at this time and for these reasons, anyway) with few real-world applications outside of the US. But then again, I am the resident American teacher, so it's my job to teach my culture, right?

So that's what I set out to do. I had had some ideas about how to do it last week while lesson-planning, which I enthusiastically shared with my LETs, and which they agreed to with few issues. It wasn't until Friday, as I sat on the train headed for Taipei, that I realized I had volunteered myself to create and teach the entire lesson by myself.

I went to work, and crafted a PowerPoint presentation in pretty Fall (well, American Fall, anyway) colors, including a brief account of the first Thanksgiving, discussion about when it is, and, most importantly, a description of Thanksgiving traditions and foods. I made myself drool as I uploaded photos of turkeys and stuffing and cranberry sauce and picked out our vocabulary words for the day--thankful, feast, turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie--wrote out instructions for hand turkeys, complete with a sentence pattern they were to write in the palm area ("I am thankful for______"), and found and linked to several YouTube videos.

But when I arrived at school today, I discovered that we had a problem. Several, in fact.

At Hanmin, we don't have an English classroom, and so go from home room to home room teaching English; only one or maybe two of these is equipped with a computer-overhead set-up. We knew this ahead of time, of course, and Alison had booked us for the audio-lingual room upstairs. But when I got to school, I discovered that my beautiful PowerPoint's formatting had been severely mangled in the transition from .pptx to .ppt and, what was worse, that the "audio-lingual room" was entirely lacking in the audio, thanks to a blown amplifier.

What followed was several periods of awkwardly silent YouTube clips drawn from disordered PowerPoints (I did my best to fix them over breaks), as I tried to explain what was going on:

"See, that's Squanto, and he's helping the children plant corn with fish to make it grow better...See, Lucy is telling Charlie Brown that football is a Thanksgiving tradition, so this time she won't yank the ball away...See, the Thanksgiving Day parade..."

To make matters worse, the large, echoey room's microphones were also not working, and I quickly discovered that, out from under the eyes of their home room teachers, the kids at Hanmin are much MUCH more prone to talking. By lunch time, my throat was beginning to ache.

Fortunately, though, just before lunchtime we scored another room with a projector, and this time one with functioning audio--but still no microphone, and this room was larger than the last. We finally rigged a mic to work for the last period of the day, but by that time there was no going back. My throat was irrevocably sore.

On the plus side, though, I think the kids enjoyed the presentation, for the most part, and I was able to teach them many things about Thanksgiving that even my LETs had not heard about, foods like candied yams and stuffing, and activities like Black Friday and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

I'm pretty sure that this clip was their favorite part of the whole day, though, so here it is for your enjoyment:

Snoopy is a big hit here; he was also their favorite part of the Macy's parade clip I showed them.

After classes, I took my malfunctioning throat home with me, a persistent technical difficulty from a day strewn with them. But it didn't matter much as I got to enjoy the wonderful company of Emily, Lydia, Fonda and Chialing on Chialing's birthday, sitting outside her shop, drinking tasty drinks and eating delicious food and ice cream with her homemade mulberry-cranberry-strawberry jam on top.

I can't think of a better way to end a day that was all about Thanksgiving than that: eating great food with great friends and reflecting on how great life is.

Mud

It's become a sort of paradigm with me that, on days which I actually have something exciting to write about, I have no time in which to write about it. Today is one of those days.

In sum, I went with Karina and her LETs to mud springs, where we got to live out every kindergartener's dream: smear mud all over ourselves.

The trip there was pretty epic itself: we left my apartment at 2pm and got to the springs at 6pm, though we weren't going too far, just a bit north of Tainan; in the process, we used four different forms of communication, including MRT, walking, train (not HSR, just regular train--my first time here!), and car. In addition, both MRT and train cars were more full than we had ever seen them (looked like Taipei!), so we were standing for the entire first portion of the trip.

When we finally did reach the mud springs, though, it was fantastic. They had a bowl of mud and a mirror for you to watch where you smeared the thin, blue-gray mixture all over yourself, and then you entered the mud spring pool, which was already mud-colored and the perfect temperature in which to bask and let the mud do its glorious thing on your skin. Needless to say, a series of wonderful mud-related photos also followed. (Unfortunately, said photos are on Karina's camera, but I'll add them when I can.)

UPDATED 11/18: PHOTOS!

Bekah: "I can't believe I'm actually doing this..."    Karina: "I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M ACTUALLY DOING THIS!!!"

