Author's note: I have had a WONDERFUL time in Taiwan; please check out my companion list to this one for proof of that. But I thought it fitting, since I'm leaving, to remind myself of why it's not all bad to be going home--so this was my way of doing that.
10. Having to check all movies etc to make sure they are in English
OK, so this was only actually an issue once, last week when Tiffiany, Rachel and I went to see Brave and left two Chinese-dubbed lines in. But it will be very nice when I won't have to scrutinize every film title and description to be sure it's in English. In general, having English-language media readily available again will be a wonderful thing.
9. Having to watch my vocabulary and speed when talking
I don't particularly mind doing this, and I've gotten quite used to adjusting my speech to the English level of those around me--my students, for instance--but it will be much easier when I can turn that part of my brain off and just talk.
8. Being dirty all the time
In the same category: having my clothes get dirty all the time; having my shoes get dirty all the time; having my apartment be dirty all the time. No amount of caution or cleaning can help you when it's in the air.
7. Cockroaches
*Shudder* 'Nuff said.
6. Scootering in the rain
I love scootering--when it's nice out. When it's not, well...just see the last post I wrote on the subject. Being the constant subject of showers of street water is not exactly my idea of a good time.
5. Not being able to find potatoes on any menu, ever
I love potatoes. When asked my favorite food, that is usually my answer. So, when the only variety you can ever find them in is french fried, and that rarely, I get a little sad. And then a lot sad. Really, Taiwan, you're missing out on an amazing food here!
4. Being surrounded by bad drivers on poorly designed streets
I've written before my conclusions of why scootering in Taiwan is so difficult. Several times, actually. What it boils down to is this: badly designed roads and people who don't pay attention to things like right-of-way or the traffic laws. I won't miss that. (And yes, I realize that in conjunction with what I said yesterday, this makes me a massive hypocrite. I don't care.)
3. Having bones and skin and fat make up the majority of every "meat" dish on any menu
In America, we like our meat as meat only: no skin (too much fat!), no bones (too much work!), no fat (see "no skin"). In Taiwan, they're much better about not wasting things (and/or have less of a market for our other uses for these materials, like hot dogs, perhaps?), and so a slab of "meat" is never a slab: it's a little crosscut of a bone, whichever bone they had handy; your job is to get the bits off it that you like and leave the rest. I will like having "meat" mean just "meat" again.
2. Being drenched in sweat within 5 minutes of walking outside
I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I don't particularly like sweating, and less still do I like having heat dictate how I dress and how I look--that is, never well. I get quite excited in Taiwan when I'm being picked up (in a car!!) to go somewhere inside (air-conditioning!!), and so can do things like put on makeup and do my hair without the knowledge that it will all be for naught the instant I put on my scooter helmet or walk the few blocks to wherever I'm going.
1. Not being able to communicate above a very basic level
I've written about this more times than I can count, and certainly more times than I'd like to cross-reference for you now: it is so terribly hard sometimes not to be able to talk to most of the people you come across.Your world becomes very small, excepting the Internet, consisting of the few friends you have that speak English and the few places where you know you can communicate in Chinese--some well-trusted restaurants, for instance, and a single bank. Going anywhere else or doing anything else requires a massive effort, and even when you make that effort, is often incredibly frustrating and may or may not end in success. One very small example is in the realm of small talk, which I wrote about before--I feel so rude not making small talk with people I come across! And yet, the terrible truth is that, at least at the moment, I have no choice in Taiwan. And I won't miss that.
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
(Host) Mother's Day
母親天快樂! That's a sentence that, prior to this evening, I was not capable of uttering. But now, having been taught it and practiced it many times before a group of 20 or so people, I am well able of saying "Happy Mother's Day!" in Chinese.
Tonight, James, Margaret and Emily picked me up to go to an early celebration of Mother's Day. I grabbed some flowers for Margaret (it is Mother's Day, after all!) and figured I was set for an evening with my wonderful host family.
And I was. What I hadn't realized, though, was that tonight would be my whole host family--that is, James' mom, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews. (Later explanation revealed that only perhaps 3 or 4 people from the extended family were missing.) We met at a Japanese restaurant, where we were treated to a multi-course, multi-toast meal the likes of which I'd only seen here before at a wedding.
Dinner conversation was peppered with various uncles and aunts trying to make their kids talk to me in English--it was cool to hear "我的英文不好" (My English is bad) coming from so many mouths, having uttered the reverse, "我的中文不好," so many times myself--and a rather fun mixture of English, Chinese, and Hakka coming from all sides.
Filled to bursting, both with food and with new-learned vocabulary, we then relocated to James', Margaret's and Emily's home, where we drank tea, ate corn, and continued our trilingual conversation.
All in all, quite a fun night, though infinitely different from the one I had thought was coming. Being with James' family reminded me of being with my Mom's side of the family, always a fun occasion, and as always I loved being able to simply slide into belonging, not just to my immediate host family, but to my extended one, too. So, to all my mothers, Happy (Host) Mother's Day!
Tonight, James, Margaret and Emily picked me up to go to an early celebration of Mother's Day. I grabbed some flowers for Margaret (it is Mother's Day, after all!) and figured I was set for an evening with my wonderful host family.
And I was. What I hadn't realized, though, was that tonight would be my whole host family--that is, James' mom, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews. (Later explanation revealed that only perhaps 3 or 4 people from the extended family were missing.) We met at a Japanese restaurant, where we were treated to a multi-course, multi-toast meal the likes of which I'd only seen here before at a wedding.
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| What the table looked like BEFORE it disappeared beneath a mountain of food |
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| Movies playing on the wall <3 |
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| It was a pretty epic restaurant, really... |
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| Eating 米苔目 for the first time: delicious! (or 可口) |
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| The Japanese place's sister restaurant provided the towelettes: yay for Seattle! |
Filled to bursting, both with food and with new-learned vocabulary, we then relocated to James', Margaret's and Emily's home, where we drank tea, ate corn, and continued our trilingual conversation.
All in all, quite a fun night, though infinitely different from the one I had thought was coming. Being with James' family reminded me of being with my Mom's side of the family, always a fun occasion, and as always I loved being able to simply slide into belonging, not just to my immediate host family, but to my extended one, too. So, to all my mothers, Happy (Host) Mother's Day!
Friday, May 4, 2012
English Village
Here in Taiwan, they have a lovely little thing called English Village. They exist in a series of re-envisioned and rebuilt classrooms in elementary schools, each room newly designed as a weather station, an airplane, a convenience stores, a restaurant. They exist all over the country, and serve as their host schools pride and joy.
In previous years, Kaohsiung ETAs worked in them; Yilan ETAs still do. To work there is to lead the small groups of kids who come from all over through the labyrinthine hallways, instructing them to speak only English and helping them practice it in practical situations. For the teachers, that means repeating the same lesson over and over and over and over and... let's just say I'm glad it's not in my job description.
So why am I mentioning it, you ask? Well, because today, I went. Or, rather, the Qingshan 5th graders went and I tagged along. After a long, drawn-out and WET (it was pouring) process of finding Wufu English Village that ended in a kindly staff person taking pity on the clearly lost foreigner and the discovery that Patty's phone is broken, I was led into the Weather room with a group of my 5th graders.
After that, it was the airport...
...and then a break wherein I was introduced to Darren, their token foreign
teacher from Canada, and Barry, "the military guy," as he termed
himself. Then we went to Darren's "class," the faux-fast food
restaurant, where we discovered that he is the EPITOME of an otter and
loves to sing Adele's "Someone Like You" in a high falsetto, then to the
convenience store, where I was dismayed to see "cup water" on the list
of drink options. Oh, well. At least they had English newspapers on the
walls that I could read to distract myself!
It was an interesting day to see how English Village works--and a day which confirmed my happiness not to be working at one every day. It was fun for a day trip, though!
In previous years, Kaohsiung ETAs worked in them; Yilan ETAs still do. To work there is to lead the small groups of kids who come from all over through the labyrinthine hallways, instructing them to speak only English and helping them practice it in practical situations. For the teachers, that means repeating the same lesson over and over and over and over and... let's just say I'm glad it's not in my job description.
So why am I mentioning it, you ask? Well, because today, I went. Or, rather, the Qingshan 5th graders went and I tagged along. After a long, drawn-out and WET (it was pouring) process of finding Wufu English Village that ended in a kindly staff person taking pity on the clearly lost foreigner and the discovery that Patty's phone is broken, I was led into the Weather room with a group of my 5th graders.
After that, it was the airport...
