Flurry

To look at today, you wouldn't exactly describe it as a "flurry." I didn't leave the house until almost 7pm; until then, I was mostly sitting at my computer or cleaning.

But that's just it! All day, I was sitting at my computer or cleaning! I guess I should clarify at this point that my computer-sitting today was, in fact, productive; I finished editing a chapter of a thesis I'm working on (just under deadline, I might add), I cleaned the apartment, and I posted the month-and-a-half's worth of photos that I'd fallen behind on (links here and here). And I made a three-year plan for myself. And I washed my sheets. AND I got to talk to my Mom for a while. It was great!

I've determined that, for me, Sundays have become a last-ditch productivity day. Every weekend, I have X amount of stuff I need to get done. Every Friday, I take a weak stab at it and then give myself the rest of the day off--after all, it's the weekend! Every Saturday, I tell myself I'm going to get a lot done--and that lasts right about until my alarm goes off in the morning. I get a good-ish sized chunk done, but inevitably leave myself with more to do than I should have--and that's where Sunday comes in. I must thrive on tight deadlines or something, because Sunday is, pretty much without fail, my single most productive day of the week in any given week. So, hooray!

I could have posted a "hooray"-like picture here...But how much cooler is a picture of my Buzz Lightyear band-aid???

From Karina's camera: hands-down my favorite photo from our last weekend in Taipei. :)

Cinderella

...but not really. "Cinderella" just happens to be the most imaginative way I could think of to describe how I spent my day today--essentially, with housework.

And well, that's not entirely true, either, unless you count sitting on my bed and editing  as "housework," and even by that definition I doubt you'd consider the prolonged breaks I took to talk to friends and read articles online as "work."

(Also, as I did my housework without the help of magical mice and of my own volition, sans the orders of an evil stepmother, and as it's past midnight now and I haven't had any magical transformations or lost any shoes, let alone found a Prince Charming, I really can't claim the title.)

So...I should have called this post "Cinderella and lies," apparently.

But on the plus side, I did complete all but one of the items on my to-do list today! The final item is choosing the hostels for my trip this summer: one where I'll spend the bulk of my time, in Cairns, Australia, and one in Osaka, Japan, which I'm flying through at night on my way home. (Special considerations for the Japanese hostel: how can I squeeze as much out of Japan as possible in a single night, while still making my flight the next morning?) So, if anyone knows of a good place to stay in Cairns or Osaka...hit me up!

Side Notes with "Th":
(because they are not enough to write a lot about, but I feel like sharing)

Thunder. It has woken me up two mornings in a row, now, and this morning did so so loudly that I practically shot out of bed, my subconscious evidently under the impression that I would be murdered if I stayed where I was. Thunder itself isn't too odd, I guess, but what is is that, by the time I've gotten up for real, both yesterday and today, it was not only no longer stormy, it was not even raining, and, apart from the water on the roads, I would never have guessed the thunder was anything other than a particularly vivid part of my dream. We'll see if the pattern holds tomorrow; hopefully not, for my subconscious paranoia's sake...

Things I will miss about Taiwan. The following is an exchange I had with the sweet, motherly woman who works downstairs at the local 7-11:

Me: (give her the money for the eggs and bread I'm buying)

Her: 謝謝.

*I smile. A pause.*

Her: “很漂亮” “so beautiful” 是不是?

Me: 對!

Her: (to me) So beautiful!

 Me: Aww, 謝謝!

It absolutely made my night! (Even though I answered incorrectly...oh well, the point was served. :) )

Elbow grease

Well there's something I never thought I'd write about! But I just made a quick trek to the kitchen, which is across the apartment from my room, and couldn't help but revel in the non-sticky floors and the sparkling metal surfaces in the kitchen. That's what I did today.

In our apartment, we rotate cleaning weeks between the four of us; the standard is that if it's your week, you do the little stuff like take out the trash, wipe down counters, and, the bigger one: clean the floors.

This is not an easy task. First of all, our entire apartment is tiled, so the easy vacuum-and-you're-done approach doesn't work. Second of all, things get dirty here--FAST. Even the air is dirty; every time you walk into the apartment, between your clothes and your shoes, you're bringing a crap-ton of dirt with you, which will soon be coating every horizontal surface.