When we recovered from our childhood ecstasies of playing in mud, we moved on to the other pools (which did not have mud in them), our favorite of which was tinted blue-green and smelled like tea, or lemongrass, or some such herbal mixture. It was heavenly.

After the mud springs, we headed down the most adorably quintessential Chinese/Taiwanese street on a winding street which reminded me, by turns, of Huangshan in China, the area around the Great Wall in China, Kenting in Taiwan, and Maokong in Taipei. (Please note that only one of those links shows what I really mean: a twisty green road with little shops along either side--same at the Great Wall, and also at Maokong, with tea shops.) It was all of these things and none of them, a mystical place shrouded in mist and serving up some delicious roasted chicken and fried rice, once we picked a restaurant. Fabulous.

Well, after all that, our long journey back began; I walked in the doors to my apartment a little after 11:30pm and, of course, I have class tomorrow. So, epic day though it was, that's all for now! It's just one of those days.

***
Bonus moment: I've had this song stuck in my head in the best possible way, and feel like sharing it with ya'll:

Friday night

...is not all that exciting. After a week of Halloween festivities and teaching, when Friday rolls around all I really want to do is sit around, and read, and watch TV, and sleep.

This was called to my attention today with the arrival of Nick, a former Fulbrighter in China whom we met in Taipei, arriving at our apartment for the night. His arrival was the most eventful part of the day (closely rivaled by Skyping with my parents and brother, whom I hadn't seen in months); sitting around our kitchen table and chatting with him, Brittany and Rachel was the biggest social event I've experienced for a while.

Is that weird? Maybe. Is it the truth of my existence here? Yes.

I've mentioned it before, but my social life here is essentially nonexistent. My phone contains 22 names and phone numbers, 11 of whom are my fellow ETAs, 3 of whom are my LETs, 2 of whom are other Fulbright people, and 3 of whom are my host family. When you boil it down, that right there is my social circle: pretty tiny. And teaching is great, but it's tiring, and by the time I get home, I don't really feel like going out again.

It's times like these that I wish there weren't a time difference, so I could at least get in touch with my friends back home; Facebook and email only work up to a certain point, and then only if the friends check as often as I do, which is all but impossible. In truth, most of my friends have never been big Facebook users, a fact I simply forgot when there were other ways to get a hold of them, such as walking down the hallway or calling their cell.

The irony of my writing this post on this particular Friday night is that I do actually have plans tomorrow--an art exhibit with Maggie and another colleague, Fiona, in the morning, and dinner with my host family in the evening.

But right now it's Friday night, and all I want to do is sleep.

Back to Normal

Dan and Danny left this morning sometime after I did, and I was instantly plunged back into my occasionally unrelenting (oxymoron, I know) schedule. And today was one of the unrelenting ones.

I've often meant to detail my schedule on here to give you a glimpse into my actual day-to-day life, and I suppose I have done that in snippets so far, but now let me just give you the timetable I follow every other Wednesday.

6:45am -- Wake up and get ready for the day, assuming I remembered to shower the night before (otherwise, the alarm is set for 6:20am)
7:20am -- Leave for Han-Min, on the expectation that it will take a good 10 or 15 minutes longer than a normal day, as I will have to fight through the morning rush all trying to get to Siaogang by 8am
7:50am -- Arrive at Han-Min, with any luck
8:00am -- Begin Morning English! I switch off teaching this with Alison and Maggie, and we teach 5 classes of a single grade every week; by the end of the semester, we will have seen every class once and we'll start over again. Today Maggie and I taught a new dialogue for our first "middle grade" group of 4th graders; first times always have a few bumps, but overall, it went pretty well.
8:30am -- Begin the awkward hour break before my next class, usually rendered un-awkward by a coffee/tea trip with Maggie and/or Alison. Today it went by really quickly, thanks to a few great conversations with both of them and the fact that we used the time to plan for our Halloween lesson plans. Going to be great, by the way!
9:30am -- First *real* class of the day; all adorable 5th graders with Maggie on Wednesdays.
12:00pm -- Lunch. My last class of the three I teach on Wednesdays bring me my lunch in the teachers' office, where I thank them in English and they, without fail, giggle a response and run away. Love it. :) Another highlight of lunch is always sitting and talking with Maggie, Alison, and Fiona, the other English teacher at Hanmin; our desks are close together and we just sit and chat and teach each other new vocabulary. It's fantastic.
12:30pm ish -- Lesson plan time! Alison and Maggie and I plan for next week
1:00/1:30pm -- Go home to pick stuff up if I have time (I did today); if not, straight to Sanmin for our massive LET-ETA-Fonda-Alex-Education Bureau people-Dr. Sun meeting!
2:00pm -- Here begins our meeting.
4:00pm (if we're lucky) -- Here ends our meeting. Nothing much of importance happens in between.
4:25pm -- We (ETAs) finish our post-meeting meeting with Fonda and Alex, and either quickly run home for stuff if there wasn't time before (this option would make us late) or run out for food at the local market and/or 7-11. Oh, the nutritious dinners we eat on Wednesdays...
5:10pm -- Chinese class begins. "Surprisingly," we make horrible students on these days...
7:10pm ish -- Chinese class ends.
7:40pm ish -- Rachel and I reach the gym (if we coordinated and have managed to conquer our exhaustion--which didn't happen today)
8:40pm ish -- Rachel and I head home, where I drop exhausted onto whatever flat surface I see first.