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| The "airplane!" Pretty cool, really... |
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| Flight attendants... |
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| And a captain! |
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| ...also, a bathroom. LOVE that they included that. |
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| American prices! With decimals and everything!! |
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| Darren the cashier |
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| Of course there was a convenience store! |
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Blinking cursor
It's one of those days: the days I regret having compelled myself to write a blog post--daily. Writer's block is a common enough problem, I know, and I've written about it before (but I'm not giving you the links, both because I am too lazy to find them and because I doubt you'd want to read that drivel again anyway), and it multiplies like rabbits (I told you I'm stumped for creativity here, what'd you expect but another cliche?) when you have something that is neither interesting to others nor pertinent to your daily life on your mind.
In this case, the future. And, more specifically, the time period two months from now when I will find myself suddenly Fulbright grant-less, surviving on my savings until I land a so-called "real" job, preferably one involving editing. The logistics of those are complicated at best, and the question of how to best arrange them is what I've been stewing on today.
Ironically, though, now that I've gotten started talking about my writer's block, I have a topic--tada!--and it even neatly ties together the first two paragraphs: daily posts are a terrible idea. Why? Well, allow my old writer's block friend, the list, tell you...
1. You run out of ideas! Seriously, NO one's life is interesting enough to be written about on a daily basis, and mine is even less so. What did I do today? Hmm, I went to school, taught, hung out with my coworkers, came home, ate dinner, went to Chinese class, went to the gym, went to an ATM, came home, researched copyediting jobs. I'm sorry, dear readers, that I can't give you back the time you spent reading that last worthless sentence...
I'm sorry, also, for the fact that...
2. You make dozens of stupid mistakes! As a creative writing graduate/writing tutor/editorial intern/newspaper editor/English teacher/overall grammar nerd/writer, I would say I've gained a pretty thorough understanding of the English language and, by extension, the errors it often contains. My job often depends on catching them; heck, you know that job stuff I talked about earlier? Yeah, those potential jobs would consist entirely of catching writing errors. I love doing it.
...except when it's in my own writing. But the thing is, it often is, especially in first draft mode. Something else I learned as a creative writing student/writing tutor/editorial intern/newspaper editor/English teacher/overall grammar nerd/writer is that your first draft always sucks. It just does! I would even go so far as to say it's supposed to, up to a point. The purpose of your first draft is not perfection; the purpose of your first draft is to get your ideas on paper and in a rough semblance of how you want them to be. It's not until you hit the later drafts that you start fixing things and aiming for perfect.
But see, here's the thing about daily blog posts: they're all first drafts. They have to be! This post I'm writing right now, I began at roughly 1am; when I finish it, I'm going to hit post, close my laptop, and go to bed. Tomorrow, I know, I'll pick up my computer again and re-read what I wrote, only to discover scores of little errors--the errors I hate, the errors I want to make my living correcting. But there they sit, staring me in the face in my own writing. It's just the nature of the beast!
3. You end up writing entire posts on the phenomena surrounding writing.
'Nuf said.
In this case, the future. And, more specifically, the time period two months from now when I will find myself suddenly Fulbright grant-less, surviving on my savings until I land a so-called "real" job, preferably one involving editing. The logistics of those are complicated at best, and the question of how to best arrange them is what I've been stewing on today.
Ironically, though, now that I've gotten started talking about my writer's block, I have a topic--tada!--and it even neatly ties together the first two paragraphs: daily posts are a terrible idea. Why? Well, allow my old writer's block friend, the list, tell you...
1. You run out of ideas! Seriously, NO one's life is interesting enough to be written about on a daily basis, and mine is even less so. What did I do today? Hmm, I went to school, taught, hung out with my coworkers, came home, ate dinner, went to Chinese class, went to the gym, went to an ATM, came home, researched copyediting jobs. I'm sorry, dear readers, that I can't give you back the time you spent reading that last worthless sentence...
I'm sorry, also, for the fact that...
2. You make dozens of stupid mistakes! As a creative writing graduate/writing tutor/editorial intern/newspaper editor/English teacher/overall grammar nerd/writer, I would say I've gained a pretty thorough understanding of the English language and, by extension, the errors it often contains. My job often depends on catching them; heck, you know that job stuff I talked about earlier? Yeah, those potential jobs would consist entirely of catching writing errors. I love doing it.
...except when it's in my own writing. But the thing is, it often is, especially in first draft mode. Something else I learned as a creative writing student/writing tutor/editorial intern/newspaper editor/English teacher/overall grammar nerd/writer is that your first draft always sucks. It just does! I would even go so far as to say it's supposed to, up to a point. The purpose of your first draft is not perfection; the purpose of your first draft is to get your ideas on paper and in a rough semblance of how you want them to be. It's not until you hit the later drafts that you start fixing things and aiming for perfect.
But see, here's the thing about daily blog posts: they're all first drafts. They have to be! This post I'm writing right now, I began at roughly 1am; when I finish it, I'm going to hit post, close my laptop, and go to bed. Tomorrow, I know, I'll pick up my computer again and re-read what I wrote, only to discover scores of little errors--the errors I hate, the errors I want to make my living correcting. But there they sit, staring me in the face in my own writing. It's just the nature of the beast!
3. You end up writing entire posts on the phenomena surrounding writing.
'Nuf said.
Monday, April 16, 2012
6 Ways Living in a Foreign Country Changes Your POV
I'm noted on here before that I enjoy occasionally delving into the ridiculous, but funny, annals of Cracked.com. For those who don't share my hobby (if you visit, be warned: its humor can get dirty), one of the hallmarks of their website is their list-format articles. For instance, the two stories currently leading on their homepage are "The 7 Most Insane Ways People Legally Avoided Paying Taxes" and "5 Things Flight Safety Presentations Should Mention."
I like this format. And, just now, I feel inspired to try it out. So, apart from the literal change in view that comes from being on a different side of the globe, how does living in a foreign country change your POV? Well...
1. All your holidays become multi-day events
I've written about this, I believe, at every holiday I've experienced here in Taiwan. Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter, rolls around. "Aw," I think, "Another holiday away from home! Time to have a search for a turkey meal/Christmas Eve service/Eggs Benedict-making fest to compensate." I have said festivities, miss my family, but do the best I can to have a good holiday. Then I go to sleep.
And the next morning, surprise! It's still Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter! Yep, due to the wonder of time zones and the fact that my hometown is a solid 15 or 16 hours (depending on Daylight Savings Time) behind Taiwan, my family is usually having their big celebration right around the time I'm eating breakfast and driving to school the next day.
Let's take Easter for our first example, since it happened most recently and my family was disappointed because I (whoops!) forgot to Skype in with them for the holiday. But, as I figured out afterwards, there was a reason for that. See, my family celebrates Easter in the early afternoon, like, say 1pm-4pm or so. Which, in Taiwan, would be 4am-7am. And, on any given Monday, my alarm goes off at 8am. So...yeah.
On the more successful Skype holidays, say, Christmas, for example, I Skyped my family three times over the course of two days: noon on Christmas (Christmas Eve at home), late at night on Christmas (Christmas morning), and afternoon on Boxing Day (Christmas night). Or, take Thanksgiving, which found me Skyping in the next day at lunchtime, with my Subway turkey sandwich, as my family cleaned off their Thanksgiving late-night snacks. It's bizarre, but it's something you eventually adjust to: holidays are as fluid as time zones when it comes to when they're celebrated. And you'd better be there for all of them.
2. Everyone's online at the wrong time.
All this talk about time zones brings me to my second point: you know all those people who've hassled you your whole life about not staying up too late? You know, the early birds who consider staying up past 11pm or sleeping past 9am to be some sort of freakish abnormality, not to be tolerated under any circumstances? Well---they are now your most reliable contacts.
On the flip side, never have I felt more rewarded to keep an abnormal sleeping schedule than I have since I moved here. Want to talk to someone? Better be okay with staying up till 2am. Want a lot of people to read your blog? Well then forget about posting before midnight, it's best if you wait till at least 3am to maximize readership. (True numbers there: Google Analytics tells all.)
And, really, developing dual communities on opposite sides of the globe just means you have twice as much stuff to do online, and doing it in sync with the local community necessitates more and more hours spent there. At this point, just about every time I open my Facebook I have a notification or four waiting--after all, while I'm sleeping or teaching, my friends back home are in their late-night Facebook mode! And then, on top of that, once I'm in my late-night Facebook mode, so are my friends here in Taiwan.
So I'm not actually complaining about this shift. It really works out pretty well for a night owl/online addict like me. But still, time zone shifts can be confusing, especially when you're dealing with facts like...
3. You have to re-memorize all publication schedules
This may not be a big deal for other people. And, truthfully, it's not *that* big of a deal for me, most of the time, since I had no functioning television in my house last year and so relied exclusively on Internet versions of shows, which always come out later to begin with. But. You still get used to certain release dates; you still (if you're me) know *exactly* when Bones will be up, and *exactly* when The Office will be. You also have to get used to the fact that none of the reputable sites you know and love are licensed for use where you are.