And for the past few months, we've been sweeping (in humidity, this tactic is less than effective), and then cleaning the floors with whatever we could scrounge--at first we used torn up rags and our feet, then discovered that we have a floor-cleaning apparatus (somewhat like a Swiffer) to which we can attach rags and push around the floor. The only problem is that, no matter whether we used water, Windex, or some other sort of floor cleaner, the floor never *really* got clean, it just got greasy.

So this week, I decided to go old school. I went out, bought a *real* mop and the cheapest bucket I could find (it's giant and pastel pink, but who cares!), and brought it home to fill it up with plain old water and dish soap. I rolled up my sleeves, slipped my iPod in my pocket and got to work.

It was disgusting how fast that water turned black. Our apartment is big by Taiwanese standards, but is by no means a mansion, yet in the course of mopping the kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway, and bathroom, I had to change the water 5 times. Like *had* to change it. My theories seem to have been proven true: all that dirt wasn't going anywhere! But now it has: down the drain. Fantastic.

In all, I cleaned for about 4 hours today, beginning with a thorough scrub-down of the kitchen with bleach water before moving on to the floors and the bathroom and, finally, my own room. The apartment looks great, and I feel like I actually got a work out, scrubbing nasty stains off the back splashes in the kitchen and working out the little gummy spots and the floor that no other cleaning device could quite dislodge. It feels good to have cleaned so hard, and to be able to see the outcome. Now if only we could keep it this way...

It's great to see what a little sweat and extra effort can get you.

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!

Free time

I have free time now. It's an odd concept, after eight years of "higher" education. Okay, so high school isn't really higher education, but my high school experience was at least as intense as my college one. If I think about it (which I have), I haven't had free time as a regular part of my life since middle school: there's always been a job (or jobs), or homework, or other obligations. And sure, now I'm still in the process of at least one application for next year, but by comparison, my days are suddenly free as a bird.

Take today, for instance. Granted, it's a Saturday, which is typically somewhat of a down-day anyway, but when I sit down to think about what I did, I come up with very little. I got up around noon (in my defense, I was up till 2:30), at which point I discovered that a former ETA had come over to collect her stuff and was hanging out and chatting. I got ready for the day, ate breakfast, made coffee and ran down to 7-11 for almond milk to put in it. I emailed someone at SPU about sponsoring my one application for next year. I read some articles online. I watched part of Lord of the Rings on TV. Karina came over and we got food, then made a run to Ikea and Carrefour. I reassembled my room using stuff bought on this trip. Karina and I sat for a while at the Cultural Center.

And that was my day! It's now midnight, and I've done maybe 3 productive things: sent that email, bought stuff at Ikea and Carrefour, put the stuff in my room. Not a lot to show for a good 12 hours, really.

But that's okay here! I don't HAVE that much to do! Even during the week, I teach 19 periods of 5th and 6th graders, plus 1 period of Morning English for all grades, and that might be it--I'm supposed to have 15 more hours at the schools, but so far the administrators and teachers at both schools haven't come up with things for me to do other than focus on my teaching. I'll be taking Chinese soon to help fill the hours, too. And after eight years of working steadily for the mass majority of my waking hours, it's nice to have a little break, especially while in a new city and learning a new language--I am so fortunate to be here and to actually have the time I will need to take full advantage of that. I can't wait to wander around the city and explore both the physical and cultural aspects of Kaohsiung while trying out my young Chinese skills.

In the mean time, I get nice little down days in which all I do all day is send an email and buy and make curtains. Here's the final result, by the way--just need wall decorations now and my room will be finished!

The curtains aren't perfect, but at least they're clean. And I bought purple ribbon to tie them back with when I want a little sun!

Good News, Bad News

Today I took my scooter driver's license test--and passed half of it. The other half, the driving half, I failed.

It was kind of funny: 3 of us went to take our tests today. One person got it (Rachel), one person passed the written but not the driving (me), and one person didn't pass (Andrew). The irony of the situation, though, is that our experience on a scooter runs in the opposite direction: Andrew is basically a pro, I've practiced a fair amount, and Rachel had previously been on a scooter twice. Proof, to me, that the scooter test has very little to do with actual skill and more to do with common sense, ability to comprehend poorly-translated test questions, and ability to overcome nerves and LOOK UP NOT DOWN on the straight-line test.