I know that, in writing this, I'm inviting comparisons from people who routinely work 14 hour days etc, and I have no answer for that. I'm just sharing my day.

Teachers' Day!

Today was Teachers' Day, which is, as you may have guessed, a day honoring teachers. Apparently there's one in the US, too, but I had never heard of it before 10 seconds ago, when I searched it on Wikipedia. Not possible here!

Here in Taiwan, Teachers' Day is a really big deal--according to Maggie, Kaohsiung used to give teachers $5,000NT each on this day, and according to Alison, they still give New Taipei teachers $1,000NT. (We didn't get money, though, for the record.) Here, Teachers' Day celebrates the attributed birthday of Confucius, he of the hundreds of wise sayings and seemingly the wellspring of all Chinese wisdom. Basically, he's a superstar--and a superstar at teaching. Which means that we, as modern-day teachers, are by extension superstars as well!

Teachers' Day celebrations actually began earlier this week. On Monday, I arrived at Han-Min to find this sitting (not bitten yet, of course; that was me) on my desk:

It's a rice bun filled with red bean and (a single) strawberry! Quite good, actually.

I think it may have been from one of the other teachers or from the administration (all the teachers in the Subject Teachers' Office had one), but still.

And not to worry: you can't say students don't know how to appreciate their teachers here in Taiwan! Later that day, I witnessed this wonderful little moment:

No, your eyes do not deceive you: that's a student rubbing Alison's shoulders while another waits behind her--they were literally in line a second before I snapped this; a second before that, they were fighting over who got to give her the back rub. Would this happen in America? I think NOT. (Incidentally, the boy in this picture is named Louis; he's a total teachers pet and especially loves Alison. The girl, however, is just there to rub her shoulders.)

And that wasn't even on the day.

Today, after teaching Morning English, I found, first of all, that Alison had bought me coffee. (She is so sweet!) Second of all, I discovered that I, like all other teachers, was a temporary rock star.

(Of course, all it really takes to make me feel like a rockstar is this, but still...)

Anyway, today, in addition to the carefully-scripted "Laoshi hao" and/or "Good Morning Teacher Bekah" in the halls and in the classrooms (where either greeting is accompanied by a group bow), I heard "Happy Teachers' Day!" more times than I could count. And they were genuinely excited about it! This could be evidenced by the growing pile of stuff on my desk that students gave me--I think this was the bulk of it, sans a couple candies I ate.

Worth noting: the flower was from the school

Not pictured is one of my favorite cards, a handmade postcard showing the beach, an umbrella and a big cloud cut out against an inexplicably yellow sky. Actually, now that I'm looking at it again to describe it, you've just got to see it:

Sorry--webcam quality.

I love this card all the more because two girls came literally running up to Maggie and I today while we were on our way to class to deliver it--they were that excited to show us their appreciation. And, terrible teacher that I am (or, you know, just teacher-with-540-students-I-see-once-a-week that I am), I couldn't even tell you their names. I know that they were in class 5-01, so I know I taught them yesterday, and I know that they are super sweet, and made me the best card ever! Yet another reason I need to take individual pictures of my students holding their name cards or something--I can't stand not knowing simple stuff like this!

Aherm--back to topic. Another fun discovery today was that my name has apparently changed its spelling without my knowledge: the standard attempt was "Bkka," which I guess sounds about right if you sound it out, and especially makes sense given that there is no "eh" sound in the Chinese language, but it was a bit funny to see written out over and over.

And once on a crane!

Then there was the absolutely adorable card Alison and I got from a student named Madeline:

Outside...(It reads "Lead; Knowledge; Kind; Humorous; Inspirit; Likes Playing; friend?" Last three are my favorites. :)

And the inside: melts your heart!