And there are websites that get updated on a time schedule, too--usually something like Monday/Wednesday/Friday, yet now rendered Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Or, if it's a daily site, perhaps it will seem to be updated twice-daily, since it posts directly in the middle of your viewing session.
So it's a mixed bag of good and bad, and it makes Internet content completely unpredictable until you master its patterns (which I haven't), and unfortunate fact given that, living in another country, you are 100% dependent on the Internet for everything, from translations to communications to media to procrastination. Take your normal dependence, multiply it by 100, and you've got a rough idea.
Now take into consideration that you don't know when stuff will be available. Of course, 'not knowing' is a normal state of being while living abroad, which leads us to how...
4. You acquire a deep empathy with all immigrants, ever.
This is actually the number 1 reason why I truly believe that EVERYONE should be required to live somewhere they can't communicate at some point in their lives. Preferably while they're young, since it's easier then and it avoids years of misunderstandings.
See, if there's one thing I've realized since moving to Taiwan, it's that living in a foreign country is hard! You don't know your way around, you don't know the culture, you know next to no one, and, to top it off (in my case, at least), you can't even find the answers to these things because you don't know the language.
Let me give you an example. When I was in high school/the beginning of college, I worked for Jamba Juice. And I remember, some of our best customers were foreigners from Asian countries. They would come in, looking earnest, and spend what seemed like hours studying the menu before coming to the front and ordering, pretty invariably, an orange-carrot juice. Asking size was a struggle, and when they had finished ordering and paying--usually in cash, with a $20 bill, you could see the look of relief on their faces as they stepped back to wait for their juice.
I'm not going to lie, as employees, we hated this: orange juice and carrot juice come from two massive, hard-to-clean machines which would sometimes otherwise go a day without being used; beside that, these customers always seemed to come right after we'd finished cleaning both machines for the night. It was pretty annoying.
Well...I'm pretty sure I now am that person. I think of them every time I step foot inside a coffee shop, or a juice shop, or a restaurant of any kind, and stare unknowing at the massive menu of indistinguishable words which must, I know, be the dishes I'm supposed to be ordering. I'll stare, and stare, pick out the few words I recognize, and then, usually, place one of my stock orders--drinks: latte (hot or cold; hazelnut or almond), watermelon juice, or milk tea, and meals: beef noodles, hamburger (if it's a Western place) or, more frequently, "this one," with a point at the menu. I feel accomplished, and happy, if I can pull this trick off without a hitch. Anything beyond it is unthinkably hard.
I then pay--always in cash, and quite frequently in the local equivalent of a $20 bill (ie the one most ATMs use), a 1,000NT (~$30USD) note, because that's how my money comes to me. Hopefully I'm not inconveniencing the employees with a notoriously hard order, but truth be told, if I were I would have no way of knowing, and they would have no way of telling me.
In another side story, I remember foreigners U-picking at the orchards I also worked at in high school. They would frequently come back with fruit they weren't supposed to have picked, and I remember one of my co-workers in particular getting very frustrated over the fact. Sometimes it was an honest mistake, but sometimes--and you could tell the difference--they were just playing the "I don't understand" card.
Now, I know that card. I love that card. It really is true, too: not knowing the dominant language in the country you're living in (or not knowing it well enough) is a HUGE get-out-of-jail-free card. Not literally, of course, but the fact is you can get away with quite a lot when you really don't know the rules, or have any way of finding them out. Playing the foreigner card can come in quite handy and, previous frustrations about it aside, it's actually pretty wonderful.
See, all these little things bundle together to make you know, in pretty good anagram, exactly how immigrants feel in YOUR country. And, while it's easy to write people off who can't speak your language at home (You're in America! Learn the language!), it's much more difficult to do so when the situation's been reversed, and you see firsthand exactly how difficult it is, and, more importantly, how long it takes, to do so.
This also applies to ethnic enclaves, another phenomenon I never quite understood until I moved here, and realized that, while living abroad...
5. You develop a sudden, simultaneous love for and mistrust of all things 'foreign'--aka, from home.
I've written about this before: whenever I go to church here, or, really, whenever I see a foreigner here, a little alarm goes off in my head. What is going on? What is/are he/she/they doing here? Why are there so many foreigners in one place? Something is not right!!!
See, when you're living in a country where you stick out like a sore thumb, you go through a couple of phases. 1: WOW I am seriously the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now. 2: Well obviously I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, this is TAIWAN. 3: Yes, I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, move along, folks.
Right around when you hit that third stage, it becomes absolutely shocking whenever you're proven wrong. It happens occasionally that I'll draw some stares when I'm out on my scooter or on the MRT (I learned to ignore it sometime around stage 2 above), but when I see a white person in a similar context, I full-on stare. I can't seem to help myself. All memories of how much I dislike being stared at go out the window as I grapple with the unnerving realization that there's more than one of us here! It actually makes me quite uncomfortable, a fact which bodes interestingly for when I go back home in July...
And of course alongside this is the sudden idolization of all things American. We're going out to Western food? Fantastic! There's a Starbucks on that corner? Hooray! They serve red meat there? My day is made!
It's an odd juxtaposition, really, this love-hate relationship you develop with 'home,' and one which I suppose reinforces somewhat the idea that...
6. The whole world suddenly seems like it's just a whim (and a few saved paychecks) away
Obviously, moving across the world is a huge step, and one that involves a TON of planning, paying, and travel time. But, once you've done it, it becomes remarkably apparent just how feasible it is to do. Pick up and move to another country? Sure, why not!
As an outgrowth of that, then, travel becomes the most natural thing in the world. Want go to Thailand for a week? Sure, why not! How about Australia? Why yes I would, sign me up!
I've yet to determine whether these impulses come solely, or just primarily, from living abroad, or if they're more a product of having a full-time job (and salary) for the first time. But, for me, at least, I can't help but think it's probably largely because I'm living abroad. I mean, really, my wages are pretty low by US standards, and flight prices don't vary based on local cost of living (a bum deal, really), but even so it seems 100% natural and easy to travel widely while I'm here.
At the core of it is the realization that long plane rides really aren't that long, and that international travel, if you can keep a cool head about it, is pretty easy. And, especially once you've adjusted to living in a culture in an infantile state of non-knowing, it doesn't really matter where you display your ignorance; beyond that, you've developed the very specific skill-set necessary to navigate an unknown location using only hand signals and whatever level of English whoever you're talking to happens to know.
It's liberating, really: when you known nothing, and know you know nothing, you can go anywhere. Now that's a sentence I never would have written before moving here...oh, the joys of a fresh POV.
I like this format. And, just now, I feel inspired to try it out. So, apart from the literal change in view that comes from being on a different side of the globe, how does living in a foreign country change your POV? Well...
1. All your holidays become multi-day events
I've written about this, I believe, at every holiday I've experienced here in Taiwan. Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter, rolls around. "Aw," I think, "Another holiday away from home! Time to have a search for a turkey meal/Christmas Eve service/Eggs Benedict-making fest to compensate." I have said festivities, miss my family, but do the best I can to have a good holiday. Then I go to sleep.
And the next morning, surprise! It's still Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter! Yep, due to the wonder of time zones and the fact that my hometown is a solid 15 or 16 hours (depending on Daylight Savings Time) behind Taiwan, my family is usually having their big celebration right around the time I'm eating breakfast and driving to school the next day.
Let's take Easter for our first example, since it happened most recently and my family was disappointed because I (whoops!) forgot to Skype in with them for the holiday. But, as I figured out afterwards, there was a reason for that. See, my family celebrates Easter in the early afternoon, like, say 1pm-4pm or so. Which, in Taiwan, would be 4am-7am. And, on any given Monday, my alarm goes off at 8am. So...yeah.
On the more successful Skype holidays, say, Christmas, for example, I Skyped my family three times over the course of two days: noon on Christmas (Christmas Eve at home), late at night on Christmas (Christmas morning), and afternoon on Boxing Day (Christmas night). Or, take Thanksgiving, which found me Skyping in the next day at lunchtime, with my Subway turkey sandwich, as my family cleaned off their Thanksgiving late-night snacks. It's bizarre, but it's something you eventually adjust to: holidays are as fluid as time zones when it comes to when they're celebrated. And you'd better be there for all of them.
2. Everyone's online at the wrong time.
All this talk about time zones brings me to my second point: you know all those people who've hassled you your whole life about not staying up too late? You know, the early birds who consider staying up past 11pm or sleeping past 9am to be some sort of freakish abnormality, not to be tolerated under any circumstances? Well---they are now your most reliable contacts.
On the flip side, never have I felt more rewarded to keep an abnormal sleeping schedule than I have since I moved here. Want to talk to someone? Better be okay with staying up till 2am. Want a lot of people to read your blog? Well then forget about posting before midnight, it's best if you wait till at least 3am to maximize readership. (True numbers there: Google Analytics tells all.)