Driver's license tests in Taiwan are WAY different than in America. First, you show up and hand over your ID and a photo of yourself; then you wait (just a few minutes, in our case) for your turn to take the written exam, which is in fact on a computer. If you pass that (required 85%; 40 questions), the computer displays a smiley face and the moderator gives you a driving test time (mine was 3:00, 40 minutes after I finished my test).

You are then welcome to join the milling dozens of scooters on the practice course, driving in endless circles on a course that looks--but isn't--identical to the actual test course. So that's what I did, join the mob practicing, and failed every run for the first 15 minutes or so, before occasionally getting it right. And then Rachel came out, triumphant from her test (she'd forgotten her ID earlier, and had to go back for it), and ready to practice as well.

At 3pm, a moderator rounded up all us unruly scooter-practicers and explained the course to us. And we discovered that, unlike the practice ring here everything had a sensor, beginning with a big bump at the start of the already-hard straight line test!

(Caveat to explain what the straight line test is: you get on your scooter and have to drive within two narrow lines, maybe a foot and a half apart, for a couple hundred feet, and must take 7 seconds or longer for the whole process, which means that you're going really slow. Which, as you may know if you've ever been on a bike, is really hard. And if your feet touch the ground, or if either tire touches the sensor on either side, you can't finish the driving test. You get one more shot, and if you fail again, you have to wait a week.)

So yeah, the moderator explained in Chinese (Fonda translated for us), and then Rachel went back to practice while I watched the lined-up examinees take their turns. Here's a video of one girl I watched who didn't quite make it, just to give you a frame of reference:

Yeah, she failed. And how do I know? First of all, if you make a mistake, a big flashing light and buzzer goes off to tell you (and the world) that you screwed up. Also, as you see at the end of the video, the moderator gives her her paperwork back. That is never good--it means sorry, good try, come back next week.

(If the previous video doesn't show up--it's been screwy lately--here's a more professional video of the standard Taiwanese scooter test):

I had a similar experience. Rachel and I went last (she went before me), to avoid pressure of people behind us, but even so I just couldn't make it past the straight line test, and that's at the beginning of the test. The rest is easy--stop at a rail road crossing, turn right, stop at a stop light, turn right again, stop at a pedestrian crossing, and you're done. Again it's no touching the lines, but they're farther apart and there's no time limit, so it's easy! I could have--and did in practice--easily pass that part. But the straight line hates me! The moderator was nice and gave me advice before my second time, and even gave me a third try--unheard-of!--but still I failed. I'll try again next week, or, if all else fails, just get a low-power scooter, which only requires the written exam.

In other news, I'm *actually* unpacked/reorganized/cleaned now! Just need to make a final Ikea/Carrefour run for a comforter, some returns, bed risers and actual sleeping pillows, and I'm set! Oh, and I need to install my new curtains. Pictures coming when it's done!

Learning

Teaching, for me, is a mixed bag. On the one hand it comes naturally--what is there to complicate standing up before a group of kids and spouting off information?--but on the other hand it's a massive shot in the dark, something over which I have absolutely no control over, and the outcome of which may or may not be a direct result of what I do.

So I co-taught today. Maggie (one of my co-teachers from Hanmin) and I planned out a beautiful lesson on farm animals; I wrote up a story that incorporated the vocabulary--pig, goat, horse, cow, hen, duck; she printed and cut out pictures of each animal times 10 for learning sentence patterns (How many _____ are there? There is one _____. OR There are (#) ________s.); we set out a couple games and a couple exercises; we drew out the difficult words from my story on the board; we gathered the students. It looked to go great.

But it wasn't the right lesson.

Last week I taught a group of exuberant 4th graders; today, when we entered the room, we found a room full of stony-faced 6th graders. True, in Taiwan 6th grade is still primary school, but 6th graders are 6th graders across the globe and arbitrary educational divides: too cool for you, and definitely too cool for whatever you planned for them. You may pique their interest at first by being a foreigner, but good luck holding it once you start trying to teach them!

"What's my name?"