But the most extravagant, wow-this-is-fantastic moment came in the second class of the day, when Maggie and I walked in to find...this:

 It was beautiful! All over, it read "Happy Teachers' Day" in two languages, plus "I love teacher" and "You are beautiful" in Chinese. I had forgotten my camera, but instantly ran to get it. This was not a board that could be erased before being captured forever!

The artists and their creation.

Had to get a close-up, too, to capture the vividness!

Feeling very honored as a teacher (and very awkward to be having my picture taken--Maggie's idea)

 We did, of course, have to erase it for the lesson, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They actually did it themselves, going at it with a gusto I thought amazing, given the time they seemed to have put into making it. But they were enthusiastic, and we then had a great class!

After class: even the home room teacher got in there! Can you spot the adults?

Feeling very blessed to be here in Taiwan, and to have the co-teachers and schools that I do. And not just because they give me stuff on Teachers' Day--they are genuinely some of the best people I've ever met, and I just love spending time with each of them!

Taxi!

Considering my other non-Taipei, non-USA weekends since I got here, I did a remarkable amount today. But it wasn't quite intentional.

The day began with me looking at my clock and thinking "Huh, 10 o'clock. Not a bad time to get up!" Seconds later, I looked over and saw that it was now 11 o'clock.

Once I was up, though, I immediately set into cleaning mode: our apartment decided to set up weekly cleaning people, rather than divvy up weekly chores like we did at my last house. And this was my week, and I hadn't yet completed probably the biggest and most important of my cleaning jobs: sweeping and mopping all the common areas. It wasn't pretty, and it certainly wasn't fun (take all the joy of normal cleaning, then add 15* and humidity), but it was rewarding to see the outcome: clean floors, for about 5 minutes. Se la vie, I guess.

Anyway, after that, Rachel and I set out to try to find a way to spend $2,500NT. That may sound like an easy task, but ours was actually more complicated--the reason we were trying to spend money was that the gym we're planning on joining, Fitness Factory (for the record, not the gigantic one with the rock climbing wall and pool pictured; we're going to a smaller, cheaper branch off of Sanduo), is having a promotion in which, if you spend up to $2,500NT at once at one of their partner stores, you can deduct that amount from your joining fee of $2,500NT. So, really, it's a question of "Do you want to give us $2,500 and get nothing, or spend $2,500 somewhere else and get something?"

Big surprise, we chose the latter.

But it was not an easy task! We visited Fitness Factory on Tuesday, found out about the deal, and were given a pamphlet listing all the partner stores. It was, however, written entirely in traditional characters, which neither Rachel nor I can read. (We could read "SUBWAY," but $2,500NT worth of sandwiches is a bit extreme...) So we (and by we, I mostly mean Rachel) spent the week asking various Taiwanese friends what the places on our pamphlet were, and where we should go. With the help of Chialing, as well as Rebecca and Karen (Rachel's LETs), we got some translations and narrowed down the list to a few contenders.

And this morning, we clutched our little green pamphlet, grabbed a cab across the street (and down a ways, since the guy in the cab directly across the street was sound asleep in the driver's seat), and asked him to take us to a car store. Now you may be thinking "Cars? But you don't have a car.." which is true. Our thought was that they might also sell scooter stuff, and we have both been hankering for a better scooter helmet.

Turns out, though, that your thoughts were right--nothing doing. As Rachel pointed out, we could have gotten Ferrari bumper stickers for our scooters, but I really can't say that's something I'm in the market for.

So we hailed another cab and asked him to take us to our back-up place--a jewelry store which turned out to be right around the corner from the gym. It also happened to be a tiny little section of a department store, with prices beginning at $40,000NT. Next!

We hopped another cab and asked him to take us to either of two watch stores on the list; whichever was closest. He agreed and set out, but as we looked closer at the address on the pamphlet, we realized that even the "closer" one was in Zuoying--by the HSR station, quite a ways from where we were. *sigh* One $200NT cab ride (spendy for here, but dirt cheap by US standards) later, we finally found the store, and discovered we'd finally found somewhere to spend our money. I walked away with a great watch and a pair of cheap clear glasses (for scootering at night), and Rachel walked away with a pair of cheap clear glasses and a pair of "designer" (we're not sure if they were telling the truth...ever hear of Martini?) sunglasses. I was actually a bit disappointed, though, because they gave me a discount, meaning my total was less than the $2500 allowed. Never been disappointed about a discount before! But now I have to pay a good $420NT to join, which is unfortunate.