And, really, developing dual communities on opposite sides of the globe just means you have twice as much stuff to do online, and doing it in sync with the local community necessitates more and more hours spent there. At this point, just about every time I open my Facebook I have a notification or four waiting--after all, while I'm sleeping or teaching, my friends back home are in their late-night Facebook mode! And then, on top of that, once I'm in my late-night Facebook mode, so are my friends here in Taiwan.
So I'm not actually complaining about this shift. It really works out pretty well for a night owl/online addict like me. But still, time zone shifts can be confusing, especially when you're dealing with facts like...
3. You have to re-memorize all publication schedules
This may not be a big deal for other people. And, truthfully, it's not *that* big of a deal for me, most of the time, since I had no functioning television in my house last year and so relied exclusively on Internet versions of shows, which always come out later to begin with. But. You still get used to certain release dates; you still (if you're me) know *exactly* when Bones will be up, and *exactly* when The Office will be. You also have to get used to the fact that none of the reputable sites you know and love are licensed for use where you are.
And there are websites that get updated on a time schedule, too--usually something like Monday/Wednesday/Friday, yet now rendered Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Or, if it's a daily site, perhaps it will seem to be updated twice-daily, since it posts directly in the middle of your viewing session.
So it's a mixed bag of good and bad, and it makes Internet content completely unpredictable until you master its patterns (which I haven't), and unfortunate fact given that, living in another country, you are 100% dependent on the Internet for everything, from translations to communications to media to procrastination. Take your normal dependence, multiply it by 100, and you've got a rough idea.
Now take into consideration that you don't know when stuff will be available. Of course, 'not knowing' is a normal state of being while living abroad, which leads us to how...
4. You acquire a deep empathy with all immigrants, ever.
This is actually the number 1 reason why I truly believe that EVERYONE should be required to live somewhere they can't communicate at some point in their lives. Preferably while they're young, since it's easier then and it avoids years of misunderstandings.
See, if there's one thing I've realized since moving to Taiwan, it's that living in a foreign country is hard! You don't know your way around, you don't know the culture, you know next to no one, and, to top it off (in my case, at least), you can't even find the answers to these things because you don't know the language.
Let me give you an example. When I was in high school/the beginning of college, I worked for Jamba Juice. And I remember, some of our best customers were foreigners from Asian countries. They would come in, looking earnest, and spend what seemed like hours studying the menu before coming to the front and ordering, pretty invariably, an orange-carrot juice. Asking size was a struggle, and when they had finished ordering and paying--usually in cash, with a $20 bill, you could see the look of relief on their faces as they stepped back to wait for their juice.
I'm not going to lie, as employees, we hated this: orange juice and carrot juice come from two massive, hard-to-clean machines which would sometimes otherwise go a day without being used; beside that, these customers always seemed to come right after we'd finished cleaning both machines for the night. It was pretty annoying.
Well...I'm pretty sure I now am that person. I think of them every time I step foot inside a coffee shop, or a juice shop, or a restaurant of any kind, and stare unknowing at the massive menu of indistinguishable words which must, I know, be the dishes I'm supposed to be ordering. I'll stare, and stare, pick out the few words I recognize, and then, usually, place one of my stock orders--drinks: latte (hot or cold; hazelnut or almond), watermelon juice, or milk tea, and meals: beef noodles, hamburger (if it's a Western place) or, more frequently, "this one," with a point at the menu. I feel accomplished, and happy, if I can pull this trick off without a hitch. Anything beyond it is unthinkably hard.
I then pay--always in cash, and quite frequently in the local equivalent of a $20 bill (ie the one most ATMs use), a 1,000NT (~$30USD) note, because that's how my money comes to me. Hopefully I'm not inconveniencing the employees with a notoriously hard order, but truth be told, if I were I would have no way of knowing, and they would have no way of telling me.
In another side story, I remember foreigners U-picking at the orchards I also worked at in high school. They would frequently come back with fruit they weren't supposed to have picked, and I remember one of my co-workers in particular getting very frustrated over the fact. Sometimes it was an honest mistake, but sometimes--and you could tell the difference--they were just playing the "I don't understand" card.
Now, I know that card. I love that card. It really is true, too: not knowing the dominant language in the country you're living in (or not knowing it well enough) is a HUGE get-out-of-jail-free card. Not literally, of course, but the fact is you can get away with quite a lot when you really don't know the rules, or have any way of finding them out. Playing the foreigner card can come in quite handy and, previous frustrations about it aside, it's actually pretty wonderful.
See, all these little things bundle together to make you know, in pretty good anagram, exactly how immigrants feel in YOUR country. And, while it's easy to write people off who can't speak your language at home (You're in America! Learn the language!), it's much more difficult to do so when the situation's been reversed, and you see firsthand exactly how difficult it is, and, more importantly, how long it takes, to do so.
This also applies to ethnic enclaves, another phenomenon I never quite understood until I moved here, and realized that, while living abroad...
5. You develop a sudden, simultaneous love for and mistrust of all things 'foreign'--aka, from home.
I've written about this before: whenever I go to church here, or, really, whenever I see a foreigner here, a little alarm goes off in my head. What is going on? What is/are he/she/they doing here? Why are there so many foreigners in one place? Something is not right!!!
See, when you're living in a country where you stick out like a sore thumb, you go through a couple of phases. 1: WOW I am seriously the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now. 2: Well obviously I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, this is TAIWAN. 3: Yes, I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, move along, folks.
Right around when you hit that third stage, it becomes absolutely shocking whenever you're proven wrong. It happens occasionally that I'll draw some stares when I'm out on my scooter or on the MRT (I learned to ignore it sometime around stage 2 above), but when I see a white person in a similar context, I full-on stare. I can't seem to help myself. All memories of how much I dislike being stared at go out the window as I grapple with the unnerving realization that there's more than one of us here! It actually makes me quite uncomfortable, a fact which bodes interestingly for when I go back home in July...
And of course alongside this is the sudden idolization of all things American. We're going out to Western food? Fantastic! There's a Starbucks on that corner? Hooray! They serve red meat there? My day is made!
It's an odd juxtaposition, really, this love-hate relationship you develop with 'home,' and one which I suppose reinforces somewhat the idea that...
6. The whole world suddenly seems like it's just a whim (and a few saved paychecks) away
Obviously, moving across the world is a huge step, and one that involves a TON of planning, paying, and travel time. But, once you've done it, it becomes remarkably apparent just how feasible it is to do. Pick up and move to another country? Sure, why not!
As an outgrowth of that, then, travel becomes the most natural thing in the world. Want go to Thailand for a week? Sure, why not! How about Australia? Why yes I would, sign me up!
I've yet to determine whether these impulses come solely, or just primarily, from living abroad, or if they're more a product of having a full-time job (and salary) for the first time. But, for me, at least, I can't help but think it's probably largely because I'm living abroad. I mean, really, my wages are pretty low by US standards, and flight prices don't vary based on local cost of living (a bum deal, really), but even so it seems 100% natural and easy to travel widely while I'm here.
At the core of it is the realization that long plane rides really aren't that long, and that international travel, if you can keep a cool head about it, is pretty easy. And, especially once you've adjusted to living in a culture in an infantile state of non-knowing, it doesn't really matter where you display your ignorance; beyond that, you've developed the very specific skill-set necessary to navigate an unknown location using only hand signals and whatever level of English whoever you're talking to happens to know.
It's liberating, really: when you known nothing, and know you know nothing, you can go anywhere. Now that's a sentence I never would have written before moving here...oh, the joys of a fresh POV.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
(Belated) Breakthroughs
There are some things I've just had to accept about my experience here in Taiwan. For instance, that I will never be able to remember the names of every one of my students. And that those students will never be able to properly pronounce the letter "z."
Then today happened.
This first thing is embarrassing to admit, but a breakthrough nonetheless: today I realized, after 7 months of teaching them, that my 3rd class of 5th graders on Fridays at Qingshan has four twins from three pairs in it. I already knew that Bess and Kyle were in that class, while their respective twins were in other classes, but I had somehow missed up until today that this class also has Bruce and Chris in it--identical brothers whom I'd failed to notice were, in fact, twins.
I guess I just thought they were the same person or something? Weird.
The letter "z" has been a major headache for me this year. It's an incredibly difficult sound for Chinese speakers learning English, yet for some unfathomable reason, it features pretty prominently in textbooks. Rachel's told me about her adventures trying to get kids to say the word "zebra," and I have had run-in after run-in with the word "zoo," which invariably comes out as "loo" or "lroo" or "roo."
To me, "l" and "r" bear almost no phonetic similarity to "z"--so why do they always resort to this? Why is this sound so hard? I honestly don't know. But I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that at least Chinese has the initial sound of "在" (tzai), which is admittedly not perfect, with the t sound before the z, but does at least feature a sound that, if said with "oo," would be recognizable as "zoo" (tzoo), not as "bathroom" (loo) or "regret" (roo/rue).