Last week, that question would rouse a huge roar in response: "TEACHER BEKAH!" This week, I could hear maybe three or four voices above the general murmur. To top it off, my 4th graders from last week were next door, and I could hear their excited screams throughout the day, and during my lesson itself. Several of them waved and said 'hi' to me in the hallway. But where were Vincent and Johnny and Victor and Tina and Coco when I needed them? Back in their own classroom, of course, enjoying themselves, while my new students sat in silent contemplation.

The contrast is enough to make me wish I was teaching lower grades, rather than the 5th- and 6th-graders I actually will be teaching.

But, despite my lesson's inability to excite the students, my story's too-complicated plotline and cast of characters, and our miscalculation of what we could do in our short (20 minute!) class period which resulted in our not even making it to the sentence patterns, let alone the most fun games, the day went pretty well.

We had story time in the morning, which I greatly enjoyed; I read them Bill Peet's "Zella, Zack and Zodiac," and the wonderful "My Life With the Wave," which they seemed to like, though the words were over their heads. And I enjoyed it! Here are some pictures Maggie took of story time:

With some fun effects, of course :)

ENTHUSIASM! Trying to pass it on...

Other key points of today...our kitchen/dining room area is clean! I can't even begin to take credit for it--Brittany and Rachel worked on it for hours while I was gone today, at scooter practice and then getting food. But I did at least manage to sweep and mop (by the old foot-and-rag-and-ammonia method--not the best in an ill-ventilated kitchen) the kitchen floor, and make the long journey down to the trash can with arm-fulls of stuff.

And that's about it! Hopefully tomorrow my learning will help my students' learning, and their enjoyment of the lesson, to improve.

Deep Cleaning

It has begun. My room is in chaos; there are dirty dishes piled up our sink and clean dishes scattered all over our dining room table; there are trash piles near every door. We're beginning to settle in, and in the process, there's a lot to be done.

I started unpacking hardcore today! My massive black trunk, which has heretofore sat, undisturbed, at the foot of my bed, is unpacked now, the duct tape removed and the case placed atop my newly-dusted wardrobe. So, too, my biggest rolling bag is unpacked, its contents split between the wardrobe and under the bed, the Kaohsiung destination tag ripped off and the bag resting upright where the black case was before.

I also began in what will be a multi-day rearranging effort: my wardrobe, which was on the same wall as my bed, leaving ample wasted space on the wall my door is in, has been shifted around the corner so that it sits next to the light switch, with a nice-sized space beside it which I hope to fill with a clothes rack for more hanging space--I'm quickly discovering that, with my hanging organizer in place, my wardrobe does not have enough room for my hanging clothes. And in this climate, of all climates, I want to give my clothes room to breathe.

As for the rest of the room, I haven't decided yet, though I did move the bedside table over so it's actually beside my bed. Planner that I am, I will probably bust out the measuring tape and graph paper before I start shoving all the furniture around.

The actual cleaning part of settling in in this apartment is disturbing. You wipe any surface in this house with a wet rag, and it comes away black. Today, when I moved my wardrobe, I discovered a scattering of gray cocoon-looking things all over my wall (they were soon gone and the whole area RAID-ed), and an inch-deep layer of dust built up on the moldings. GROSS!

Then there's the roaches, of course, which I haven't mentioned yet in this blog, mostly because so far my experiences of them have been pretty innocuous--tiny little guys who usually pop up on the bathroom floor or somewhere in the kitchen. On our first day, Rachel killed a giant one, but I didn't see it; today, though, Brittany found a big one in her bathroom and let loose a blood-curdling scream that pierced the whole apartment. Luckily, the one thing our predecessors did leave behind for us was roach spray and roach traps.

But it's coming along. My room will look much better once I make it to Ikea to get some more organizational stuff--right now I've run into the problem of not having anywhere to put the stuff I unload from my bags--but for now it's nice to have a little more floor space and a few cleaner walls. Could also use some homey touches. The rest still needs serious work; one of the previous tenants ripped a bulletin board off the wall, taking parts of the wall with it, and the walls themselves are visibly dirty. I mentioned both problems to Fonda; I'm hoping the landlord will agree to repaint. It's pretty nasty.

And that's about all that's been happening around here today! We had waffles for brunch. We pulled a stereotypical American moment and had Pizza Hut and soda for dinner in front of the TV. Now we're sitting around the house blogging, listening to music, Facebooking, cleaning...whatever. Pretty chill. Back to teaching tomorrow!