Anyway, since we were in Zuoying and I'd promised Karina a visit today anyway--she lives in Zuoying now--we took the MRT down to meet her puppies. They are absolutely adorable! She adopted them off of Cijin Island a few weeks ago, and though she's since discovered she can't keep them--she's taking them to Taipei next weekend to become animal therapy dogs--it was so much fun to see the little pups and watch them play. Their names are MoMo and ChiChi--combined into "Mochi" their names mean "an unspoken deep understanding" in Chinese--and they were born at almost the same time that we got to Taiwan, Karina says. I do wish she could keep them if only for that reason--they have the same amount of history here as we do! In any case, though, it was lots of fun to see them, and to see where Karina and Esther live now.

We then grabbed another cab and went back to our apartment, where Brittany (who had been at a Taiwanese engagement ceremony of the friend of one of her LETs all day) was waiting for us to go to Kaohsiung Sky Tower 85--the landmark building of Kaohsiung, which we hadn't been to yet.

So we hopped in yet another cab and went to the 85, as it's usually referred to around here. At the top (or, rather, floor 74, where the observation deck is), we enjoyed some great views and an....interesting....Tokyo photographers exhibit, before grabbing dessert (caramel apple cheesecake for me; Haagen Dazs for Brittany and Rachel; Karina didn't want anything) and heading home.

For Karina and I, anyway--we walked to the MRT and went our separate ways. Brittany and Rachel grabbed another cab and went shopping.

And that was my day! Did some application work when I got home, which I should have done all day, and now I'm sitting here doing this. At least it doesn't require a taxi!

Friday

Well that title is simultaneously the most blatantly obvious statement of all time and it managed to get the song by Rebecca Black stuck in my head. But it is, nonetheless, an apt description of how I feel right now--it's Friday!

And I'm spending my Friday night sitting on the couch in my apartment, watching movies and eating junk food. Because sometimes, you just need a day like that. (Or at least that's what we're telling ourselves.)

But fortunately, we're currently watching The Holiday--way out of season, I know--but I'm watching the scenes of the snow-covered southern English countryside and realizing afresh just how much I want to go there next on my travels. So maybe I'll use this time to gain inspiration to keep working on my application. :)

After school (which was pretty great, though the 5th graders were rather too noisy in their appreciation of the vocabulary matching game), I got home just in time to get a call from Rachel asking if I wanted to go to lunch with her and her LET, Karen. I'd met Karen at the orientation and loved chatting with her then; today was no different!

Karen took us to a lovely Japanese restaurant owned by her family (she introduced us to several, who were there--and were, if I remember her introductions correctly, were her 6th and 7th aunts? Big family!), and it was absolutely deLICious. Here are some photos of us and the wonderful spread:

...and keep in mind that this wasn't all of it.

Pictured behind the hand rolls: tempura shrimp. Possibly the best thing I ate all lunch...hard to tell, though. So yummy!

Other than that, nothing terribly exciting, provocative or insightful happened today. I worked on my application, watched TV, hung out with Karina, who came over for a few hours, and pretty much just rehearsed my role as a couch potato.

And that's it! Another reason my posts are getting shorter: my life is settling into a routine, and with routine comes a lack of new experiences to write about. SO, if you have things you want to know more about, just let me know!

For now, I'm going to enjoy my lazy Friday.

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.

Culture Shock and Co-teaching

They told us, again and again, in fact, that it would come to this. At some point, they said, you will experience culture shock. I just didn't expect my first culture shock to come through our placement process.

We still don't know our schools.

What we've concluded is that we are being sacrificed to guanxi: the city-county merge happened in January; our county placements were the first project of a new head honcho; there's an election coming up in January. So, if there's a way, we're going out to county. Too many relationships would have to be broken to change it. Time to get used to the culture!

But we got to co-teach today! Since we didn't have our school assignments yet, we were all randomly assigned to a school league, and I was assigned to League C, with Hou-jing and Oil Refinery Elementary Schools. So today, I got to co-teach with Cecilia, who is absolutely amazing, and tomorrow I get to co-teach with Tracy, who is fantastic as well. There are 3 leagues in each classroom, so I was also working with Esther and Andrew, who were paired with Leagues A & B.

Our class was wonderful! We have sixteen 4th grade students, 8 boys and 8 girls, all of whom are energetic and adorable. I think my favorite part was our twin boys, Johnny and Vincent, who began the day refusing to participate and ended it with their hands shooting up with every new question: Teacher, I know, I know!