So I mentioned this breakthrough to Patty, who liked it and shared it with the classes via BoPoMoFo (Taiwanese phonetic system). The results? Whereas at the beginning of the class maybe 30% of the students could say their "zoo" correctly, towards the end I'd say about 75% could. Not bad! Now, just to retroactively teach this breakthrough to all of my students...
But it's pointless to "rue" the consequences of being slow on the uptake on this one. Just because I left my brain in the "loo" before doesn't mean its retrieval can't be meaningful--and it is, for Chris, Bruce, and the letter "z"!
Then today happened.
This first thing is embarrassing to admit, but a breakthrough nonetheless: today I realized, after 7 months of teaching them, that my 3rd class of 5th graders on Fridays at Qingshan has four twins from three pairs in it. I already knew that Bess and Kyle were in that class, while their respective twins were in other classes, but I had somehow missed up until today that this class also has Bruce and Chris in it--identical brothers whom I'd failed to notice were, in fact, twins.
I guess I just thought they were the same person or something? Weird.
 |
| Pictured here on the right: either Chris or Bruce. Chruce? |
To me, "l" and "r" bear almost no phonetic similarity to "z"--so why do they always resort to this? Why is this sound so hard? I honestly don't know. But I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that at least Chinese has the initial sound of "在" (tzai), which is admittedly not perfect, with the t sound before the z, but does at least feature a sound that, if said with "oo," would be recognizable as "zoo" (tzoo), not as "bathroom" (loo) or "regret" (roo/rue).
So I mentioned this breakthrough to Patty, who liked it and shared it with the classes via BoPoMoFo (Taiwanese phonetic system). The results? Whereas at the beginning of the class maybe 30% of the students could say their "zoo" correctly, towards the end I'd say about 75% could. Not bad! Now, just to retroactively teach this breakthrough to all of my students...
But it's pointless to "rue" the consequences of being slow on the uptake on this one. Just because I left my brain in the "loo" before doesn't mean its retrieval can't be meaningful--and it is, for Chris, Bruce, and the letter "z"!
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Bullet points
Some days, my life warrants paragraphs. Today, it warrants bullet points.
- The most exciting moment of the day came the second I walked into our teachers' office at Hanmin--and discovered that we have a new foreign teacher! Ingrid, who's from the Netherlands, will be here for 2 months teaching English, and is currently teaching with Fiona. She just graduated college, and is filling the time between her degree and her Master's in what I think is the best way possible--teaching English in Taiwan!
- I spent much of the day figuring out travel plans, because MY BROTHER AND SISTER-IN-LAW come next week!
- I still like the gym, even after a week-long hiatus and when I forget my headphones at home. Woo!
- I put pictures up for the first time in about a month. If you're my friend on Facebook and missed them, here are the links:
- Teaching 'n stuff: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2163914024684.2105389.1451610020&type=1&l=6718d387c3
- Kaitlin's visit!: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2948540759862.2120425.1451610020&type=1&l=dd996d3d21
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Haha point
I'm no comic. I'm well aware of the fact that, my frequent attempts to the contrary, I will never be the next big thing in the world of comedic writing.
But I am a foreigner. And an English teacher. And that, as it turns out, is all you need to be qualified to judge an English language joke competition in Kaohsiung!
It was brilliant. After a week of others wondering what sort of horrible butchering of jokes I'd gotten myself into, I found instead a group of marvelous performers who, for the most part, could tell a decent joke!
One of my favorite moments from the evening:
The first performer stands up and begins to speak. In a near flawless British accent! I must say, it actually threw me off for a bit, considering that one of the things I was evaluating was pronunciation, and I'm just not well-versed enough in British accents to know if some of the words he said were said wrong, or said in a British accent. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he did a great job with his anecdotal joke of bad husband "Bobby" (easily the most British-pronounced word in the whole bit) who forgets his wedding anniversary. His wife says "When I wake up tomorrow morning, there better be a gift sitting in the driveway that can go from 0 to 200 in 6 seconds." And what does she find the next morning? A bathroom scale. And, as the young comedian went on to note, Bobby had not been heard from since.
For that little gem, he got third place.
The remainder of the (actually pretty short) evening consisted of some hilarious voices, some wonderfully physical comedy, some great comedic timing--and yes, a little nervousness and a few mispronounced words, but generally just great performance after great performance after great performance.
And they did come right on like that: one after the other, many lasting no more than about 45 seconds, and the next person ascending the stage long before I'd finished scoring the person before, let alone making the more detailed notes I was supposed to give each team. I wrote like mad, but even so, when the time came to give notes, I found myself with a gaping hole where my notes for Team 6 should be.
"That's okay," I thought. "I'm sure they'll come up one group at a time for feedback, and when I see who it is I'll remember what I was going to say."
Then the other judge, a professor at NKNU, stood up to say a few words.
"Great!" I thought. "She'll jog my memory and I can go from there."
Then she sat down, having given no more than a few sentences, and all in Chinese. Wait, she isn't giving individual feedback? My turn? Gulp.
I managed something, though, and then the results were tallied, awarding my faux-British friend third, a girl with absolutely flawless English and a pretty good joke to boot in second, and a group of three with a high production quality and even higher energy levels scoring the top spot with their simple, yet well-executed sketch about a tourist and an old man's dog.
And me? Well, I got a doctorate, apparently. No, really:
Yes, that certificate is thanking me, Professor Rebekah (and I finally learned to doctor pictures for privacy's sake, woo!) for serving as a judge. I like the looks of that! What's better, it reminds me of a favorite college professor of mine who refused to let us call her "doctor" because she technically didn't have her doctorate. Having now been on the receiving end, I say, why not? It's a great thing to be artificially honored!
So no, I'm still not a humor writer. But now, with a full 40 minutes of experience now behind me, I am apparently a full Professor of Comedy! How very appropriate that my title also be a joke...
But I am a foreigner. And an English teacher. And that, as it turns out, is all you need to be qualified to judge an English language joke competition in Kaohsiung!
It was brilliant. After a week of others wondering what sort of horrible butchering of jokes I'd gotten myself into, I found instead a group of marvelous performers who, for the most part, could tell a decent joke!
One of my favorite moments from the evening:
The first performer stands up and begins to speak. In a near flawless British accent! I must say, it actually threw me off for a bit, considering that one of the things I was evaluating was pronunciation, and I'm just not well-versed enough in British accents to know if some of the words he said were said wrong, or said in a British accent. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he did a great job with his anecdotal joke of bad husband "Bobby" (easily the most British-pronounced word in the whole bit) who forgets his wedding anniversary. His wife says "When I wake up tomorrow morning, there better be a gift sitting in the driveway that can go from 0 to 200 in 6 seconds." And what does she find the next morning? A bathroom scale. And, as the young comedian went on to note, Bobby had not been heard from since.
For that little gem, he got third place.
The remainder of the (actually pretty short) evening consisted of some hilarious voices, some wonderfully physical comedy, some great comedic timing--and yes, a little nervousness and a few mispronounced words, but generally just great performance after great performance after great performance.
And they did come right on like that: one after the other, many lasting no more than about 45 seconds, and the next person ascending the stage long before I'd finished scoring the person before, let alone making the more detailed notes I was supposed to give each team. I wrote like mad, but even so, when the time came to give notes, I found myself with a gaping hole where my notes for Team 6 should be.
"That's okay," I thought. "I'm sure they'll come up one group at a time for feedback, and when I see who it is I'll remember what I was going to say."
Then the other judge, a professor at NKNU, stood up to say a few words.
"Great!" I thought. "She'll jog my memory and I can go from there."
Then she sat down, having given no more than a few sentences, and all in Chinese. Wait, she isn't giving individual feedback? My turn? Gulp.
I managed something, though, and then the results were tallied, awarding my faux-British friend third, a girl with absolutely flawless English and a pretty good joke to boot in second, and a group of three with a high production quality and even higher energy levels scoring the top spot with their simple, yet well-executed sketch about a tourist and an old man's dog.
And me? Well, I got a doctorate, apparently. No, really:
 |
| Easiest 4 years of my life! |
So no, I'm still not a humor writer. But now, with a full 40 minutes of experience now behind me, I am apparently a full Professor of Comedy! How very appropriate that my title also be a joke...
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Good Food, Good Company
Here I am again, posting about food. But it deserves it--and, besides, the next-most exciting thing I did today was cleaning. So...onward with the food!
I'll be honest. After last night's dinner with my host family, I didn't know if I would eat again, ever. Which was slightly problematic, in that I knew that I had dinner plans tonight--so I ate next to nothing today in preparation. And, by 7pm, when Rachel and I set out, I had finally succeeded: I was hungry!