We began the day with the ETAs leading plenty of games, including a name game and hangman (Esther led), Volcano (Andrew lea), Rhythm and Bingo (I led), and Teacher Says (we all led). After that we each had 20 minute lessons which we delivered with one of our co-teachers. I went last (afternoon in the heat--yuck!); Esther and Priscilla began with a lesson on taste (sweet, sour, salty, bitter); then Andrew and Rebecca (LET) went with a lesson on things you do right now (ie watching TV, doing homework). They were all stupendous; quite intimidating to see how easily they both interacted with the kids. Andrew especially had a great report going with them; by the end of the day they had a nickname for him and everything.

Then it was my turn. Cecilia and I co-taught a lesson on emotions; we taught happy, sad, tired, and angry, and the sentence patterns "I am..." and "He/She is..." It went pretty well, I think--we got great feedback after--but it was hard for me to see how un-talkative the kids were when they weren't simply repeating after me or using their new sentence patterns. When, for instance, I would say things like, "you want to win, right?" I would get blank stares. Something to work on in my actual classroom.

I'm tired, so that's it for now. I co-teach again tomorrow--with a story I wrote today about animals--so maybe then I'll have more details!

Trouble on the Eastern Front

I toyed with the idea of calling this post "Revolt," or "Mayhem." Karina suggested "Jury Duty." All are apt for describing the situation, and the day: we are having major issues with the county schools, and they go way beyond people just not wanting to go. Tensions abound.

Today we focused on co-teaching for most of the day; in the morning Professor Lee gave a presentation on what to do and what not to do in co-teaching (key point she made: IT IS ILLEGAL for ETAs to teach on their own in Taiwan--we're not certified!), and we watched a video the ETAs from a couple of years ago made called "The Art of Co-teaching," and discussed the best method in numerically assigned small groups.

But of course, the small groups weren't exactly impartial--we were supposed to number off, but somehow my group, group 4 of 12, ended up with 3 LETs, while another group had 6, and most had at least 4. Suspicious. When we snagged someone from the group of 6, it turned out she was from the same school as another LET in my group, and they took it upon themselves to turn our discussion, in part, into a time to pitch their school. They were very nice, but it felt a bit like I was being manipulated.

And oh, what a glorious segue that is into our number one concern with the LETs today: we felt, and in many cases were correct in feeling, like we were being lied to and manipulated.

As I mentioned before, several of the county schools yesterday sent school representatives, rather than the actual LETs like they were supposed to; yesterday, Alex made it a point to tell the group once again that they MUST send their LET to the orientation, as a requirement of their participation. So, today, all the same people showed up, but now they were magically transformed into LETs, when we asked. Beyond that, on probing several of them during our afternoon "speed dating" with all the schools, we discovered that some of the schools still hadn't sent anyone at all, and that a couple people couldn't speak English at all--one of the supposed English teachers could barely say his own English name, which was, incidentally, "Aware." Irony of ironies.

All of these shady practices made us, as ETAs, nervous. Leaving all thoughts about city versus county aside, these schools are lying about having LETs for us to teach with. When we get there, we know exactly what we will find: big joyous crowds come to welcome the English teacher, and an empty classroom set aside for us, and only us. Which is illegal.

And, even supposing that the "LETs" we met are there, we have too much of a language barrier to work together effectively! It would inevitably end up being either just them teaching the class in Mandarin, or just us teaching the class in English--which, again, is illegal. (You see, I told you that was a key point of the morning presentation.) And it's also ineffective! We are not (most of us) trained teachers; what we bring to the classroom is enthusiasm, an embodiment of why kids should care about English, and a native command of the language. What we do not bring is a knowledge of Mandarin good enough to manage a classroom, talk to administrators, and avoid miscommunications.

So, after the day was over, in our group meeting with Fonda, the ETAs essentially staged a verbal coup. Not against Fonda, not against Alex, not against anyone in Fulbright, but against the situation: we are terrified of it, and, I believe, justifiably so. We do not want to be sent to the county schools, only a couple of which actually have LETs so far, to discover that we are expected to do what we are not trained for and cannot legally do. We feel disrespected by the schools by their inability to prepare for our arrival and their total disregard for the hard-and-fast rules set down by the local government--we all went through a stringent screening to get to come here, and the city schools also took part in a major competition. But, due to political pressures, the same is not true of the county, and we don't feel that they are holding up their end of the bargain. In sum, we can't imagine a good situation coming from a partnership based in lies or, worse yet, from the absence of a partner.

So for now, we wait. We wait to see what the Education Bureau will do about those who break the rules; to see if they will enforce their own restrictions and fulfill our contracts to be assistant teachers. We wait to see if practicality will beat out political difficulties to benefit everyone involved.