Rachel and I met up with Issac (our trainer from the gym) and his friend Juna at Foster Hewitt's, a Canadian-run restaurant in Zuoying where I had happened to go for Thanksgiving on my unsuccessful quest for turkey. Then, I settled for steak.
Today, however, was different. I ordered the BBQ beef burger, and then Rachel, Issac, Juna and I entered into a wonderful and several hours long conversation, mostly in English but with Chinese and even some Taiwanese thrown in for good measure, in which we discovered things like that "haha point" is the direct translation of "punchline"; why many Taiwanese people don't eat beef; that "all guys are alike" (from Issac), "yeah, all guys are ***holes" (from Rachel); and that Issac is a major lightweight.
Also in debate were whether or not Asian girls have butts (Issac said some do; Rachel said they don't), whether it's "study aboard" (Issac) or "study abroad" (the rest of us), and which of the many foreign guys in the busy restaurant was most attractive (question from Issac to Rachel and I).
So many other wonderful moments; far too many to tell. And the food--fabulous. Wish I had pictures to show for it. All in all a great night, and one I'm still full from now, four hours later...might necessitate another fast tomorrow.
I'll be honest. After last night's dinner with my host family, I didn't know if I would eat again, ever. Which was slightly problematic, in that I knew that I had dinner plans tonight--so I ate next to nothing today in preparation. And, by 7pm, when Rachel and I set out, I had finally succeeded: I was hungry!
Rachel and I met up with Issac (our trainer from the gym) and his friend Juna at Foster Hewitt's, a Canadian-run restaurant in Zuoying where I had happened to go for Thanksgiving on my unsuccessful quest for turkey. Then, I settled for steak.
Today, however, was different. I ordered the BBQ beef burger, and then Rachel, Issac, Juna and I entered into a wonderful and several hours long conversation, mostly in English but with Chinese and even some Taiwanese thrown in for good measure, in which we discovered things like that "haha point" is the direct translation of "punchline"; why many Taiwanese people don't eat beef; that "all guys are alike" (from Issac), "yeah, all guys are ***holes" (from Rachel); and that Issac is a major lightweight.
Also in debate were whether or not Asian girls have butts (Issac said some do; Rachel said they don't), whether it's "study aboard" (Issac) or "study abroad" (the rest of us), and which of the many foreign guys in the busy restaurant was most attractive (question from Issac to Rachel and I).
So many other wonderful moments; far too many to tell. And the food--fabulous. Wish I had pictures to show for it. All in all a great night, and one I'm still full from now, four hours later...might necessitate another fast tomorrow.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Theoretically the 29th
Technically, 1:28am in Singapore (and Taiwan), so 12:28am in Thailand, which is still not the 29th, but this is still pretty close to actually blogging all but one day of our stay in Thailand. Hooray!
So, we're currently in the Singapore airport, enduring a 6-hour overnight layover (cheap flights always have downsides...), and discovering that Singapore is the absolute best place ever to have a long layover. Their motto is "The feeling is first class," and it certainly does feel that way: wide open spaces, uber clean glass walls, smooth-running escalators, pristine stretches of (now-empty) carpet, free internet kiosks, an overnight cafe which smells scrumptious...and, as we just discovered, lounge chairs. Those will be our beds tonight.
In the meantime: today. It's been full. And a little crazy, for several reasons and on several occasions. Best of times, worst of times. A Dickensian day, if you will.
It started early, 7am, with a buffet breakfast and a rendezvous with our friend at the tour center, an older guy with so-so English who told us we could get a 2-hour snorkelling trip for two to Bamboo Island and Mosquito Island for 1,000 baht (~30USD). We said sign us up!
Snorkelling was glorious: after a 20 minute longtail boat journey, we started at Bamboo Island, where our driver parked on the beach near the coral; for me, a complete newbie at this whole being-in-the-ocean thing, it was perfect. I got to wade into it, literally, with the deepest spot I found about waist deep, and just float as I saw parrot fish, angelfish, leapord fish (campoflauged beautifully!), dozens of unidentified smaller fish, of course a fair amount of (unfortunately smallish) coral, sea cucumbers, some gorgeous peacock-blue floral-looking things, and, my favorite, a deflated puffer fish. Karina didn't snorkel much there, since she prefers deep water, but I loved it, my bi-minutely shark scans (I read too much for my own good) notwithstanding.
Then, after a brief verbal scuffle with someone trying to charge us to stay at the beach for an hour, we set out for Mosquito Island where, despite the name, I saw not a single mosquito.
What I did see, though, was fish. THOUSANDS of them, all swimming about and above a magnificent reef off the side of a limestone cliff. This one was deeper, and we didn't go to the shore, but just flopped out of the boat into what felt like an aquarium. Here were all the fish I saw before (except the puffer), plus some groupers, a Dory-like fish, some truly rainbow colored fish, and more varieties of others than I could possibly name. It was glorious.
All-in-all, a wonderful first snorkelling experience and, for that matter, first ocean-swimming experience. But I discovered that I love everything about swimming in salt water except the salt water. Despite my best efforts, it would NOT stay out of my mask and mouthpiece, leading to a few moments where I felt like I was drowning--many of which happened, not coincidentally, when I was in the deep water, barred from standing up and a long swim from my boat. Also, Karina delighted in throwing bread at me, upon which hundreds of thousands of fish would then converge--which is, by the way, TERRIFYING to experience inches from your face.
So snorkelling was great. When we got back, we checked out and I checked into the local massage place, where I treated myself to a lovely oil massage (at triple the prices of the mainland, unfortunately, though still four times cheaper than America) while Karina sunbathed. Then it was a rather rushed buffet lunch and just catching our 1pm ferry back to Phuket.
In Phuket, things got...interesting. For some unknown reason, not nearly enough taxis had shown up to service people coming off the ferry and, as all the minibuses were full, too, we decided to foot it to Phuket town (a 15 minute walk, we were told), eat dinner there and spend the rest of our Thai money (I REALLY wanted another hour or two of Thai experience), and then catch a minibus to the airport. A long walk past illegal taxi- and motorbike-hawkers later, we stopped in at a 7-11 and stepped out to find it was raining. And, of course, by then all taxis had disappeared.
At least this time my travel curse waited till we were off the beach.
About an hour, three stops for directions with some-English-speaking locals and several kilometers of walking and watching minibus after minibus speed by without stopping later, we found a wonderful Thai family who spoke decent English and called a taxi for us, which arrived just as it was starting to get dark for the last-minute save.
So we ate in the Phuket airport, bought a few postcards, rearranged our stuff, sat around, got frustrated with line-cutters at immigration, jostled for service with determined, yet non-English or Thai-speaking Chinese tourists with meal vouchers at Dairy Queen, and finally boarded our (delayed) flight for Singapore.
And now we're here, using our free Internet but more than ready to seek out the fabled "snooze chairs" the airport is advertising every time our 15 minute sessions run out. After all, the 29th has been a very long, though wonderful, day.
So, we're currently in the Singapore airport, enduring a 6-hour overnight layover (cheap flights always have downsides...), and discovering that Singapore is the absolute best place ever to have a long layover. Their motto is "The feeling is first class," and it certainly does feel that way: wide open spaces, uber clean glass walls, smooth-running escalators, pristine stretches of (now-empty) carpet, free internet kiosks, an overnight cafe which smells scrumptious...and, as we just discovered, lounge chairs. Those will be our beds tonight.
In the meantime: today. It's been full. And a little crazy, for several reasons and on several occasions. Best of times, worst of times. A Dickensian day, if you will.
It started early, 7am, with a buffet breakfast and a rendezvous with our friend at the tour center, an older guy with so-so English who told us we could get a 2-hour snorkelling trip for two to Bamboo Island and Mosquito Island for 1,000 baht (~30USD). We said sign us up!
Snorkelling was glorious: after a 20 minute longtail boat journey, we started at Bamboo Island, where our driver parked on the beach near the coral; for me, a complete newbie at this whole being-in-the-ocean thing, it was perfect. I got to wade into it, literally, with the deepest spot I found about waist deep, and just float as I saw parrot fish, angelfish, leapord fish (campoflauged beautifully!), dozens of unidentified smaller fish, of course a fair amount of (unfortunately smallish) coral, sea cucumbers, some gorgeous peacock-blue floral-looking things, and, my favorite, a deflated puffer fish. Karina didn't snorkel much there, since she prefers deep water, but I loved it, my bi-minutely shark scans (I read too much for my own good) notwithstanding.
Then, after a brief verbal scuffle with someone trying to charge us to stay at the beach for an hour, we set out for Mosquito Island where, despite the name, I saw not a single mosquito.
What I did see, though, was fish. THOUSANDS of them, all swimming about and above a magnificent reef off the side of a limestone cliff. This one was deeper, and we didn't go to the shore, but just flopped out of the boat into what felt like an aquarium. Here were all the fish I saw before (except the puffer), plus some groupers, a Dory-like fish, some truly rainbow colored fish, and more varieties of others than I could possibly name. It was glorious.
All-in-all, a wonderful first snorkelling experience and, for that matter, first ocean-swimming experience. But I discovered that I love everything about swimming in salt water except the salt water. Despite my best efforts, it would NOT stay out of my mask and mouthpiece, leading to a few moments where I felt like I was drowning--many of which happened, not coincidentally, when I was in the deep water, barred from standing up and a long swim from my boat. Also, Karina delighted in throwing bread at me, upon which hundreds of thousands of fish would then converge--which is, by the way, TERRIFYING to experience inches from your face.
So snorkelling was great. When we got back, we checked out and I checked into the local massage place, where I treated myself to a lovely oil massage (at triple the prices of the mainland, unfortunately, though still four times cheaper than America) while Karina sunbathed. Then it was a rather rushed buffet lunch and just catching our 1pm ferry back to Phuket.
In Phuket, things got...interesting. For some unknown reason, not nearly enough taxis had shown up to service people coming off the ferry and, as all the minibuses were full, too, we decided to foot it to Phuket town (a 15 minute walk, we were told), eat dinner there and spend the rest of our Thai money (I REALLY wanted another hour or two of Thai experience), and then catch a minibus to the airport. A long walk past illegal taxi- and motorbike-hawkers later, we stopped in at a 7-11 and stepped out to find it was raining. And, of course, by then all taxis had disappeared.
At least this time my travel curse waited till we were off the beach.
About an hour, three stops for directions with some-English-speaking locals and several kilometers of walking and watching minibus after minibus speed by without stopping later, we found a wonderful Thai family who spoke decent English and called a taxi for us, which arrived just as it was starting to get dark for the last-minute save.
So we ate in the Phuket airport, bought a few postcards, rearranged our stuff, sat around, got frustrated with line-cutters at immigration, jostled for service with determined, yet non-English or Thai-speaking Chinese tourists with meal vouchers at Dairy Queen, and finally boarded our (delayed) flight for Singapore.
And now we're here, using our free Internet but more than ready to seek out the fabled "snooze chairs" the airport is advertising every time our 15 minute sessions run out. After all, the 29th has been a very long, though wonderful, day.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Assembly-line English
Three by three, they come to my desk, jittery and unsure of themselves. I give the instructions and begin flashing through word cards. The oral test is underway.
"Arms."
"Left."
"Jeans."
"Comb."
"Write."
"Uhhhh....."
I pause and help the student break down the troubling word, "knot," and then continue in the line-up. After the words comes another round of instructions, and then I'm showing picture cards of different feelings.
"How does he feel?"
"He feels good."
"How does he feel?"
"He feel thirsty."
"He feels thirsty. (change card; to next student) How does he feel?"
"He feels sicks."
Close enough. The next bit invariably surprises them, though it's precisely the same routine we've practiced in the classroom dozens of times. I lightly tap them each on their heads (or arms or legs or hands or feet):
"What's wrong with you?"
"I feel I head hurt..."
"My head hurts."
"I feel my head hurts."
"No, just 'My head hurts.'"
"Just my head hurts."
Well, I guess that's probably true, too. Sigh.
Throughout the day, 5 classes of 6th graders file dutifully before me, reading words and answering questions, then filing out again as I scramble to write down a grade before being inundated by a group of new students reminding me of their names and numbers. I leave my desk maybe three or four times total all day; even my breaks are eaten up by tests, as there never seems to be quite enough class time to get through everyone.
I assign each student a grade between 80 and 100, per the general grading policy here, and move on to the next. Student after student. Word after repeated word. Sadly, even giving them my little Chinese New Year cards became automatic ("What color do you like?"--student answers and takes card--"Thank you.")
Unfortunately, that's just the way it is here. Assembly-line English. As I've mentioned before, I teach over 550 students, and even so, I'm having to trade classes for next semester so more kids can have access to 'the foreign English teacher." Of all the kids I test today, none will be in my classes next semester. It's their peers' turn; theirs is over, and they have to make way for them.
And I hate that aspect of this process. I've loved the last 4 1/2 months teaching this group of kids, and I finally feel like I'm getting to know them, but now I'm being shuffled along to the next group. To be fair, I knew this was coming. When I got my school assignment, Hanmin offered for me to either teach all the 5th and 6th graders every other week, or teach half of them the first semester and half the second. I chose the latter option, on the assumption that it would be easier to get to know kids if you at least saw them once a week.
And I was right. Which is why it's so hard now to just slide on down the line to the next. I want to have more time with all my kids; they're each so wonderful and I love teaching them. Of course, that's the good news, too: they're ALL wonderful--including those I haven't taught yet.
But still, "How does Teacher Bekah feel?"
"She feels sad."
"Arms."
"Left."
"Jeans."
"Comb."
"Write."
"Uhhhh....."
I pause and help the student break down the troubling word, "knot," and then continue in the line-up. After the words comes another round of instructions, and then I'm showing picture cards of different feelings.
"How does he feel?"
"He feels good."
"How does he feel?"
"He feel thirsty."
"He feels thirsty. (change card; to next student) How does he feel?"
"He feels sicks."
Close enough. The next bit invariably surprises them, though it's precisely the same routine we've practiced in the classroom dozens of times. I lightly tap them each on their heads (or arms or legs or hands or feet):
"What's wrong with you?"
"I feel I head hurt..."
"My head hurts."
"I feel my head hurts."
"No, just 'My head hurts.'"
"Just my head hurts."
Well, I guess that's probably true, too. Sigh.
Throughout the day, 5 classes of 6th graders file dutifully before me, reading words and answering questions, then filing out again as I scramble to write down a grade before being inundated by a group of new students reminding me of their names and numbers. I leave my desk maybe three or four times total all day; even my breaks are eaten up by tests, as there never seems to be quite enough class time to get through everyone.
I assign each student a grade between 80 and 100, per the general grading policy here, and move on to the next. Student after student. Word after repeated word. Sadly, even giving them my little Chinese New Year cards became automatic ("What color do you like?"--student answers and takes card--"Thank you.")
Unfortunately, that's just the way it is here. Assembly-line English. As I've mentioned before, I teach over 550 students, and even so, I'm having to trade classes for next semester so more kids can have access to 'the foreign English teacher." Of all the kids I test today, none will be in my classes next semester. It's their peers' turn; theirs is over, and they have to make way for them.
And I hate that aspect of this process. I've loved the last 4 1/2 months teaching this group of kids, and I finally feel like I'm getting to know them, but now I'm being shuffled along to the next group. To be fair, I knew this was coming. When I got my school assignment, Hanmin offered for me to either teach all the 5th and 6th graders every other week, or teach half of them the first semester and half the second. I chose the latter option, on the assumption that it would be easier to get to know kids if you at least saw them once a week.
And I was right. Which is why it's so hard now to just slide on down the line to the next. I want to have more time with all my kids; they're each so wonderful and I love teaching them. Of course, that's the good news, too: they're ALL wonderful--including those I haven't taught yet.
But still, "How does Teacher Bekah feel?"
"She feels sad."
Monday, December 12, 2011
Co-co-teaching
"Do you know who this is?"
Thirty-five pairs of expectant eyes train on me, not quite sure enough of themselves to answer. Finally, one girl raises her hand. "Your mom?"
Yes! My kids were beside themselves with excitement at meeting Teacher Bekah's mom, and began lobbing questions at her about herself (what do you like to do?), her school (what do kids in America eat for lunch?), etc. Which worked out wonderfully, giving me time to write the day's vocabulary words on the board.
With my mom, an experienced teacher, here for the week, we now routinely have three or four teachers in a classroom, between myself, my co-teacher, my mom, and the home room teacher who is often sitting at her desk at the back. But with the lesson plan we've cooked up, it's just about perfect.
We're teaching Christmas decorations! My mom, who is a 4th grade teacher back home, recently did an exercise with her students in which they decorated a cut-out paper ornament and then had to write descriptively about their creations; next, she read each description aloud and students had to guess which was which. I thought it sounded fun and easy--with some tweaking to accommodate my students' non-native command of English--and it has been.
The only problem really, is that the kids love the decorating so much that it's a struggle to make it to the writing bit (you know, the part that redeems this as an English lesson, not an arts class...), and we have not made it to the guessing bit a single time.
What we did get, over and over again, was a bunch of glitter, strewn from ornaments onto the overflow paper, surrounding table space, floor, and, of course, ourselves, lending a permanent sheen to our classes. It took all of us working together from keeping a single class from running through our entire glitter stock.