I certainly hope so. 

First Impressions (and an "Aha" Moment)

Today we met all the LETs we will be working with from all the different schools around Kaohsiung. And that's all we did. To be honest, when I looked at our schedule and saw "ETAs & LETs PPT Self-introductions" marked down for the full day, I didn't think we could fill the day. But we did. And, surprise of surprises, the time went by really quickly; 12 leagues, 23 schools, 29 LETs, and 12 ETAs later, the day had evaporated into the heat waves coming off the sidewalk.

My first impression: these are great people. All of them.

My second impression: some of these great people may be a bit harder to work with than others, if for no other reason than that a few of them, though English teachers, struggle with the language themselves.

Also, those teachers from the outlying areas definitely know most people would rather be in the city, and will lobby hard to change your mind.

My presentation seemed to go well--I'd beefed it up a bit since we presented just to ourselves, as I discovered that several of my fellow ETAs have basically saved the world from utter destruction a couple times a year for the past ten years or so. So this version included my Spanish language skills, my experience in the playground program, my black belt in karate, my bass and piano playing, my acting, my Reader's Theater experience and willingness to write scripts (Reader's Theater is a BIG deal over here)--basically anything and everything I've done that might make me stand out in a room full of world travelers, Teach for America teachers, UNICEF Arizona founders, friends of congresswomen, and TESOL Master's recipients.

Competition in this group is stiff, let me tell you. I'm just glad we're doing this now, when we already like each other, or it could get brutal. In any case, Karina told me that they were really interested in what I had to say--more than anyone else's presentation, she said. I just hope that translates well for the rest of the process.

I spent the LET presentations taking copious notes on the presenters--not all of whom, we discovered later, were actually the LETs, like they were supposed to be (some were other school representatives,which was against the rules)--and, during the mingling time, did my best to be sociable and open and ask all the right questions and, for that matter, talk to the right people.

But it's stressful. At this point I think I know where I want to go, based on my interactions with the teachers and what they've told me about their schools. However, I have no idea who else of the ETAs may want the same schools as I do, or who of us the LETs would prefer. This makes the process intricately complicated--if ETA 1 puts my favorite school as their #1, too, and the LET at that school has ETA 1 rated above me, I lose out; if my second choice school is someone else's first choice and they match with an LET, I drop again, and so on. It's a complicated dance of trying to gauge ETA's and LET's interests and weigh them against my own: if I really want to be smart about this, I have to pick not just my favorite school, but a favorite school of mine that I don't think anyone else will put as their top choice.

But, given that there are only 7 city schools and at least 10 people vying for those spots (I overheard another ETA today saying she may vote county), it's almost unavoidable that we will overlap.

On the plus side, I genuinely like all of the teachers I met today. On the negative side, I'm afraid that ranking schools 'wrong' may result in me missing out on any chance in the city. Now's a time when I wish I were better at reading people. A big part of me also has this utopian fantasy that all the ETAs could get together and talk it over, and then compare notes with the LETs and come to some sort of mutually agreeable arrangement. But let's face it, that's a pipe dream.

So I'm playing it pretty close to the vest. Tomorrow we have more time to get to know the LETs--this time in a structured 'speed dating' format, rather than today's free-form talk-to-whom-you-will (or, as was often the case, whomever is available and/or most persistent in flagging you down), and tomorrow night we'll do the rating. We'll know where we're placed by Wednesday.

Here's an over-the-head shot of the LET and ETA meeting today--the camera misses quite a few people, too.

After the presentations were over, we (and by we I mean Andrew, Steven, Esther, Tiffiany and I--the usual crew always volunteering to do more scootering) did scooter practice, and I had a major "aha" moment. For whatever reason, today when I sat down on the scooter, something clicked and I was suddenly able to turn without feeling like I was going to fall over, and accelerate and stop on a dime. It was pretty cool, I have to say. Last time I sat on the scooter I was struggling with turning; now I can do figure eights. Gotta love it when muscle memory suddenly wakes up and says "Hey! The maneuvering on this thing is just like riding a bike!"

Which is not to say riding a scooter is as easy as riding a bike--that's what they've been trying to tell me since I've got here, and it's not true. Scooters are heavier, harder to balance, and harder to turn without going too far. But it is definitely the same type of skill set, and apparently today my body decided it was okay to tap into that wealth of old experiences and make it work.

So yeah, that's all for now...tomorrow I will master the art of the second impression, and hopefully solidify where I want to be, and where they'll have me!