But, despite or, more likely, because of that, my students LOVE my mom, and the wonderful goodies she brought for them to enjoy. And I do too.
Thirty-five pairs of expectant eyes train on me, not quite sure enough of themselves to answer. Finally, one girl raises her hand. "Your mom?"
Yes! My kids were beside themselves with excitement at meeting Teacher Bekah's mom, and began lobbing questions at her about herself (what do you like to do?), her school (what do kids in America eat for lunch?), etc. Which worked out wonderfully, giving me time to write the day's vocabulary words on the board.
With my mom, an experienced teacher, here for the week, we now routinely have three or four teachers in a classroom, between myself, my co-teacher, my mom, and the home room teacher who is often sitting at her desk at the back. But with the lesson plan we've cooked up, it's just about perfect.
We're teaching Christmas decorations! My mom, who is a 4th grade teacher back home, recently did an exercise with her students in which they decorated a cut-out paper ornament and then had to write descriptively about their creations; next, she read each description aloud and students had to guess which was which. I thought it sounded fun and easy--with some tweaking to accommodate my students' non-native command of English--and it has been.
The only problem really, is that the kids love the decorating so much that it's a struggle to make it to the writing bit (you know, the part that redeems this as an English lesson, not an arts class...), and we have not made it to the guessing bit a single time.
What we did get, over and over again, was a bunch of glitter, strewn from ornaments onto the overflow paper, surrounding table space, floor, and, of course, ourselves, lending a permanent sheen to our classes. It took all of us working together from keeping a single class from running through our entire glitter stock.
 |
| Just a few of our ornaments, drying on my desk |
 |
| Find the mistaken word! And then give a collective "awwwww" |
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Dyslexia?
The letters on the board are wrong. Or, not wrong, but in the wrong places. I look again, and glance over at Patty, who cocks her head to the side.
Occuaptino.
Nope, that's definitely not an English word. I go at it with the back of my hand, and it morphs:
Occuaption.
Nope, not quite there yet. I try again:
Occupation.
Yes.
Unfortunately, this is not a recreation from my younger days. It happened today, as I taught a group of 5th graders the difference between the long and short "o" sounds. Is it possible that my time teaching kids has actually hurt my ability to spell in English? Or that it has turned me dyslexic somehow?
It almost seems plausible. As I sit here typing this, I've made more typos per line than ever before (or is it just that I'm noticing them because I'm thinking about it? AHHH METACOGNITION). It took me three tries to type the "I'm" in the preceding parenthetical. Ridiculous.
Maybe it has something to do with the inundation of facts, figures, names, places, and numbers that seems to have taken up permanent living space in my head recently: there are just too many of them, and my brain has decided to stop keeping track of silly little things like which order the letters of words go in.
Or maybe it has something to do with the constant flow of traditional Chinese characters, very few of which I can actually read, all around me, every day. After all, dyslexia is, by definition, "a reading disability that occurs when the brain does not properly recognize and process certain symbols." And my brain most certainly cannot properly recognize and process the vast majority of the symbols I see every day. So maybe it's decided that should be a uniform phenomenon for me.
We actually had a fun lesson planned today, including all sorts of TPR goodness (raise your hands over your head in an O if I say a word with a long o sound; put them in front of your shape in a U of O style O if I say a word with the short o sound), but what I remember as much as that is my absurd inability to spell.
Honestly, the kids probably didn't notice. And even if they did, they almost certainly didn't care. (If they did, let's be honest, I would have heard about it IMMEDIATELY.) They probably didn't know or care how to spell "occupation"; they only said it to gain a point for their team.
But it's my team's job to make them care, and learn. And, given that my current occupation is English teacher, my brain needs to whip itself back into shaep. Or--shape. Dang.
Occuaptino.
Nope, that's definitely not an English word. I go at it with the back of my hand, and it morphs:
Occuaption.
Nope, not quite there yet. I try again:
Occupation.
Yes.
Unfortunately, this is not a recreation from my younger days. It happened today, as I taught a group of 5th graders the difference between the long and short "o" sounds. Is it possible that my time teaching kids has actually hurt my ability to spell in English? Or that it has turned me dyslexic somehow?
It almost seems plausible. As I sit here typing this, I've made more typos per line than ever before (or is it just that I'm noticing them because I'm thinking about it? AHHH METACOGNITION). It took me three tries to type the "I'm" in the preceding parenthetical. Ridiculous.
Maybe it has something to do with the inundation of facts, figures, names, places, and numbers that seems to have taken up permanent living space in my head recently: there are just too many of them, and my brain has decided to stop keeping track of silly little things like which order the letters of words go in.
Or maybe it has something to do with the constant flow of traditional Chinese characters, very few of which I can actually read, all around me, every day. After all, dyslexia is, by definition, "a reading disability that occurs when the brain does not properly recognize and process certain symbols." And my brain most certainly cannot properly recognize and process the vast majority of the symbols I see every day. So maybe it's decided that should be a uniform phenomenon for me.
We actually had a fun lesson planned today, including all sorts of TPR goodness (raise your hands over your head in an O if I say a word with a long o sound; put them in front of your shape in a U of O style O if I say a word with the short o sound), but what I remember as much as that is my absurd inability to spell.
Honestly, the kids probably didn't notice. And even if they did, they almost certainly didn't care. (If they did, let's be honest, I would have heard about it IMMEDIATELY.) They probably didn't know or care how to spell "occupation"; they only said it to gain a point for their team.
But it's my team's job to make them care, and learn. And, given that my current occupation is English teacher, my brain needs to whip itself back into shaep. Or--shape. Dang.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Friends
I have some wonderful friends here in Taiwan: let me just begin this
post by saying that. This post is in no way meant to demean the many
fantastic people I have had the privilege of meeting here. You all rock!
But it struck me the other day how uncomplicated my initial friends-making mechanism is here. Back home, I tend to keep to myself, secure in my bubble of friends and with little need to, say, strike up a conversation and friendship with my baristas (which is not to say I don't, but the need isn't there). And if I do have a conversation with a random stranger, I expect that to be it: we had our momentary chat, and now we're off to live our own lives.
And if you look at my friends back home, you will probably notice patterns of common interests, hobbies, etc; it's human nature to seek out people with whom you have something in common, so most if not all of my friendships back home are based off of some sort of deeper connection than simple small talk.
Not so here.
Here, for instance, it makes total sense for me to be friends with Rob, who I met scootering to work one day. I know next to nothing about him, other than that his name is Rob and he's an English teacher from New York. But that, as it turns out, is all you really need here in Kaohsiung.
So, (nerd that I am), I made a flow chart to show the steps foreigners go through while making friends. This is partly just for fun and partly my lame attempt to copy funny things I've seen on others' web sites, like Cracked.com. (I was going to make another one with all the intricacies of making friends back home for comparison, but this chart was complicated enough to make, without adding in more options. Seriously, took me forever just to figure out how to upload it here..so ENJOY IT!)
As you can see, my criteria are pretty simple: can we talk to each other? Do we see each other a lot? Perfect! We are now friends.
Of course, once we make it past this initial stage of friendship you get into all the deeper sharing that makes for friendships worldwide--that's where my wonderful friends here all come into play--but I thought you might be amused by my attempt at a flowchart and the odd (lack of) intricacies that make for foreign friendships.
But it struck me the other day how uncomplicated my initial friends-making mechanism is here. Back home, I tend to keep to myself, secure in my bubble of friends and with little need to, say, strike up a conversation and friendship with my baristas (which is not to say I don't, but the need isn't there). And if I do have a conversation with a random stranger, I expect that to be it: we had our momentary chat, and now we're off to live our own lives.
And if you look at my friends back home, you will probably notice patterns of common interests, hobbies, etc; it's human nature to seek out people with whom you have something in common, so most if not all of my friendships back home are based off of some sort of deeper connection than simple small talk.
Not so here.
Here, for instance, it makes total sense for me to be friends with Rob, who I met scootering to work one day. I know next to nothing about him, other than that his name is Rob and he's an English teacher from New York. But that, as it turns out, is all you really need here in Kaohsiung.
So, (nerd that I am), I made a flow chart to show the steps foreigners go through while making friends. This is partly just for fun and partly my lame attempt to copy funny things I've seen on others' web sites, like Cracked.com. (I was going to make another one with all the intricacies of making friends back home for comparison, but this chart was complicated enough to make, without adding in more options. Seriously, took me forever just to figure out how to upload it here..so ENJOY IT!)
As you can see, my criteria are pretty simple: can we talk to each other? Do we see each other a lot? Perfect! We are now friends.
Of course, once we make it past this initial stage of friendship you get into all the deeper sharing that makes for friendships worldwide--that's where my wonderful friends here all come into play--but I thought you might be amused by my attempt at a flowchart and the odd (lack of) intricacies that make for foreign friendships.
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