The Principal's Office

I spent most of today in the principal's office. Well, there, and moving in and out of a tour bus, as we visited several--but not all--of the area schools where we will be teaching. 

The day didn't start out great for me, honestly--my alarm didn't go off, so I didn't wake up until a half hour before we had to leave, when Rachel knocked on my door; after a wild scramble to get ready to go (I somehow managed to get everything done in half the time--crazy what necessity will do for you), I arrived at our first school and promptly discovered that the coffee they gave me had leaked all over my shirt. So much for a good impression, there or anywhere on our route. And, of course, this was one of our most official-picture-taking heavy days so far, so I did some experimenting with strategic arm crossing.

At each place, the routine was the same: we'd pile out of the bus and follow someone into the principal's office/conference room they had set up for us, where we would be invited to sit and drink some sort of beverage (there was a bit of range here--hot coffee, iced coffee, iced tea, water, and cold honey water were all proffered at various places). Then, after a brief introduction, usually given over a microphone by the principal and translated by the local English teacher, we would be given a tour of the premises, always interrupted by a group photo op, before being herded back to our original seats for question-and-answer time. Then it was back on the bus and off to our next stop.

The schools are all so beautiful!

This is one of the county schools--only 77 students, but 6 class preps!

There were variations, of course. Some schools showed us a video to highlight their accomplishments; several gave us food; one showcased previous classes' work in English; one had a minute-by-minute itinerary and a prepared folder of materials for us to look over, which I, beaver that I am, quite appreciated. But the overall impression I came away with is that these are all great schools; as Rachel pointed out, they have all been through a selection process probably at least as rigorous as the one we've been through in order to get ETAs. No matter where we are placed, we will be in a good situation; no matter where we are placed, we will be working with gracious people. But still, the placement is an issue.

In fact, the wonderfulness of all the schools makes placement in some ways a bigger issue--it puts all of the emphasis on location, which was already what people were most worried about. Today we saw three 'city' schools and two 'county' schools, and really, they were all great. Each had its pros and cons, sure--one was close to the MRT station, but had bigger classes, while another had a small school population, but required more class preps, for instance--but the biggest factor for everyone, from what I can tell, remains whether the school is in the city or the county. 

We saw the county today. It is absolutely gorgeous--jungle-clad hills rolling into mountains in the distance; lush banana and rice farms not far off the road--but it is also far. From our discussions with Fonda, Alex, and several of the local teachers, it can be more than an hour to get into the city, and require at least three modes of transportation; the routes they described to us for getting to our biweekly meetings in Kaohsiung all consisted of scooter, train, and MRT. And that's complicated, especially if people in the county are wanting to take Chinese classes or hang out with other ETAs. At one of the county schools, the LET told us straight out that the only things to do in the area was watch TV, surf the Internet, or hike the mountains. And you all know how well hiking and I get along...

Don't get me wrong, it's GORGEOUS, I just don't know how I'd do trudging up these slopes in 90% humidity!

On the bus ride back, I settled my mind that if I ended up in the county, at least I'd get a lot of writing done!

When we finally made it back to the city, Alex, the ETA coordinator with whom we'd emailed since June  but whom we hadn't met until today, explained the placement process to us, and our tense, carefully-worded negotiation began. 

Alex said that in previous years (before the county was incorporated into Kaohsiung, so when all ETAs were placed within the city limits), everyone met all the teachers, worked with them throughout orientation, and then at the end ranked their favorites; placements were based on ETA rankings, combined with LET preferences. This, he said, usually ended up with everyone being disappointed that they didn't get their first choice, so this year, the plan was to allow those who wanted to go to the county to pick their schools, and then have the remaining city-dwelling ETAs draw straws, and to do it all this next week, so we have time to work with our own LETs, rather than the LETs as a cumulative group.

Almost immediately, Andrew raised the question on everyone's mind: can we go back to the ranking system, but do it earlier?

The answer was yes, if we all agreed and Dr. Vocke was okay with it, but then it got complicated, as more and more people weighed in, and as we determined that, as of now, only one of us actually wants to go to the county; soon questions of what the least psychologically distressing path would be arose, and, about a half-hour of negotiation and poll-taking later, we had determined--and then reneged--and then determined--and then put off the question, until Wednesday. 

Our tentative plan is to still let county people pick, and then rank the remaining based on one day of knowing the LETs, but there are still rumblings in the group from those who would prefer a purely random selection. We must decide, somehow, by Wednesday, so that Alex and Fonda have time to talk to Dr. Vocke and the Bureau of Education, and plan for our placement.

Oh, complications.